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CHAPTER FOUR
THERE WAS A slight bump that made the cabin shudder as the plane touched down and Trip was momentarily pressed back against the seat as the pilot reversed the engine thrust. Almost immediately, he heard the bark of the hydraulics balancing the steering and air pressure.
It had taken quite a few phone calls and several conversations during which he’d had to distort some of his motivations and intentions to get to this moment, but it had been worth it, Trip thought, gazing down at Lily’s pale, stunned face.
‘You did what?’
Her voice was frozen with shock or fury, he couldn’t tell which. But then it didn’t matter either way, he thought as he met her narrow-eyed gaze.
‘I told the pilot to fly us to Italy.’
Glancing over at her, he saw that she was spluttering with fury, which in and of itself was immensely satisfying. He had never seen her lose control before.
His body tensed. At least not outside the bedroom.
He could still remember how stunned he’d been that first time they’d had sex.
He hadn’t planned to.
They had gone for a drink at some bar with one of those huge screens showing some boxing match and nobody had even looked at them as they’d walked in. And perhaps it was that shared anonymity or maybe it was that she had looked to him to save her, but he’d forgotten that she was not his type, or that he even had a type, and they’d ended up back at her apartment, in her bed.
Eventually.
The first time they had barely got through the front door.
Before that evening, he’d thought he had her all figured out. But she had been a revelation. The sex had been a revelation. Tentative at first, then fast, urgent, clumsy almost, then hesitant again. Real, in other words, and all the more exciting for being so unscripted, so instinctive.
Watching her lose control like that had been the single most erotic experience of his life, but all he’d been to her was a pretty face.
‘How dare you do that?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘You deserved it—’
Her grey eyes were silver with fury. ‘You’re such a child,’ she said after a quivering pause.
She wasn’t used to losing her temper. He could tell by how she was holding herself and the tremor in her voice and he didn’t like how it made him feel, knowing he was responsible. It stung that she thought he was acting out some petty vendetta.
Like so many people in his life, she had made the mistake of not taking him seriously. But now she did.
‘It was your idea,’ he said, making no attempt to soften his tone. ‘You said you wanted to be with a man who can solve his own problems.’
She was looking at him as if he had sprouted horns.
‘And you think this is the best way to do that? By playing some stupid trick?’ she said in a withering tone. As if he were extraordinarily stupid. ‘Well, if you’ve quite finished your magic show I’m going to go and speak to the pilot and ask him to fly me back to—’
But he was done with being scolded and made to feel as if he were a fool.
‘That’s not gonna happen,’ he said quietly. ‘You see, this is my plane, my crew and they are not going to be flying you anywhere any time soon.’
Lily was still for a moment and he could see her fitting his version of the facts against hers and testing it. Now, she was shaking her head. ‘No, this is my father’s plane. I asked my mother if I could borrow it—’
‘You did. But then I spoke to your mother and I told her that we had got engaged secretly several months ago and that was why you’d been upset. Because you’d been so worried about me, only you’d had to hide how you were feeling.’ He paused and his gaze narrowed on hers in a way that made her breath go shallow. ‘I explained that I thought we needed time alone together. That you were struggling to deal with everything that’s happened but were too stubborn to admit it.’
‘That’s not true—’ The fury in her voice gave it a huskiness he felt in all the wrong places, and he wanted to touch her so badly he didn’t even realise that he had lifted his hand to touch her cheek.
‘She was very sympathetic.’
Their eyes locked for one frozen second and then she jerked her head away from his fingers, the movement exposing the underside of her throat, the pulse beating there at a rapid pace that matched his own.
