Mediterranean Tycoons: The De Santis Marriage / The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife / The Sicilian's Virgin Bride. Michelle Reid

say anything to that one. He just opened the car door for her and waited for her to get in. Lizzy pulled off her hat and placed it on her lap, then watched in simmering silence as he dropped her purchases at her feet before he shut her door and strode round the car bonnet to get in beside her.

      ‘I want to see the photograph she was talking about,’ she told him.

      ‘No.’ The engine vibrated beneath her on a low growling leap into life.

      ‘Why not?’ she persisted. ‘Have you seen it?’ she then demanded sharply.

      All she got back was a view of his profile set in stone. Her head suddenly began to buzz as he swept them back up the hill towards the villa. Like little pieces of a jigsaw falling into place, Lizzy began to link that ugly scene he’d orchestrated this morning with what Elena Romano had said.

      ‘You have seen it,’ she declared in a hot, husky voice filled with fizzing resentment. ‘It was the reason why you were so nasty to me this morning. You saw that photo and didn’t like what it fed out there for everyone else to see—namely me, looking all pale and interesting, and you, looking like some poor rich guy who’d been caught by the oldest trick in the book.’

      ‘You possess a wild imagination,’ he drawled casually.

      ‘I want to see it,’ Lizzy repeated.

      He said nothing, just pulled the car to a stop outside the sugar pink plantation house and climbed out of it. Lizzy did the same thing, glaring at him across the car’s soft top. He was frowning, grimly ignoring her as if she were an irritating fly he would like to swat away with his hand.

      Well, that was fine, she told herself as she stalked around the car and into the house. She wasn’t a complete air-head. She knew a man like Luc didn’t go anywhere unless he had a reliable connection to the internet.

      So she began stalking the huge hallway, opening doors and glancing inside them before she moved on to the next.

      ‘If you want to see over the whole house, cara,’ his hateful voice murmured, ‘I am happy to show you around without risking the paintwork on all the doors. Go away, Nina,’ he added as a mere calm aside.

      Lizzy turned in time to see the housekeeper disappearing towards the back of the house. He was standing in the middle of the pale marble floor looking so darn together against her sizzling anger that she wanted to fly at him with her nails unsheathed.

      Instead she balled her fingers into tense fists by her sides. ‘If you and the rest of the world can see a picture of me at my own wedding, then I want to see it!’ she insisted furiously.

      ‘I assure you, you don’t,’ he said, smiled, then dropped the smile and shot out an impatient sigh when all she did was to spin her back to him and move on to fling open the next door. ‘Why is it,’ he snapped out, ‘that everyone else gets to enjoy your placid side while I only get the—?’

      His voice just stopped. Lizzy didn’t notice. She was too busy taking in the room she had just stepped into filled with the softest light and gentle shadows—and a huge gold-framed portrait hanging from one of the pale blue walls.

      ‘The virago,’ she murmured, just too stunned to remember that she was supposed to be hunting down some kind of office in this many-roomed mansion. ‘Dear God,’ she added on a thick shaken swallow as her feet took her further into the room.

      ‘La Contessa Alexandra De Santis,’ Luc’s deep dry voice fed to her from behind. ‘Grande Dame, matriarch, bad mother, wonderful grandmother, and my other virago inglese.’