The Recluse Heir by Monique Moreau
3
Ihad to escape the suffocating pressure of being dragged around by my mother, who prodded me to smile wider and laugh quieter in order to seem more ladylike. Pfft, as if any of that would help my case. It didn’t matter what I said or how I acted. The man, or rather stranger, who was my fiancé, was as stuck as me with our engagement.
My mother was relishing every moment of the charade, especially since the Lupu clan was paying for the entire engagement party weekend. Considering our financial problems, I tried talking her out of a big wedding, but she said it was a matter of Popescu pride. I didn’t see what pride had to do with it. If we couldn’t afford it, we couldn’t afford it. My father was already in debt, and the idea of adding to it to pay for my wedding seemed insane. While my mother was ecstatic, I was trying to manage Cristo, who slunk in the background, growling and snapping at anyone who passed by.
Meanwhile, Simu was working hard behind the scenes with my dad. Getting nowhere, he too, was acting like a grouch. I had too much on my plate to deal with him and was relieved that he had to return to the city in the evening.
My mother got embroiled in a deep conversation with another mafie matriarch, and seeing my chance, I held my breath and inched away slowly until I melted into the crowd. When I was far enough away, engulfed in the large, bustling reception room, I scooped up a champagne flute from a passing waiter, took a deep swallow, and slipped out the nearest open French doors onto a patio.
Guzzling down half the glass, I felt the bubbly blend with the acid roiling in my stomach. Not the best combination, but screw it. I followed the wraparound patio around the corner of the house and pressed my spine against the rounded, ancient-looking stones protruding from the wall. The back of my head thumped lightly on the wall as I closed my eyes and expelled a long sigh.
“Needed an escape, huh?”
A gasp slipped past my lips as my eyes popped open wide. My head spun in the direction of the intruder. My gaze landed on a man, half a dozen feet away from me. Leaning a shoulder against the stone wall, a cigarette dangled from his full, sculpted lips. I gaped at his face. God, what a face. His expression confirmed that he was a devil. Wasn’t every man here? But damn if his features didn’t give him the look of an angel.
How unfair.
A spring breeze blew blond curls off a face that might as well have been carved out of marble. All the angles were hard, from his strong, wide forehead to his high cheekbones to the jut of his jawbone. But his eyes were what paralyzed me, rooting me to my spot. Bright silver and hard, but with a faint trace of mischief in them. Staring at him was an experience in and of itself. An unusual mixture of the desire to scream and laugh hysterically warred inside me.
“Uhhh…” I trailed off. Caught off guard by his cruel beauty, my brain hiccupped. “I-I didn’t see you there.”
A feral smirk curled the edges of his lips upward as his eyes slowly made their way down my body. Heat singed every inch he touched with his eyes. It took every ounce of pride I had not to fidget under his blatant perusal. Sheesh, at least he found me attractive, which was more than I could say for my fiancé. The thought burned a hole in my gut. Normally, I didn’t seek the approval of others, but it was a doozy to experience Nicu’s eyes gloss over me like I didn’t even exist.
Nothing like that could be said of this man.
“Hmm, apparently not. Who are you running from, beautiful? Or were you also escaping the general bullshit of this absurd party?” he asked, his voice doused in mockery.
I cleared my throat.
“General bullshit,” I croaked out.
He nodded knowingly, as if we shared a mutual secret. As if we were co-conspirators of some kind. Good God, I wish I could conspire with him. Preferably between the sheets. I didn’t really mean that, of course. It was my unbridled libido talking. But that’s what happened when a woman of eighteen, who had never been touched, was faced with such raw, sensual beauty.
Between the arrogance that oozed from him and the fact that I didn’t recognize him, he was most definitely a Lupu. Lupu men were dangerous, and this one had to be the most perilous of them all. There was a wild, rough energy that rolled off him in waves, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle. He reminded me of a caged feline.
Powerful. Untamed. Unsafe.
The smartest move I could make was to leave his presence, but then my eyes dipped to the cigarette in his hand.
I stammered out, “D-do you have another one of those?”
Alcohol. Nicotine. Anything to help me get through this ludicrous farce of an engagement party. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was my duty, that I wanted to make my family proud, and that my mother was having the time of her life, I’d never have put up with this ridiculous situation.
His eyes slid over my face critically. “Are you even legal?” he asked, tipping his chin toward the glass that I gripped. His lips turned up into a half smile and a deadly dimple popped out on his left cheek.
“Yes and no,” I teased.
His eyebrows drew down. “What the hell does that mean?” he ground out.
Jeez, no patience, this one.
“I’m eighteen,” I clarified.
He nodded sagely. Instead of giving me a cigarette of my own, he passed me his own, butt facing me. I glanced down, searching for the imprint of those full lips on the filter. Finding nothing, I snatched it and took a drag. The burn exploded in my lungs, giving me a little head rush, but I savored it.
“You’re not going to tell on me, are you?” I threw him one of my toss-away flirty smiles.
His eyes turned hard. Clearly, it didn’t melt him. He snorted. “No. I’m the last one to tattle.”
I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but as long as I had a moment to regroup before I returned to my mother, I was good.
“You must be a Popescu,” he said neutrally.
“Obviously,” I said before taking another drag. “And you must be a Lupu.”
He gave a bark of disbelief at the snark in my tone.
“A little attitude. I like it.”
Those last three words coming out of his mouth did something to my tummy. It was like a swarm of butterflies had suddenly found refuge in there. Damn, with that edginess and rough tone, he was too sexy by half.
A few curls of sandy blond hair flopped over his forehead, and I itched to reach out and sweep them out of the way. I always had a thing for blonds, a rare unicorn among dark-haired, olive-skinned Romanians, like Nicu.
