The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

desire she somehow managed to arouse in him. Marco frowned. The very idea of a woman like Lily needing any kind of protection was risible, and he was a fool if he allowed himself to entertain it. Of course she no doubt would love knowing that he was vulnerable to her.

       Her clothes—the clothes which last night he had discarded on the floor—were folded neatly on the chair. Marco looked briefly at them, his attention momentarily caught by the sight of her bra, half tucked away beneath her dress. He remembered now how it had struck him as he’d removed it that its plain, practical style was somehow at odds with the kind of bra he would have expected someone like her to wear. Surely something much more sexy and alluring would have been more in keeping with her lifestyle? Or perhaps, like the consummate actress she obviously was, she immersed herself so completely in her chosen part that even her underclothes had to reflect it. Dr Lillian Wrightington must not be allowed to be the kind of woman who wore sensual underwear.

       He walked past the bed, the sunlight throwing his shadow across her sleeping face. Immediately her eyes opened, her head turned, the colour coming and then going in her face. Her eyes widened as she looked at him.

       ‘Excellent,’ he told her cynically. ‘You’ve got the “shocked, prim young woman finding a man in her room” look off to perfection. Especially after last night.’

       Lily’s face burned. He was talking about her passionate response to his touch. He had to be. And she had no way of denying that response or defending herself from whatever judgement he chose to make because of it.

       Marco noted her flushed face. She was angry—obviously because he had refused to be taken in by her play-acting. Good.

       ‘Sadly, excellent though your acting ability is, it was wasted on me as an audience since we both know that you knew exactly what you were doing when you came here last night,’ he told her, determined to make sure that she knew he wasn’t taken in by her. He might have been overwhelmed by his desire for her last night, but there was no way he was going to let her get away with using that weakness against him.

       ‘What’s the next scenario in this little drama you’re concocting? Ideally, I suppose it should be the arrival of your ex-lover and his realisation that you spent the night in another man’s room.’

       The initial shock of opening her eyes and seeing Marco wearing only a towel and standing beside the bed looking down at her, had left Lily too stunned to speak. But now she was fully awake—and fully aware of the events of the previous evening. She had embarrassed herself and infuriated Marco. Things had been bad enough between them before, but her behaviour last night would make a workable business relationship between them virtually impossible. The last thing she wanted was Marco thinking that she was going to make unwanted advances to him. She had to assure him that that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how uncomfortable that would be for her.

       ‘I’m really sorry about last night.’ she began apologetically, but with firm dignity, sitting up in the bed and making sure that the bedclothes were very firmly wrapped around her. No way did she want Marco thinking that her behaviour was sexually inviting. He had, after all, already made it clear that he did not want her when he had left her last night.

       ‘My behaviour was totally… It was inappropriate. It shouldn’t have happened. And if possible I’d like you to forget that it did happen, if you can.’

       Marco’s gaze narrowed. What kind of game was she playing now? Was she hoping to get him to admit that he had wanted her? Her downcast gaze and her pseudo-humble words were just a pose. That ‘if you can’ was definitely a challenge to him. Did she want to humiliate him with that knowledge, mock him, telling him that he couldn’t resist her?

       ‘I should have thought you would be more concerned about letting your ex-lover know that you spent the night here than with expressing regrets to me. Why don’t you go and find him now?’

       She opened her mouth to refute his accusation, but before she could do so the closed door between the bedroom and the suite’s sitting room opened to reveal a hotel maid, her arms piled high with immaculately folded clean towels, accompanied by an older woman, obviously of more senior status, with clipboard and pen in hand. The older woman broke off speaking to the maid to cast with expert glance round the room, with Lily still in its bed and Marco clad only in a towel, before apologising and then making a swift exit.

       Marco exhaled in grim irritation, only realising then that he had failed to use the ‘privacy’ facility for the suite the previous night.

       The fact that Lily had flushed a deep pink and was looking acutely mortified and uncomfortable was lost on him as he strode across the sitting room to the suite’s door to rectify his omission, coming back towards her to demand, ‘What? Nothing to say?’

       Lily took a deep breath. On the contrary, she had plenty to say—and she intended to say it.

       ‘I’ve tried to…to apologise for last night, but it seems that rather than accept my apology you prefer to accuse me…to suggest that Anton was…’

       As hard as she was trying to behave in an adult, businesslike manner, Lily’s emotions balked at using the word ‘lover’ with regard to Anton, so great was her fear and detestation of him.

       ‘Was your lover and you now want to make him jealous,’ Marco insisted

       ‘No. The last thing I want is for Anton to come in search of me.’

       ‘It’s well known that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You’ve quarrelled with him and you want to make him regret that and regret the end of your relationship. You want to make him jealous. You want him to go to your room and think when you aren’t there that you’re with someone else—and you are prepared to use any means in order to do so. Isn’t that the truth?’

       ‘No. I would never stoop to that kind of behaviour,’ she told him, her voice trembling slightly with the force of her feelings. ‘I came here to you for one reason and one reason only, and that was because I was too afraid to stay in my own room.’

       ‘Why?’ When Lily looked away from him instead of answering him Marco challenged her. ‘If you’re as afraid of this Anton as you expect me to believe there must be a reason.’

       There was no reason other than the one he had already suggested, Marco was sure, and that was why she couldn’t answer him.

       He had started to turn away from her, he the victor in their exchange and she the vanquished, when she said in a low, tense voice, ‘Very well—yes, there is a reason, and it has nothing to do with me wanting Anton in my life.’ A fierce shudder racked her body. ‘Quite the opposite. But I can’t…I can’t talk about it.’

       ‘Why not? Surely I deserve an explanation for your behaviour?’

       ‘Behaviour for which I’ve already apologised.’

       Lily had had enough. She could feel her self-control fraying and giving way under the pressure of her emotions. She bent her head, not wanting Marco to realise how close to the edge she was, how afraid she was that her own actions as much as her words might inadvertently give her away.

       ‘There’s no law that says I have to provide you with an explanation of my…of the reasons for what I did as well,’ she told him fiercely. ‘A…a compassionate man—a man who understands and accepts that other people can sometimes be vulnerable and in need—would know that. But you aren’t that kind of man, are you? You’re the kind of man who wants to think the worst about others.’

       ‘I’m the kind of man who knows when he’s being lied to, if that’s what you mean,’ Marco agreed acidly, defending himself against the knowledge that he had been far more affected by Lily’s outburst than he should have been.

       ‘But you are not being lied to,’ Lily insisted. ‘Perhaps I should be the one questioning you about your motives for refusing to believe me rather than the other way around,’ she added perceptively.

       Marco felt his heart thud heavily into his chest wall. His glance fell on his watch and his