Memoirs of a Millionaire's Mistress Page 14

Cam watched her lay her napkin on the table and make her way to the stage, her short skirt flaring around her upper thighs. Those silky thighs had rubbed along his only twenty-four hours ago. And again he felt that overwhelming sense of ownership and pride.

  And imminent sense of loss.

  ‘And no second guesses, ladies and gentleman, as to the lucky guy sharing the evening with our lovely winner.’

  She took possession of the tickets, held them high, then grinned at Cam. The necklace he’d given her winked in the lights. He could only nod, his throat constricted, his chest tight. Couldn’t manage a smile. The noise seemed to dim, the crowd faded to black and all he could see was Didi.

  But she wasn’t Didi. She was dressed and styled like a woman he might have dated a few weeks ago if he hadn’t met her. He didn’t like the changes; he wanted the old Didi back. The girl with the offbeat fashion sense and spiked hair.

  As she watched him her hand fell to her side, her smile faded. He saw her step off the stage and walk back to the table, chin high. But she didn’t sit down—she swiped her purse from the table and headed to the Ladies without looking at him.

  Cam excused himself from the table and caught up with her as she exited a few moments later. She stopped short when she saw him.

  The sheen of moisture in her eyes damn near killed him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  So she wasn’t going to talk. ‘I’ve had enough,’ he said. ‘How about you? You want to skip dessert?’

  She gave a half-nod. ‘But you’ve spent so much money…’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fig about the money.’ He took her hand, rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. ‘We can splurge on that ice cream in the freezer if you want. We’ll grab your coat and escape before anyone else sees us.’

  ‘Cameron…Is that what this is all about?’ she asked in a small voice.

  He frowned and kept walking, tugging her along beside him. ‘Is what what this is all about?’

  ‘You don’t want anyone to see us together?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘I just want to go home.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DIDI hugged her arms as they rode home. Even in her new wool coat she felt cold. Cameron had openly admitted he didn’t want to be seen with her. She might look the part tonight but he knew it wasn’t the real deal. Unlike that glamorous woman she’d seen on his arm in the magazine.

  How could she hope to measure up to that poise and sophistication? Once again she didn’t fit. She’d never fit in with the rich crowd. Up on that stage she’d been linked with him publicly and all he’d done was frown.

  She’d fallen in love with a man who didn’t love her.

  Yes, she was in love, time to admit it. When was she going to learn? When was she going to stop letting her heart be broken?

  ‘Would you like that ice cream?’ he asked as they entered the apartment. ‘Or coffee?’

  She kept walking, her stilettos clacking over the marble. ‘No, thanks. I’m going to bed.’

  All she wanted to do was scrub the gunk off her face, strip out of the dress and hide under the quilt. Alone. But time was running out. Very soon she would be alone. Permanently. Because she’d never let this happen again. She closed the en-suite door, kicked off her shoes and reached for her make-up remover.

  When she opened the door ten minutes later Cameron was sitting on the edge of the turned-down bed, his shirt unbuttoned, his feet bare. Waiting for her. Yes, he wanted her in the bedroom, just not in public.

  His gaze tracked her progress, but it wasn’t the look of a man who only wanted sex. For a moment he looked as if he really cared in a deeper, more intimate way.

  And it hurt. Because now it seemed she was only seeing what she wanted to see. She’d lost the ability to be objective. And damn it all, she was going to give him what he wanted, because she wanted it too. For the next few nights she’d take what they could make together and store the memories in her heart.

  ‘Didi.’ He rose and came to her, touched her cheek with such tenderness she wanted to weep. She let him unzip her dress, tug the straps over her shoulders. It fell to the floor with a soft flutter of air. The blunt tips of his fingers fumbled at her back as he unclasped her bra, drew it away. Then her black lace panties as his palms slipped beneath the elastic and tugged. Over her hips, down her thighs.

  Fast or slow, he made love-making an art. With one flick of his finger, one brush of his lips, he knew how to tease and arouse, how to soothe and seduce.

