Lizzy released her lip from her anxious white teeth and slithered her eyes over the silky fall of her hair. Carla the giggly maid had done it for her—washed it, conditioned it, actually almost tamed it. And the barely there hint of makeup applied by Carla’s steady fingers made her look—
‘It is now no mystery to me why he risked ridicule to replace la bella Bianca with what I see standing here,’ the designer said.
‘Don’t,’ Lizzy responded, her voice sounding shaky and thick the way it left her tense aching throat.
Her loyalty to her best friend would not allow anyone to mock Bianca. And she missed her. She wanted to see her, talk to her, find out why she’d run away with Matthew, and if what Lizzy was about to do had her blessing because if it didn’t…
Lizzy swallowed, the ache of tears threatening her eyes. A knock at the door revealed Luis the major-domo who’d first led her into this villa a long week ago.
‘It is time to leave, signorina,’ he advised.
Her father met her at the church. He looked younger than he had when she’d left him in Sussex two weeks ago, the strain of worry having gone from his face, but the cold disappointment she saw in his eyes made her want to cry all the more.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘Just like your mother.’
Just like her mother, Lizzy repeated bleakly as he bent to press a cool kiss to one of her cheeks.
Then he walked her into a church packed with curious witnesses. The rippling hiss of softly voiced comments accompanied them down the long stone aisle towards the man she could see standing tall and straight at the other end.
He was wearing morning grey—formal like her father, like the man standing beside him whom she vaguely recognized, but that was about as far as her ability to think about anything went.
And she wanted Bianca. Bianca was supposed to always have been here with her for her wedding just as she was supposed to have been there for hers.
And she wanted to stop and turn to her father and say sorry, beg his forgiveness because she couldn’t bear knowing that he was walking beside her likening what she was doing here with what her mother had done ten years before.
The marriage-wrecker, the greedy little gold-digger only out to please herself. Being aware that she was just being silly believing her own press didn’t help.
Then Luc turned to look at her, his lean, dark, sombre expression fixing on her like a magnet that pulled her the last few faltering steps to his side. Her father offered her hand to him, he took it, long brown fingers firm as they closed around the trembling state of her own. After that the rest became a hazy glaze of traditional solemnity wrapped in a muffling shroud of beautifully toned Latin that eventually joined them as man and wife.
And the kiss Luc pressed to her lips was somehow piercingly poignant if only because it sealed this mad, ill thought-out union in front of a few hundred fascinated witnesses.
Four euros, Lizzy found herself thinking as Luc lifted his mouth away again. It’s going to take me a lifetime to pay back what I owe him.
As if he knew what she was thinking he grinned, all gleaming white teeth and mocking arrogance.
The next thing Lizzy became aware of was stepping out of the church into brilliant sunlight and a cacophony of sound. Cameras flashed, her heart fluttered into sudden panic, the man standing beside her drew her closer into his side. Two rows of dark-suited security men formed a barrier to hold back the curious onlookers and Luc hurried her down through this corridor of safety to a waiting limousine, his arm not leaving contact with her until he had seen her safely shut behind the car door.
The car sped off the moment he’d settled beside her. The hazy glaze lifted from her eyes. Silence stung. It was over. She’d done it. She’d married her best friend’s fiancé. The air sounded choked as it left her lungs.
‘So you do remember how to breathe,’ Luc’s quietly sardonic voice said beside her.
Seems so, Lizzy thought without attempting to offer a reply.
Instead she looked down at her hand where a traditional gold band now adorned her slender white finger. Across the gap separating them a matching band glowed against the brown of his skin. She hadn’t expected him to wear a ring too, it had come as a surprise when she’d been quietly instructed to place it on his finger.
But, like the church and its packed congregation, she presumed the rings were the same rings he had bought for his marriage to Bianca.
‘I am not that insensitive,’ he said coolly.
So he was reading her mind as if he owned it too now. ‘And at least the dress was mine.’
She sensed his sharp look, the slight tensing of his muscles as he caught the bleakness threading her tone. ‘You don’t like the dress?’
Was he blind? ‘I love it. It’s the most romantic and beautiful wedding gown I’ve ever seen.’
‘And you look beautiful in it—bellissima,’ he extended huskily. ‘No one watching you come down the aisle to me was left wondering why it was you I married today.’
‘One more goal on your pride-saving agenda successfully accomplished?’
Lifting her chin, Lizzy looked at him for the first time since they’d kissed as man and wife—then instantly wished that she’d kept her eyes lowered because he looked so boneshiveringly breathtakingly devastating and perfect—the true handsome prince she had bagged for herself by foul means.
A bitter little smile caught hold of her mouth. ‘Well, don’t look to me for congratulations because you’re not going to get any,’ she told him, turning her eyes away.
‘You feel cheated,’ he murmured.
Of what? Lizzy wondered. Of choosing her own wedding dress? In truth she felt cheated of a lot of things today, not least the given right to choose her own husband, or having her best friend there to share her day with her, or seeing pride, not disapproval, on her father’s face.
A sigh shot from her. ‘I’ve hurt and disappointed my father with all of this.’
‘And now you are in danger of disappointing me.’
It was the way he said it that made Lizzy look back at him, wary tension uncoiling inside her when she saw the almost savage glint of anger hardening his face.
‘We made a deal,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘One where neither of us would deny the one basic ingredient that will make this marriage work.’
He meant the mutual attraction. Lizzy pulled in a breath, her lips parting in readiness to say something cutting about that, but he stopped the words by reaching across the gap to press a set of cool fingers over her mouth.
‘Be careful, la mia moglie bella, that you don’t talk yourself into trouble with that unruly tongue of yours,’ he advised. ‘Your father will recover from his disappointment once he begins to consider the good fortune our marriage has blessed him with,’ he assured with hard cynical bite. ‘Just as you will learn to get over your disappointment in me as your husband because I intend to see to it that you do with the first bed and opportunity we get. And,’ he continued in a dark driven undertone without letting her eyes break contact with his, ‘I will recover from my disappointment in you when you stop feeling sorry for yourself and remember just who you are now, Signora De Santis. For this name makes you my wife, my lover, the future mother of my children and the gracious custodian of the De Santis good name.’
Wow, was all Lizzy could think when he finally fell into a simmering silence. Somewhere in this strange conversation they’d been having she’d hit a raw nerve when she hadn’t thought he had any!
Lifting up her hand, she caught hold of his fingers and pulled them away from her mouth. ‘That was really good,’ she