A Tangled Affair Read online

  Zane’s attention was no longer on her; it was riveted on Lilah and realization hit. She wasn’t the only one struggling here. “You want Lilah.”

  The grim anger she had glimpsed winked out of existence. “If I was in the market for marriage, maybe.”

  “Which, I take it, you’re not.”

  Zane’s dark gaze zeroed in on hers, but Carla realized he still barely logged her presence. “No. Are you interested in art?”

  Carla blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Yes.”

  “If you want out of this wind, I’ll be happy to show you the rogue’s gallery.”

  She had glimpsed the broad gallery that housed the Atraeus family portraits, some painted by acknowledged masters, but hadn’t had time to view them. “I would love to take a closer look at the family portraits.”

  Anything to get her off the balcony. “Just do me one favor. Put your arm around my waist.”

  “And make it look good?”

  Carla’s chin jerked up a fraction. “If you don’t mind.”

  The unflattering lack of reaction to her suggestion should have rubbed salt into the wound, but Carla was beyond caring. She was dying by inches but she was determined not to be any more tragic than she had to be.

  Lucas’s gaze burned over her as she handed her drink to a waiter then allowed Zane’s arm to settle around her waist. As they strolled past Lucas, she was forcibly struck by the notion that he was jealous.

  Confusion rocked her. She hadn’t consciously set out to make Lucas jealous; her main concern from the moment she had realized that Lucas and Lilah were together had been self-preservation. Lucas being jealous made no sense unless he still wanted her, and how could that be when he had already chosen another woman?

  Carla was relieved when Zane dropped his arm the second they were out of sight of the balcony. After a short walk through flagged corridors, they entered the gallery. Along one wall, arched windows provided spectacular views of the moonlit sea. The opposite wall was softly lit and lined with exquisite paintings.

  The tingling sense of alarm, as if at some level she was aware of Lucas’s displeasure, continued as they strolled past rank after rank of gorgeous rich oils. Most had been painted pre-1900s, before the once wealthy and noble Atraeus family had fallen on hard times. Lucas’s grandfather, after discovering an obscenely rich gold mine, had since purchased most of the paintings back from private collections and museums.

  The men were clearly of the Atraeus bloodline, with strong jaws and aquiline profiles. The women, almost without exception, looked like Botticelli angels: beautiful, demure, virginal.

  Zane paused beside a vibrant painting of an Atraeus ancestor who looked more like a pirate than a noble lord. His lady was a serene, quiet dove with a steely glint in her eye. With her long, slanting eyes and delicate bones, the woman bore an uncanny resemblance to Lilah. “As you can see it’s a mixture of sinners and saints. It seemed that the more dissolute and marauding the Atraeus male, the more powerful his desire for a saint.”

  Carla heard the measured tread of footsteps. Her heart sped up because she was almost sure it was Lucas. “And is that what Atraeus men are searching for today?”

  Zane shrugged. “I can’t speak for my brothers. I’m not your typical Atraeus male.”

  Her jaw tightened. “But the idea of a pure, untouched bride still has a certain appeal.”

  “Maybe.” He sent her a flashing grin that made him look startlingly like the Atraeus pirate in the painting. “Although, I’m always willing to be convinced that a sinner is the way to go.”

  “Because that generally means no commitment, right?”

  Zane’s dark brows jerked together. “How did we get on to commitment?”

  Carla registered the abrupt silence as if whoever had just entered the gallery had seen them and stopped.

  Her heart slammed in her chest as she caught Lucas’s reflection in one of the windows. On impulse, she stepped close to Zane and tilted her head back, the move flirtatious and openly provocative. She was playing with fire, because Zane had a reputation that scorched.

  Lucas would be furious with her. If he was jealous, her behavior would probably kill any feelings he had left for her, but she was beyond caring. He had hurt her too badly for her to pull back now. “If that’s an invitation, the answer is yes.”

  Zane’s gaze registered unflattering surprise.