“A little,” I agreed, giving him a real grin this time, with a shrug of one bare shoulder. My dress was pretty revealing, with a plunging neckline from my spaghetti straps. I cupped my elbows to warm myself in the still-cool weather of the late spring day. While not far north of the city, being away from the incubation of the concrete jungle dropped the temperature by a few degrees.
Searching for something else to say, I observed, “It’s pretty here. Different from the usual mafie parties, always on some fancy rooftop or, even worse, a blinged-out reception hall.” My gaze absorbed the garden, with its swaths of tulips in brilliant colors. There was a marble fountain of a woman, water pouring out of the urn she was holding.
“You’re the pretty one,” he commented, his voice dripping with dark promises. His gaze coasted over me, and there was a snap, crackle, and pop on every inch of skin he pored over. Holy hell. Suddenly, I was burning up.
“Ahh…a player. I should’ve known,” I replied with a sardonic shake of my head.
“How would you know?” he scoffed. “You’re barely an adult.”
Delectable heat turned to hot shame. Okay, that was uncalled for. Grinding my teeth together, I took a turn at patently looking him over. Two could play this game, and oh, was I going to take advantage of my one and only chance to look. Tease him with my overtly sexual gaze. It might be my engagement party, but screw that, this man was taunting me. Besides, I was no delusional miss who thought my engagement and marriage had anything to do with love. I was a pawn, and my marriage was a contract. Nothing more. Nothing less. So, while I had a teensy bit of freedom, I’d snatch it up.
And he was nothing like the immature teenage boys from school that left me unimpressed and uninspired. This Lupu was a full-grown male. Biting into my bottom lip, I took in his broad shoulders and defined chest, obvious beneath his jacket and tie, down to his tapered waist and fitted slacks. This one was a lady-killer. He exuded a combination of sensuality and dominance that would bring women to their knees.
“For a little girl, you have a dangerous way of looking at a man. Could get you in trouble,” he murmured low, the gray in his eyes turning darker and more turbulent as he moved closer. Close enough for me to catch the musky scent of him, with a hint of bergamot.
That and the way he called me “little girl” shot lust down my middle and settled in between my thighs. I may have felt something when I’d kissed Simu, but what this man made me feel was in a whole other category of heat.
It could go no further than this moment, but I enjoyed the flirting, even with the edginess he threw into the mix. I chuckled, dismissing his comment. “I seriously doubt that.”
My fiancé had barely looked my way since I arrived, over an hour and a half ago. And I was watching his behavior closely. I got nothing. Nada. Nichts. You couldn’t feign that level of disinterest. Again, I knew this wasn’t love. But couldn’t lust at least make an appearance? Boys at school hit on me. Simu liked me. Hell, he could’ve at least glanced my way. I wasn’t ugly. In fact, people had commented on my looks in the past. I’d been called pretty.
But clearly not by my fiancé. Maybe he had a side girl, like Cristo had. Or maybe he was at the bottom of the totem pole and didn’t have the clout to reject me.
This one, on the other hand…I checked him out beneath my lashes and caught him staring at me again. This one was…something else. He took out another cigarette from a gold cigarette holder and lit it with a Zippo that he’d extracted from his jacket pocket. There was interest in his eyes. Deep interest. And I loved being the center of his attention. I felt like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis and stretching its wings for the first time.
His hand moved, picked a strand of hair that had flown across my face, and rubbed it between his fingers. My tummy swooped. The gesture felt proprietary. The cigarette I was holding had burnt down to the butt. Mesmerized by him, I dropped it to the ground. He crushed it beneath his heel.
“It’s quiet here. So different from the city,” I said, to cut through the heavy tension between us. I’d never felt this with a man before.
“It’s my hideaway,” he divulged, continuing to caress my hair.
“I love flowers,” I confided on a gentle sigh. His hand paused on my hair for a moment. There was an emotion in his eyes that I couldn’t interpret, him being a stranger and all. If I wasn’t mistaken, there was warmth in his gaze, along with a glint of pride.
Breaking our connection, he looked across the explosion of blooming flowers. Why would a man like him want to hide out? Men who looked like him were meant to rule in nightclubs, getting to choose the pick of the litter of women that inevitably flocked them. And yet, at the same time, I completely related. Boarding school was a hideout for me. It offered me an escape from the parts of my family and the mafie world that I hated, necessary evil that they were. I just assumed that only women, who were locked away most of their lives, were desperate to break away.
Before I could ponder this enigma or the man behind it further, I caught a flash of red.
My cousin, Dina, turned the corner and I pulled away from him. He held on for an instant before letting go just as Dina noticed me. Letting out a huff, she gave him a brief nod of respect before chastising me, “Your mother’s been looking for you everywhere. God, you can be such a pain sometimes.”
“I haven’t been gone for more than ten minutes. I needed a break.”
Her eyes softened as she came to me and pulled me into a hug. “I know, I know. The whole situation is maddening, but this is our lot in life. We have to make do, sweetie,” she said as she wrapped her fingers around my upper arm and dragged me off the wall like I was a child. Ugh. My head snapped to him when I heard a low growl, but I must have imagined it because his face was a mask of nonchalance.
“Come on, things could be worse,” she muttered.
His eyes were narrowed on Dina’s hold around my arm, and my heart soared. As we passed him, he brought his hand up and broke her contact on me. She drew back, rattled, but he ignored her, his eyes on me now.
“Could they?” I replied as I nodded a thanks to him before following her. Glancing over my shoulder, I gave the sexy Lupu a little wink and downed the rest of my champagne before Dina poked me in the side to get moving.
