Magnate's Make-Believe Mistress (13 page)

“Why don't you come out here?” Isabelle said into the phone. “There is no reason not to.”

“There is, actually,” Chessie replied after a beat of pause. “Colin has tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show.”

“Colin?”

“Crash. His real name is Colin Ashcroft, but I am so over nicknames. Did you know he was at school with Cristo? And he paints. Seriously good stuff.”

Isabelle frowned, uncomfortable with Chessie's familiarity with the intriguing butler. “You're not getting too friendly, are you?”

“Romantically? Good grief, no. Colin is looking after me, which I'm sure is the job he's been assigned with you and Cristo out of town. Plus, he knows people.” Chessie managed to imbue those last few words with enough profundity that Isabelle knew she meant Justin Harrington. “I would rather be picking his brain than mouldering away in the country.”

After being assured there was little mouldering in Herting Green, Chessie consented to come out early the following week, after she'd pored over all the exhibits and Kew Gardens and several other must-sees for an apprentice landscape designer.

Isabelle tried not to be too selfishly pleased to have Cristo and Chisholm Park to herself for a whole week. She loved the place and the effortlessness with which she fitted in. Even when he was working, sometimes at the Luton offices, sometimes in lengthy phone conferences from home, she didn't rattle around or feel lost. She pitched in and helped Meredith
and the stable staff. Chloe was even teaching her to ride on the quietest of ponies. Those regular doses of reality helped balance out the fairy-tale aspects of being Cristo Verón's lover.

She vowed to maintain that make-believe, to keep things light, to remember that he'd not promised anything beyond the wedding, but her vows were tested from day one. That was the polo tournament, when he capitulated to her wishes and took her to see the final games. It should have been easy to keep her perspective, seeing him greeting friends in the posh and privileged crowd, but he moved just as easily amongst the grooms and spent most of the afternoon at Isabelle's side.

She wasn't sure if she liked the frantic pace and violent clashes; she found it easier to watch Cristo, to revel in his exhilaration and the pride he took in Chloe's game. Driving to the grounds she'd learned that his young groom was replacing Madeleine on the team. “I will not allow her to get away with yesterday's stunt,” he said shortly. “She put you and the pony in needless danger.”

Chloe, it turned out, was well up to the task.

“She's good,” Isabelle decided, watching her slight figure ride another player off the ball with fearless gusto. Cristo nodded, an answer to her question and a signal of approval when his brother pounced on the loose ball and fired an effortless goal to put the Hawks into the lead. Whatever else he said was lost in the roar of applause and in Isabelle's response when he swung her up in a close embrace and kissed her soundly. Not a peck but a full-blooded this-is-my-woman kiss for all to see.

“Is that how you celebrate every goal?” she asked.

Cristo's grin grew warm as he slid her down his body until her feet touched ground. “You should see how I celebrate a win.”

Isabelle did get to see that night, when he swept her home
and made good with another of his promises. Champagne sipped from her skin, he told her, tasted sweeter than any victory. And Isabelle kept her perspective by noting that the champagne was an obscenely expensive vintage. The stuff of fairy tales, it bore no relation to her real life.

Another day he took her sightseeing in a helicopter bearing the Chisholm Air logo.
His
logo, to all intents and purposes, because he casually admitted that he owned a majority share in the company. She'd figured as much, but this confirmation of his wealth put him in a different stratosphere. One where she could not exist without an oxygen mask or a housekeeper's uniform.

Then he brought her down to reality by taking her to dinner at the village pub, this time on foot so he could introduce her to Gisele, the mare who'd almost died while he was in Melbourne and who was now recuperating nicely. Watching him stroke her neck, listening to the deep affection in his voice as he told her about the pony's courage and bravery, turned Isabelle's heart upside down and inside out.

Another evening he brought home an extravagant picnic basket and drove her in the Aston to a secluded spot by the lake. “I had tickets to Glyndebourne tonight,” he admitted later, stretching out beside her on the picnic rug. His hand dipped lazily beneath her skirt. “I hope you don't mind, but they frown on making out on the lawns there.”

“Stuffy of them,” she replied. “I'm glad we didn't go.”

“Because you fancy making out on the grass or because you don't like the opera?”

“I've never been.”

His hand drifted higher. “So you're an opera virgin?”

“I guess I am,” she managed, although his questing fingertips made her feel very unvirginal.

“How do you know you don't like something you've never tried?”

Isabelle's eyes drifted shut. She didn't want to talk, especially about opera. She wanted those clever fingers to really apply themselves to something she did like. But they'd stilled, and when she peered beneath her lowered lids she found him waiting patiently for her answer. “I don't care much for operatic melodrama,” she said. “Had enough of it in my childhood.”

