Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure (20 page)

But he had come, and that was something, her heart cried wildly. He had come, and she couldn’t let him leave without asking to see him again. She knew how much he loved Felix—he had a right to know about his other child. Her baby.

The sound of her heels on the tiled floor echoed madly in the stark corridors as she ran, so she paused to slip them off and carried on, not caring what she looked like to the few straggling musicians and backstage staff she passed. Rounding a corner, she found herself on the mezzanine balcony that rose up from the Bankside’s famous Art Deco entrance hall.

She rushed to the railing and looked down.

With the concert still technically not ended, the place was deserted—except for one man crossing the austere white space towards the door. There was no mistaking those massive shoulders, the narrow hips and long legs, the slow, deliberate walk. Or the infant, now quiet, in the car seat.

’Orlando…Please…Wait!’

His hand was on the door.

‘You can’t just leave like that!’ she said wildly, the pain in her voice echoing around the stark walls.

As if in slow motion she watched his arm fall back to his side. Seeming to tense himself, as if in anticipation of some terrible blow, he turned round. His expression was rigidly controlled, his narrow eyes dark and hollow.

‘I have to.’

She gazed down at him. Her chest was heaving with the exertion of running, and also with painful locked-in emotions. The air seemed to have been squeezed from her lungs and replaced with razorblades, and her eyes searched his face for answers to the questions she hardly dared to ask.

‘Arabella? Is she waiting for you?’

For a second he looked almost bewildered, shaking his head as he said irritably, ‘Arabella? She’s gone. We were never together.’

Rachel could feel the metal railing biting into her aching fingers. ‘But Felix…’ she said desperately. ‘She said if you weren’t together she would take Felix…’

Bitter understanding suddenly flooded Orlando’s face. With deliberate care he set Felix down on the floor at his feet. ‘Another of Arabella’s sophisticated tactics,’ he said acidly.

A tiny spark of tentative hope glowed somewhere in the darkness of Rachel’s barred and shuttered heart. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, trying to keep the pleading note out of her voice. ’Why did you come?’

Below her, Orlando was standing perfectly still, perfectly straight, his face an emotionless mask.

‘To see you.’ He gave a sudden ironic laugh. ‘To hear you. Whatever. It was worth it. You were astonishing.’

‘But you’re a philistine,’ she protested, unable to stop the hope that was now spreading like wildfire through her whole body. Holding onto the balcony railing for support, she started to move along it towards the stairs, never taking her eyes off his pale, tense face. ‘You said so yourself…You don’t even like music. You burn pianos.’

He gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve changed.’

She had reached the stairs now, and she began to run down them on bare, silent feet towards him. Tears were streaming down her face as she came to a standstill in front of him on the second step from the bottom. Adrenaline and love and the same gut-wrenching desire she had always felt whenever she looked into his ocean-coloured eyes fizzed through her, making her brave.

‘I don’t want you to change…’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I love you just the way you are.’

Very slowly he lifted his hand and held it out towards her. The smile he gave her was one of unbearable sadness as he tilted his head back slightly, as if preparing himself for the firing squad.

‘Oh, Rachel…’ he said resignedly, ‘I love you too. Far, far too much to ruin your life. You’re too bright, too beautiful, too talented to throw yourself away on me. This is where you belong—and if I had any doubts about that before, tonight has put them all to rest once and for all. If we were to…’ He faltered, and an expression of fathomless suffering flickered across his face. ‘I’d only stand in your way, and I can’t do that. I won’t.’

For a moment Rachel couldn’t speak, couldn’t take in what he was saying. The words were like silvery, shimmering snow-flakes, and for a second all she could do was watch them in wonder, terrified that if she tried to catch them they’d melt away. Hesitantly, she brought her hand up to his, and with infinite tenderness her fingertips brushed his outstretched palm.

‘Again…’ she breathed, her face streaked with tears. ‘Say that again.’

Their fingers tightened, twisting together, locking fast, so that they were holding onto each other as if from either side of a deep and unbridgeable ravine.

‘I love you,’ he said harshly. ‘I love you, but I won’t hold you back. I won’t take you away from everything you’ve worked for. You were right. Your hands are far too brilliant, far too precious for everyday life at Easton. I can’t do it to you.’

‘You don’t have to.’ Joy sang out of her voice, falling onto his bowed head like sunlight breaking through cloud. ‘I’m doing it to myself. As of tonight, I’m retiring.’

‘
No
—’

‘Yes,’ she said tenderly, emphatically, lifting her chin and gazing at him in a blaze of defiance and love. ‘
Yes.
This time, Orlando Winterton, you have
no choice.
As of tonight I’m starting my maternity leave, and there’s nothing at all you can do about it.’

His head whipped violently upwards. His face was ashen, but his eyes burned with terrifying emotion.

‘
What?
’

Gently she pulled the hand that was still entwined with hers downwards, and placed it on the slippery satin over her small bump.

‘See?’ she whispered.

And then suddenly he was pulling her into his arms, bringing his mouth crashing down on hers, and they were devouring each other with all the desperate longing of the past four months, all the hope of the next lifetime. When he finally pulled away Orlando couldn’t tell whether the wetness on his cheeks was from her tears or his own.

As his hands moved wonderingly over her rounded stomach, moved upwards over the cold, slippery satin to the new fullness of her breasts, her eyes never left his face. The fierce, dazed longing there told her everything she needed to know.

‘There’s an expression…’ she said slowly. ‘An old proverb that says “Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight”…’

Orlando took her face in both his hands, gazing down at her with his intense, mesmerising stare. ‘I don’t want to have my sight restored,’ he said gravely. ‘I don’t need to, because when I’m with you I see things more clearly than I ever did before. God, Rachel, I do want to marry you. I want that more than anything.’ He paused, frowning. ‘But can you really live with this illness?’

