Читать книгу Emily's Innocence - India Grey - Страница 9

‘EMILY—are you in there?’

Kiki’s voice echoed off the tiles in the gloomy ladies’ loo. Slumped against the door of the middle cubicle, Emily gritted her teeth to disguise their chattering and tried to sound normal as she answered.

‘Yes, I’m here. Won’t be a second.’

‘Well, make sure you’re not. You just got yourself a royal audience, honey. The prince is coming backstage and he’s specifically asked to meet you so you’d better get out here quick.’

Emily opened the door and looked at Kiki with huge, anguished eyes. ‘I can’t, Kiki. Really—I mean, I’m hardly dressed for meeting royalty and I’ve only worked here for a couple of months anyway so—’

‘Hey.’ Kiki’s kind face was creased with concern. ‘Forget about what you’re wearing. What’s wrong, baby? You look dreadful.’

A quick glance at her reflection in the mirror above the sink told Emily that Kiki was absolutely right. Her face, always pale, was now the eerie white of an extra in a vampire movie, a fact which was emphasized by the way her dark hair was held severely back in her plait. She attempted a wan smile. ‘Thanks. I’m fine. It was just being on stage…dancing in front of an audience, with the music and everything, and—’

Kiki made a sympathetic noise. ‘Nerves, eh?’

No, Emily was going to say. Not nerves. More an absence of nerves. An absence of anything. She was just going through the motions as if she’d been programmed—why couldn’t she feel it any more?

‘Anyway,’ Kiki continued a little breathlessly before she had a chance to speak, ‘the Prince was very impressed. He wants to meet you, and your dance group. I’ve got them all lined up on the stage, and they’re really excited so hurry up.’

‘OK, I’m coming.’ Emily ran her hands under the tap and splashed cold water on her face to try to bring some colour to her cheeks. ‘Which prince is it anyway?’ she said into the depths of the basin.

But it was too late. Kiki had already gone, and the only answer was the bang of the door behind her. Left alone, Emily stared at her reflection in the mirror, not seeing her pinched face but looking instead into the bleakness of a future without dancing. God, less than a year ago when she’d danced the part of Sleeping Beauty in the Royal Ballet School’s final production, no one would have been surprised at the idea of her meeting royalty backstage after a performance. But as a soloist at Covent Garden, not in the capacity of an unpaid teacher in a struggling community arts centre.

But that had been when she could dance. In the few brief, brilliant months when the technical skill she’d built over all those years of training had come together with something else—the indefinable, dangerous something Luis Cordoba had unlocked in her when his beautiful mouth had covered hers in the darkness beneath the trees.

She let out a long breath, turning away from the mirror and smoothing her T-shirt down. A lot had happened in a year.

She pulled open the door and went back to join the children. She’d kicked her shoes off when she went onto the stage and the rough parquet floor snagged at her tights as she hurried back along the corridor. Great, she thought despairingly. That was all she needed. She was so behind with the rent on her horrible bedsit that buying a loaf of bread felt like wanton extravagance at the moment. Tights were as beyond her budget these days as a designer ball gown.

She ran lightly up the steps to the back of the stage. Beyond the wings she could see her class of little dancers lined up and standing very straight, which, along with the deep rumble of male voices, told her that the royal party was already there. Ducking her head she slipped silently onto the stage and took her place at the end of the line, glancing along the row of children as she did so.

Emily’s heart stopped.

His head was bent as he talked to one of the little girls, the stage lights shining on his broad, perfectly muscled shoulders and picking out the gold strands in his deliciously untidy tawny hair. Her stomach dissolved with horror. Oh, God. It was him. It was really him. The royalty Kiki had been talking about was Luis Cordoba, Crown Prince of Santosa, and he was making his way quickly along the line towards her.

Too quickly. The little dancers bobbed curtsies as he passed them, but he barely glanced at them. Emily had the sensation of standing on the track in the path of a speeding train, knowing that the moment of impact was almost upon her. He wouldn’t recognize her, she reassured herself desperately. Why would he? They’d only met once—and then only for a couple of minutes in a situation which was a world away from this. He must meet thousands of women…kiss thousands of women…

Someone was speaking. Dimly, Emily registered that it was one of the council members who’d been round to look at the Larchfield premises in expectation of the youth centre’s closure. ‘This is one of the valuable volunteers who bring new experiences into the lives of our young people. Miss Jones is a graduate of the Royal Ballet School…’

Like an automaton Emily bent her head and sank down in a curtsy. From an etiquette point of view it was the right thing to do, but more importantly it also gave her a great chance to avoid looking up at the man she’d last seen in the garden at Balfour, when he’d drawn her into the shadow of the trees and kissed her with an arrogance and an expertise which shocked and thrilled and horrified her.

