LUCCA RIPPED YET another piece of paper off his sketchpad and scrunching it savagely into a ball, threw it at the wall. It bounced off and landed next to the pyramid of sketches he’d tossed there over the course of the evening.
For the first time in his life he couldn’t get into the zone. Couldn’t centre. Couldn’t anchor down.
Drawing was the music of his soul but tonight the band had packed up and left. Throughout his life, whatever emotions he grappled with, whatever demons he wrestled, whatever ghosts he avoided, he did it with pencil or paintbrush. It was his way of purging himself of every foul feeling festering inside him. The meticulous concentration of miniature work calmed him. Whether he was doing the preliminary sketch, or painting with one of his finest brushes while he worked under a large magnifying glass, the painstaking process calmed him like a lullaby does a fractious child.
But not tonight.
He was angry. Angry at himself. Angry for allowing his control to slip.
Lottie had needled him and instead of laughing it off in his usual I-don’t-give-a-damn manner he had reacted. Let her see a side of him he allowed no one to see.
Her little dig about him sponging off his family’s money seriously annoyed him. Who was she to talk? What about all the silver spoons she’d been fed with over the years? It wasn’t as if she had a big career path all mapped out. She lived her life through other people. Planning their events for them. She had no events of her own.
He had a right to his family’s money. The security of wealth made up for the emotional wasteland of his childhood. The loneliness he had suffered. The shame and hurt of not having a mother who had loved him and his siblings enough to stick around. The wretched disappointment when yet another important event at school ended without either of his parents showing up. He would look at all the other children with their proud and indulgent parents sitting in the school auditorium during a formal assembly or awards night or on the sports field. He would search that sea of beaming faces, hoping for a glimpse of his mother, desperately trying to match a face to the Laurent’s painting that hung at Chatsfield House. He would think it each and every time, even though he had no hooks to hang his hopes on: maybe this would be the day his mother would return. She would come to see him and Orsino. To cheer them on, to be proud of them, to show she still cared about them. His hopes would mushroom up in his chest until he could barely breathe. But then, like a sharp pin piercing the thin skin of a balloon, his hopes would deflate—flat, useless, empty.
He hadn’t made the most of his schooling. He had acted out his frustration, kicked back at authority, deliberately sabotaged his academic potential as a way of punishing his parents for not caring enough to show even a modicum of interest.
He had been lucky to have Orsino, but a twin was not a parent, and nor were older siblings. Antonio and Lucilla, his eldest brother and sister, had filled in where they could, but like Nicolo, and Franco, the next brothers in line, they had issues of their own to deal with.
And then there was Cara, the baby of the family, who had no memory of their mother at all.
Lucca swore as he dragged his hand over his face. He hated thinking about his family. He hated thinking. It stirred up emotions he had long ago buried, shining a bright light on the dark shadows of his hurt. The illumination of his pain made him feel physically ill. He could feel it now … the dead feeling in his muscles, the lethargy that dragged at his limbs. The tightness across his forehead, as if his eyes were being pulled back in their sockets by hot metal wires.
He picked up his phone, scrolled past another couple of missed calls from his brother, but instead of returning the call or distracting himself with social media he found himself scrolling through his photo file instead. He came to the photo of Lottie in the palace gardens. The light had caught the top of her tawny head, dividing her hair into segments like skeins of spun gold. Her skin looked as pure as cream with just a hint of dusky rose on her cheek that was facing the camera. She looked young and innocent, untouched, unsullied by the stain of twenty-first-century humanity.
He picked up a new pencil and turned over a fresh sheet on his sketchpad and started drawing….
Lottie had been fine about spending the night alone. Perfectly fine. Anyway, it had been exhausting doing loads and loads of shopping. It had been enormously liberating to wander about without a bodyguard, especially since no press had discovered her. With Lucca’s cutting remark about her goody-two-shoes personality still ringing in her ears she had bought outfit after outfit in a range of colours and styles just to prove she wasn’t half the coward he thought she was. She couldn’t wait to see his face when he saw her dressed in hot pink and wearing make-up and with her hair loose. Which was why it was kind of annoying he hadn’t made any contact since their little spat.
It wasn’t as if she’d been expecting him to take her out to dinner or a nightclub or anything. Perish the thought! She was perfectly fine about watching old movies on the large-screen television and ordering room service.
It had been very quiet next door, which was both a relief and a surprise. She’d expected to hear a boozy giggle or two as he brought a nameless girl back from a nightclub. She’d strained her ears for the sound of clinking glasses or the murmur of voices, but instead she had heard nothing, which just showed how incredibly soundproof the walls of Chatsfield Hotels were these days.
But when it got to ten the next morning and she still hadn’t heard a peep from next door or received a text from Lucca she started to wonder if he had stayed out all night. She paced the floor of the suite and fumed. How dare he leave her hanging? It would serve him right if he missed his important business meeting due to a massive hangover.
Lottie glanced out of the window and saw a cluster of paparazzi in front of the hotel. There was even a television crew. Her stomach knotted. She had pointedly ignored the newsfeed on her phone and the newspaper that had been delivered in the early hours of the morning and was still hanging in its silk bag on the doorknob outside the suite. She could just imagine what utter rubbish the press were peddling. Fashion Tragic Ice Princess Charlotte Spends Night with Dashing Hot Playboy Lucca Chatsfield in Secret Lust Fest.
She turned away from the window in disgust. She would be laughed at, pilloried as usual. Pitied for being the ugly sister. Cinderella without a handsome prince to take her to the ball.
No one would be running after her with a glass slipper in his hand.
No one would be running after her, period.
No one was even checking on her to see if she was fine about being left all alone for hours on end.
Lottie went over to the adjoining door, staring at the lock she had turned over the day before. She felt an inexplicable compulsion to open it. It was like an out of body experience as she watched her hand reach out and touch the old-fashioned brass key. The shock of cold metal against her fingers wasn’t enough to stop her turning the key with a click that sounded like a rifle shot.
The door was silent as she pushed it open. It didn’t even whisper over the carpet.
The bright morning light from her suite fanned across the room like the V-shaped beam of a searchlight and a muffled expletive sounded.
Lottie’s heart jumped as if it had been jerked by a tractor towrope but she didn’t back away or close the door. The suite was in total disarray. It looked like a tornado had been through it. Or a crazed burglar. There were balls of paper littered over the floor and the bed was a mangled mess of sheets and naked male limbs. No female ones that she could see. Thank God.
‘Get the freaking hell out.’ The words didn’t quite have the sting they should have had. Lucca’s voice sounded flat, listless, as if he didn’t have the energy to spit them out.
‘Are you all right?’