The Darkest of Shadows (32 page)

I placed the bracelet and the card on the table beside me and did the only thing that I could—I went back to sleep.

I’m not sure how long I slept, but it was long enough for the game Charlie had been watching to morph into a baseball match. What had woken me wasn’t Charlie or the noise from the TV; it was Lawrence, sitting quietly beside me. I opened my eyes just long enough to see the card from the flowers in his hand before I snuggled down closer to him, my head coming to rest in his lap.

“Nicholas sent me flowers,” I mumbled into his lap.

“I see that.” He was trying really hard not to stay calm.

“And a bracelet,” I added as an afterthought.

“Really?” Oh, it took a lot of effort to keep that one word as even as he managed.

I reached out and snagged the bracelet from the table and dropped it beside Lawrence. “Send it back,” I told him, my eyes closing again as I settled sleepily in his lap. “I don’t want his stuff.”

“I’ll take care of it.” I didn’t realize quite how worried he had been until he knew I didn’t want the gifts. The tension in his body drained almost instantly, and his hand, which had been gripping the card to within an inch of its life, finally settled gently against my head, his fingers tracing their way through the tangle of my hair.

“Don’t be mad,” I requested quietly. “Nicholas isn’t interested in me, not in that way. This is just an excuse to get to you. It’s not often he would be able to play in your league, and he will exploit this any way that he can.”

Lawrence moved out from under me and then reached down to lift me in his arms. “You are far too intelligent for this world, Lilly,” he whispered, as he carried me down the hall to our room. “Far too good for me.” He whispered the last words almost to himself.

I’m not sure what Lawrence did when he returned the gift to Nicholas, but that was the last we heard from him. Lawrence, however, made up for it with a replacement bracelet—not diamonds, however, but sparkling sapphires that were absolutely stunning. The diamonds came in a set of earrings that were beyond words and made it easy to forget about any gift from someone called Nicholas.

Months passed, and life became normal again, or as normal as it was when one lived with someone like Lawrence Monterey. We racked up more frequent flyer points than most pilots. Work was comfortable and rewarding, but also exhausting, and I had even managed another directors’ meeting. However, this time Lawrence arranged it so that Patrick couldn’t attend, something about it clashing with the opening of a casino in Asia that he couldn’t miss. Pity, that. I knew it would be a short respite, however; I couldn’t ignore him forever, and in fact he had already sent through his confirmation for the next directors meeting, which now loomed only a few weeks away.

Lawrence and I had settled into a fairly stable arrangement; it was more common knowledge than not that he and I were an item. Most people still treated me with the same level of respect that they had when I was only his assistant, but now they talked to me more personally. They had access to someone personally close to Lawrence, which I discovered was a rare thing. Never before did he mix business and pleasure. Usually his dates for functions were exactly that, very short term, and the women certainly had no influence or knowledge of his business interests; so to suddenly have me handed to them on a platter was more than some people could pass up.

Everyone wanted to be friends with me, or at least they all sent their wives to be my friend. I couldn’t count how many times I got invited to play tennis or golf—both of which I wouldn’t have touched if they paid me. Lawrence found it highly amusing. I was getting to the point where I was going to smack one of those simpering women with a tennis bat if they asked me again.

“You know, this is all your fault,” I told him one evening. I had just managed, with his help, to extricate myself from a particularly enthusiastic wife of a local contractor who though that we should absolutely go shopping together the next day. It was only when Lawrence mentioned that I actually had to work—yes, I did have a job—that she finally realized it wasn’t going to happen. I had mentioned that fact myself, but it seemed the words had to actually come from Lawrence for her to believe them.

“What’s my fault?” We were at a high-profile charity auction to raise money for a disaster relief effort for a small island somewhere near Thailand that had recently been decimated by an earthquake, so the invite list was mostly the big players in business and celebrities. However, there were always a handful of people who weren’t quite as wealthy as the rest who managed to snag an invite as well.