Call me when you grow up…

She steeled herself, and looked up.

The express train hit. For a moment the breath was knocked out of her and it was like falling. Like skydiving into the sunset. And then realizing that you didn’t have a parachute.

Luis Cordoba raised one fine eyebrow a fraction. Beneath it his eyes were a hard, dull gold. ‘Really, Miss Jones?’

Oh, God. That sexy accent. Not Spanish—Kiki had been wrong about that. Portuguese. It almost distracted her from the slight emphasis he placed on her name. Or—correction—the random name she’d given when she started volunteering at Larchfield. There was a part of her that had hated the deception and felt that she was betraying the friends she had made by keeping her real identity secret, but the anonymity was like armour. It was her protection and she’d clung to it. And now she felt like she was standing there, naked and wrapped only in the skimpiest of towels, and that the man standing in front of her had hold of the corner and was ready to pull it off her. Just for fun.

‘Y-yes,’ she stammered, looking up into that lean and perfect face, silently begging him not to give her away.

‘The Royal Ballet?’ he said softly. ‘And from there you’ve chosen to come here to teach these children instead of concentrating on your own dancing career? Impressively altruistic. Your family must be very proud of you.’

Only she could hear the hint of challenge in his low, velvety voice. So he did recognize her, and he clearly knew exactly where to insert the knife, how to inflict the deepest wound where it wouldn’t show. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room—the council officials, Kiki, the children getting restless now—on her, but all of them combined were nothing compared to his cool, metallic glare.

‘I’d like to think they would be,’ she said breathlessly, and instantly regretted it. The words if they knew hung in the air between them, and she waited for him to say them out loud. But Luis Cordoba didn’t play things the straightforward way.

He nodded, slowly, and for a long moment his eyes stayed locked with hers. And then his gaze flickered downwards to the Pink Flamingo logo on the front of her black T-shirt.

‘It’s good to know that you haven’t given up dancing altogether though,’ he said gravely. A brief smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. ‘Keep up the good work, Miss—?’

‘Jones,’ she croaked.

And then he was being ushered forwards by the council officials, who were no doubt keen to take him outside and show him the all-weather football pitch, a fraction of which had been paid for by a council grant. Out of the arc-light beam of his gaze Emily felt like a puppet that had suddenly had its strings cut. Around her the children relaxed into excited chatter, relieved at being released from the need to be on their best behaviour. Emily felt numb.

He’d got it all wrong. Bloody T-shirt. She wanted to run after him and grab his arm, force him to turn round so she could explain that she didn’t dance at the Pink Flamingo—she worked behind the bar. He might have awoken something in her when he’d kissed her, but he hadn’t changed her whole personality for God’s sake…

But he was gone, leaving nothing but a whisper of his masculine, expensive scent in the air. The lights seemed to dim and the shadows around her thicken. It was too late.

The wolf had slipped back into the forest, and she was safe.

So why didn’t she feel more relieved?

‘Stop the car.’

Tomás looked round sharply, surprised. ‘Sir?’

Luis stared straight ahead, his fingers drumming on the walnut inlay of the door. ‘We’ll wait here for a while, and then we’ll go back.’

‘Back, sir?’ Tomás looked alarmed. ‘Why? I thought you’d be keen to leave here as quickly as possible.’

‘I was. I am. But not without bringing “Miss Jones” with me.’

Alarm had turned to a mixture of panic and horror on Tomás’s open face now. ‘Sir…if I may say so, that’s not a good idea. The press office…The papers…The purpose of this trip was to put all those stories firmly in the past.’

‘They are firmly in the past,’ Luis said with quiet, emphatic bitterness. ‘When was the last time I picked up a girl for a one-night stand?’

‘The public have long memories, sir. And those photos of you falling out of nightclubs and groping women in the back of the car still get published regularly. If the newspapers get hold of this…this Miss Jones…’

Luis smiled. ‘You mean if she were to kiss and tell?’

‘Exactly, sir. She could profit handsomely from such a story.’

‘My night of passion with the playboy prince?’ Luis suggested mockingly, then shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

‘With respect, sir, you don’t know that for sure. Some of these girls have no concept of privacy…’

‘With respect, Tomás, I do know it for sure, because I also know that that girl has considerably more to hide than I do. I’m not going to seduce her—I’m going to find out what a nice girl like Emily Balfour is doing in a place like this.’

‘Emily Balfour, sir? But I thought her name was—’

‘Jones? No. That, Tomás, was Oscar’s youngest daughter. Or the one that used to be his youngest until a subsequent claimant to the position arrived on the doorstep.’ Looking out of the window Luis frowned slightly.

‘I’ll ask security to go in and get her, shall I, sir?’ Tomás asked, glancing nervously around. ‘This probably isn’t the best place to hang around.’

