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As if on cue, he did just that, pulling himself up onto the tiled edge of the pool with effortless grace. Her pulse ticced in her throat as he smoothed back his wet hair, sending water trickling down the hard planes and angles of his back and shoulders.
It was impossible to look away, excruciating to keep looking.
So move, she told herself, but Trip was already walking towards her and then he was sitting beside her, stretching out one long muscular leg and tilting his head up to the sun.
‘Ah, here’s Valentina,’ he said softly, and before she had a chance to react he had taken her hand and lifted it to his mouth.
The housekeeper had brought out a jug of freshly squeezed peach juice and, pressing her lips together in a tight smile, Lily sat fuming while Trip dragged out the conversation on purpose by asking Valentina which peaches she had used. And the whole time, he caressed the back of Lily’s hand with his thumb in a way that made her feel restless and light-headed.
Finally, Valentina left and Lily jerked her hand free of his grip and got shakily to her feet.
He glanced up at her, frowning. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going indoors.’
‘For real?’ His face was expressionless, but she could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘Why? Because I held your hand? I’m following your rules. Maybe you should too, Lily, because you need this to work as much as I do. If it doesn’t, I think life is going to be real hard for you and everyone you care about, so stop fighting me and stop fighting yourself, because this is happening.’
He was right on both counts, she thought as she headed back into the house for the second time that day. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to live with.
Staring after her, Trip felt his hands curl into fists. Yesterday had been a challenging but ultimately satisfying day. Obviously Lily had been furious with him and it had taken longer than he’d thought for her to stop fighting him. But then he’d mentioned Lucas and she had acquiesced with a speed that had confused him.
And unsettled him.
Picking up the jug of peach juice, he poured himself a glass and drank it swiftly. Normally, he found the familiar sweetness calming but now it sat in his stomach like a lump of ice.
He knew Lily’s younger brother. Not well, but enough to know that he was shy and sensitive and probably not equipped to handle the modern media machine. Nor did he know for sure what Lucas had been doing in Zurich, and to be truthful he probably would have never given it a second thought. But then he’d realised that the Dempseys had lied about Lucas’ whereabouts.
There had been no need to join the dots for him to work out why. Among his set there was only one reason people lied about being in Zurich. It was because they were in rehab.
He hadn’t ever planned on using it as leverage, but then Lily wouldn’t give in and he’d been getting impatient. And working and living with Henry Winslow II had taught him that if you found a crack, you pushed on it to see what, if anything, broke.
And Lily had capitulated.
But as victories went, it had been less than satisfying. She had looked small and fragile, just like that time at the auction, and, watching her face grow pale, he hadn’t liked how it made him feel. It wasn’t who he was, whatever she might think. He was impulsive, occasionally thoughtless, sometimes arrogant, but he didn’t lie or cheat or bully or blackmail or do any of the other things she had accused him of doing.
And he didn’t want to hurt Lily. In part that was one of the reasons he’d decided to bring her to Italy.
Because something had happened to him in Ecuador. It might be a cliché but staring down the barrel of a gun had rewired him in some way. All those weeks of feeling vulnerable and alone had made him understand that he could rely only on himself. That he needed to be ruthless. Single-minded. Selfish even.
And then there were the letters. Lily had been the first person he’d seen after reading them and shock had made him colder, and crueller, than he should have been. More like the man he couldn’t not love, but resented and hated. Knowing that had angered him, and he’d felt guilty too for taking it out on Lily, but in the moment it had been easier to blame her for making him feel so out of control.
He’d done the same thing earlier today, his guilt at dragging her into all of this colliding with his frustration at her continuing and pointless refusal to accept the new status quo, and so he’d lashed out at her with the kind of ultimatum Henry had specialised in. And he hated being like his father.
Tilting back his head, he stared into the sun until everything turned white and he was forced to blink. If only he could blank out those pages, unsee those lines of cursive script, but he couldn’t.
It was what he’d hoped would happen in Ecuador. But the blindfold and then the silence and claustrophobic gloom of the jungle had simply made everything inside his head sharper and louder. He’d thought he was going to lose his mind. Only one thing had kept him going: Lily.
He had dreamed about her constantly, often with such clarity that when he’d woken he’d half expected to find her by his side. And when, finally, he’d escaped his captors it had been her eyes that had been like silver stars guiding him onwards whenever he couldn’t see the night sky through the rainforest canopy.
His shoulders tensed.
Obviously, he hadn’t been himself in those days and weeks in the jungle, but in some ways it made sense for him to have imagined Lily. After all, he had ended up in her apartment every night for months, right up until he’d left for Ecuador.
No doubt that was also why hers had been the first name to pop into his head when he’d been squaring up to Mason and the other trustees.
Not that he was planning on explaining any of this to Lily. He didn’t need to.
She hadn’t come quietly or easily, but she was here now, with her rules and that tilt of her chin. And her uncanny ability to find the cracks in his armour.
