‘ARE YOU WARM ENOUGH?’
The late-afternoon sun hung low in the sky. Its orange glow more visual than effective at keeping off the chill now that they’d swapped the bikes for the picnic rug. And though their spot beside the lake was sheltered from the wind by the trees and the general public by his team, he was starting to question his choice to dine outdoors.
The autumn chill did mean less of an audience though, which also meant less chance of an unwarranted intrusion and therefore more pleasure for her. Or so he would have thought. But she’d fallen unusually quiet through their meal. Her gaze on the lake turning distant. And, yes, Lac Inférieure, with its pretty little island and its rounded monument dedicated to Napoleon III, deserved to be looked at, but he got the impression she wasn’t seeing any of it.
‘I’m fine.’ She snuggled deeper into the blanket he’d wrapped around her, the curve to her cheeks giving him a hint of the smile beneath. ‘I’m more than fine. This has been the most perfect of days. Right up there with the Louvre.’
He cocked a brow. ‘A day of cycling...many would see that as some kind of torture.’
‘You knew I wouldn’t though.’
‘That’s true enough. And yet you seem a little distant now that we’re off the bikes...was it too much food? I warned Lucile you ate like a bird.’
Now she was the one cocking a brow as she eased out of the blanket cocoon to give him the full weight of her unimpressed stare. ‘A bird?’
‘A bird with very discerning taste.’
That earned him a laugh. ‘Sorry, old habits and all that. I’m getting better. Moderation is your friend. Mum was all about the slippery slope growing up.’
‘Hence the no sweets and chocolate.’
‘You remember me saying that?’
‘Of course I remember. Hearing someone say they were forbidden treats as a child isn’t something you forget in a hurry.’
‘So that’s why Lucile provided them in abundance.’
‘No, Lucile just likes to do her own thing. Just like you’re getting to do these days.’
‘Well, you can tell her it was delicious, all of it. And I am pleasantly full and very much looking forward to the cycle back so that I can work it all off again.’
‘Oh, no, there’s no more cycling today. We have a van returning all of this and we’re taking a car back so we’re free to enjoy this.’ He turned to pull a bottle of champagne from the cool box. ‘If you’re not too cold for it?’
‘One can never be too cold for champagne, surely? Especially in Paris, the city of...’ She bit her lip, her cheeks flooding with colour.
‘You can say it, Cassie.’ He eyed her, wondering why she wouldn’t. Was it for his benefit? Was she worried he would get the wrong idea? ‘It’s what we’re here for after all.’
‘Only we’re not.’
And what did he say to that?
She wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t right either. Because the whole point of this pretence was to show the world they were in love. But no one was eavesdropping this second, he’d muted the comms. And visually, he was right. They were out in the open. On a picnic rug. Sharing champagne. Any passer-by could snap the classic ‘love shot’. So why had she felt the need to say it?
‘I’m sorry.’ She touched a hand to his arm. Gave an apologetic smile. ‘You’re right. This looks good. Sets the perfect scene. I was just...overthinking.’
He returned her smile. Overthinking. That sounded about right. Because he felt like he’d been treading those murky waters too of late. Questioning things too much. The way he felt, too much. The desire, too much.
He popped the cork, the explosive action too in tune with his thoughts, and she gave a small squeal as it overflowed. ‘Was it a stubborn one?’
‘A little,’ he hurried out, clinging to the excuse she had gifted him as he plucked two flutes from the hamper and offered one out to her.
‘Thank you.’ She wet her lips. ‘You’re very good at this, you know.’
‘Which bit? The cycling or the opening bottles of wine?’
She gave a soft laugh. ‘I was thinking more the romancing.’
He filled her glass before seeing to his own—at least she seemed comfortable mentioning the R word.
‘We have to make it look believable remember...’
‘I think you’re doing that very well...it’s only been a week and the press are lapping it up—lapping you up.’
He grinned. ‘Sorry. You can’t blame a man for wanting to look good in the process, and if my hotels are taking a boost, all the better.’
‘Not blaming you at all, though I apologise now if they start interrogating your exes.’ The bottle hit the bottom of the hamper slightly harder than he’d intended, but he didn’t make a show of it. ‘That’s something they can’t seem to help themselves with.’
