He popped the cork on the champagne. ‘I seem to recall you and Morag never quite hit it off.’ He proceeded to pour dancing bubbles into the two glasses.
‘That’s because she didn’t respect me. I was your partner...your fiancée. But behind your back she treated me like I was gold-digging trailer trash. It was one of the first things she said to me when I met her. “You’re only after his money and fame”.’
That she had benefited from that fame after their breakup was neither here nor there, in her mind. Elodie had not agreed to marry him for any other reason than she wanted to be with him. Because... Because she’d been a silly little fool back then, who’d thought lust equalled love.
A taut line formed around Lincoln’s mouth, as if he recalled every heated argument they’d used to have over his housekeeper. ‘Perhaps you didn’t treat her with the respect she deserved.’
He came over with the two glasses of champagne, handing one to her. Elodie did everything she could to avoid touching his fingers as she took the glass, but in spite of her efforts a tingle shot up her arm when his fingers brushed hers.
‘Or perhaps she always knew you weren’t going to stick around.’
Elodie made a snorting noise and took a generous sip of her champagne. ‘She was just plain rude to me. She should have retired years ago.’
‘Elodie.’ The was a heavy note of censure in his tone and a frown was carved deep into his forehead.
She gave a nonchalant shrug and took another sip of champagne. ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me what I’ve decided about your proposal?’
Lincoln sat opposite her on the large sofa and stretched one of his strongly muscled arms along the back. ‘I already know what you’ve decided. You wouldn’t be here if your answer was still a flat-out no.’
Elodie circled one of her ankles round and round, not sure she was comfortable with him being able to read her so well. ‘I’ve thought it through and I agree with you. It can be win-win for both of us—especially with the on-paper-only clause.’ She raised her glass in a mock toast, painting a sugar-sweet smile on her lips. ‘I would never have accepted without that.’
Lincoln rose from the sofa and placed his champagne glass on the coffee table between them with a thud. He straightened and nailed her with his gaze. ‘There are some ground rules we need to establish from the get-go. Just because we don’t sleep with each other doesn’t mean we sleep with anyone else during the duration of our marriage. Is that clear?’
Elodie raised her eyebrows and whistled through her teeth. ‘My, oh, my... That’s going to be harder for you than me, isn’t it? Celibacy isn’t quite your thing, as I recall. You had someone else in your bed within a week of our cancelled wedding.’
His jaw became granite-hard. ‘And that rankled, did it?’
‘Nope.’ She injected her tone with insouciance. ‘I didn’t want you, so why would I be upset someone else did?’
His eyes bored into hers with the intensity of an industrial strength drill, but Elodie was determined not to look away first. The tension in the air was palpable. A vibrating, pulsating tension that travelled along the invisible waves of silence like an electric current.
‘But you want me now.’ A cynical smile slanted his mouth and his eyes glinted challengingly.
Elodie laughed and tipped back her head. She drained her champagne glass, then leaned forward to set it on the coffee table next to his. ‘Actually, I think you’ve got that the wrong way around. It’s you who wants me.’
‘And you know this because...?’
Elodie rose from the sofa and sashayed over to where he was standing, driven by an irresistible and recklessly rebellious urge to make him eat his words. She stood right in front of him and, locking her gaze on his, slid her hands up his muscular chest to rest on the tops of his impossibly broad shoulders. She breathed in the intoxicating scent of him—the wood and citrus and salty male scent that sent her senses into a tailspin. His eyes were hooded, his expression inscrutable, but she could sense a palpable tension in him.
‘I know this because of the way you look at me.’ She ran her index finger down the straight blade of his nose. ‘It’s the way you’ve always looked at me. Like you want to lick every inch of my body.’ She kept her voice husky and whisper-soft, her gaze sultry.
He drew in a breath and let it out in a jagged stream. ‘I told you the rules.’
Elodie moved a little closer, so her breasts brushed against his chest. A wave of incendiary heat swept through her at the contact, making her inner core contract with longing. She lifted her finger to his lips, tracing the sensual shape with deliberate slowness. ‘You know all about me and rules.’
Lincoln grasped her by the upper arms in a hold that hinted at the coiled tension in his body. His eyes were diamond-hard, his expression grimly determined. ‘We’re not doing this.’ The words were bitten out through tight lips.