“Stop being so nice to them,” I snapped at him. I knew he was doing it on purpose; there was no way that he would normally have given a frig about any of them—that is, right up until they sauntered up to me and introduced themselves; then he was all charming and lovely. “You’re doing it on purpose so that you can sit back and watch while I try and get out of their clutches.” He handed me a drink from a passing waiter, and we moved off to the side of the room, his body hiding me from view of the room as he backed me against the wall.

“But it’s so amusing to see you squirm,” he teased, with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“I can think of other ways for you to see me squirm.” I raised an eyebrow in invitation. “But you keep this up, and you won’t see that at all.”

He followed my logic impeccably, so impeccably that he moved a step closer, indecently so in this room, and allowed our bodies to brush tantalizingly close to each other. “Let’s ditch this place and see about that,” he suggested.

“Tempting.” I leaned up to brush a kiss over his lips. Hopefully, if anyone saw, it just looked like we were talking intimately. “Very tempting.”

“Is that a no?” he breathed against my lips.

“That’s a later. Definitely a later,” I assured him. We’d only just arrived, so there was no way we could sneak off already. The auction hadn’t even started yet.

“Making out in the corner, Monterey. How very déclassé.” Nicholas’s voice interrupted our little moment. Seriously, of all the people to meet, it just had to be him.

Lawrence wrapped his arm around me and turned to face Nicholas. “I won’t say it’s a pleasure, Nicholas, because that would be a lie; and as I’ve already been informed tonight, I’m to stop being nice to strangers.

Apparently it encourages a familiarity that isn’t appealing.”

I laughed at his choice of wording, then pulled his arm from around my waist and twinned my fingers through his. “Hello, Nicholas.” I stepped into the silence between the two men. “It’s nice to see you again, and now that there is no misunderstanding between any of us, I’m sure we will have a much more enjoyable experience. However, if you will excuse us, Lawrence promised me this dance.” I didn’t wait for his response but led a grumbling Lawrence through the crowded room and into the adjoining one, where they had made space for dancing.

Dancing would take his mind off Nicholas. Even though it would probably be frowned upon by the upper-class snobbish matrons in attendance, I pressed my body, top to toe, against Lawrence and gave up all pretense of actual dancing. We swayed gently to the slow beat of the music, his arms like steel around me while my arms rested gently around his neck, my fingers tracing patterns in the hair at the back of his neck.

I watched as gradually the frown dropped from his face, replaced by amusement and a touch of puzzlement.

“Why is it that you can calm me so easily?” he asked finally.

“Because I’m amazing.” I laughed up into his beautiful dark face.

“That you are,” he agreed, and lowered his head to rest against the top of mine. “That you most certainly are,” he repeated.

“Don’t take life too seriously, Lawrence,” I told him quietly. “It’s too short and too precious and far, far too dangerous to be that structured.”

That night Lawrence bought me a racehorse. Not exactly romantic, but it was for charity, and its name was Red Rufus. I laughingly told him that was the name of my childhood pet dog. He assured me it was an omen, and moments later, I was the proud owner of a sparkling new racehorse. When I gave him an incredulous look, he teasingly informed me that I was really an owner in name only. Apparently, I could quite happily continue my life and never actually see the horse, because it was a charity the purchase came with training and everything included. All I had to do was pay a yearly maintenance and training fee and occasionally, if I wanted, go and watch it run.

That’s my kind of pet!

“Congratulations.” Nicholas managed to find his way over to us later that night. “Didn’t know you were a racing fan.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about her,” Lawrence said from behind me. He had been talking to a friend and I had turned to look out over the crowd when I came face to face with Nicholas.

“Seriously?” I stepped back so that I was pressed against Lawrence. “If you two can’t be civil to each other, then I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to find someone else to talk to, Nicholas,” I told him, leaving neither in doubt that I wasn’t serious.

“I was genuinely curious when I asked. I’ve got racing stables, and when you bought that horse, I was just wondering, is all.” Nicholas explained.

“My apologies,” Lawrence said with a nod.

“How about we forget that night ever happened?” I told them both. “I assume that you were both amicable before. I think you should both try and be civil to each other again.”