‘There isn’t much of substance to report on I’m afraid.’
She leaned closer, trying to get a better look at him. ‘Explain?’
He shrugged. ‘There isn’t much to explain, I’m your classic bachelor. I date for fun, nothing more.’
Because the really interesting titbit—the bit the press would love to get their hands on—had been well and truly buried by the people with the power and the influence to make it so.
Much like the remnants of his heart.
‘And besides...’ He forced a smile, refusing to let Sara out of the darkest recesses of his mind and into the moment that up until now had been warm and quite enjoyable. ‘They’ll be too busy reporting on us. Like I said, they love a good love story as much as they love a bad one.’
She gave a tiny shiver and eased her legs up to her chin as she gestured to the path ahead. ‘Well, something tells me one of these walkers will have a snap of this out in the world tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Don’t you mean in the next thirty seconds.’
‘Probably.’
‘And so long as we’re controlling the narrative, it’s all good, right?’
She met his gaze. ‘Right.’
‘And that feels worthy of a toast, don’t you think?’
She smiled, green eyes twinkling with gold much like the Eiffel Tower in the distance. ‘To us.’
‘To us.’
She clinked her glass to his, and he opened up his blanket to her, offering to share his warmth as well as the perfect camera opportunity.
Sure enough, he could sense a snap in the distance as she snuggled into his side, and he suppressed the twinge of annoyance—he was courting it after all—as much as he suppressed the warmth her body provoked. And focused on what mattered, her and the little bit of her past she had divulged. Because talking about her past sure beat thinking about his...
‘So, tell me, was it just your mother’s controlling influence or society’s in general?’
‘Hmm?’
‘The eating habits...’
‘I don’t know. I guess it’s easy to blame others when really, the true person to blame is yourself. I should have been stronger. If I wanted the cake, I should have eaten the bloody cake.’ She gave a tight laugh, shook her head. ‘Yes, my mother watched over me, made sure I was always careful, always knew how many calories were in what. I knew from a very young age that every delicacy came with a price, and hell, the press never let you have a day off. But maybe I shouldn’t have cared so much about what they thought in the first place. And then maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much when they turned their back on me.’
‘Your parents never deserved to have you as a daughter.’
‘On that, I think they will now agree. After the shame I brought on them...’
He squeezed her into his side, his jaw pulsing. ‘They did that to themselves when they backed you into a very public marriage with a man who no more deserved you than they did.’
‘Not how they see it.’
‘That’s their problem, not yours.’
‘I guess it is. I guess it’s also the difference between you and me. Railroading me into the future they wanted for me is a move they will live to regret, whereas for your father, I can’t imagine he will ever regret choosing you to take on his firm.’
Oh, there was a time...
‘Do you really want to talk about families when we’re in this amazing parkland, red squirrels playing at your feet?’
‘Red squirrels. Where?’
He dipped his head to a spot in the distance. Nothing but fallen oak leaves now lay at the base of the trees but there had been a red squirrel not so long ago...it wasn’t a complete lie. But she knew.
She nudged him with her elbow, the contact as provocative as the truth tightly packed inside his chest. Just not in the same way. ‘Hugo!’
‘I made him regret it.’ He ground out. ‘Once.’
It came out as raw as it still felt. Because he regretted it. The pain. The foolish act. The stupidity. He stared at where their glasses almost touched, watched the bubbles rising in the glass, but his head had travelled back. Reliving the past as she searched his face and likely saw it all.
‘When?’
‘When I worked for him all those years ago... Carving out my own path and going into the leisure industry wasn’t entirely by choice, Cassie.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
She shivered and he pulled her closer. Kissed her hair on autopilot. ‘In my defence, I was young. Twenty-four. It was my fifth close protection detail. But even then, I should have known better.’
‘What happened?’
‘I made a mistake. One I would never be so stupid as to make again, but my father wasn’t a man you ever got to disappoint twice. Though when you’re in the business of close protection, such a hard rule saves lives.’
‘Did someone get hurt? Did you...?’