“Your parents?” he guessed, giving up the seductive intent and turning her until her face rested on his sun-warmed chest. “Tell me about them.”

“It's a long story.”

“As is many an opera.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Then I guess I will start with the opera, which is where my parents met. Working,” she added. “My mother was a moderately successful soprano, my father a set director.”

“Your love of music is no accident, then?”

“There was always music,” Isabelle said with a shrug. “At home, and the lessons they signed us up for. Piano, drama, voice, art. Luckily neither Chessie nor I had the talent or the desire to pursue them.”

“Luckily?”

Usually she hated talking about her upbringing, but in the sun-tinged evening with his hand idly stroking her hair she felt relaxed and encouraged. He wanted to know—he wanted to know
her.
“I would not want the life of my parents,” she replied with heartfelt fervour. “They travelled constantly, often not together because they were working on different productions. They didn't even have a home.”

“Did you travel with your mother?” he asked. The play of
his hand in her hair was no longer lazy; its weight rested a moment, strong and comforting.

“When I was a baby, yes, but then I needed to start school and my mother was pregnant with Chessie. We moved in with my grandparents in Melbourne—Poppy was alive then, too—and that was a disaster.” A rueful smile ghosted across her lips. “So many fights, about everything. My father left and my mother started taking jobs, as well. In the end we just spent more and more time with our grandparents.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“They visited between seasons, they sent cards and presents for our birthdays, but then my father died. I don't know what happened, but after the funeral there was a big row—Mother brought this horrid new man with her—and we didn't see her again. It was okay,” she hastened to add. “In fact, after all the clashes, there was finally some peace in the house, and Gran…she was wonderful.”

“I know.”

Intrigued, Isabelle rolled onto her side and pushed up onto her elbow. “How do you know?”

“She taught you everything you know, and look how you turned out.”

Isabelle smiled into his eyes, unable to hide the pleasure she took from that compliment. It was the perfect ending to the conversation, the perfect endorsement of the grandmother she'd adored, and when he reached for her, his hand strong and warm on her neck, and drew her down into his kiss, she felt an overwhelming swell of emotion inside.

She loved him, not only for this perfect evening or the connection they'd forged this past week, but because of everything she knew of him. His responsibility to his family, his protectiveness of Amanda, his regard for his staff and his animals,
his loyalty to the Delahuntys and his stepfather's memory. Even his exasperated dealings with Vivi reflected his deep affection. Every day there was something else, some new facet, and yet she had barely scraped the surface of Cristo Verón.

There was still so much to learn, and for an instant she felt a mild rush of panic because she had so little time and soon this idyll would be over. But then his hands slid up her thighs to cradle her buttocks, and the kiss took fire and burned through her anxiety, leaving only the purest of truths.

She loved him, and for now that was enough.

“A
re you expecting visitors?”

Chloe waved her polo stick in the direction of the driveway, and Isabelle turned in her saddle—gingerly, since she still didn't trust herself not to spook her horse with a clumsy movement—and caught a familiar silhouette gliding in and out of view between the trees. Tonight Cristo was flying to Russia, an unavoidable meeting, and for a moment she'd hoped he might have cut short today's business. But no, this was the town car not his Aston Martin.

“My sister,” she told Chloe. How like Chessie to arrive a day early and without warning…although she rather fancied shocking Chessie with her brand-new skill. In jodhpurs and long boots borrowed from Chloe, she even looked the part. “Can we ride down and greet her?”

“Don't see why not.” Turning her pony around, Chloe whistled her dog Otto to heel and led their sedate procession
across the parkland toward the house. Isabelle's intrepid skill was yet to progress beyond a walk. “Keep a firm hand on your reins,” Chloe called over her shoulder. “Dini has quite a fondness for the shrubbery.”

Isabelle kept a firm hand on her reins and a firm eye on her pony in case appetite overwhelmed his calm nature. She paid no heed to the car or its occupant until Chloe said, “Your sister doesn't exactly travel light, does she?”

The driver added another piece to the mountain of matched luggage at the foot of the stairs, and Isabelle shook her head. “I don't think that's Chessie's.” In fact she knew it wasn't, even before a stylishly attired stranger stepped from behind the car and into view.

From this distance she bore no physical resemblance to Cristo, and yet Isabelle instinctively knew that this was his mother.

“It's Vivi,” Chloe confirmed. “I wonder what she's doing here?”

“Another wedding emergency, I imagine.”

“Could be that.” Chloe's eyes twinkled above a cheeky grin. “Or she's come to scope you.”

“No,” Isabelle said weakly. Then more strongly, “She has no reason to do that.”

“You're the first girlfriend Cristo has ever brought here. I imagine that is reason enough.”

