AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’ll pick you up later,’ Bastien told Lilah quietly, clearly content for her to depart.
‘I’d be happy to stay,’ she told him.
His dark golden eyes skimmed her troubled face. ‘I don’t need support, hara mou.’
That was a matter of opinion, Lilah reflected ruefully, avoiding Cleta’s haughtily resentful glance and Leo’s cool, curious regard. In such company Bastien stood very much alone, and she hated that it was like that for him. But then in such a dysfunctional family circle he had always been alone, she thought unhappily. Bastien was still treated like the illegitimate son—the outsider to be resented and kept at a distance.
Not unnaturally, Bastien had eventually learned to live like that—never getting too close to people, steering clear of messy human emotions as best he could because he had seen far too many unpleasant displays of turbulent emotion while he was growing up.
‘How do you get on with your mother-in-law?’ Lilah asked Grace as the three women stepped into a lift.
‘I don’t see much of her. Her life revolves round Anatole. She’s a bit of a cold fish,’ Grace volunteered with a grimace.
Lilah pressed her arm against her breasts. They were sore, aching and tender, but she occasionally suffered from such discomfort before her menstrual cycle kicked in. On the other hand, she was already late... She was planning to do a pregnancy test the following morning, but was convinced it would be a waste of time because she just couldn’t imagine that she would be pregnant.
She rested back against the wall of the lift, feeling incredibly weary, and noticed that Marina was staring at her.
‘I was surprised to hear that Bastien had got married,’ she admitted baldly.
‘He rushed me into it,’ Lilah responded coolly, studying the woman whose one-night stand with Bastien almost ten years earlier had caused such lasting and damaging repercussions.
‘He must’ve been scared of losing you,’ Grace opined.
‘Very little scares Bastien,’ Lilah said wryly, thinking of how she and Bastien had started out at daggers drawn, and of how quickly her feelings had changed.
Obviously she had no resistance when it came to Bastien. Love had been softening her up for a serious fall from the beginning, she reckoned ruefully, feeling nausea stirring in her tense tummy because she felt so ridiculously uncomfortable in Marina’s presence.
Lilah was experiencing a volatile cocktail of jealousy and resentment, and telling herself that she was not entitled to those reactions wasn’t helping. She hated knowing that Marina had once shared a bed with Bastien, hated the fact that Bastien had wanted Marina first, and hated even more the reality that Marina could have had him but had instead chosen to throw him away, while at the same time lying about him to poison his relationship with his only sibling.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Grace commented in the limousine.
‘I napped during the flight but I’m still very tired,’ Lilah confided with an apologetic smile.
‘When did you first meet Bastien?’ Marina asked.
‘Over two years ago.’
‘He’s quite a guy,’ Marina remarked, in a tone that Lilah took exception to because it oozed intimacy to her sensitive hearing. ‘A lot of women will envy you.’
Including you? Lilah wondered, thinking that the brunette might well have come to live to regret rejecting Bastien once he had become rich and successful, and as such much more socially acceptable.
It dismayed Lilah that she should feel so angry with Marina and so very protective of Bastien.
Leo and Grace lived in a palatial town house. A nanny brought their daughter, Rosie, to meet them. The toddler was adorable, and Lilah relaxed in little Rosie’s presence—but only until she began wondering how Bastien would react to her not being pregnant. After that disappointment would he still want to stay married to her? Or would that single disappointment be sufficient to knock the gloss off his belief that he wanted to keep her as his wife? Rich, powerful men didn’t deal generously with disappointments because they met with very few.
A chill ran down Lilah’s spine as she sipped her tea and tried to think cheerfully of returning to the life she had left behind.