She looked up and he tucked her back under his chin, unable to look her in the eye as he admitted, ‘I got involved with the principal.’
He sensed her tense, her soft gasp barely audible as he eased back on the rug and she came with him.
‘Her father was a head of state in a country where culture and custom would prohibit any sort of a relationship between us, and that was before you put my job into the equation...’
He was so grateful that he’d killed the comms with his team before they’d sat down, grateful all the more for the twenty-foot safety perimeter that meant no one could overhear his shameful tale.
He’d thought he was over it. He’d endured the therapy. Relished the recovery.
Yet here he was, retelling the tale over a decade later, and it felt as raw as if it was yesterday. The heartbreak. His father’s disappointment. It didn’t matter that he was a billionaire hotelier now, his father’s firm under his wing too. He felt transported back to that moment. The twenty-four-year-old son who had broken his father’s trust and his own heart in the process. Lost. Susceptible. Weak.
‘What was her name?’
Her soft request pulled him back to the present. So typical that Cassie would want to put a name to the face that she didn’t know because it mattered to his past.
‘Sara.’
‘I take it her family weren’t very happy when they found out?’
His mouth twisted into a derisive smile, because of course that’s where her head would go based on her own experience.
‘They had every right to be angry. Cultural and family expectations aside, I was supposed to be protecting her. Love shouldn’t have come into it.’
‘And did you love her?’ she said quietly.
He threw back his drink, but it tasted bitter, unpalatable, or was that just the memory?
‘Hugo?’
Answer her.
‘I thought I did, at the time.’
‘And did she love you?’
‘She said she did.’
He took another swig and realised his glass was empty. Reached for the bottle and topped himself up. Went to do the same for her only hers was still full. Not a good sign. He tried to relax. Took a breath. This was ancient history. Dealt with. Though, as he had discovered in the last week alone, it wasn’t as buried as he wanted it to be.
His heart too was beating far too close to the surface.
‘Then what happened?’
He ground his teeth. He didn’t want to go there. But refusing to give it airtime was as bad as admitting it still hurt...
‘Her family forced her hand. She made her choice and it wasn’t me.’
Whatever she heard in his voice had her hand reaching up to cup his cheek, her palm soft, her green eyes softer still. ‘I’m so sorry, Hugo.’
But that wasn’t everything, was it? She wouldn’t be so sorry when she knew how he had failed Sara. How he had let his heart get in the way of his head.
He was back on that street, Sara’s car waiting, door open. The heat suffocating. The look in Sara’s eyes all the more so as he caught at her wrist. Desperate. Helpless. Weak. ‘Don’t go.’
‘Hugo?’ Cassie took the glass from his limp fingers, returned to cup his cheeks, her thumbs gently stroking. Her face so close he could see the ring of fire around her pupils. Could see his pain being reflected back at him in the swirling sea of green—and this is what love did. This is why he never wanted to go back there.
And Cassie was giving him all this compassion when he deserved none.
‘It’s okay, Hugo.’
He grabbed her wrists, almost threw them down before realising how it would look to a passer-by. How it would feel to her too. An outward sign of rejection that she didn’t deserve.
‘No. It is not.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘What I did, that was my fault.’
She searched his gaze, unflinching from the pain she could see there. It was the first time she’d witnessed it within him. Such hurt. So raw and unguarded. He had loved. Hugo had loved. More than she ever had.
And he hadn’t denied it either. ‘I thought I did, at the time.’
Though Sara had crushed it. Walked away. Chosen her family over him.
Cassie couldn’t imagine it. No matter how hard she tried. Cassie couldn’t imagine having the heart of the man before her and choosing anything but that. Though he wouldn’t have been the same man...at twenty-four he would have been young, untainted by the world and all the work that would have hardened his shell since. The heartbreak that would have toughened him too.
And she needed that reminder. She needed it now because every day in his company, every day they played out this charade that was their epic love story, she could feel herself getting as lured in as the press. Lured in by him and his kind gestures, his kind smile, his kind heart.
Because it couldn’t be so easy as this, could it? After a life of living for others, an adulthood of having her men chosen for her, she couldn’t be so lucky as to have landed her own perfect love story right next door. To believe that would truly be naive, wouldn’t it?