Elodie stood on tiptoe, which pressed her breasts even more firmly against his chest. Her mouth was so close to his she could feel the warm waft of his breath mingling intimately with hers. ‘But we both want to, don’t we?’
She brushed her lips against his firm ones but he didn’t respond. Goaded by his intractability, she pressed her lips on his and then slowly stroked her tongue along the seam of his mouth. He smothered a groan-cum-curse deep in his throat and crushed his mouth to hers.
It was a kiss that contained so many things—unruly and fiery passion, frustration, and even a little anger. Elodie didn’t care. All she wanted was his mouth on hers, working its old magic on her senses. His tongue entered her mouth with a commanding thrust so like the way he’d used to enter her body she almost came on the spot. The taste of him was so familiar it triggered a firestorm of lust in her flesh. She groaned against his lips, winding her arms around his neck, needing, wanting, aching to be closer to the hard ridge of his erection.
No one could turn her on like Lincoln. No one. His touch was so electric, his kiss so explosively passionate, she had no hope of resisting even if she’d wanted to.
But just as quickly as the kiss started it ended, as if a cord had suddenly been tugged out of an electric appliance.
Lincoln pulled away from her with a cynical smile. ‘Not going to happenthis time, baby.’
Elodie disguised her disappointment behind a cool smile. ‘Let me guess—there’s someone else? I hope you’re not going to humiliate me by seeing her while you’re married to me.’
‘You’re a fine one to accuse me of humiliation.’ There was no mistaking the bitterness in his tone, or the rigid set of his jaw. ‘I think you deserve the prize for that.’
Elodie wasn’t proud of the way she had ended their relationship, but at the time it had seemed her only escape route. She had let things go too far without talking to Lincoln about her career plans and her worries over how their relationship would cope. How she would juggle being a wife with being a lingerie model.
He had said he wanted children at some point. Even his father had mentioned how much he was looking forward to grandchildren. But what would have happened to her career if she’d got pregnant sooner rather than later? At the age of twenty-one, having children wasn’t even on her radar. And even now, at twenty-eight, she still hadn’t heard a single peep from her biological clock. Her career was her focus. Her drive and ambition left no room for anything else.
‘I understand how embarrassing it must have been for—’
‘But it achieved what you wanted it to achieve, didn’t it? You were a nobody until you got involved with me. Jilting me got you the press attention you always wanted, and you built your career off the back of it.’
Elodie stared at him speechlessly for a long moment, her mind whirling like clothes in a tumble dryer. He thought she had used him? That nothing about her involvement with him had been more than a tactical move to gain fame? That might be her plan now, but back then she had loved him. Truly loved him. Had told him so many times. Her feelings for him had been overwhelming—so much so they had contributed to her rash decision to jilt him.
She had sensed that if she married him, her career would never be a priority. Her priority would be him. His priority would never be her. To Lincoln, all she would have been was a trophy wife. He had never told her he loved her, and until the last moment she had been too star-struck by him to see that was a problem—an alarm bell she should have paid far more attention to. She had fooled herself into believing he was one of those men who wasn’t comfortable with expressing his emotions. She had fooled herself into thinking he actually felt the emotions just because their lovemaking was so incredible.
But complete strangers could have incredible sex—love had nothing to do with it.
Elodie walked over to the drinks cabinet, where Lincoln had left the champagne bottle, and brought it over to refill her glass. She placed the bottle down on the coffee table and sent him a sideways glance. ‘I find it highly amusing that you’re accusing me of using you when all you wanted was for me to be a trophy wife, a bit of arm candy to show off to all your friends and business associates. You didn’t love me.’
Lincoln compressed his mouth into a flat line. ‘At least we’re equal on that score. Love was never a part of our relationship.’
There—he had admitted it. He had never loved her. Elodie did everything in her power to disguise the pain his words evoked. But then she had always been good at masking her emotions, and if she couldn’t mask them she ran away from them.
Growing up with a twin with a life-threatening nut allergy had taught her how to play down her panic, to keep cool under pressure, never to show the turmoil she was actually feeling at the thought of losing her sister. In a perverse kind of way, she had adopted a devil-may-care approach to life. And her rebellious streak had strengthened as her mother’s overzealous attention had focussed more and more on her twin. Negative attention was better than no attention, and it was a pattern that had followed her through life.