“Lilly’s old dog was called Rufus.” Lawrence gave an inch toward renewing their acquaintance, and I was sure that had a lot to do with my assurance that I wasn’t going to leave him for Nicholas. “I bought it for her because of the name. She was horrified.” He smiled down at me.

“Oh.” Nicholas seemed surprised, probably more so by Lawrence’s stretch toward amicableness than by his actual words. “Well, if you need any advice, give me a call. I know a lot about the racing industry. You never know, your horse might just beat one of mine yet.” He shrugged.

“Of course, mine is going to win,” I joked.

Nicholas cracked a smile in response. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it did. You actually bought yourself a really good horse.”

Talk between Nicholas and Lawrence settled after that; with only a little prodding on my end, they managed to keep up a fairly even conversation. I had hope for them, because as much as Nicholas annoyed him, I knew Lawrence well enough to know that they could be good friends; that is, if they could get past their own individual issues with control.

The end of the evening found Lawrence, Nicholas, and me absconded in a dark corner of the bar, with both of them well on their way to being extraordinarily drunk. I watched with amusement as they traded stories with each other. Probably part of the reason that they could be friends was that they were both into different areas of business. Lawrence wasn’t into the accommodation industry in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter. Not in the manner that Nicholas was. Nicholas built or bought and ran boutique hotels; he rarely sold them, instead focusing on keeping them profitable and exclusive. Lawrence, on the other hand, was more into large-scale development concepts; the closest he got to a hotel was a casino or a resort facility, and most of those he sold off as soon as they started to turn a profit.

They were very different businessmen, but both exceedingly intelligent and very alike. The more I learned about Nicholas, the more I liked him.

Charlie and Frost had moved much closer to us as the evening wore on; the more people left, the closer they could come, until they had taken up position against the wall on either side of where we sat. Their presence was comforting for me, but more than that, they managed to keep the rest of the room away from us, because after all, Lawrence and Nicholas weren’t in any condition to deal with the general population right at that moment. I would have been surprised if either of them could have managed to stand, at the rate they were going.

It was just past two o’clock in the morning when I finally called the party to a halt. “I think it’s time we went home, Lawrence,” I told him as he signaled a waiter for another round.

He shot a glance between Nicholas and me, then back again, before he finally registered that he was going to get more out of me tonight than Nicholas. Men are so predictable.

I was already standing, waiting with Charlie and Frost, by the time they both managed to extricate themselves from the lounges and stagger over to us.

“Ah, Lilly,” Nicholas groaned. “You have changed my life.”

I laughed at his slurred words. “How did I manage that, Nicholas?” I asked curiously, but when he looked at me blankly, I realized that he had forgotten what he said. “How did I change your life?” I prompted.

“Yes, you did,” he agreed. “Before I met you, I was happy, or I thought I was.” He ran a hand through his hair, making a shocking mess of it.

“You’re not happy now?” I asked.

“Hell, no!” He nearly shouted his denial, then slapped a hand against Lawrence’s shoulder. Frost had to snap out a hand to keep Lawrence upright. “You made me like this man. It’s a travesty.” At least, that’s what I think the last word was; it came out very garbled.

“It’s all your fault,” Lawrence agreed with a nod. “And now you have to put up with him in our lives.”

“You might regret that yet,” Nicholas assured me and then wandered off with a slightly wobbly gait.

“Charlie, can you please make sure he gets home?” I nodded after Nicholas.

“I’ll see you at home.” Charlie handed Lawrence off to Frost and disappeared out the door after Nicholas.

“If you vomit on me, I’m going to be very upset.” I shook a finger at Lawrence and towed him by the hand out of the hotel.

“I’m never sick. Ever,” he grumbled; but by the time we were home, he had made a liar out of himself. Frost had to stop the car three times so that Lawrence could be sick, and then we won’t even go near what happened in the elevator. I felt sorry for the person who was going to have to clean that up.

“Geez, Lawrence,” I grumbled, as I stripped him out of his clothes. “At least I made it home before I started vomiting.”