  ‘This is how I want you,’ he murmured, tracing a damp path down her body from neck to navel with light nips, fleeting open-mouthed kisses. ‘No cosmetics to conceal your inner glow, nothing to hide your naked beauty. Just Didi.’

  He knelt before her, his eyes following the path his mouth had taken while his palms massaged slow circles over her hips. The diamond he’d given her burned into the flesh above her breasts as if he’d set it alight with his gaze and she knew then that she’d never take it off.

  The lump in her throat made it impossible to speak. She needed to remember his words were just that—words. To pretend they didn’t flow into her heart, filling it until it felt ready to burst.

  To not let her imagination leap ahead to happy-ever-afters as he lifted her against his hard warm body and laid her back on the fine cotton sheets.

  To not notice how his heart thudded against hers as if they beat as one when he stretched out beside her.

  His hands were big, his fingers roughened, but he handled her as if she were made of the most fragile glass. Somehow his trousers were gone, his satin-steel erection sliding hotly against the soft flesh of her belly as he eased on top of her.

  His mouth covered hers. He drank her in and reason ebbed away, longing flowed in. He tasted of rich dark wine and spice and summer. But summer was impossibly far away and out of reach so she reached instead for the arms that held her, curled her hands around his rock-hard strength and thought only of the moment.

  He slipped like silk inside her. Longing turned to need, and need to urgency. Yet even in passion he paid homage to her with a reverence she’d never experienced.

  When he sent her soaring she touched the stars, and he was right there with her. It was a long slow slide back to sanity.

  To reality.

  To the man who couldn’t wait to take her home because he hadn’t wanted to be seen with her. Once again her not-so-smart mouth had got her into trouble. Dominique had pushed all the wrong buttons and Didi had just had to react, hadn’t she?

  She just bet that woman on his arm in the picture would know how to work a room, what to say, how to say it. Feeling vulnerable, she pulled the sheet higher to cover her breasts. ‘I saw your picture in a magazine at the salon today.’

  ‘I hope it was my good side,’ Cameron murmured against her temple while his fingernails traced lazy circles on Didi’s upper arm.

  ‘You were with a woman.’ Tall, dark. Stunning. ‘Was it Kathryn…?’ She felt a quiver of tension run through him.

  ‘Katrina.’ He spoke through stiff lips.

  ‘Ah, of course. Katrina. Perhaps you should’ve taken her to dinner.’

  Tension tightened his hand and he pulled it away from her arm. ‘Don’t do this, Didi. It was over with her a while ago.’

  ‘Is she the woman who left the poster?’

  A long, telling silence. ‘She’s out of my life.’

  From the photos she’d seen of the two of them the woman was not unlike his sister in looks, Didi thought. Did he even realise that? ‘Ah, but are you over her?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Irritation roughened his voice as he stared at the ceiling.

  A politician’s answer—not an answer. Her heart—she had to hold the cracked pieces together. Jay hadn’t been honest about his previous partner. A month into his relationship with Didi—they’d even picked out the engagement ring and booked the church…

  ‘What if she changed her m
ind, Cameron? What if she wanted you back, what if her poster game was a ploy for your attention?’

  ‘No. Why would she do that?’

  ‘Because she’s not over you?’

  ‘That’s b—’

  ‘The phone rang today,’ Didi went on. ‘And whoever it was hung up when I answered. It’s not the first time. Call it woman’s intuition but I know it’s a woman.’

  Another silence. ‘She’s over me.’

  ‘Perhaps not, if she thought you’d met someone. Maybe she wants you back because she can’t bear the thought of you with someone else.’

  ‘You’re wrong. For a start she—’ Cameron bit back the words that sprang to his tongue. That Kat, whose father had the top job of Prime Minister firmly in his sights, would have nothing to do with a man whose father had been a criminal wanted over two states.

  The sins of the father… His hands tightened into fists, his blood ran like a chill wind through his veins. Beyond the grave and still screwing with his life.

  He couldn’t tell Didi. He’d confided in Kat and look where that had landed him. The risk of losing this woman who brought the freshness, warmth and promise of spring into his life was too great a risk. He wanted her with him a little longer—was that selfish?

