The Wedding Charade (18 page)

Jade blinked back the blur of tears that were banking at the back of her eyes. ‘I bet your art guy didn’t say I was amazingly talented.’ She brushed at her eyes with her free hand. ‘I bet he thought you dragging him here was a complete and utter waste of time.’

‘Actually, he was very impressed,’ Nic said, stroking her wrist with his thumb.

She looked up at him with a guarded look. ‘You’re just saying that … ‘

He sent his eyes upwards in a frustrated roll. ‘Why do you doubt yourself so much? Of course he was impressed. He said you have a very special way with colour and light. He couldn’t believe you hadn’t had tuition of any sort. You have natural talent, Jade. He wants to show some of your work, a limited space in a general exhibition
to start with to get a feel for the market. He thinks you could have your own exhibition eventually.’

Jade thought of all that would entail. The business side of things would be her downfall. She would end up looking a fool, not even able to read through a contract or write her own biography for promotional purposes. She would be mocked in the press—the illiterate artist who could paint but not write down her own address.

‘Why are you chewing at your lip like that?’ Nic asked, brushing her savaged lip with his thumb.

‘I can’t do it, Nic,’ she said. ‘Please don’t make me.’

‘Cara,
no one is making you do anything you don’t want. If you don’t feel ready to put your stuff out there, then that is your decision. It’s just that I thought you would be interested in having something to fall back on should you need it in the future.’

She sent him a pointed look. ‘Don’t you mean when our marriage comes to an end and I’ve spent all the money? That’s what you think, isn’t it? That I’m going to spend all the money your grandfather left me and have nothing to show for it.’

His frown deepened across his forehead. ‘I don’t think that at all. I just don’t believe you will be content with all that money unless you have a purpose for your life. Art is meant to be seen and appreciated. I don’t understand why you won’t take this chance to show the world you are not the shallow socialite everyone thinks you are.’

Jade turned away, not sure she could keep her emotions in check with his penetrating gaze focused on her. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said, knowing full well what her decision would be.

There was a small silence.

‘You won’t budge on this, will you?’ he said.

She let out a tiny sigh and slowly turned around. ‘My art is the one thing I can keep private,’ she said. ‘Like you and your brothers, I have lived my whole life in the public eye. This is one area I can keep to myself. It’s an outlet for me. I do it because I love it, not because I have a deadline or a contract or an exhibition looming. I just love it.’

Nic gave her a crooked smile. ‘You constantly surprise me, do you know that? ‘

Jade bit her lip again. ‘I appreciate what you were trying to do for me, Nic, I really do. I’m just not ready to take that step.’

He slowly nodded, as if he finally accepted her position. ‘So, tell me about your shopping trip,’ he said. ‘Did you buy anything? ‘

Jade felt her colour blast like an open furnace on her cheeks. ‘Um …no …I didn’t.’

‘Any paparazzi lurking around? ‘

She had to look away, her gaze going to the gardens outside. ‘They’re pretty hard to avoid,’ she said. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Yes, I do indeed,’ he said, coming up behind her to place his hands on her shoulders.

Jade felt her whole body shiver in reaction. She automatically leant backwards, seeking his hard warmth. He brought his mouth down to the sensitive skin of her neck, just beneath the thick curtain of her hair, his teeth nibbling at her playfully, sending every nerve into a madcap frenzy.

‘You always taste so delicious,’ he murmured against her neck. ‘I can’t keep my hands or my mouth off you.’

‘Maybe after eleven months you won’t feel quite
the same way,’ Jade said, desperately looking for reassurance.

Nic turned her around in one movement, his eyes dark and frowning. ‘Why do you have to keep on about that?’ he asked. ‘You know the terms. We stay in this marriage until we get what we both want. That’s the deal. You signed on it, Jade. You read the contract. It’s in black and white with your signature at the bottom of

it.’

Jade moved out of his hold, cupping her elbows with her palms. ‘Don’t you ever think about anything else but money?’ she asked. ‘You drive yourself so hard in business, but what for? Who are you going to give it to when you leave this earth?’