‘The car is fully bullet-proof,’ Luis reminded him drily. ‘We’re quite safe. And I don’t think she’ll respond well to being hauled out by security. As I recall from last year, Emily Balfour won’t be pushed into doing anything she doesn’t want to.’

‘Ah, here she is now, sir,’ Tomás said with evident relief. ‘I’ll just get—’

But Luis had already got out of the car. Tomás swore with uncharacteristic crudeness, whipping his mobile phone out of his pocket and speed-dialling the head of security in the other car. At times he found the Crown Prince’s lack of regard for protocol and formality refreshing, but mostly it was just a giant pain in the backside. He just hadn’t seemed to grasp that, since his brother and sister-in-law’s shocking deaths, he was the future of Santosa.

God help them.

Trying to prepare Luis to take the reins of his ailing father was like taking a tiger from the jungle and trying to teach it to jump through hoops. Difficult and dangerous. And, he thought gloomily, if anything went wrong he would be the one to get his head bitten off.

‘’Night, Kiki—see you tomorrow!’

Hastily, not waiting for a reply, Emily slipped out of the door and into the cool, blue evening, wrapping her cardigan tightly around her. Usually she waited while Kiki locked up and the two of them walked part of the way home together, but tonight she just wanted to get out of there and be alone.

‘Can I offer you a lift?’

She jumped, giving a little gasp of shock as a figure emerged from the twilight and stood in front of her, barring her way.

‘Sorry,’ said the same husky, amused drawl. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. But I think that just proves my point that it’s really not safe for you to be out on the streets on your own in the dark. It’s just as well I’m not some drug-crazed youth with a gun in his hand.’

‘I’ll take my chances, thank you,’ Emily muttered, attempting to slip past him. But he was too quick for her. She bit back another gasp as strong fingers closed around her wrist, stopping her in her tracks and pulling her back round so she was facing him.

From the shadows beyond the car someone said something in rapid Portuguese. Luis didn’t turn his head, didn’t loosen his grip, didn’t take his eyes from hers. ‘Sim, obrigado, Tomás.’ he said curtly. ‘This won’t take long.’

‘No, it won’t,’ she said shakily, ‘because I’m not going anywhere with you. Goodbye…’

It was said with more hope than conviction. Her heart was hammering out an uneven rhythm against her ribs, her whole body flooded with adrenaline. In the violet dusk his face was indistinct, but she could see the shadows beneath his aristocratic cheekbones and the glitter of his eyes.

‘What a disappointment. I saw that Pink Flamingo T-shirt and just assumed you’d grown up a bit since last time we met.’

‘I have.’ She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Which is why I’m not getting into a car with you. Now, if you’ll let me go, it’s been a long day and I want to get home.’

He let her go without resistance. ‘Funny. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

The icy edge to his voice stopped her in her tracks and filled her with sudden misgiving. She turned back to him.

‘What?’

‘Home.’ He paused, his face impossible to read in the gloom. Emily felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Beyond the black car that waited behind him she could hear the sound of voices from the street, the distant wail of a siren. ‘I was at Balfour Manor last night.’

A door slammed inside the community centre. Emily darted an anxious glance over her shoulder, hoping Kiki hadn’t heard him. ‘Please…’ she implored.

In one smooth movement he turned and pulled open the car door. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer to have this conversation in the car, before your cover is blown and your new friends find out that “Miss Jones” is really the daughter of a billionaire who could end all the financial problems of this extremely valuable community resource just by asking Daddy nicely…’

Emily shrank back, as if the plush interior of the car was the mouth of a giant whale, waiting to swallow her up. Her voice was cracked and faint. ‘But I have nothing to say to you.’

‘That’s fine.’ His voice was cool as he placed a hand in the small of her back and brought her forward. ‘You can just listen.’

There was someone else in the car—a man in his thirties perhaps, in a dark suit. He smiled as Emily slid reluctantly onto the seat beside him, and she felt slightly reassured. At least she wouldn’t be alone with Luis.

On the downside, there wasn’t so much room. As Luis finished speaking to the driver and got in beside her, Emily found herself far closer than was comfortable to his long, hard thigh on the seat. The only alternative was to move more towards the silent, suited man on her other side. Forget ‘better the devil you know,’ she thought miserably. No one could be more dangerous than Luis Cordoba. She inched away, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

No such luck.

‘That’s Tomás, my private secretary,’ Luis said sardonically. ‘You can sit on his knee, if you like. He’s very good with children.’

Tomás smiled, with the indulgent air of someone who had seen all this before. ‘Take no notice of His Highness, Miss Balfour.’

‘Thank you, Tomás.’ Emily turned back to Luis. ‘I’m not a child, and you’re certainly not my father, so I don’t know why you think you can order me around.’

