Which wasn’t a good thing—because his head was full of more questions than answers.
He didn’t know whether to believe Lily about her not having a current lover, but he was beginning to suspect that she was telling the truth about not knowing she’d had drugs in her bag. That was disconcerting, because it meant he’d been wrong about her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been wrong about a person. Hated to think that he was now. Because if he was he owed her an apology.
Could she really be as genuine, as untouched, as she appeared? Or was he just a fool, being taken in by a beautiful and duplicitous woman? One whose job it was to pretend to be someone she wasn’t.
Whatever she was, he desired her more than he’d desired any woman before—and that wasn’t good.
He gripped the balustrade so tightly his palms hurt. He needed an outlet for all the pent-up energy whizzing through his blood, and the only thing he could think of to assuage his physical ache was totally off-limits.
Straightening, he clasped his hands behind his neck, twisting his body from side to side to ease the kinks in his back. A run usually helped clear the cobwebs away. And if he didn’t have a suspect movie star sleeping next door he’d put on his joggers and do exactly that. But then, if he didn’t have a suspect movie star sleeping next door he probably wouldn’t need to go for a run at—he glanced at his watch—one in the morning.
Grimacing, he strode inside and flopped face down on his bed.
Given that he couldn’t get rid of her in the short term, the only way he could think of to deal with this situation was with the detached professionalism he would offer any client and ignore the attraction between them.
He’d told her more than once today that he was in charge, and damn it if he wasn’t going to start behaving as if he was tomorrow.
‘A MOVIE premiere? Is this your idea of a joke?’
Tristan’s PA flinched as she stood on the other side of his desk, and he realised he’d said almost those exact words to his sister at almost this exact time yesterday.
Again he’d been having a great morning, and again it was shot to—
Okay, so it hadn’t been that great a morning, what with Lily waking up late and a police detective waiting around in his home until she did so, but it was definitely ruined now. He cut a hard look to Lily, who stared back impassively at him from the white sofa.
‘Uh, n-no,’ Kate stuttered.
He glanced back at his computer screen, at the images Kate had brought up of the legions of fans who had camped out overnight in Leicester Square to get a glimpse of Lily Wild at some premiere to be held that evening.
‘Lily, tell me this is a joke.’
He watched Lily’s throat work as she swallowed, and then he returned his eyes to his surprised PA, who didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. She’d never seen him on the verge of losing his temper before and she was clearly daunted.
‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ Lily informed him coolly, standing to walk over to his desk.
Only she wasn’t so cool deep down, because she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands either, and nervously pleated the loose folds of her peasant skirt.
His eyes swept upwards over her clinging purple shirt and then into eyes almost the same shade. ‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ he mocked.
‘Only because I was going to cancel my attendance—not because I didn’t want you to know about it.’
Cancel it? He doubted that very much. She’d set up her attendance long before now, and while she might be feeling apprehensive about her drug bust he doubted she seriously wanted to miss an opportunity in the limelight. She’d chosen that life, after all.
‘Oh, you can’t cancel!’ Kate cried, trying very hard not to appear starstruck. ‘The premiere was delayed until today so you could make it, and there are people who have camped out in the cold night to see you. They’ll be so disappointed. Look.’
She pointed to the computer screen, but Tristan’s eyes stayed locked on Lily’s face.
Just as they did later that night, when he found himself in the back of his limousine being whisked through central London on his way to Leicester Square.
It wasn’t quite sunset, but the sky was filled with leaden clouds that blocked the setting sun from view and made it darker than it otherwise would be. Light rain splattered the windows, and Tristan wondered if Lily looked so nervous because she was worried that the rain would ruin the look she and Jordana had come up with in his bathroom or something else.
Because she certainly looked nervous.
Her chest was rising and falling with each deep, almost meditative breath she took. Her hands were locked together in her lap, and with her eyes closed she looked like Marie Antoinette must have before being dragged to the guillotine. But he didn’t think Marie Antoinette could have looked anywhere near as beautiful as Lily Wild did at this minute. As she did every damned minute.
Then the car rounded the final bend and he suspected he knew why she might be nervous.
The car pulled up kerbside, and the door was immediately opened by a burly security guard wearing a glow-in-the-dark red-and-yellow bomber jacket. A wide red carpet extended in front of them for miles, dividing the screaming mass of fans barely constrained behind waist-high barricades.
Men and women in suits trawled the carpet, and the fans went from wild to berserk, waving books and posters around like flags, as Lily alighted from the car into a pool of spotlights.
The stage lighting on nearby buildings and trees was no match for the sea of camera flashes that blinded Lily, and then himself, on both sides as Tristan followed Lily out of the car.
An official photographer rushed up and started snapping Lily from every angle, while a woman in a dark suit and clipboard motioned her along the carpet to sign autographs for the waiting fans.
Tristan felt as if he’d stepped into an alternative universe, and wasn’t wholly comfortable when Lily approached one of the barricades and the fans surged forward as one, making the beefy security guards who could have moonlighted as linebackers for the New Zealand All Blacks square off menacingly.
Tristan felt sure the fans were about to break through the barricades, and his own muscles bunched in readiness to grab Lily and haul her behind him if that should happen.
In the surrounding sea of multiple colours and broad black umbrellas held aloft to ward off the fine rain falling from the sky Lily stood out with her cream-coloured dress, lightly golden skin and upswept silvery-blond hair.
When he had first seen her in the dress Jordana had produced earlier—a knee-length clinging sheath with a high neck—he’d known he was in trouble. Then she had turned to reveal that it had no back, and he’d nearly told her to go back and put on her blouse and peasant skirt. But then he’d have had to explain why, and he didn’t like admitting why to himself let alone anyone else.
Now he could appreciate that Jordana had wrought a small miracle, and had made Lily look like a golden angel amid a sea of darkness.
Which, aesthetically, was wonderful, but was not so great for his personal comfort level—nor, he could safely say, that of any other man who happened to look upon her that night!
He watched her now, doing her thing with the fans, and thought back over the interminable day.
All day she had been a paragon of virtue.