Far From Perfect (20 page)

Nick spun around. “Well, thank you for enquiring at last.”

His voice was low too, and cutting, and yet a strange look of confusion and sorrow passed fleetingly across his face. It so reminded Anna of the maelstrom of her own feelings that for a second she wanted to shoot across the room and console him with a hug.

But then he went on, tensely, “No, as a matter of fact, my father is fine. Still improving. I’ve just spoken to him.”

“Then who
were
you talking to?” she asked, grasping the bull by the horns. Better to know for certain, deal with it and stop driving herself crazy.

Nick’s shoulders suddenly dropped, and for a moment he looked defeated, and infinitely weary.

“To Letti, Maria’s PA.” His voice was flat now, and the impression of tiredness intensified. “There’s been an accident. Maria’s smashed up her car, and she’s injured and she’s asking for me. I’m afraid I’ve got to go back to England straight away.” He gave her a level look. “That’s what I was speaking to Carlo about. The jet’s being prepared. You’re welcome to stay on here if you like. You could have a little holiday, maybe?” His eyes narrowed oddly, as if gauging her somehow. “But if you want to return to London, I’d be grateful if you’d start packing straight away.”

Another wave of pain and confusion washed through her, with a breaker of self-loathing crashing in behind. Her heart was screaming because the beauty of what she and Nick had shared was being snatched away from her. And at the same time, she hated herself for resenting a woman who was hurt, possibly seriously.

Don’t be such a selfish cow, Anna
.

Furiously, she smashed down the remnants of her self-pity, and her anger at the capricious way fate seemed to persist in punishing her for going to bed with Nick. She
must
get over herself, and do what was right. The opportunity to wail and rail and lick her wounds would have to be postponed to some private and very secret time.

“How…how is Maria? Is it very serious?” She kept her voice calm. Tried to put herself in Nick’s place and imagine hearing that a woman he’d been very close to, and maybe was still be close to, had been injured.

“I’m not sure. I couldn’t get much sense out of Letti.” He shrugged; looking worried as his broad, gleaming shoulders lifted. “She isn’t exactly the calmest and most level of women. Which is exactly why someone with a cooler head should be there to look out for Maria’s interests. Film people are notoriously superficial and prone to making bad decisions.”

He was right.

“Yes, you need to be there,” Anna said quietly. Her emotions felt deadened and numb. She struggled to feel what she knew was right and appropriate, but it suddenly seemed as if she’d been turned into a robot.

“Are you coming to London with me?”

Nick too sounded oddly mechanical, so different from the fiery, passionate, magical man she’d lain entwined with earlier.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll come,” she replied, wishing him out of the room suddenly so she could dress. Pack. Tentatively attempt to feel something, or at least see if she could bear to feel it. “Unless you think I should stay and visit Carlo a bit more?”

Nick’s beautiful mouth thinned, and he spoke with a shocking, unexpected vehemence.

“I think my sainted father will do very well indeed without the presence of either of us,
cara
. He was doing perfectly fine, it seemed, before we arrived.
And
before that, so I’m now—finally—informed.”

“What do you mean?” Anna’s stomach began to sink again. She felt rather odd.

“I mean that I—or should I say
we
have been deceived. Carlo was never quite as ill in his post-operative phase as I’ve been led to believe. He is an accomplished actor, and skilled at coaxing others to…” Again, that exquisite, expressive shrug. “Well, not exactly lie on his behalf, but to be flexible with the truth.”

She was aware that her mouth was hanging open foolishly. What was he trying to say?

Nick went on, striding back towards her. “Yes, he convinced me that he was in a decline and that the only thing that would halt it would be news of our engagement. Now it seems he was recovering normally, and simply saw an opportunity to get what he wanted…and took it.”

Anna could no longer look at him. She glanced down at her hands and the beautiful ring she saw on her left one felt as heavy as a lead ingot. But when she started to tug at it, Nick reached out and clasped her hands, preventing her from pulling off the empty symbol of nothingness.

