Never Gamble with a Caffarelli(15)
Angelique knew he wasn’t talking about the coin. She blew out an uneven breath. ‘You have the bed. You’re much taller than me.’ That was an understatement. He’d had to stoop through every door they’d been through so far. ‘I can curl up on the sofa.’
‘What sofa?’
She chewed her lip as she glanced around the suite. It had everything but a sofa. ‘Oh... Well, then...’
‘The bed is big enough for both of us. You stick to your side. I’ll stick to mine. It’s only for one night.’
Angelique tried to read his expression but he had his poker face back on. ‘I hope you don’t snore or talk in your sleep.’
‘If I do just give me a shove in the ribs.’
She gave him a frosty look. ‘I’m not going to go anywhere near you.’
A sexy smile tilted his mouth. ‘Then you’d be the first woman I’ve shared a bed with who hasn’t.’
* * *
Angelique spent an inordinate amount of time in the en suite cleansing her face and brushing her teeth. She even brushed her hair for a hundred strokes to delay going back into the bedroom. But when she came out of the bathroom there was no sign of Remy. He hadn’t even bothered to leave her a note to tell her where he had gone or when he would be back... Or whom he was with.
Careful; you’re starting to sound like a wife.
She shook off the thought and pulled back the covers on the massive bed. The tension of the last twenty-four hours—seventy-two if she counted the time since she’d found out Tarrantloch had been lost—had finally caught up with her. As soon as her limbs felt the smooth, cool embrace of the impossibly fine linen she felt every muscle in her body let go. She melted into the mattress, even though it was far too firm for her, and closed her eyes on an exhausted sigh...
* * *
Remy came back to the suite at three in the morning to find Angelique fast asleep.
Right in the middle of the bed.
Her mane of glossy black hair surrounded her head like a cloud. Her blood-red lips were soft and slightly parted, her skin now without its armour of artfully applied make-up. Now she had lost the layer of worldly sophistication she looked young and tiny, almost fragile. There were dark shadows underneath her eyes that her make-up must have hidden earlier. Her slim body—personally he thought she was too slim—was curled up like a comma, the sharpness of her hipbone jutting out from beneath the covering of the bed linen.
He could see the spaghetti-thin straps of her nightie, an ivory white that was a perfect foil for the creamy tone of her skin. The upper curves of her breasts were showing just above the sheet. He’d always thought of them as Goldilocks breasts—not too big, not too small, but just right.
He gave himself a mental shake and turned away from the sight of the temptation lying there.
Hands off, remember?
He rubbed a tired hand over the back of his head and down to the knotted muscles in his neck. He’d had to pull some strings to get out of Dharbiri by first light. He didn’t want to spend any more time than he had to ‘married’ to her. If the press got wind of this back home, it would go viral in no time. He didn’t want to be made into a laughing stock. He could just imagine the headlines: World’s biggest playboy gets hitched. The last of the Caffarelli rakes bites the dust.
He wanted to erase it from the record. Wipe it from his memory. Get back to normal.
Get her out of his life.
Remy looked at her again. She murmured something in her sleep and stretched out her arms and legs like a cat—and not just any old moggy—a beautiful, exotic cat that was begging to be stroked.
He wondered who her latest lover was. He hadn’t read anything just lately in the press about her, which was surprising, as hardly a month or two went by without some mention of her caught up in some scandal or other. He often wondered how much of it was true. He knew from his own experience that not everything that was reported was accurate. But how she was keeping her head below the parapet was a mystery if not a miracle. It was not an easy feat to stay under the radar when around every corner was a camera phone. You didn’t have to be a member of the paparazzi to get a shot of a celebrity or any other high profile person these days.
He’d had a few candid camera shots he’d rather weren’t out in the public domain. The press always made it look far worse than it was. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, and he had never and would never touch party drugs. But somehow he had been portrayed as a hard-partying, hard-drinking playboy.
The playboy bit was true.
He wasn’t going to deny the fact he’d bedded a lot of women. And he wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Which was why he had to get this marriage annulled as soon as possible. Call him old-fashioned but, on-paper marriage or no, he was not going to betray those promises he’d made. As far as he was concerned, infidelity was a deal breaker even in his most casual relationships. Sleeping around on a partner was not what a real man would do.