She smiled into the clear pools of his eyes. ‘I can’t live without it. Because it’s part of you, and I can’t live without you. Your life is my life. Your problems, your joys, your triumphs, your children…all mine. Because you see things in me that I didn’t know were there. You give me courage.’

He laughed, though his dark lashes were wet with tears. ‘You’re going to need it if this baby’s a boy. Believe me, Winterton brothers are a nightmare.’ Still holding her face between his hands, he pressed a kiss to her quivering lips, feeling them part beneath his, welcoming him into the darkness of their private heaven. He felt drunk with longing, drunk with love.

Behind them there was an embarrassed cough. ‘Miss Campion…Excuse me…’

‘Mmm?’ Rachel murmured against Orlando’s mouth.

‘The audience are wondering if there will be an encore…They want more.’

Orlando groaned. ‘They’re not the only ones,’ he said with a rueful grin, taking a step backwards and giving her a little push in the direction of the hall. ‘Go.’

‘I don’t have to…’

‘You do. Over a thousand people are waiting for you.’

‘You and Felix are the only ones who matter.’

‘We’ll wait as long as it takes.’

She was halfway across the hall, but then she ran back to him and stood on tiptoe to brush her mouth across his ear, her fingers lightly caressing his neck as she breathed very softly, ‘Five minutes. And then I’m yours—exclusively, for ever.’

Closing his eyes, he smiled languidly into her fragrant hair as her touch and the whisper of her breath against his ear sent shockwaves of ecstasy through his entire body.

Five minutes suddenly seemed a hell of a long time…

Pausing now, in the golden summer twilight, a cool, moisture-beaded bottle of champagne clasped in one hand, Rachel looked back. The garden was at its most intoxicatingly perfect—ripe with blossom, heavy with perfume—but her joy in the achievement was nothing compared to the familiar surge of deep-down, wrenching love she felt as she watched Orlando walk towards her with his sexy, long-limbed stride, their daughter in his arms. Although she was the first Winterton girl for three generations, seven-month-old Rose had the dark hair and thrill-seeking energy of all her male forebears, and she kicked and wriggled delightedly in her daddy’s easy grasp.

The neck of Orlando’s white wedding shirt was open, his tie long since discarded. A couple of hours ago, in a private ceremony in Easton’s church, he had reverently added a plain band of old gold to the finger of Rachel’s left hand that already bore the Winterton rubies. Afterwards, coming out of the church into the drowsy late-summer afternoon, the new Lady Ashbroke had taken her bouquet of apricot roses, gathered that morning from the garden, and laid them at the feet of Felix’s angel.

They had returned to Easton, where all the estate employees and Rachel’s new friends from the mother-and-baby group in the village had mingled happily on the lawn and drunk champagne beneath a soft, forget-me-not blue sky. It had been perfect. And yet Orlando had found himself longing for this moment, when he could have Rachel to himself again.

Beneath his bare feet the slate pathway felt like warm silk as he followed the ribbon of smooth stones set into it. This began at the doorway at the end of the lime walk and got gradually wider as the path wound its way to the centre of the garden, meaning he could instantly orientate himself. Rachel’s idea, and just one of the many millions of ways she made his life better.

She made
him
better.

He followed her to where the stone seat stood, in its arbour of frothing white roses, and stooped to set his daughter down on the circle of flat cobbles around it. Instantly Rose hitched herself up onto her plump pink knees and, cooing with satisfaction, scuttled off in her precocious crab-like crawl to find her beloved Felix and the water. Orlando sat down beside Rachel, taking the glass of champagne she put into his hand. Her wedding dress was a simple knee-length shift of palest coffee-coloured silk, and he dropped a kiss onto her bare creamy shoulder.

‘Are you sorry we’re not jetting off somewhere exotic for a honeymoon?’ he murmured. Her skin was like the velvet of sunwarmed peaches.

‘No.’ She smiled, bending her head to expose the curving sweep of her rose-scented neck to his lips and sighing with pleasure. ‘I’m glad. I love it here too much. At home.’

The shadows stretched and deepened, and the first tiny diamond stars flickered in the lilac sky above them. The children’s laughter and muted shrieks of joy rose like soft moths in the hazy, fragrant evening. Sipping champagne, Rachel let her head fall back as Orlando’s beautiful fingers moved languidly down her arm, trailing rapture. Through half-closed eyes she gazed at him, feeling the familiar unfurling hunger inside, watching as his mouth spread into a slow smile of recognition.

‘Lady Ashbroke, would I be right in thinking that you’re giving me
that
look?’

She breathed a low, wicked laugh and slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt, feeling the muscles of his taut stomach tighten beneath her palm. ‘How did you guess?’

‘I can
feel
it.’

‘How does it feel?’ she whispered huskily.

‘Exquisite.’ He drained his glass of champagne and stood up, pulling her to her feet. ‘But, unless you do something about it soon, extremely uncomfortable. Come on—time for bed.’

Rachel quirked an eyebrow. ‘Us or the children?’

‘Both.’

Laughing, Rachel gathered up a protesting Rose, raining kisses down onto her face and her fat little hands, while Orlando lifted Felix high, setting him on his shoulders. Together they made their way back up the path to the house through the blue evening haze.

A vast disc of gold hung over the rooftops of Easton as they approached.

‘Moon,’ said Felix sleepily, pointing. ‘Big yellow moon.’

‘Honeymoon,’ said Rachel quietly, as Orlando’s fingers closed around hers, his thumb caressing her palm. ‘A perfect honeymoon.’

And, in every way possible, it was.