‘This is... This is...’
‘I know who you are...’
Alex had moved into charming mode, and Susie sighed as she watched her older sister do what most women did when those deep, dark eyes fastened on them. Her brilliant, sharp, independent and undeniably striking sister blushed.
‘Mother, this is only Sergio Burzi. I might be a neurosurgeon,’ she added coyly, ‘but even I know who you are. How on earth did you meet Suze?’
‘You naughty little thing!’ Louise Sadler was smiling, her beautiful aristocratic face creased with delight as she looked at Susie. ‘You kept this one well hidden under your hat. I expect you were hoping to surprise us...?’
‘Or maybe,’ Alex inserted, ‘you didn’t want to say anything just in case your date didn’t turn up. You must have your diary filled to overflowing, Mr Burzi...’
‘Sergio, please...’
‘You probably don’t remember me at all, but we were at the same art gallery opening a few months ago...’
‘Sergio...’ Louise stepped forward, still thrilled to bits, and took his arm. ‘You must come and meet the rest of the family. Your father is going to be delighted,’ she whispered to Susie, who had reluctantly fallen into step as they moved towards the main party, ‘that you’ve brought along such a gorgeous chap...’
‘Mum...’
Too late. Events had been taken out of her hands. Or rather transferred from her hands into her family’s hands—and now, as the evening progressed, everyone else’s hands.
So many people had heard of him. She hadn’t known him from Adam when she had plonked herself next to him uninvited because she had been on the run from her dinner companion. She hoped to God that he didn’t breathe a word about that.
Having had him all to herself for the past few weeks, she was awestruck at the ease with which he mixed. He knew just what to say to everyone. He charmed. He was witty. He was flatteringly attentive to her. And she couldn’t help but feel a treacherous burst of pride at having his arm slung over her shoulders.
Even Clarissa, who was getting steadily more tipsy as the evening wore on, and who barely had time to talk to anyone because she was so wrapped up with Thomas, dragged her to one side and told her that she wanted to hear everything the very second they were alone together once she’d returned from her honeymoon.
Under any other circumstances, Susie would have been over the moon. Had they been seriously involved, and had their relationship gone beyond sex—had she not now been carrying his baby—she would have been bursting with happiness and daydreaming about being the next one to walk up the aisle.
As things stood...
‘Did Stanley bring you? I guess you’ll be wanting to head off now...’
Most of the guests had left. Only a circle of hard-core friends, all drunk, were swaying inside the marquee with glasses in their hands.
Outside, the temperature had dropped and she hugged her pashmina around her.
Somewhere in the course of the evening Sergio’s bow tie had been discarded, and she wanted to slip possessive fingers under his shirt and feel that hard, roughened chest against her skin. She itched to do it.
‘You’re not drinking?’
‘I...I’ve had a headache all day,’ Susie mumbled.
‘What’s eating you?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming?’
‘Not this again. I wanted to introduce the element of surprise—let’s not breathe new life into that particular argument.’
‘You don’t know what you’ve gone and done.’
‘Really? Enlighten me.’
‘Now that my parents have met you...especially in the presence of every single one of my family members on my mother’s side...they’ll all be thinking that what we have is serious—is going somewhere...’
‘I’m not responsible for what other people think.’
The cool detachment in his voice washed over her like freezing sleet, penetrating through every part of her being. ‘I know you’re not.’
‘I’m taking it that you can’t face everyone’s disappointment when this is over and we part company?’ he said, in the same horribly remote voice.
‘My parents have had a very happy marriage. Uncle Richard and Aunt Kate the same. I come from a long line of boring, happily married people...’
‘They surely can’t expect you to marry the first guy you meet?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’
‘It’s not that easy, Sergio. You’ve got the makings of the perfect son-in-law—especially after some of the guys they’ve met in the past. You’ve come here... They’ll be thinking that...’
That we’re in love...because they’ll want someone like you for me...
It occurred to her that she had never told him how she felt about him, never breathed a word, because she had been so sure that she could play by his rules. No wonder he was having a hard time trying to work out why she was so hot and bothered because he had shown up.
‘Stop analysing everything. You’re so keyed up, worrying about what other people might think, that you can’t seem to see that it’s your life at the end of the day. You live it as you see fit. If other people have other plans in mind, then tough.’
‘You’re so black and white.’
‘Like I said, I’ve seen what misplaced emotion can do. I stick to what I know. It makes life a damned sight less complicated.’
‘What...what was that girl like?’
She hadn’t been aware that she was going to ask that question until it left her mouth and Sergio, caught on the back foot, raised his eyebrows in a perplexed, impatient frown.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You once said that you’re the way you are because you had a learning curve... Who was the woman who provided the learning curve?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘None. And if you don’t want to talk about it, then forget I asked.’
She shrugged, started making for the kitchen door of the house, which she knew would lead to the spacious ground floor and eventually the front door and her way out—although how she was getting home she had no idea. Her ride, in the form of her parents and Alex, had gone an hour and a half ago. It would have to be another taxi.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Bed and breakfast. It’s in the village. A bunch of us are booked in there.’
‘And I,’ he said smoothly, ‘am booked into the one and only five-star hotel ten miles away.’
‘I’d rather not come with you...’
‘Sure about that?’
And he swooped to kiss her, his tongue probing into her mouth, enveloping her in a swirl of heated responses that shook her to the core.
He did this every time. She needed to think...not say goodbye to all her thought processes and cling to him like a vine.
Yet