He looked at her for a tense moment before turning away to rub at a knot of tension at the back of his neck. ‘I haven’t any plans to leave this earth for the next sixty-odd years if I am lucky.’

‘You can’t know what life will have in store for you,’ she said. ‘No one can.’

‘I realise that, Jade, but you have to be sensible about this. This was never about the long term. We both agreed on that. When this is over, I want my life to continue the way it always has.’

‘But what if it can’t?’ she asked. ‘What if this year changes everything?’

He frowned at her. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘What if that’s what your grandfather wanted to communicate to you by tying things up the way he did?’ she asked. ‘You can’t have life the way you want it, Nic. It doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes things happen that change everything and you can’t change it back.’

He cocked his head at a wary angle. ‘What sort of things are we talking about here?’

She bit her lip and looked away. ‘Nothing specific.’

‘Jade?’ He turned her with one hand, forcing her chin up to meet his gaze. ‘What is going on?’

Her green eyes flickered with something but then she lowered her gaze. ‘I’m just tired,’ she said.

Nic brushed his thumb across her cheek. ‘I can see that. You look pale and you have dark smudges under your eyes. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll sleep in one of the spare rooms tonight?’

She looked at him with a nervous flicker of her gaze. ‘You don’t have to do that … ‘

He pressed a soft kiss to the little frown in between her finely arched brows. ‘Oh, but I do,
cara mio,’
he said softly. ‘Otherwise I will keep you up all hours pleasuring you because I can’t stop myself.’

She gave him a small movement of her lips that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘Well, goodnight, then,’ she said and stepped away.

Nic caught her hand on the way past, closing his fingers around hers for a fleeting moment. He felt the tingles all the way up his arm, the flow of his blood increasing its pace as her fingers moved against his. But then her hand slipped out of his and she was gone, her soft footsteps fading into the distance.

He stood staring at the space where she had been for a long moment, a frown pulling at his forehead as he pictured their final goodbye in eleven months’ time. His stomach felt wrapped in barbed wire as he imagined that parting scene: the final handover of money, the polite goodbyes and ‘thanks for the memories’ routine. Why
had his grandfather locked them together like this when it would only cause grief and pain when it ended?
It doesn’t have to end …

Nic shook his head as if to get rid of the errant thought. Of course it had to end. Jade had the right to her own life—a life with someone who could give her the things she wanted. She believed in lasting love and she deserved it. No one deserved it more. She said she didn’t want children but he wasn’t sure if she was being truthful on that. He had seen her with his nephews and niece, the way her face lit up and her smile bloomed like an exotic and rare flower.

He thought about her vulnerability. She pretended to be so tough but inside she was like a frightened little girl. Who would be around to protect her if he wasn’t? If they divorced as planned she would be even more vulnerable. She would be such an easy target for some creep after her money. She had a naivety about her that, in spite of her street-smart past, had never really gone away.

Letting her go was not going to be easy. He had not expected their time together to be so intensely satisfying. He ached for her and couldn’t imagine how this need he felt so constantly was going to ever fade.

Maybe it wouldn’t …

He frowned until his forehead hurt. It had to fade. It always did. He had never fallen in love. Love was not an emotion he trusted. Sure, he loved his family and would put his life on the line for any one of them, but romantic love was something that came and went. It was unreliable and transient. He had no intention of allowing himself to be sucked into the fantasy of happily ever after, although he had to admit that in some cases,
such as his brothers’ lives, it actually was a reality and not a fantasy at all.

He gave a cynical laugh but it caught on something deep in his chest.

Maybe there was hope for him after all.

W
HEN
Jade woke up the next morning Nic was standing by the bedside with a newspaper in his hand. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked, thrusting it at her.

Jade frowned as she pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes. She glanced at the paper before returning her eyes to his glittering ones. ‘You know I can’t read Italian,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you read it to me?’

‘Here’s an English paper,’ he said, pushing another paper towards her. ‘It says much the same thing.’

She looked at a photograph of her in the baby wear shop the day before. She couldn’t read the caption but the photo told the story: she was holding the pink with polka dots Babygro, looking down at it with a dreamy, wistful look on her face.

