One Christmas Night In...: A Night in the Palace / A Christmas Night to Remember / Texas Tycoon's Christmas Fiancée. HELEN BROOKS
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time he’d gone up to his own bedroom he’d been feeling less than sleepy, and had remained awake for some time after that, watching the security panel in his bedroom in case the alarm should go off again. Even once he had fallen into an uneasy sleep he was sure he had still been half listening for the sound of someone moving stealthily through the building!
To come downstairs this morning and find her calmly seated at the kitchen table enjoying her breakfast—and looking completely rested into the bargain—only increased his feelings of irritation at his own lack of sleep. ‘As you wish,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘The glazier should be here shortly, and in the meantime I have some telephone calls to make.’
‘In connection with Felix and Claudia?’ she prompted sharply.
His mouth tightened. ‘As it happens, yes. I take it you have still not heard from your brother?’
‘No.’ If Lily was being honest she was starting to get more than a little annoyed with Felix herself now. Not only had her brother just disappeared, but he hadn’t even bothered to so much as check whether or not Lily had received his message in time to cancel her trip to Rome. None of which was helped by the fact that Lily had realised first thing this morning that today was Christmas Eve.
‘The glazier should not take long to replace the window, and then I will be free to drive you to a hotel—if that is convenient for you?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course it is.’ Lily sat up straighter in her chair as he came straight to the point; obviously idle chit chat was not the order of the day. ‘Obviously I don’t have any other plans for today.’
‘Obviously not,’ he conceded dryly.
‘But I could always get a taxi to a hotel rather than put you to any trouble on my behalf. Any more trouble on my behalf,’ she corrected as Dmitri raised mocking brows.
His smile was strained. ‘It is no trouble, I assure you.’
Lily gave him a small smile. ‘No doubt you’ll just be glad to see the back of me?’
‘No doubt.’
Well, you asked for that one, Lily, she seethed inwardly. Gave him the perfect opening, in fact. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’
Dmitri eyed her coolly. ‘Such as?’
‘Make some of the telephone calls for you? No, that isn’t going to work when I don’t speak Italian,’ she acknowledged ruefully. ‘There must be something I can do!’
His mouth twisted into another semblance of a smile. ‘I cannot think of anything.’
Great. Now Lily felt completely superfluous. Which she obviously was.
Was it any surprise that he couldn’t wait to get rid of her when, instead of being a means of contact with Felix, as Dmitri had obviously hoped she would be, she had become nothing more than a liability. A liability who last night had caused him deep embarrassment with his security firm and the police. And she was another inconvenience to him this morning by making him wait at home for a glazier to replace the broken window. No wonder he couldn’t wait to get rid of her!
But was Lily equally eager to leave?
That was an interesting question. And one that she hadn’t been able to answer either last night, as she lay in the warmth and comfort of her four-poster bed, or this morning, when she’d come downstairs to make herself some breakfast in the now-familiar kitchen.
Admittedly she had initially been forced to stay here against her will, and Dmitri’s agreeing to her leaving this morning was what she had been asking for ever since her arrival.
But once she left it was very unlikely that she would ever see him again.
Which was good—wasn’t it?
That was what she was still trying to decide!
She stood up. ‘I’ll just clear away here and then go upstairs and pack my things.’ She once again avoided looking at him as she carried her plate and cup over to the dishwasher.
Dmitri watched Lily as she walked across the kitchen. The blue of her fitted sweater was an exact match in colour for her eyes, and her hair was once again a loose curtain of platinum about her shoulders and down the length of her slender spine. Her black jeans fitted smoothly over the delectable curve of her bottom as she bent over the dishwasher.
Good sense told Dmitri that the sooner he was rid of such a distraction the happier he would be. The now familiar throbbing hardness of his arousal—this time just from his observation of the pertness of Lily’s bottom as she bent over the dishwasher—obviously didn’t agree with him.
Once again he was completely at a loss to understand why he reacted so intensely, so immediately to a schoolteacher from England, when he had escorted—bedded— some of the most beautiful and accomplished women in Italy. It was totally illogical.
He stood up as well. ‘I will be in my study when the glazier arrives.’ He turned away before she was able to see the evidence of his physical reaction to her, irritated that a certain part of his anatomy was wilfully glad to see and be with her!
Lily looked up in time to see Dmitri leaving the kitchen. There was a frown between her eyes as she slowly straightened. Obviously even being in the same room with her was a strain for him this morning.
‘Does the glazier or the representative of the security company have need of me?’
‘No, the glazier is still replacing the window.’ Lily stood hesitantly in the doorway of Dmitri’s study, not in the least encouraged by his slightly hostile greeting or the coldness of his expression as he sat behind the large mahogany desk that dominated the elegant wood-panelled room with its large picture window. ‘I’ve finished my packing.’ It had taken Lily all of ten minutes to replace the few things she had taken from her case the day before. ‘And I wondered if you’d had any luck with your phone calls?’
‘None whatsoever,’ he admitted as he threw down onto the desktop the pen he had been making notes with. ‘None of our friends or acquaintances have seen or heard from Claudia, and there is no record of Felix or Claudia taking a flight from Rome airport in the past twenty-four hours.’
‘Oh.’ Lily grimaced. ‘What about the other airports in Italy?’
He frowned. ‘Sorry?’
She shrugged as she leant against the doorframe. ‘Well, it seems to me that Felix and Claudia are both intelligent enough to have realised you would concentrate your efforts on Rome airport. Especially as they conveniently left Claudia’s car at a Leonardo da Vinci for you to find,’ she added. ‘So I wondered if there’s another airport close by? One they could have taken a taxi to? Where they could then have taken a flight to another part of Italy, perhaps?’
Dmitri’s expression was thoughtful as sat back in his leather chair. ‘Perhaps I should have accepted your offer of help earlier …’
Her eyes widened. ‘You should?’
‘Two heads are obviously much better than one.’ Waves of frustrated energy came off him as he sat forward to pick up the telephone before punching in the appropriate numbers. ‘I should have thought of this earlier … Paolo?’ His attention quickened as his call was obviously answered. ‘Si.’ Dmitri launched into a stream of Italian that Lily didn’t have a hope of understanding. ‘Si, si, si. Grazie, Paolo.’ He slowly replaced the receiver to look dazedly across the room at Lily. ‘Claudia and Felix chartered a plane and pilot and flew from a private airport to Milano yesterday morning.’
Which certainly explained why there had been no record of them flying out of Leonardo da Vinci airport! But Milan? Why on earth would they have flown to Milan? ‘Does Claudia have friends or relatives there?’
‘No.’ Dmitri’s mouth was tight. ‘But my delay in realising what they had done will have given them a twenty-four hour window in which to arrange a flight out of Milano.’