  ‘She what, Cameron?’

  ‘She’s getting married.’

  He turned his head on the pillow to impress that fact upon her. To look at her…while she stared at the ceiling. Which allowed him a smile when she might not have appreciated it. ‘What about your ex?’ he said quietly. ‘What happened with him?’

  She continued to gaze upward for a long silent moment. He thought she wasn’t going to answer him but then she said, ‘He was good-looking, wealthy, educated at the right schools—a real ladies’ man. I didn’t know it at the time but he was on the rebound. Then his ex changed her mind…and they lived happily ever after. End of story.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Didi.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ She turned her face to him, eyes wide in the dimness. ‘I’m over him. I don’t do serious any more.’ She resumed her study of the ceiling.

  Moonlight etched her profile in silver, the pert nose and kissable lips, the curve of her breasts outlined against the sheet. Like fairy folk she was made for moonlight. Or maybe moonlight had been made for her.

  Then a wispy cloud drifted past, a gauze curtain dulling the image and taking his smile with it. Like the way their relationship was headed. He wanted to hold that curtain back for one more moment…another day, another week. A year. Ten years.

  How long would this infatuation last?

  If that was what it was. It felt more like…No. He refused to acknowledge anything deeper. As she’d said, she didn’t do serious, neither did he. But how long would it be before Didi wanted more than an affair? A man with his past, his inability to lay his heart on the line and trust, couldn’t give her that.

  Whatever they had, it would all end in a matter of days. And that would be the wiser course, he thought. But he couldn’t stop himself reaching out to brush her hair off her brow, to gently close her eyelids with his fingers. ‘I was the luckiest man there tonight,’ he whispered. ‘You were gorgeous.’

  Her eyelids fluttered against his hand and she turned to him, eyes wide. ‘But you couldn’t wait to get me away.’

  ‘Only because I wanted you all to myself.’

  ‘You mean you weren’t embarrassed?’

  ‘Embarrassed?’ He took a moment to figure it out. Was that what it was all about? He reached for her hand on the sheet between them, brought it to his cheek. ‘Ah, sweetheart…no. No. Not on your life. I was sorry. I pushed you into something that made you uncomfortable. I tried to make you into someone you’re not—with the best of intentions—and that was my mistake.’

  She blinked. ‘Thank you. For telling me.’

  But she knew he hadn’t answered all her questions and he hated the deception. It was there in her quiet gaze and the emotional distance she’d put between them.

  Didi didn’t have time or the emotional energy to think about Cameron and their relationship for the next few days. Instead she poured everything into her work. The piece was coming together beautifully, just as she’d imagined when she’d planned it.

  She knew Cameron was busy with preparations for Saturday night’s opening, which was perhaps why she saw very little of him, until he slipped into bed beside her at night.

  They made love. Sometimes he was warm and tender, at other times it was with an urgency that blew her away; almost as if he didn’t want what they had to end. But he never mentioned it, so neither did she. After all, they’d agreed she would walk away at the end, no strings, so she had to assume that hadn’t changed. Perhaps if she didn’t have the opening coming up she’d have left earlier because it was tearing her apart inside.

  He took her to the gallery one evening and showed her the renovations he’d made to the old building. Her Before the Temptation was to be on display, earlier pieces were going to be offered for sale with work from other unknown artists he wanted to support. And then there was the wall where her commissioned piece would hang.

  Excitement mingled with a sense of surrealism. Could this really be happening? He’d invited Melbourne’s rich and important people. To see her work. To launch her career. The press coverage was going to be huge.

  She’d sent her own invitation to her parents and one to Veronica and Daniel, but had already received an inability to attend from Veronica by return mail. Would her parents treat her with the same indifference?

  On Wednesday morning she needed more beads. She stepped out of the building onto the busy footpath and into sunshine where spring was putting in an early appearance. Two trams rattled past, ferrying commuters. Didi rolled stiff shoulders and began walking.

