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Too much.The answer slithered through his mind, too slippery to catch and examine, but it was true.
They flew by helicopter, landing in a private airfield where they were collected by a chauffeur who greeted Saint with warm familiarity and a welcoming smile for Fliss.
His mother was less effusive when they arrived at the end of a secluded driveway in a cobbled courtyard surrounding a fountain before a massive stone mansion with wings off either side. It was topped with gingerbread detailing and a tile roof.
Norma greeted them with perfunctory cheek kisses and directed their luggage to “the junior suite.”
“I’ll leave you to show Felicity around. The florist finally arrived, and they brought the wrong color lilies so I have that disaster on my hands.” She stalked away.
“Oh no,” Saint said faintly in her wake.
“She just wants her party to go well,” Fliss murmured, but if the wrong lilies were a disaster, what did that make her?
During that awful dinner last week, she’d been politely interrogated on her life, from her upbringing to her education right up to her aspiration to pursue fashion design. At no point had she felt that Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery had warmed to her.
As Saint showed her around, Fliss’s apprehension grew. His penthouse was gorgeous and worth millions, but this was onlyoneof his parents’ residences. His father stayed in their Fifth Avenue apartment while Norma spent most of her time at their twenty-two-acre estate in Bedford Corners. They called this mansion their “cottage.”
It had been built for entertaining. The main floor was open and welcoming with a great room containing a massive fireplace, a number of smaller conversation areas and a formal dining room with seating for sixteen. Every room had windows and doors onto the back garden where a huge patio was surrounded by flowering shrubs and June blooms.
Saint pointed out the games room and home movie theatre—it easily sat twenty.
“The fitness room and sauna are below our suite in the other wing. I’ll show you on the way to our room.” He walked her outside past the enormous kidney-shaped pool. “I wanted us to have the pool house, but that’s the beauty salon this week. If you chip a nail or want your hair done, just come here. Do you play tennis?” He nodded to the court that was tucked into the trees at the end of a short path.
“Never.” She was still craning her neck back at the pool house, which was a genuine cottage with a chimney, a porch, hanging baskets and rickrack detailing.
They stepped onto a boardwalk that wound through grassy sand dunes, then descended onto the longest, emptiest beach Fliss had ever seen. The ocean stretched out in a gray-blue rippling blanket for about a thousand miles.
“Is that England I see over there?” she joked, pointing randomly.
“That’s West Africa.” Saint took hold of her shoulders and angled her so she was looking almost straight up the beach. “Northeast is that way, but Canada’s elbow is in the way.”
“Oh, Canada,” she groused. “Can’t you see I’m homesick?”
“Are you?” His arms came around her, drawing her back into his strong frame. “I thought you were settling in.”
“I am,” she fibbed because he could be so sweet sometimes, holding her like this. She draped her arms over his as they watched the waves rolling onto the sand.
At least she had her studio in the penthouse to make her feel at home. It was so much her dream workspace she nearly cried with joy every time she entered it. But the time she spent in there was less about pursuing her dream and more about escaping the reality of this new, foreign life she’d been thrust into.
Her other escape was, of course, this. His arms. The feel of him nuzzling into her neck and thickening against her backside sent tingles showering from her scalp into her breasts. Tendrils of warmth wound into her pelvis whenever he so much as glanced at her. None of her worries could impact her when they spent their nights—and mornings and stolen midday moments—kissing and fondling and pleasuring each other into oblivion.
They cushioned the culture shock of what she was going through, but none of it changed the fact that she felt as though she’d won an all-expenses-paid vacation and was enjoying a holiday fling.
How could she settle into a life that wasn’t real?
“Why don’t I show you where we’ll be sleeping?” Saint suggested throatily.
“You’re losing your touch,” she teased, reaching back to comb her fingers into his silky hair. “I’m surprised you haven’t shown me already.”
“The maid needed time to unpack yoursixsuitcases.” He was also teasing, but all Fliss could think was that they weren’t her cases. They might’ve been rose pink where his were black, but they’d been purchased by him and contained clothing he had bought. She’d approved the outfits after being coached on the robust itinerary of appearances and events and the expected dress code for each. One whole case was dedicated to lotions and cosmetics and hair products.
Hand in hand, they climbed the steps back onto the boardwalk. The house came into view in all its dramatic glory, wings reaching out like arms to cradle the glimmering pool.
“This is really beautiful.” She paused, absorbing that this property, along with all those other ones she hadn’t yet seen, would be his one day.
“I prefer my beach house in California.”
She swallowed a semi-hysterical laugh and let him lead her back to the house, then up some stairs to a massive suite decorated in powder blue and silvery white. Fliss took a moment to wander the sitting room with its small dining nook, then peeked onto the balcony with its view of the ocean. The sumptuous bathroom held a claw-footed tub and a shower that could have doubled as a parking garage. The bed was as big as the pool.
