The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

only backfire on you.

       CHAPTER TEN

      IT WAS over an hour since Marco had left her alone in their suite. An hour in which she had gone over and over their conversation. What had possessed her to say that about there not being anyone since that boy? What had she hoped for?

       Did she really need to ask herself that question? She had wanted him to take her back in his arms. She had wanted him to take her to bed and show her—give her, share with her—all the sensual pleasures she knew she would find there with him. She had wanted to give him her love—even if he had no love to give her because he loved someone else.

       He loved someone else, but she knew instinctively that, being the man he was—the kind, caring man he sought to hide beneath an outward mask of disdain and arrogance, the man who had rescued her from Anton—were she to ask him, plead with him, beg him to give her what she had never had, his compassion—the compassion she had now discovered the he possessed—would lead to him giving in and giving her what she wanted.

       She would do that? She would humiliate herself like that when she knew he loved someone else?

       But didn’t she have the right to know him as her lover? Didn’t she have the right to create memories with him and of him that she could hold long, long after she could no longer hold him? She was on the pill—prescribed by her doctor because of problems she’d been having with her periods—so there was no question of an accidental pregnancy, and something told her that a man like Marco would always place sexual health high on the list of things that were important to him.

       She had always sworn not to get sexually involved, in case it led to her falling in love and suffering the pain she had seen her mother go through.

       She was already in love with him, though, so that argument no longer held good. She was going to suffer the pain of not being loved by him whether or not they were lovers.

       Lovers. Her and Marco. Wasn’t that really what she had wanted right from the start?

       It was too late now. He had gone. But he would come back, Lily reminded herself, and when he did…

       When he did she must think about her pride and do nothing, she warned herself.

      Marco hesitated outside the suite door. It was over two hours since he had left Lily to rest, and he wanted to warn her that the Duchess had asked if they would mind dining alone this evening, without her, as she had an engagement she’d overlooked. If Lily preferred she could eat alone in the suite. She was bound to have a reaction to what she’d gone through in telling him about her past, and she might prefer to be alone.

       With his admission to Lily that he trusted her the last of his barriers against her had been swept away—kicked away by himself, he acknowledged, because he no longer wanted or needed them. What he needed and wanted was Lily’s love, Lily’s presence in his life. He had been so wrong about her. Could he bring himself to tell her that? Could he bring himself to let her see his vulnerability and his need? Could he really believe the inner voice that told him he could place his trust in her?

       Lily watched as the handle to the suite door turned, her heart lifting and then plummeting downwards in a high dive, the sensation inside her chest echoing the tension of the high-risk strategy she intended to adopt. After all, what had she got to lose?

       Her heart? She’d already lost that. Her pride? She didn’t care about it. Right now all she cared about was creating enough memories to sustain her through the rest of her life from the handful of hours that were all she would have of Marco. She’d made her plans. If he agreed then later, afterwards—tomorrow morning, in fact—she intended to leave the villa for the airport and England without completing their tour. That way Marco would be spared the embarrassment and awkwardness of her continued company, and she would be spared having to face the reality of his lack of love for her. Her last memories of him would be those of lying in his arms as his lover.

       She didn’t think she’d be letting the trust down. She had enough information and commitment already for the exhibition. Of course leaving tomorrow did mean that she’d never get to see Marco’s home…

       If she did have any regrets they were superficial—a wish that she could have dressed herself for Marco in something more sensually provocative than the bathrobe she was wearing under which she was naked. She hadn’t forgotten his reaction to her sensible undies. Better not to wear them than risk putting him off with their practicality and lack of feminine allure.

       The door was opening. Her mouth might have gone dry with tension, her heart might be pounding erratically against her ribs, but she was ready.

       Ready and oh, so willing and wanting. A small final mental prayer that things would go well, and then she was positioning herself so that she would be the first thing Marco saw when he walked into the room.

       When he did, though, his reaction wasn’t what she’d hoped for. She’d somehow envisaged them looking at one another and then her slipping out of her bathrobe and going to him in a shared intense silence. Instead Marco seemed to be avoiding looking at her.

       Why hadn’t he knocked on the door first? Marco asked himself savagely. If he had he would have saved himself the agony of knowing that Lily was probably naked under that bathrobe, and everything that that knowledge was doing to his self-control. He could almost feel the satin softness of her skin beneath his touch his need for her was so intense. He could almost see her, feel her, taste her, and his body was reacting as though he had. Molten, hot pent-up desire—the kind of desire he had never imagined he could allow himself to feel—was surging through him, taunting him and tormenting him as it swept away his self-control.

       He ached for her—and not just physically. His desire for her was passionately emotional. It filled him not just with a need to bind them together in the physical act of love but also with a hunger to bind them together with words as well—the kind of words he had always sworn he would never utter. Words of longing and giving. Words of pleasure and promise. Words that would humbly offer up to her the poor gift of his love and somehow magically win from her the sweet prize of hers.

       Words that would give his emotions expression and free them from their imprisonment. The same words that had always been his adversaries, bringing a danger that could rob him of his defences, would now become his aides in the battle to win Lily’s heart.

       Marco still hadn’t moved or spoken, but it wasn’t for nothing that Lily had her doctorate. It took her only a handful of seconds to mentally reorganise her plan and see a way of using Marco’s silence as a way of taking charge and setting her own agenda.

       She paused to steady her nerves, and then told him, ‘I’m so grateful to you, Marco, for helping me to come to terms with…with things, and to leave my past behind and walk freely into my future.’

       A future he wanted to share with her, Marco recognised as he listened to her.

       ‘I’ve got a favour to ask you,’ Lily continued.

       ‘If I can help, then you have my word that I will,’ Marco responded.

       Lily’s heart somersaulted. He might not say that when he knew what the favour was.

       ‘I know that you aren’t the kind of man who likes to leave a task only partially completed,’ she said sedately, ‘so I’m hoping…’

       Marco waited.

       ‘The thing is…’ Lily paused. Did she really have the courage to do this? Thinking about the consequences if she didn’t, of all that she would never know or have, was all she needed to convince her that she did.

       ‘Well, the fact of the matter is, Marco, that helping me to get over the effect Anton had on me isn’t just about listening to me talking about it. I need your help with something else.’

       ‘Something else?’

       Did she want him to pursue Anton and punish him as