“Perhaps we should maintain the fiction for a little while longer,” he said evenly. “My father is considerably more recovered than I believed him to be. But even so, a sudden disappointment isn’t going to do him any good at this critical stage.”

“Of course,” Anna concurred.

Her hands felt limp and nerveless, and they flopped to her sides when Nick released her, as if weighed down by the falseness and lack of meaning in the exquisite jewel that graced her engagement finger. “Now, if you’d just leave, I can get dressed and pack my bag. That jet’s waiting, and the sooner we get home, the sooner you can get to Maria and the sooner I can get back to my work. It must be piling up and it’s not fair on Lydia to leave her dealing with everything for longer than necessary.”

For a moment, it seemed as if Nick was going to say something—a wealth of indecipherable emotion seemed to pass behind those glittering blue eyes—but instead he merely nodded and walked swiftly from the room. He was every bit the high-flying decision-maker now, even though his feet were bare and he wore just the oldest pair of jeans.

It was only when the door was closed firmly behind him that Anna sank to her knees, hands covering her face as she tried to hold in the tears.

The return to London in the Learjet felt like being enclosed in a strange bubble of limbo, a timeout from one crisis before he had to face the next.

Just as before, Anna kept her nose firmly in a magazine, but as Nick watched her, he observed a tension in her limbs that matched his own. It was agony not to tap his foot or his fingers to relieve it. The deeply upholstered seat felt about as comfortable as a pile of rocks.

He hated himself.

It was an effort to force his mind back to Maria and the car smash. He knew he should be planning strategies to ensure she received the best care and achieved the quickest recovery. Trying to find ways to ensure that it didn’t happen again and that she remained free of the addictions that he had no doubt had caused her accident.

And yet his mind and his heart wouldn’t obey him. His thoughts, his very consciousness kept circling around, and focusing on the woman who was sitting a few feet away.

He’d hurt her again. Badly.

I’m poison for you, Anna
, he told her silently.
I’m just as venomous as my father was to my mother.
A great weight seemed to settle in his chest, making it hard to breathe, and he knew that his scheme to cheer up Carlo had been a horrific misfire.

He should never have come near Anna again, for her sake. He should have known that the instant he was back in her company, he’d want her again. His mouth thinned in self-disgust. His own special pleading appalled him.

Get her out of my system? Give us both some fun during the masquerade?
Stronzate!
He’d simply indulged his appetites, and now she—an innocent and loving young woman—was paying the price.

And yet…

Horrified, he felt his body rousing again as his wayward imagination swept him back to those hours in his bedroom at Villa Rosa. Lovemaking had never been so perfect, so deep and so complete. So rich with emotion.

The last thought filled him with dread.

No!
He couldn’t allow those feelings. Not now. Not ever. He was his father’s son and he could never allow himself to love, because to love would be to destroy the one he loved.

He had to nip everything in the bud right now. His feelings. Her feelings. Stop now, before they were sucked in deeper and did something stupid that would only bring greater agony further down the road. Look what had happened to vulnerable Maria when the two of them had become involved. The thought that Anna too might be at risk from him was so intolerable that it made his gut clench in actual nausea.

But suddenly, because he was in the grip of something he’d never expected to feel, he knew exactly how to end it. He’d try the tactic that had worked so well before.

Anna looked up from the copy of Elle International that she hadn’t read a word of and found Nick’s eyes upon her. His look was intense, almost calculating, and she wondered how she could ever have thought—while she was in his arms—that she’d seen all his barriers melting and falling down.

You’re an idiot, girl
. She attempted to flash him a calm, amenable smile, yet knew it would appear as brittle and false as those of the models in her magazine.
He’ll never have the feelings you projected upon him then. It’s not in his nature.

Okay, so maybe Nick could feel affection as well as lust for the women who tumbled into his bed, but it was only for that moment. It was transitory, and he was probably fooling himself as much as he was fooling his paramours.

But as for the longer term? Well, he’d told her himself that commitment just wasn’t his style, so why had she ever begun to entertain ideas that he might change?