‘Well?’

Jade looked at him. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘Then why don’t you tell me what it is?’ His voice contained a thread of steel.

She decided to be honest with him. ‘Nic, I can’t go on like this. I have to be honest with you.’

‘Is this another one of your attention-seeking tricks?’ He stabbed a finger at the paper. ‘To tell the press you were pregnant before you even told me?’

Jade looked at him in shock.
‘Is that what it says? ‘

His frown deepened. ‘What, you’re not pregnant?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘How could you think that? I told you I was on the Pill. I wouldn’t deliberately try and trap you like that.’

Nic dropped the paper and rubbed a hand over his unshaven face. ‘I’m sorry, Jade,’ he said. ‘Just like everyone else, I immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘No, it’s not OK,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who should know better. I know you. I should not have judged you so quickly.’

‘You don’t really know me, Nic,’ Jade said softly. ‘You don’t know me at all.’

‘How can you say that?’ he asked. ‘Of course I know you.’

‘Do you know what I want most in the world?’ she asked.

His expression faltered for a moment. ‘You want to be loved,’ he said. ‘I know that you want to be loved and accepted for who you are.’

‘Do you love and accept me as I am?’

His throat moved up and down over a rough swallow. ‘I care about you, Jade,’ he said in a gruff tone. ‘I admit I didn’t at first. I was annoyed that we were forced to marry. I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to marry less. But I have come to see how wrong I was about you. You are a very special person. So talented, so beautiful and so damned sensual I can’t keep my hands off you.’

He cares for me,
Jade thought with a mental curl of her lip. What a pathetic word that was. People cared for their goldfish and pot plants, for God’s sake. It didn’t mean they would give anything to be with them. It didn’t
mean they felt achingly empty when they were away from them. It didn’t mean they couldn’t imagine life without them in it. She felt all that and more for Nic. Surely she deserved to be loved, not just cared about.

‘Cara?’
He stroked a gentle thumb across her cheek. ‘We’re good together. You know we are. We care about each other. That is a good thing,
sí?’

‘How do you know what I feel about you?’ Jade asked. ‘I might still hate you for all you know.’

His thumb moved to stroke across her bottom lip. ‘If you do, you have a delightful way of showing it.’

Jade pulled away from his tempting touch. ‘Nic, I want some space …to think about things.’

He frowned darkly. ‘Things? What things?’

She chewed at her lip where his thumb had set off the nerves into a tingling frenzy. ‘The news thing …the false report about a pregnancy? Well, I’ve kind of changed my mind about babies and …things … ‘

Nic’s frown intensified until his brows met over his eyes. ‘Are you saying you
want
to have a baby?’ he asked.

Jade held her breath for a moment before she answered. ‘I know this is not what you want. And I know it’s not really fair to spring it on you, so that’s why I want some time to think about what happens after this year is over. I need time, Nic. Please, just let me go back to London for a few days. I can’t think straight when I’m with you.’

‘Cara, I can’t think straight when I’m with you either but do you really have to go to London?’ he asked. ‘It’ll be wet and cold, for one thing.’

Jade steeled her resolve. ‘Just a few days, OK? Just until my birthday. I want to see Julianne McCormack.
I want her to know I didn’t betray our friendship. I need to do that face to face. I should have done that right at the start. At least now she knows we are married maybe she’ll listen to me.’

He scraped a hand through his hair. ‘I’ll book you a room in our London hotel. But I want to join you in a couple of days, got that? I am not having you out of my sight any longer than that.’

‘Because you don’t trust me?’ Jade asked.

He gave her a long and serious look before he brushed the back of his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. ‘Because I will miss you,
mio piccolo,’
he said.

London was as cold and wet as Nic had warned but Jade had too much on her mind to notice. She called on Julianne at home, taking a very big chance on whether she would let her in, but surprisingly she did. It was an emotional meeting for both of them. Julianne had found out only a few days before that her husband was conducting an affair with a woman from his office. A compromising text message had come up on Richard’s phone, which resulted in Julianne confronting him about how he had used Jade to shield his perfidious behaviour.