  Minor detail, because Lucas was now walking toward them. Gritting her teeth, she wound her finger in Zane’s tie, applying just enough pressure that his head lowered until his mouth was mere inches from hers.

  His gaze was disarmingly neutral. “I know what you’re up to.”

  “You could at least be tempted.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  “Damn, you’re type A. No wonder he went for Lilah.”

  Carla’s fingers tightened on his tie. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Only to me. And that’s because I’m a control freak myself.”

  “I am not a control freak.”

  He unwound her fingers from his tie. “Whatever you say.”

  Cut adrift by Zane’s calm patience, Carla had no choice but to step back and in so doing almost caromed into Lucas.

  She flinched at the fiery trail of his gaze over the shadow of her cleavage, her mouth, the impression of heat and desire. If Zane hadn’t been there she was almost certain he would have pulled her close and kissed her.

  Lucas’s expression was shuttered. “What are you up to?”

  Carla didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I’m not up to anything. Zane was showing me the paintings.”

  “Careful,” Zane intervened, his gaze on Lucas. “Or I might think you have a personal interest in Carla, and that couldn’t possibly be, since you’re dating the lovely Lilah.”

  A sharp pang went through Carla at the tension vibrating between the brothers, shifting undercurrents she didn’t understand.

  Spine rigid, she kept her gaze firmly on Zane’s jaw. She hadn’t liked behaving like that, but at least she had proved that Lucas did still want her. Although the knowledge was a bitter pill, because his reaction repeated a pattern that was depressingly familiar. In establishing a stress-free liaison with him based on her rules, she had somehow negotiated herself out of the very things she needed most: love, companionship and commitment.

  Lucas had wanted her for two years, but that was all. The relationship had struggled to progress out of the bedroom. Even when she had finally gotten him to Thailand for a whole four-day minibreak, the longest period of time they had ever spent together, the plan had crashed and burned because she had gotten sick.

  She wondered in what way she was lacking that Lucas didn’t want a full relationship with her? That instead of allowing them to grow closer, he had kept her at an emotional arm’s length and gone to Lilah for the very things that Carla needed from him.

  She glanced apologetically at Zane in an effort to defuse the tension. “It’s okay, Lucas and I are old news. If there was anything more we would be together now.”

  “Whereas marriage is Lilah’s focus,” Zane said softly.

  Lucas frowned. “Back off, Zane.”

  Confusion gripped Carla along with another renegade glimmer of hope at Lucas’s reaction. She was tired of thinking about everything that had gone wrong, but despite that, her mind grabbed on to the notion that maybe all he was doing was dating Lilah on a casual basis. Just because Lilah wanted marriage didn’t necessarily mean she would get what she wanted.

  Grimly, she forced herself to study the Atraeus bride in the painting again. It was the perfect reality check.

  Her pale, demure gown was the epitome of all things virginal and pure. Nothing like Carla’s flaming red silk dress, with its enticing glimpse of cleavage and leg. The serene eighteenth-century bride was no doubt every man’s secret dream. A perfect wife, without a flirty bone in her body. Or a stress condition.

  Lucas
’s gaze sliced back to Carla. “I’ll take you back to the party. Dinner will be served in about fifteen minutes.”

  He was jealous.

  The thought reverberated through her, but for the first time in two years what Lucas wanted wasn’t a priority. Her rules had just changed. From now on it was commitment or nothing.

  Her chin firmed. “No. I have an escort. Zane will take me back to the party.”

  For a long, tension-filled moment Carla thought Lucas would argue, but then the demanding, possessive gleam was replaced by a familiar control. He nodded curtly then sent Zane a long, cold look that conveyed a hands-off message that left Carla feeling doubly confused. Lucas didn’t want her, but neither did he want Zane anywhere near her.

  And if Lucas no longer wanted her, if they really were finished, why had he bothered to search her out?