Because that was what she’d been doing, wasn’t it? Imagining that one of these days, either in bed with him or out of it, he was going to turn to her and say “let’s make it all real.”

Unable to bear the weight of his stare any longer, she spoke up.

“Okay, spit it out. You’ve obviously got something to say. And I’ve a feeling I’m not going to like it.”

The words came out harsher than she’d wanted them to, and once again, she was furious with herself. He probably wasn’t thinking about her at all. He was probably worried sick about Maria and had just happened to be looking in her direction. Oh why did this horrible emotional hotbed have the power to turn her into a cast-iron bitch?

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I didn’t meant to say that. It’s just that you were looking at me very intensely. And it makes me nervous.”

Nick put aside one of his ever-present files of business papers and leant towards her slightly. He was still casually dressed, in dark jeans and a close-fitting black T-shirt, and the very somberness of his clothing made him even more intimidating. She was right, she realized. Whatever he was about to say was something she wasn’t going to like.

Nick’s voice was soft when the words came, but strangely precise.

“I think we’ve made a mistake again, Anna, don’t you?”

It was exactly what she’d half been expecting, but it still hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. The statement—in that cool, manufactured tone—was so similar to one spoken four years ago, that she had to fight not to show that it had knocked the wind out of her.

She dragged in a breath, willing her prickling eyes not to well over. She
must
not show how much this was killing her. She must remain calm, apparently unconcerned. It wouldn’t make it hurt any less than last time, but at least this time she’d still have her pride and he wouldn’t know how much she was shriveling up inside.

“I was wondering when that would come,” she said, stiffening her spine, bracing her shoulders and fabricating what she hoped looked like a wry smile.

Nick blinked, his dark lashes flashing down, and Anna swore that for split second she saw admiration in the blue depths of her eyes.
He knows I’m kidding him
, she thought, battling to maintain her feigned nonchalance.
Well, I’m just going to have to try harder.

“In fact, I’ve been thinking of saying the very same thing myself.” She paused, thinking fast and on the fly, not wanting to make a mistake. “We both know it’s messy to mix pleasure with business. And that’s all this engagement thing has been, really, isn’t it? Just a deal between us. A convenient arrangement. Mutually beneficial.”

Nick was frowning now, his brilliant eyes narrowing.

“I help you,” she rushed on, the words not as crisp and businesslike as she would have preferred, “And you, hopefully, help Dad out of a tight spot.” She swallowed, hoping she’d not been too explicit. “I mean, that was part of the subtext, wasn’t it?”

The beautiful mouth that she’d kissed so desperately became a hard, tight line. “Why won’t you believe me? It really was always my intention to provide refinancing for Felgate’s. Your helping me was
never
a condition, Anna. I would have done it even if you’d said no.”

She watched as he rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. It was an uncharacteristically revealing gesture, and she wondered if he was aware of what he was doing. Nick was normally the master of poker-faced opacity.

“Oh,” she said, feeling small. In this at least, she knew she should have trusted him. “Well, in that case I’m sorry—again—that I mistrusted you.”

“I thought you agreed to help me because you really cared about Carlo?”

“I do care about Carlo. Of course, I do.”

“But not about me.”

How could she answer that? What response could she possibly give that wouldn’t reveal her? Four years ago, she’d given him her virginity and he’d unwittingly taken her heart forever. But he must never know that. She wondered how long she could stall without giving herself away.

“I’m fond of you, Nick,” she said, striving for lightness, for an adult rationality. “I always have been, despite our…our differences.” She looked away, unable to face his eyes. “And we’re good together sexually, that’s obvious.” That was the greatest understatement that she, or anybody, could have perpetrated, and it tasted like ashes on her lips. “But let’s face it, we’re not really all that good for each other otherwise, are we?”

She risked the swiftest glance and the look of shock written across Nick’s elegant male features rocked her in her seat.

Shock of her own forced her onwards. “Well, I’m right, aren’t I?”

In an uncanny, almost unnerving transformation, Nick’s face almost instantly became as blank and unrevealing as a sheet of polished stone.