And she’d almost given herself away too.
It’s why she’d blurted out. ‘Only we’re not.’
Hugo hadn’t needed the reminder. Cassie had.
Her heart had.
‘By falling in love? I can’t see how that’s your fault, Hugo.’
He stiffened. ‘No,’ he ground out. ‘But leaving her exposed was.’
The chill ran from him into her and she lowered her palms from his face, rubbed them together. ‘I see.’
‘No. You don’t.’
‘Then make me see. Tell me what happened.’
He kept his gaze fixed ahead, but she could see his self-loathing, the sickness in his pallor, and she tucked her hands between her legs, forbade them from moving. He didn’t want her touch right now, no matter how much she wanted to give it to him.
‘You don’t need to tell me, not if you don’t want to, but...’
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his dark lashes flickering over his eyes that were so haunted she prayed that talking about it would in some way release the ghosts from his soul. Ghosts he must have had buried deep for so long.
‘I lowered my guard. I was focusing so much on her, fighting with her to see a different future for us that I didn’t see the threat until he was upon us. I had my hand around her wrist, I wasn’t prepared and when he drew his gun, she was completely exposed. The only thing I could do was throw myself into it.’
She failed to suppress a shiver as it played out in her mind’s eye. ‘You threw yourself into the path of the bullet?’
‘He never should have got that close.’
‘But you did what you were trained for,’ she whispered.
‘Far too late.’
He raised his hand to his shoulder, scratched at the skin beneath, the scar that must exist and Cassie tracked the move. ‘If he’d been any further to the left, or if I’d been any slower...’
She felt the tremor that ran through him with his breath. ‘But you weren’t.’
He shook his head, stressed, ‘He never should have been able to get that close.’
‘But you were there. And you saved her.’
‘I took the bullet but—’ he choked on thin air ‘—it was not my finest moment.’
‘We all make mistakes, do things we’re not proud of, but you were in love—’
‘I was a fool.’
He sounded so angry, so hurt, so bitter, and Cassie’s heart ached for him. She could think of nothing else to do but to fold into him, moulding her body into every hard ridge of his until the tension gradually seeped from his limbs. So grateful to have him here now. That he hadn’t lost his life in the line of duty to the woman who hadn’t loved him enough to keep him.
‘I’m so sorry, Hugo.’
‘I’m not. Like I said, the only time I let my father down was when I was distracted and infatuated. I learned from that mistake, and I’ve been committed ever since. Proved myself to my father. Made myself into the man I am today. As for the press, you needn’t worry about them digging this story up. Sara’s family made sure there was nothing to discover. Nothing to ruin their reputation and her marriage potential back then, and I’ve told no one of it...my family certainly don’t speak of it, and those at the firm are under NDAs.’
She lifted her head a little. ‘You think I’m worrying about any of that?’
He gave a stilted shrug.
‘I’m more concerned that your relationship with Sara has seen you walk away from the possibility of love in your future, Hugo. This is why you don’t have a home in the country with those mini-Chevaliers I mentioned, isn’t it?’
He stroked the hair away from her face. ‘You make that sound so tragic, Cassie.’
‘Because it is tragic.’
He gave a choked laugh. ‘Love isn’t for everyone. Mon Dieu, if you saw my parents...it’s a miracle they’ve got to where they have. My mother has the patience of a saint, I’ll say that for her. And I’m a better man without it. I don’t need someone else to make me feel fulfilled. I don’t want to rely on someone else to make me feel whole and happy again, because when you lose that someone, it’s like—it’s like having your soul ripped out, and you struggle to see the path for the pain of it.’
‘I understand why you don’t want to rely on love to make you happy again,’ she whispered eventually. ‘It’s not all that different to me spending my life tying my happiness to that of others. My parents, Georges, things you can’t control. But... I don’t know. To swear oneself off it because you fear losing it again... I’m not sure that’s all that healthy either.’
‘I never said it was healthy, Cassie. Just that I don’t intend to suffer it again.’
And that was her told.
So why did she get the distinct impression her heart wasn’t listening...?