Page 50 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

‘I know,’ she ended comfortingly, ‘that no one is going to be looking atyou, but slipping under the radar might be a good thing. I know how you hate these sorts of things and they’ll mostly be couples there. Oh, did the gorgeous Theo get an invitation too?’

Grace smothered an inappropriate laugh before responding. ‘Well, Salvatore was his father, so I’m assuming...’ she said, feigning ignorance and not feeling as guilty as she suspected she should.

Their relationship was never likely to reach the public eye—it might not even reach next week, she reminded herself, thinking it was not good to build castles in the air when you were standing on quicksand. But even if things had been different she would still have kept Theo clear of her family for as long as humanly possible.

It wasn’t just George who had fallen under the spell of her family—virtually every person she had ever taken home had been charmed by them. She had always been philosophical about the situation. But this was different. Theo was hers and she didn’t want to share him—especially with her family.

Except, of course, he wasn’t hers. But that thought she locked away behind closed doors in her head, for study and tears at a later date.

Grace was living in the present and for once she was not planning sensibly for the future. She now knew that you couldn’t plan for anything—including who you fell in love with.

George, bless him, had been right about that.

‘You must see something of the man,’ said Hope. ‘He owns half your palazzo, or whatever it’s called.’

‘It’s a big place.’

‘Maybe I’ll get to see it one day,’ Hope said pointedly.

Grace gave a noncommittal grunt.

‘Well, I expect some juicy gossip—so do make an effort, Grace. I can’t believe you don’t even know who Theo is dating. There must be some clues if you bother looking. There’s a lot of speculation... He’s not been seen in the usual places for a month now. Anyway, enjoy yourself,’ she finished generously. ‘Oh, and George sends his love...’ There was a slight pause before she added drily, ‘As always.’

Grace put her phone down, congratulating herself on dodging a bullet and thinking about that cryptic little‘as always’.It took her only two seconds to dismiss the idea that her sister was jealous of her.

She felt like a coward, because her family knew nothing about her and Theo and Grace had every intention of maintaining total radio silence on the subject. She was salving her conscience by telling herself that, realistically speaking, there was not much point, and that the likelihood of them finding out before there was nothing to tell was low to zero.

Grace tried not to focus on the ‘nothing to tell’ eventuality and focused on her determination to extract every last ounce of pleasure out of being Theo’s lover—to store up as many memories for what she saw as a pretty bleak future for her love-life as possible.

She knew now that any future that didn’t have Theo in it would be bleak. Because for better or worse she had fallen in love with him, and he was definitely a hard act to follow!

She tried to bury her feelings, terrified that he might guess. But the truth was that ever since the first time they had made love, when she had floated back down to earth and stroked his hair as he fell asleep, his head against her breasts, she had known that she was in love and that this would all end in tears.

But in the meantime she was going to enjoy it, she told her mirror image defiantly, before turning away to carefully pull up the invisible zip of the dress that fitted her as if it had been made for her—which it had.

If Hope knew, she’d be wild with jealousy.

When a team from the couturier had arrived earlier in the week Grace had been utterly gobsmacked, looking to Theo for an explanation. He hadn’t seemed to think one was necessary—which was probably to be expected of a man who had never bought a suit off the peg in his life.

‘You must see something of the man!’

Her sister’s words came back to her as an image of the last time she had seen ‘the man’ slipped through Grace’s head. He had been rolling out of bed when it was still dark, the golden flesh of his broad sculpted back gleaming in the half-light. She had reached out and trailed her fingers down his warm skin and he had turned his beautiful head, a blur in the dark, caught her hand and lifted her palm to his lips before apologising for waking her.

‘Any time, big boy,’ she had joked, in an exaggerated husky purr, and he had laughed.

Even the memory of the warm sound made her shiver.

‘I need to make a few calls,’ he’d told her.

She had sighed. He was on Los Angeles time at the moment—apparently there was a big merger in the pipeline there. Grace didn’t know the details, but it did seem to her that it would surely have been easier for him to travel to the States rather than come to bed in the early hours, having retreated to his office after dinner and worked straight through. Or, like today, got up around one or two a.m. to conduct business.

One thing she had learnt about Theo was that he functioned on very little sleep—which from her point of view was a plus! No matter what his schedule, he did not neglect their shared bed—which was her bed. Though he never once referred to it astheirroom, even if it was littered with his belongings. Maybe because there was no ‘we’ in his head...only in her heart.

Oh, God, if I carry on thinking like that I’ll cry and ruin my make-up.

Grace had refused to have someone come in and do it for her tonight—she had to draw the line somewhere. Though she had agreed to a lesson from a well-known make-up artist. There had barely been time for her to catch her breath after he’d left, leaving behind what felt like a lifetime’s supply of designer make-up for Grace—who was a ‘smudge of gloss and sweep of a mascara’ sort of girl—before the designer had turned up for her second dress fitting.

They never mentioned in the stories how intensive and boring it was being Cinderella, or how much effort went into looking groomed and glossy.

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