The car pulled out of the Larchfield compound and onto the road. ‘Thank goodness I’m not your father,’ Luis said laconically. ‘From what I saw of him yesterday Oscar isn’t a happy man.’

‘W-what do you mean?’

‘Well, there’s all this for a start.’ He leaned forward and plucked a copy of the newspaper Emily had bought earlier from a pocket in the back of the driver’s seat.

Holding her head up very stiffly she glanced at it in distaste. ‘I know. I’ve seen it. Look, don’t you want to know where I live?’

‘No, not really,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Not unless you’re going to insist on going back there to change.’

A dart of alarm shot through her. ‘Change? Into what?’

‘Anything that wasn’t hand knitted by medieval peasants from yak’s wool,’ he suggested disdainfully, his gaze travelling downwards from her cardigan to the cheap, flat shoes she’d bought for work. ‘As disguises go I must say you’ve chosen very well. Who would have thought one of the celebrated Balfour girls would go around dressed like a refugee from a hippy commune?’

Emily raised her chin, ignoring the jibe. ‘Why would I want to change? Where are we going?’ A horrible thought occurred to her. ‘Not home? Not back to Balfour, because I can’t. I—’

‘Relax.’ He cut through her mounting panic. ‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’

‘Isn’t it polite to ask first?’ Emily slumped back against the seat, folding her arms mutinously. Of course, the normal rules of courtesy didn’t apply to the Prince of Santosa. His title made him think he could do anything and have anything. Or anyone.

‘If I had asked would you have accepted?’ he said evenly.

She shook her head.

‘Exactly. Just think of it as being cruel to be kind.’

Emily gave a bark of harsh laughter. ‘The cruelty I can believe. Kindness? Not so much.’

‘When was the last time you ate properly?

Emily thought back to the bowl of cut-price breakfast cereal she’d had in her room before leaving for work earlier. The milk had been off, so she hadn’t felt like eating much. The rent she paid for her room in Mr Lukacs’s house was supposed to include use of the kitchen, but she found that whenever she ventured in there he would appear, finding some excuse to squeeze past her in the narrow space, or just watching her with his damp, beady eyes. She preferred to avoid it.

‘Why do you care? It’s got nothing to do with you.’

Despair made her uncharacteristically ungracious. Despair and the uncomfortable feeling that, having been hit by the express train, she had now been hauled aboard and was speeding away into unknown and dangerous territory.

‘You’re right, it’s not. Not in itself, and believe me I have plenty of other things to worry about. But given that your father looks like a dead man walking because he has no idea where you are, and I discover you living like…like…’ Lost for words, he gave a small exhalation of frustration. ‘It’s become my business whether I like it or not. So I’m going to feed you, and you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on.’

Something in his tone silenced the retort that had sprung to her lips. There was an edge there, a tension that she hadn’t noticed in him before. The Luis Cordoba she knew was laughing, insouciant, urbane—a playboy whose most serious decisions in life involved which party invitations to accept, and which women to seduce when he got there.

This man was different. Harder. Colder. And possibly even more dangerous than before.

The car had picked up speed now. The street lights stained the soft, early summer dusk a lurid shade of orange, and threw neon bars of light into the car as they sped along. They were heading out of the city, she realised with curious numbness. When he had said dinner she had imagined some exclusive West End restaurant, but the traffic was thinning as they left London behind them.

The events of the exhausting day seemed to pile up in the centre of Emily’s mind, blocking her ability to think properly. Instead she sat motionless between the dark-suited men, keeping herself very upright, her eyes fixed straight ahead of her.

A dead man walking.

The phrase echoed in her head. She longed to ask Luis what he meant, what Oscar had said, but couldn’t bring herself to do it in the presence of Tomás and the faceless driver. The damned newspaper still lay on the seat between them, its salacious headline seeming to emit some high-frequency signal into her brain, which made it impossible to quite ignore it. Her chest felt like there was an iron band across it as she thought of Zoe, and Olivia and Bella—what were they doing now, in the aftermath of the latest shocking news? And her father…

Suddenly she felt very tired, and knew that it wasn’t just from the events of the day. It was from the past two months of fighting to keep her head above water since she’d left home—of battling loneliness, the grimness of her surroundings, the shock of struggling to make ends meet for the first time in her life. It was from before that too—from the sheer, grinding misery of missing her mother, mourning her death and her father’s betrayal.

She tipped her head back against the cushioning leather and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind their lids she was even more aware of Luis beside her. He was lounging nonchalantly, but she could sense the restlessness that lurked beneath his outward show of calm, the strength and steely determination that infused his whole being.

And as her head drooped onto his shoulder and the soapy sweet scent of hawthorn drifted in on the warm May evening she forgot to be afraid of him.

She felt simply…safe.