  Three

  Lucas Atraeus strode into his private quarters and snapped the door closed behind him. Opening a set of French doors, he stepped out onto his balcony. The wind buffeted the weathered stone parapet and whipped night-dark hair around the obdurate line of his jaw. He tried to focus on the steady roar of the waves pounding the cliff face beneath and the stream of damp, salty air, while he waited for the self-destructive desire to reclaim Carla to dissolve.

  The vibration of his cell phone drew him back inside. Sliding the phone out of his pocket, he checked the screen. Lilah. No doubt wondering where he was.

  Jaw clenched, he allowed the call to go through to his voice mail. He couldn’t stomach talking to Lilah right at that moment with his emotions still raw and his thoughts on another woman. Besides, with a relationship based on a few phone calls and a couple of conversations, most of them purely work based, they literally had nothing to say to each other.

  The call terminated. Lucas found himself staring at a newspaper he had tossed down on the coffee table, the one he had read on the night flight from New York to Medinos. The paper was open at the society pages and a grainy shot of Carla in her capacity as the “face” of Ambrosi Pearls, twined intimately close with a rival millionaire businessman.

  Picking up the newspaper, he reread the caption that hinted at a hot affair.

  He had been away for two months but by all accounts she had not missed him.

  Tossing the newspaper down on the coffee table, he strode back out onto the balcony. Before he could stop himself, he had punched in her number on his phone.

  Calling her now made no kind of sense.

  He held the sleek phone pressed to his ear and forced himself to remember the one overriding reason he should never have touched Carla Ambrosi.

  Grimly, he noted that the hit of old grief and sharp-enough-to-taste guilt still wasn’t powerful enough to bury the impulse to involve himself even more deeply in yet another fatal attraction.

  When he had met Carla, somehow he had stepped away from the rigid discipline he had instilled in himself after Sophie’s death.

  The car accident hadn’t been his fault, but he was still haunted by the argument that had instigated Sophie’s headlong dash in her sports car after he had found out that she had aborted his child.

  Sophie had been beautiful, headstrong and adept at winding him around her little finger. He should have stopped her, taken the car keys. He should have controlled the situation. It had been his responsibility to protect her, and he had failed.

  They should never have been together in the first place.

  They had been all wrong for each other. He had been disciplined, work focused and family orientated. Sophie had skimmed along the surface of life, thriving on bright lights, parties and media attention. Even the manner in which Sophie had died had garnered publicity and had been perceived in certain quarters as glamorous.

  The ring tone continued. His fingers tightened on the cell. Carla had her phone with her; she should have picked up by now.

  Unless she was otherwise occupied. With Zane.

  His stomach clenched at the image of Carla, mouthwateringly gorgeous in red, her fingers twined in Zane’s tie, poised for a kiss he had interrupted.

  He didn’t trust Zane. His younger brother had a reputation with women that literally burned.

  The call went through to voice mail. Carla’s voice filled his ear.

  Despite the annoyance that gripped him that Carla had decided to ignore his call, Lucas was riveted by the velvet-cool sound of the recorded message. The brisk, businesslike tone so at odds with Carla’s ultrasexy, ultrafeminine appearance and which never failed to fascinate.

  During the two months he had been in the States he had refrained from contacting Carla. He had needed to distance himself from a relationship that during an intense few days in Thailand had suddenly stepped over an invisible boundary and become too gut-wrenchingly intimate. Too like his relationship with Sophie.

  Carla, who was surprisingly businesslike and controlled when it came to communication, had left only one text and a single phone message to which he had replied. A few weeks ago he had seen her briefly, from a distance, at her father’s funeral, but they hadn’t spoken.

  That was reason number two not to become involved with Carla.

  The ground rules for their relationship had been based on what she had wanted: a no-strings fun fling, carried out in secret because of the financial scandal that had erupted between their two families.

  Secrecy was not Lucas’s thing, but since he had never planned on permanency he hadn’t seen any harm in going along with Carla’s plan. He had been based in the States, Carla was in Sydney. A relationship wasn’t possible even if he had wanted one.

