Page 46 of On His Bride's Terms

Is it too much to hope we can arrive at events together one day soon?

Faye didn’t answer Primo’s text and shut down her phone. She sighed as the taxi crawled forward in the bumper-to-bumper traffic near the venue in Boston. She wasn’t surprised that Primo had been irritated when she’d said she’d make her own way to this function, but her meetinghadgenuinely run over.

She shook her head again to try and dislodge the woolly feeling. She’d felt an ominous prickling pain at the back of her throat all day today, and she’d been sniffling. She really hoped she wasn’t coming down with a cold. She had a massive job the following week in Manhattan—helping a corporate client take delivery of their new art collection, curated by her—and she’d promised to be on hand to help them get it hung properly.

Her limbs felt a little achy. She told herself it was just the effects of the jetlag after her return from Europe.

That magical coastal castle in the West of Ireland felt like a long time ago. She wondered if she’d imagined it?

She hadn’t seen Primo since London. She would have, if they’d lived together. The thought that they could have been sharing a bed for the last few days sent simultaneous thrills and trepidation through Faye.

Living together was just a step too far into making this whole arrangement more permanent.

You are married to the man—can’t get more permanent than that,pointed out a voice.

Faye scowled at herself.

If anything, the more she got to know Primo, and the more she hungered for him, the more imperative it was to maintain these boundaries she’d put in place. Boundaries she’d never known would become so important.

Because she hadn’t expected to want him.

To like him so much.

‘We’re here.’

‘Thank you,’ Faye said, jolted out of her spiralling thoughts.

She saw the flow of the immaculately clothed crowd going into one of Boston’s oldest buildings for the charity benefit and curbed the urge to tell the driver to keep going.

Just then, her head started to pound. But she couldn’t leave. Primo was waiting for her, and every cell in her body was urging her up and out of the car, to go and be with him.

She cursed her weak body, but congratulated herself that he might have got to her physically, but she was still intact emotionally. He might have chipped away at those walls a little bit, but they were still strong enough to withstand all his considerable charm and powers of persuasion.

As she approached the main hall where the event was taking place, she spotted Primo immediately. Clad in a white tuxedo. Hair swept back from his forehead.

Her insides turned to jelly. And suddenly her confidence that she had somehow remained emotionally untouched by this man drained away, to be replaced with something far less certain. She knew him now in ways she never would have imagined she would. And he was so much more than she had thought a man like him could be.

He had got to her.

Faye clutched her evening bag. Maybe if she turned back now the taxi would still be there. She could jump in and—

But at that moment Primo turned to look at her. As if he’d known she was there all along. And she was caught. He was coming for her, the crowd parting to let him through like a sea.

And then he was in front of her and she couldn’t breathe.

She’d missed him.

‘Hi...’

‘Hi.’ He looked stern, as if he was about to say something else, but then his expression relaxed. ‘I was wondering where you were.’

‘Stuck in traffic.’

He took her hand and Faye instinctively wanted to burrow closer. He brought out something very feminine in her that she’d repressed for a long time. A need to feel looked after. Safe. She instantly felt more at ease with her hand in his. And it should annoy her, but it didn’t.

‘Come on,’ he said, tugging her into the room thronged with the beautiful and the famous and the rich. ‘I’m having an argument with the governor about the merits of funding art programmes and he needs to hear from a passionate expert, not an idiot like me.’

Faye shoved down all the niggles, psychological and actual—the prickling at the back of her throat, her increasingly fuzzy head and the way she felt hot and cold at the same time—and let Primo lead her into the fray.

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