Never Gamble with a Caffarelli(20)

His expression locked down, leaving just one muscle moving in and out on the left side of his jaw. ‘No one is going to find out. We can annul this as soon as we land. I’ve already spoken to my lawyer in London. We can go straight to his office from the airport. It will be over and we can both move on with our lives as if it never happened.’

Good luck with that, Angelique thought. She’d been lucky lately in keeping her face out of the gossip pages but she knew it wouldn’t last. If a journalist got a whiff of what had happened in Dharbiri she and Remy would be besieged by the media as soon as they landed. But then, anyone with a camera phone could snap a picture of them together and email or text it to a newspaper.

Even arriving at Heathrow together was going to cause a stir because there were always people coming back from holidays from tropical locations where her body had been on yet another billboard.

Oh joy...





CHAPTER SIX


REMY COULD NOT believe the sort of attention Angelique attracted. Even before they had cleared Customs people were nudging each other and pointing. Several came up and asked for autographs. Some took photos, even though the signs in the customs area strictly forbade the use of phones or cameras.

‘Do you have to be so damn nice to everybody?’ he said in a low, gruff tone as he ushered her through to where a driver was waiting to collect them. ‘Can’t you pretend you’re not you? Let them think they’ve got the wrong person or something. I’ve done that heaps of times. It works like a charm.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person if you think I’d be rude to someone who paid a lot of money for a swimsuit I’ve modelled.’ She smiled at another fan who came over with a pen and a boarding pass for her to sign.

Remy could feel his blood pressure rising. Was she doing this on purpose? People were looking at him now, trying to figure out who he was and how he fitted into her life. How long before they recognised him and put two and two together?

He took her firmly by the elbow. ‘We have to go. Now.’

‘Hold your horses.’ She winked up at him cheekily. ‘Or your camels.’

She smiled again as yet another person came over and told her how much they admired her, and that they didn’t believe for a second all that rubbish about her and the English banker who was married, and how it wasn’t her fault the marriage had broken up because it was obviously doomed from the outset, blah, blah, blah.

Remy had to wait until they were in the car before he asked, ‘Did you know the banker was married when you hooked up with him?’

‘I didn’t hook up with him.’ She flicked some imaginary lint off her clothing. ‘I was photographed next to him in a hotel lobby. I was waiting for the porter to bring out my luggage.’

He frowned at her. ‘Are you seriously telling me you didn’t have anything to do with him? That you didn’t have a secret love tryst with him in that hotel?’

She gave him a bored look. ‘Does every woman you speak to end up sharing your bed?’ She held up her hand and gave her eyes a little roll. ‘No, don’t answer that. I already know. If they’re under the age of thirty, they probably do.’

‘I don’t do married women. I might be a playboy but I do have some standards.’

‘Good to know.’ There was something about her tone and the exaggerated way she inspected her perfectly manicured nails that irked him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s very reassuring, that’s all.’

He frowned again. He could sense she was up to something. ‘What is?’

‘That you don’t do married women.’

‘Why’s that?’

Her look was arch when she turned to look at him. ‘Because I’m married.’

A surge of hot, unbridled lust rose in his loins. He could not think of a woman he wanted more than her right now. It was pounding through him like an unstoppable tide. It tapped into every thread of desire he had ever felt for her, thickening it, swelling it, reinforcing it.

He covered it with a laugh. ‘But not for much longer.’

She put her chin in the air and inspected her nails again. ‘That annulment can’t happen soon enough.’ She lowered her hand back down to her lap and studied it for a moment. ‘I can’t think of a worse forty-eight hours in my life.’

‘Hell of a short marriage,’ he said after a little pause. ‘Do you think that’s some sort of record?’

She shrugged one of her slim shoulders a little without looking at him. ‘Maybe.’

Another silence.

‘Are you heading back to Paris after this?’ Remy asked. ‘This’ being the sign-off of their brief marriage. He didn’t want to admit it but he would miss her. A bit. A niggly bit. She was incredibly annoying but vastly entertaining. He could think of worse things to do with his time than spar with her. She stimulated him physically and intellectually. Not many women did that.