As that message sunk in, Isabelle's heart skittered again.
The first girlfriend he'd brought here.
If Vivi knew—Vivi, who wanted him married to Madeleine—then that might explain her arrival. It certainly explained the sick pitch of Isabelle's stomach.

“Do you want to ride up and say hello?” Chloe asked.

“Good grief, no!”

And before she could laugh off that horrified response, the distinctive sound of a helicopter's approach had Otto barking and spinning in mad circles and Isabelle grabbing a better grip on Dini's reins. Chloe narrowed her gaze at the sky overhead before declaring, “The cavalry has arrived. You're saved!”

 

The cavalry was only one—but the right one, Isabelle reminded herself as she hurried from the stables to the helipad. With nerves threatening to chew holes right through her, she needed his reassurance as badly as her next breath. A quick word explaining that Vivi had called him home to discuss a wedding-planning issue. A smile, a kiss, an arm flung around her shoulder and an invitation to “Come meet my mother.”

Any of the above would have worked, but then Isabelle saw him appear from beneath the whirling beat of the craft's rotors and straighten. She'd seen him in a suit and tie before—this past week she'd watched him dress from naked skin into full business attire on many a morning—but there was something in his bearing right now that pulled her up short. Shadowy wisps of foreboding fluttered through her, halting her headlong rush to intercept him.

Perhaps it was the dark aviator shades. Perhaps the flat set of his mouth, the tightness of his jaw. And perhaps it was the manner in which he'd arrived, sweeping in by helicopter in answer to his mother's summons. Whatever the cause, suddenly the stretch of lawn between them opened into a chasm of doubts. She'd spent a week in his company, she'd witnessed one sliver of his life and she'd allowed herself to believe she might fit. Standing there in her borrowed clothes, she felt like a fraud and a fool. The places she fit best were alongside Meredith in the kitchen and Chloe at the stables.

She would have turned tail and scarpered back to the stables if Meredith hadn't appeared from the back of the house, gesturing for her to come. Damn. In the mudroom she pulled off her boots and took stock of herself in Chloe's too-tight breeches and a no-longer-clean polo shirt. She wanted to run upstairs and change, but before she made the stairs the phone started to ring and she paused a moment too long. Meredith hurried through from the kitchen bearing a tea tray, and when she spotted Isabelle her relief was instant. “Will you take this through to the morning room for me, Isabelle? I'm expecting a call from Colin. This is likely him now.”

What could she do?

Approaching the room, her feet grew heavy. The door stood ajar, and she could hear the two voices clearly. Vivi was bemoaning her morning's travel at melodramatic length. “My son owns half the private jets in this country,” she sniffed, “and I am forced to fly commercial.”

“No one forced you.”

“You did, holing up down here with this Isabelle who I am hearing about from all quarters. Of course I needed to see what the fuss was all about.”

“You are reading too much into this,” Cristo said, his voice dismissively cool.

Apparently his mother could not be dismissed so easily because she went on, undeterred. “Madeleine tells me she works as a house cleaner. Is this true?”

“Yes,” Isabelle said. “Quite true.”

Years of practice came to the fore as she glided into the room and across the Aubusson rug to the tea table. The silence was perfect—not one rattle of cups, not a tinkle of spoons. She put down the tray with smooth efficiency and prepared to pour.

“Tea, Mrs…?” She left the query hanging, since she did not know Vivi's present name.

“Marais,” the woman supplied, her smile warmer than Isabelle had expected. Up close she bore quite a likeness to her daughter, and like Amanda her eyes shone with undisguised interest as she took Isabelle in. “But you, Isabelle, shall call me Vivi as all my children do.”

There was a beat of pause, an awkward moment. Isabelle did not know quite what to say. She'd been prepared for Vivi's coolness, hostility even, but this apparent amiability had thrown her.

“Speaking of children,” Cristo interjected smoothly, but his eyes sparked with irritation as he moved to Isabelle's side and encouraged her to sit. “Where
is
your toyboy?”

“Patrizio has a showing,” Vivi replied, seemingly unperturbed by her son's barb. “He will be following in a few days. I came early because I could not wait to meet your Isabelle.”

Cristo said something low, foreign.

“Don't be rude,” Vivi snapped.

“I learned my manners from you, Mother.”

“Rubbish, we both know you have far better manners than I. Now—” she turned her attention to Isabelle “—I believe you are coming to the wedding? My son has not told me, but Amanda says this is so. We will need to rearrange the tables slightly, but this is not a problem.”

“Amanda was kind to invite me, but I haven't decided if—”

“Why ever would you not?” Vivi interrupted. Then she looked from Isabelle to Cristo, her expression disingenuous. “Oh dear, have I put my shoe in it? When Amanda told me that Isabelle was your date for the Delahunty event and that you'd brought her to stay at your home, naturally I assumed this was more than an
amourette….
”

“What this is,” Cristo said evenly, “is none of your business.”

