Innocent Surrender: The Virgin's Proposition / The Virgin and His Majesty / Untouched Until Marriage

It certainly didn’t look as if they had money worries from the apartment she was living in. Of course she’d told him at dinner that she was staying in the flat of her late mother’s best friend, Anny’s own godmother, a woman she called Tante Isabelle. While Isabelle was in Hong Kong doing something for a bank, she’d lent Anny her apartment for the year.

So why wasn’t Tante Isabelle, who obviously cared enough for Anny to provide her a place to live, objecting to her goddaughter’s loveless marriage?

Did she even know it was a loveless marriage?

Where was Anny’s father? He was still living, Demetrios knew that. Anny had mentioned him in the present tense. He was married again. She’d mentioned a stepmother and three little stepbrothers.

Was she doing it for them?

Whatever the “good reasons” were, she didn’t seem to be doing it for herself. So who was she doing it for? And why?

Stop it! he commanded himself roughly. It wasn’t his problem. She wasn’t his problem.

He’d done his part. He’d taken her to bed. He’d made love with her and had, presumably, reminded her of the idealistic girl she’d been. He’d given her the memories she wanted.

He had a few himself. Not that he intended to bring them out and remember them. And yet, when he attempted to shut them away, they wouldn’t go. He could still see her in his mind’s eye—bright-eyed and laughing, gentle and serene, eager and responsive.

They were far better memories than those he had of Lissa.

They should have relaxed him, settled him. His body was sated. It was his mind that wouldn’t stop replaying the evening.

He tossed and turned until eventually the bed couldn’t confine his restlessness. He got up to prowl the room, to open the floor-to-ceiling window that opened overlooking La Croisette and the sea.

To the west he could see the shape of the Palais du Festival beyond the boulevard. Past that was the harbor where Theo was on his sailboat. Beyond that the hill and buildings of Le Soquet rose against the still dark sky.

Anny was there.

He could be, too, he thought. He was sure she would have let him stay the night.

But he didn’t want to stay the night, he reminded himself. He wanted brief encounters. No involvement. He shoved away from the window and shut it firmly.

He wasn’t going to care about any woman ever again. Not even sunny, smiling Anny Chamion with her upcoming loveless marriage, her hidden dreams and her memories of the lovemaking they’d shared.

It was going on five. He had a breakfast meeting at eight with Rollo Mikkelsen, who was in charge of distribution for Starlight Studios. He needed to be sharp. He needed to have his wits about him. He didn’t need to be thinking about Anny Chamion.

He yanked on a pair of running shorts and tugged a T-shirt over his head. Maybe running a few miles could do what nothing else had done.

He pocketed his room key and went downstairs into the cool Cannes morning. He crossed La Croisette and bounced on his toes a few times, then he set out at a light jog. The pavement was nearly deserted still. In a couple of hours it would start to get busy. The day would begin.

He would meet with Rollo. There would be more meetings after that. Lunch with a producer he hoped to work with down the road. And late this afternoon the screening.

Afterward he’d go see Franck. He was tempted to see if Franck wanted to come to the screening, but it wasn’t an action hero story. It was a dark piece—the only sort of thing he had been capable of writing in the aftermath of his marriage and circumstances of Lissa’s death. It was a cautionary tale.

Not exactly fodder for a teenager who still had his life ahead of him. No. Better that he go see Franck after.

Would Anny be there?

It didn’t matter if she was.

Demetrios picked up his pace, refusing to let himself think about that. He didn’t care. They’d had one evening. One night of loving. One night in which they’d each recaptured a part of the young idealistic people they’d once been.

They’d given that to each other. But now it was over.

Time to move on.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f1d50751-b8f0-565e-88b8-4f990737474e)

ANNY DIDN’T SEE Demetrios again.

She didn’t really expect she would.

But as she went about her business, as she walked to the clinic, did her grocery shopping, worked on her dissertation, and actually went to a screening or two at the Palais du Festival over the next ten days, she couldn’t help keeping an eye out to see if she could spot the tall dark-haired man who had so startlingly swept into her life.

He had gone back to the clinic. She knew that because Franck had been full of the information. And he hadn’t only come the next day as he’d promised, but also several times over the past week and a half.

Yesterday, Franck had told her gleefully this afternoon, he had commandeered a wheelchair and taken Franck down to the dock.

“A wheelchair? You went to the dock?” Anny, who had never been able to get Franck to go anywhere because he was too self-conscious, could barely believe her ears. “Whatever for?”

“We went sailing.”

Then she really did gape.

Franck nodded eagerly. “We went in his brother’s sailboat.”

He recounted his amazing day, his eyes shining as he told her how Demetrios and his brother Theo—“a racing sailor,” Franck reported—had simply lifted him out of the wheelchair and into the boat, then set out for a sail around the Îles de Lérins.

Anny was still stuck imagining Franck allowing himself to be lifted, but apparently, as far as Franck was concerned, Demetrios and his brother could do anything. “Didn’t he tell you?” Franck demanded.

Anny shook her head. “I haven’t seen him.”

He looked surprised. “You should have come in the mornings. He always came then.”

Of course he did. Because he knew when she went to see Franck. She’d told him. If Demetrios had wanted to see her, he could have. He knew where she lived.

He hadn’t. And she hadn’t sought him out, either.

She’d had her night. She’d relived it ever since.

Of course she couldn’t deny having wished it had lasted longer—even wishing it had had a future. But she knew it didn’t.

So it was better that she not encounter him again. So even though she had kept an eye out for him over the following week and a half, she’d carefully avoided attending any parties to which he might have gone.

Of course, she knew he’d come to Cannes to work, not to party. But she also knew that sometimes going to parties was part of the work. Some years it had even been part of her own. Fortunately her father had decided not to host one this year.

And now the festival was over. Demetrios, she was sure, was already gone. He’d got what he came for. News stories early this week had reported that he’d landed a big distributor for the film he’d brought to Cannes. And yesterday she’d read that he’d found backing for his next project.

She was happy for him. She almost wished she had seen him again to tell him so. But what good would that have done, really?