  Until she caught sight of the girl she’d seen before near the apartment building. Hard to mistake the six-foot brunette and she was wearing the same velvet jacket she had worn before. And as on those previous occasions, her face was averted and she was hurrying away, disappearing into the swirl of pedestrians.

  Didi pivoted on her heel and followed the woman for a few minutes, caught up with her as she was turning into a shopping mall. Her pulse kept time with her fast pace. She had to be right, had to…Didi’s hand grasped velvet. The woman jerked, turned. Startled blue eyes met Didi’s and she knew she’d been right. ‘You’re Amy.’

  Her eyes darted behind Didi.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m Didi and I’m alone. He doesn’t know.’

  Amy stared at her. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He carries your photo in his wallet.’ Didi nodded. ‘I’ve seen you near the apartment. I’m surprised he hasn’t seen you too.’

  ‘It’s been close a couple of times.’ Amy twisted her hands around her bag strap. ‘He’s still got my photo?’

  ‘He wants you in his life, Amy.’ When she just stood there, Didi continued. ‘You’ve rung the apartment.’

  Amy nodded as tears filled her eyes. ‘Then I just chicken out. And he’s nearly caught me outside the building…more than once. I turn away, then wish I hadn’t.’

  Didi slid her arm through Amy’s. ‘Let’s find somewhere to talk…’

  ‘Cameron puts a message in the missing persons column in the paper every month. That’s how I know his phone number,’ Amy said, stirring her coffee.

  ‘So why haven’t you contacted him?’

  She stared at her cup. ‘He’ll think I’m after his money. I was a drug addict…Did he tell you?’

  Didi scooped the froth off her cappuccino and watched her. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve cleaned up my life. I’ve even got a job—only a sales assistant—but I’d like to study some day. I’m saving up.’

  ‘Doesn’t the fact he’s put an ad in the missing persons tell you anything? He doesn’t care about your past. He’d help you. He’s set up a centre for kids and there’s a new gallery opening this weekend. And you know why? Because he thinks about you. All the
time. Let me help.’ Didi reached out and covered Amy’s hand. ‘I’ll arrange for you to meet; somewhere neutral if you like. Give me your phone number.’ Didi pulled out her mobile.

  ‘You won’t tell him? Until I’m ready?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t even have to know it’s you he’ll be meeting. Let’s make it Sunday.’

  ‘Sunday?’ Amy paled, her hand tightening on her cup. ‘That’s too soon.’

  ‘No. It’s not. He’s been looking for you for too many years. I need your word, and I need your phone number.’

  Amy nodded. ‘Okay. Might as well get it over.’

  She gave Didi her number, Didi stored it in her phone, then slipped it back in her bag. ‘Remember, he loves you. Now, let’s you and I get to know each other.’

  ‘Calm down, you look fantastic and everything’s under control,’ Cameron reassured her as they headed into the gallery.

  It was early, no one was here yet, but in half an hour the place would be full. Full of people who would be looking at her work. Influential people. Judging her creativity. Analysing her style and probably comparing it with Sheila’s.

  Bats were flapping their wings in her stomach; she’d kill for a glass of water. Or something stronger. She wiped her palms down her thighs as they entered the gallery. ‘Oh…’

  On the feature wall. The Eternal Flame. Artist: Didi O’Flanagan.

  She couldn’t help it; she rushed over and traced her name with a finger, tears springing to her eyes. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe it,’ said the deep voice she’d become so familiar with.

  She took a few steps backwards for the full effect and looked at it through someone else’s eyes. Vermilion silk threads leapt from the background of black silk. Living flames insinuating themselves in an abstract yet intricate design around silver filigree and smoked driftwood.

  A glance around showed her smaller pieces amongst other artists’ works. Her Temptation piece hung by itself on another wall.

  ‘You’ll be taking a lot of orders tonight, I guarantee it. Congratulations.’

  ‘You’ve done a wonderful job with the displays. Thank you. For everything.’ Their eyes met. This was it. Soon it would be time to say goodbye. Her commission was finished, their time was up. Why did the happiest night of her life have to be the saddest?