Bianca, his first-choice bride!
‘Well…’ getting up, she began picking up scattered papers because she desperately needed something to do ‘—I am what I am, and you are what you are, which says to me that we don’t have m-much going for us in this stupid m-marriage. But I know I can’t bury my head in the sand and pretend I’m going to stop you every time you touch me because we both know I like it too much!’
‘Elizabeth—’
‘No,’ she choked out. ‘Just sh-shut up, because hearing you toss out one of your clever answers right now will just m-make me sick!’
He actually looked startled. ‘I was not about to—’
‘Yes, you were. You don’t know how not to.’ Swiping the tears from her eyes and that annoying stray curl from her brow, she gathered in his papers with trembling fingers, then came to her feet. ‘I don’t know how to deal with a man like you and it’s making this situation very difficult for me.’
‘You think I know how to deal with you?’ he hit back. ‘You are nothing like any woman I’ve ever encountered.’ He knocked his drink to the back of his tense throat. ‘You are quiet and shy and unbelievably sensitive in one disguise, then a flaming mix of defiance and passion in another!’
‘Well, now you know why.’ She put the papers on the table.
‘Yes, I know why,’ he accepted. ‘You’re a virgin—’
‘Trapped in a marriage I didn’t want.’
‘By a man that you do want.’
Lizzy swallowed thickly because she just had no defence to that. She did want him, even though she wished that she didn’t. She had wanted him for so long the guilty feeling still creased her insides.
‘I’m not going to fool myself that you really want me,’ she responded unsteadily, hunting around for her shoes now, though where the heck she thought she was going to go in them she hadn’t a clue. ‘Like you so love to say, you don’t hunt and I’m here. But if you’re daring to think that because I’m attracted to you I can’t m-mind that I come in second best for you, then forget it, because I do mind.’ She swallowed again. ‘And the fact that I’m not being given the choice as to who I give my virginity to hurts enough without you responding as if I’m offering you some dreadful social disease.’
‘I apologise if you feel I gave you that impression.’
He was coming over all cool and stiff now, which, Lizzy supposed, was typical of him.
‘You—surprised me,’ he added.
I surprised myself, Lizzy thought bitterly. I should have kept my big mouth shut.
‘And if the—sex between us is such an issue to you, then perhaps we can take it more slowly from now on.’
So he didn’t even want the sex with her now, Lizzy took from that smooth toned offer. ‘Thank you,’ she responded with chilly politeness.
The ‘fasten seat belts’ sign beeped into action then, saving her from the risk of sinking to the floor in a puddle of wretched tears. Instead she sat down, fastened her seat belt and occupied her trembling fingers by folding up the blanket.
A tinny voice came over the speaker system. ‘We will be landing in five minutes, Luc. The weather is dry with humidity at seventy-five degrees. The time is—twenty-one thirty-three. Santo is waiting with your car.’
Luc closed the drinks cabinet with a telling snap, then came to sit down himself. They didn’t look at each other as the plane began to make its descent and the silence between them was sharp enough to cut glass.
His hand still made that possessive anchor to her spine, though, when they left the plane, and the tense little quiver still made its strike down her front.
Formalities were swift and efficient. The night air was hot and heavy with the seductive aroma of spice. The car was a sturdy four-wheel drive with plenty of room to stack their luggage in the boot. And their driver, Santo, greeted them with a set of wonderful white teeth and the kind of warmth Lizzy didn’t think she was ever going to feel penetrate to her bones again.
‘I thought you said there would only be pelicans here,’ she said as they skirted above what looked like a pretty town clustered around a horseshoe-shaped harbour where she could see the yachts swaying gently in the moon-washed night.
Luc didn’t answer for a moment—long enough to inch up the tension between them some more. Then, ‘I was being sardonic.’
It was death to any vague hope Lizzy might have had that they could return to some kind of normality after the ugly scene on the plane. Pressing her lips together, she said nothing else, just stared at the shadowy shapes of an alien landscape sweeping past her window. It was only as they turned in through a pair of gates and she saw a beautiful sugar-pink plantation house standing in front of them that she suddenly wondered if this was where he’d meant to bring Bianca too.
Then—Don’t! she told herself angrily. Stop playing this pathetic torment with yourself. Aren’t things bad enough as they are?
A swarm of staff came out to meet the vehicle. Doors were opened for them, the still heat of the night became filled with warm smiles and even warmer congratulations that included hugs and happiness on their behalf until Luc gave the order for it to stop.
The house itself looked as if it had been transported here right off the set of a period movie. Lizzy could almost see the ladies in crinolines gliding out onto the front porch.
She could hear and smell the ocean though she couldn’t see it, and the heavy scent of tropical jasmine hung like a drug in the air.
‘Come,’ Luc said, making another one of those small hesitations, then rested an arm about her shoulders—for the comfort of the staff, Lizzy realised, and didn’t push him away.
But those hesitations were beginning to speak volumes. He didn’t want to touch her. Her silly confession about her lack of sexual experience had given him the biggest turn-off of his life. Now a wall was up and the detached cool was back, and it showed in the way he walked and the way he spoke so smoothly and quietly to the milling staff.
Inside the house was just as beautiful as his Lake Como villa, but decorated differently in cool pastel shades.
Lizzy stepped away from him as soon as she dared to, to glance around the huge open hallway with a white marble staircase sweeping upwards to a galleried first floor. A huge fan hung from the ceiling gently humming away and disturbing her hair as she spun slowly on the heels of her shoes.
‘We will do the proper introductions tomorrow, but this is Nina, cara…’
Swinging to face Luc, she found him standing with his eyes carefully hooded and his face like a blank golden space. Her own eyes flickered slightly as she moved them sideways to where a tiny creature with beautiful dark brown skin stood smiling shyly at her.
‘Nina manages the house and the staff,’ Luc’s carefully modulated voice explained, ‘so if you need anything go to her.’
Finding a smile from somewhere, Lizzy stepped up to say hello and to offer Nina her hand.
‘I am very happy to see you here, Signora De Santis,’ Nina returned with a smiling formality that made Lizzy feel like a fraud. ‘May I offer you both our delighted congratulations on behalf of all the staff here?’
Considering the rush of congratulations they’d just received outside, Nina’s carefully rehearsed speech kind of fell flat. Still Lizzy managed an adequate reply while sensing the tension that hit the man standing at her side.
‘My wife will want to go upstairs to—freshen up and change,’ he said calmly, with the ‘my wife’ sounding hollow to Lizzy’s sensitised ears.