Vivi even managed to make her scoffing reply sound elegantly European.

“Aren't you needed in Sussex?” Cristo continued. “Surely the wedding preparations cannot run without your interference.”

“Everything is ready,” Vivi said, “according to that wedding planner who has not earned her overpriced fee. If she does create any more dilemmas, we shall manage them just as well from here. In the meantime, I am going to enjoy a few restful days with you and Isabelle. Now, the tea. Are you pouring, Isabelle?”

 

On the outside Cristo maintained an unaffected facade—over the years, he'd learned it was the only way to shake Vivi when she sunk her teeth into something. If she couldn't create a drama, she grew bored and moved on. Unfortunately she had latched on to his relationship with Isabelle today, of all days, and he did not have the luxury of wearing her down, nor could he delay his trip to Moscow.

He hated the necessity of leaving Isabelle, halving the time he had left with her before Saturday's wedding. If it were possible, he would take her with him, but the negotiations were delicate, the accommodations uncertain, and now there was Vivi. Ever since he received the message from his driver—too late to change the course of his mother's actions—he'd been quietly fuming. Mostly because he'd been so obsessed with getting Isabelle into his bed, he'd missed the obvious.

Of course Amanda and Madeleine and Lord knows who else would have told her about Isabelle. Why hadn't he anticipated her reaction? He did not bring casual girlfriends to Chisholm Park. He didn't take them to the polo or walk hand in hand with them through the village and French kiss them against the courtyard wall of the Maiden's Arms.

Now Vivi had met Isabelle and declared her approval. Taking the stairs two at a time, Cristo shuddered. He did not trust Vivi at the best of times; an acquiescent Vivi roused all his suspicions. He'd brought Isabelle to Chisholm Park to escape his family and their machinations. Now he would have to make other plans.

Isabelle had excused herself a little while back, saying she needed to change out of her riding clothes, and he found her just out of the shower and pulling on clean underwear. Brief. Lace. Dusky blue. The sight distracted him for a good long moment, until she shrugged into a clean blue shirt and started buttoning. If not for Vivi's arrival and the changed plans he needed to put into effect, he would have stalked across the room and started unbuttoning.

“I will have the car run you into London,” he said. “You can spend the next few days at Wentworth Square.”

She paused in her buttoning. Her expression was trickily composed, and he had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. “Because of Vivi?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you don't trust me to deal with your mother.”

“I did not bring you here to deal with my family,” Cristo said, “especially my mother, who will have you measured up for a wedding dress before I return.”

Something shifted in her gaze, something he couldn't catch before she shook her head and laughed softly. “I'm pretty sure I can prevent your mother booking the church. You have nothing to worry about there. I am used to difficult clients and…”

“You are not the housekeeper,” he said curtly.

“If you prefer me gone—” her gaze fixed on his, steady and searching for a long moment “—I can have my bag packed in five minutes.”

Backed into a corner of his own making, Cristo had to let her stay. He was not happy. The edge remained until he'd unbuttoned her shirt and backed her against the dresser and used his fingers and mouth to bring her to a quick, shattering climax. And when he finally stripped away the lace and buried himself in her silken heat, he leaned forward and spoke with hot intensity against her ear. “This is why you are here and why you are staying. This—” he backed off slowly, enough that he could look into her eyes “—is why I will be doing everything in my power to finish this business swiftly. So you will be here in my bed when I return.”

 

He had thought sex would settle his malcontent; that and putting the basis of their relationship into clear words. But Cristo's dissatisfaction escalated from the moment he left Chisholm Park. The caveman approach was not him, and it niggled that Isabelle had accepted his dictate without any response.

It niggled more when every attempt to call, to explain, to apologise failed.

In the morning she was out riding with Chloe; later she'd taken Vivi to lunch; and when his late-night call went unanswered, he could not settle without knowing she was all right. That neither his boorish tactics nor Vivi's demanding temperament had sent her running for the hills. He tried Crash, who knew nothing, except that Chessie was to remain with him for a few more days.

Stewing over his lack of foresight—not only regarding Vivi's guerrilla tactics; why hadn't he given Isabelle a mobile phone?—he paced and waited until Meredith returned his curt message. “There's no need to worry,” she assured him. “Isabelle and Vivi are getting along famously. They've gone
into London to meet with Amanda. Something to do with dress fittings.”

That explanation did nothing to soothe Cristo's aggravation. He could just imagine Vivi railroading Isabelle into doing her bidding…and Isabelle allowing it. Jaw set tight, he punched the keys to Amanda's number. She answered sleepily, but when she recognised his voice and his cutting tone she immediately launched into a lengthy explanation.