So he’d had to push all that down. Be remorseless. For all he knew, it was a sob story, concocted to appeal to his sympathies. Although something about the reluctance with which she’d told him made it ring true. And now he couldn’t get that image of her smiling face out of his head.
But he had to. Because she would be upping her game now and pulling out every trick in the book to try and sabotage this wedding and Gianni would be the biggest fool on the planet if he didn’t suspect as much and act accordingly.
* * *
‘Miss O’Connor, are you sure that Signor Delucca has agreed to this?’
Keelin smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, yes, my fiancé has given me carte blanche to make all the arrangements and he really doesn’t expect to be bothered with questions. You can leave all that to me.’
The nice wedding planner, Allessandra, looked at Keelin a little doubtfully but then smiled too, and said confidentially and not without a little relief, ‘In all honesty I find Signor Delucca quite intimidating.’
Keelin patted the girl’s hand. ‘I understand completely, so it’s better this way.’
It was two days before the wedding and Keelin had finally pushed Gianni so far with a never-ending list of questions about the arrangements that he’d texted her the previous day and said succinctly, Do what you like, Keelin. I don’t care if you turn up in a clown’s outfit on Saturday afternoon as long as you’re there. G.
So she had taken his words to heart and was calmly and diligently wreaking a little havoc with everything Gianni had ordered for the wedding.
The first thing to go had been the wedding dress he’d apparently chosen for her. She’d taken one look at it and felt a betraying hitch in her breathing. Because if she had one uncynical bone left in her body, one tiny atom left where she harboured any kind of romantic dream of marrying a soul mate, then this was the dress she would wear.
It was elegant, off-white. Strapless with an unstructured sweetheart neckline, it hugged the breasts and torso before falling in delicate folds of chiffon to the floor. Whimsical and romantic.
So naturally, she’d chosen another, altogether far less suitable dress. Not that she had any hopes he’d actually see her in it. But it would be enough that she might be photographed in it to add to the furore.
She’d barely seen Gianni in the past few days because he’d been busy with meetings. This suited Keelin fine. She was still suffering from sudden and random memory flashes of the rough and smooth slide of his tongue against hers as he’d kissed her senseless in front of everyone at the engagement party. And she couldn’t even blame him!
She pushed down the niggle of her conscience as she made the most drastic changes to the wedding yet, and told herself that she was doing this for her very survival.
* * *
Gianni cursed volubly when his cufflink slipped free for the third time while trying to close it.
Dio.
He stopped and took a breath. What the hell was wrong with him? Anyone would think he was having traditional bridegroom jitters! For what was in all essence just part of a business merger.
Part of a business merger that was happening today. He’d been reliably informed that Keelin O’Connor was in her hotel, apparently making her own preparations. And that she hadn’t fled the country.
Perhaps she was hoping that he would balk at the final hurdle? The reality of marriage a little too much to take? And in truth, he did feel slightly constricted at the thought but not enough to jeopardise everything he’d worked so hard for. It had more to do with her effect on him, that lack of control he felt around her.
The cufflink finally slid home and Gianni gave himself a critical once-over in the mirror. Dressed in a dark grey morning suit with a light grey silk cravat tie, he was the epitomy of sartorial elegance, but for once he didn’t feel that measure of satisfaction at another sign that he was removing himself from his past.
He felt uneasy now that he’d allowed Keelin to needle him enough to give her carte blanche to organise the wedding arrangements. He’d assured himself that she couldn’t get up to too much trouble right under his nose, could she?
For someone who never doubted his instincts, Gianni pushed aside the concern and flicked a glance at his watch and cursed himself again. He was ready too early for the afternoon ceremony. Like some kind of besotted fool? No, he assured himself, he just wanted to get this wedding over with so that he could get on with merging forces with O’Connor.
This urgency he felt was purely for that, nothing else.
When someone knocked on the door of his apartment he welcomed the distraction, opening it to reveal his assistant, looking scared and holding a local tabloid paper. The young man cleared his voice. ‘Have you spoken to Miss O’Connor today?’
Gianni immediately went cold. ‘No. Why?’
His assistant handed him the paper, where a blazing headline read Delucca’s Fiancée Snubs Harrington in Favour of Chatsfield for Lavish Wedding Ceremony!
It took a long second for the news to sink in. Keelin had gone behind his back and changed the venue, capitalising on the very public rivalry between the hotel dynasties to generate as much adverse publicity as possible.
Gianni forced the swell of rage down and said grimly, ‘Get my driver and car.’
The assistant rushed off, only too happy to get out of Gianni’s dark angry orbit.
Keelin would not get away with this. But first, it was time to go and make her his wife.
* * *
‘Well, where the hell is he?’
Keelin tried to curb any sense of obvious excitement at her father’s increasingly angry questions as to the whereabouts of her apparently absent fiancé.
She was light-headed at the audacity of what she was doing and she quashed the niggle of her conscience when she recalled the injured looks and feverish whispering she’d left behind at the Harrington Hotel after telling them she was moving the wedding. But it had been too good an opportunity to miss. Gianni had clearly favoured a discreetly elegant affair at The Harrington with the emphasis on discretion, and so Keelin had seen an opportunity to turn the wedding into a far more publicly opulent and luxurious extravaganza, much to The Chatsfield PR’s delight, always eager to score points where possible and take the focus off The Harrington’s latest venture—an ice bar in Russia which was all over the papers because it was being created by billionaire Lukas Kovach.
It also just so happened that one of Keelin’s oldest school friends from her junior boarding school in Ireland was Orla Kennedy, who was now married to Antonio Chatsfield, the scion of the Chatsfield family, so one phone call was all it had taken to unleash a little carnage.
Where forty guests had been expected, over a hundred now jostled for space in The Chatsfield’s sumptuously decorated ballroom. There were enough flowers to open a shop.
‘Well?’
Her father’s voice and the low rumble of voices from the ballroom next door made her snap back to attention. Keelin tried to look worried. ‘I don’t know, Father, maybe he’s had second thoughts.’
Her conscience twinged. Or maybe Gianni is completely unaware about the latest developments thanks to her blithely informing everyone that he’d sanctioned the changes and didn’t want to be bothered about the minutiae.
Her father went pale and Keelin’s gaze narrowed on him. Did he really care that much? But before she could interpret that nugget, a knock came on the door and Allessandra the wedding planner stepped into the room.
The