  The line hummed expectantly.

  Irritated with himself for not having done it sooner, Lucas terminated the call.

  Grimly, he stared at the endless expanse of sea, the faint curve of the horizon. Carla not picking up the call was the best-case scenario. If she had, he was by no means certain he could have maintained his ruthless facade.

  The problem was that, as tough and successful as he was in business, when it came to women his track record was patchy.

  As an Atraeus he was expected to be coolly dominant. Despite the years he had spent trying to mold himself into the strong silent type who routinely got his way, he had not achieved Constantine’s effortless self-possession. Little kids and fluffy dogs still targeted him; women of all ages gravitated to him as if they had no clue about his reputation as The Atraeus Group’s key hatchet man.

  Despite the long list of companies he had streamlined or clinically dismantled, he couldn’t forget that he had not been able to establish any degree of control over his relationship with Sophie.

  Jaw taut, Lucas padded inside. He barely noticed the warm glow of lamplight, the richness of exquisite antiques and jewel-bright carpets.

  His gaze zeroed in on the newspaper article again. A hot pulse of jealously burned through him as he studied the Greek millionaire who had his arm around Carla’s waist.

  Alex Panopoulos, an archrival across the boardroom table and a well-known playboy.

  Given the limited basis of Lucas’s relationship with Carla, they had agreed it had to be open; they were both free to date others. Like Lucas, Carla regularly dated as part of her career, although so far Lucas had not been able to bring himself to include another woman in his life on more than a strictly platonic basis.

  Panopoulos was a guest at the wedding tomorrow.

  Walking through to the kitchen, he tossed the paper into the trash. His jaw tightened at the thought that he would have fend off the Greek, as well.

  He guessed he should be glad that it was Zane Carla seemed to be attracted to and not Panopoulos.

  Zane had been controllable, so far. And if he stepped over the line, there was always the option that they could settle the issue in the old-fashioned way, down on the beach and without an audience.

  * * *

  Dinner passed in a polite, superficial haze. Carla made conversation, smiled on cue, and avoided looking at Lucas. Unfortunately, because
he was seated almost directly opposite her, she was burningly aware of him through each course.

  Dessert was served. Still caught between the raw misery that threatened to drag her under, and the need to maintain the appearance of normality, Carla ate. She had reached the dessert course when she registered how much wine she had drunk.

  A small sharp shock went through her. She wasn’t drunk, but alcohol and some of the foods she was eating did not mix happily with an ulcer. Strictly speaking, after the episode with the virus and the ulcer, she wasn’t supposed to drink at all.

  Setting her spoon down, she picked up her clutch and excused herself from the table. She asked one of the waitstaff to direct her to the nearest bathroom. Unfortunately, since her grasp of Medinian was far from perfect, she somehow managed to take a wrong turn.

  After traversing a long corridor and opening a number of doors, one of which seemed to be the entrance to a private set of rooms, complete with a kitchenette, she opened a door and found herself on a terrace overlooking the sea. Shrugging, because the terrace would do as well as a bathroom since all she required was privacy to take the small cocktail of pills her doctor had prescribed, she walked to the stone parapet and studied the view.

  The stiff sea breeze that had been blowing earlier had dropped away, leaving the night still, the air balmy and heavily scented with the pine and rosemary that grew wild on the hills. A huge full moon glowed a rich, buttery gold on the horizon.

  Setting her handbag down on the stone pavers, she extracted the MediPACK of pills she had brought with her, tore open the plastic seal and swallowed them dry.

  Dropping the plastic waste into her handbag, she straightened just as the door onto the terrace popped open. Her chest tightened when she recognized Lucas.

  “I hope you weren’t expecting Zane?”

  “If I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “Zane won’t give you what you want.”

  Carla swallowed to try and clear the dry bitterness in her mouth. “A loving relationship? The kind of relationship I thought we could have had?”

  He ignored the questions. “You should return to the dining room.”