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He just laughed, the sound low and deep and disturbingly intimate the way it resonated against the tips of her breasts. ‘You are an unusual creature, Elizabeth Hadley,’ he informed her then. ‘You are very beautiful but you don’t like to be told so. You are tense and defensive around me yet you can completely relax with a serial womaniser like Vito Moreno.’
‘Vito isn’t a womaniser,’ Lizzy rejected. ‘He’s too laid back to be a womaniser.’
‘Ring any telephone number in Sydney and just mention his name.’
And that was cynicism, not mockery, she noted. ‘Well, I like him,’ she stated stubbornly.
‘Ah, I see he is beginning to reel you in.’
‘And that wasn’t very nice, either!’
His dark head suddenly dipped, bringing his lips very close to her cheek. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, mia bella—I am not very nice.’
He was so close now she could smell the masculine pull of his tangy scent. Lizzy jerked her head back. ‘Well, you had better be nice to Bianca,’ she warned loyally.
He just laughed as he straightened up again, then drew her even closer so he could control her movements with a cool, casual strength. He was taller than her by several impacting inches, which put her eyes on a level with his strong, chiselled chin. They didn’t speak again, and as the dance wore on maybe it was the fault of too many recklessly consumed glasses of wine that made her so aware of everything about him. Even the smooth feel of his silk lapel beneath her fingers fascinated her, and the bright whiteness of his shirt against the natural olive tones of his throat.
He was gorgeous. There was just no use in trying to deny it. Everything about him was so perfectly presented from the neatly styled gloss of his satin black hair to the length of his very Italian nose and the truly beautiful shape to his mouth.
And the singer droned on, low and soulful. Lizzy felt the sensual pull of the melody percolate her system as potently as the wine she had been drinking all evening and like a fool she closed her eyes and just let the sensation carry her away. One set of his long golden fingers lightly clasped her pale slender fingers, the other set rested low in the arch of her back. She had no idea how her fingers were stroking the silk lapel of his jacket or that she had moved in so close to him that her breath was softly feathering his throat. She just moved where he guided her, aware of the tingling tension affecting her body but unaware that it was affecting him too. His fingers moved slightly against her clasped fingers, the hand at her back glided upwards to the centre of her spine and gently urged her into even closer contact with him.
It was—nice. Kind of tingly and floaty and she hadn’t a clue as to how much she had relaxed into him until she felt the living warmth of taut skin brush against her lips and tasted it on the tip of her tongue.
With a jerk of shock Lizzy flicked her eyes open and pulled back her head. Dismay instantly curled its way through her body accompanied by a wave of mortified embarrassment that flooded like fire into her face when she realised what she had done.
She had just brushed her lips against Bianca’s fiancé’s throat and tasted him with her tongue!
CHAPTER TWO
‘OH, MY GOD,’ Lizzy gasped in skin quivering consternation.
They weren’t even dancing any longer! And he was looking down at her with one of those dreadful mocking smiles tugging at the corners of his mouth!
Dropping her eyes to his throat, Lizzy wished with all her pounding heart that the ground would just open up and swallow her whole.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she whispered, stepping back from him so violently she almost went over on the spindly heels of her shoes.
‘In truth I was rather flattered by the—compliment.’ His hand snaked out to steady her. ‘Fortunately I sensed it coming, which is why we are now standing outside on the terrace away from curious eyes…’
Outside—? Glancing dizzily around her, sure enough, Lizzy discovered that they were indeed standing on a shadowy terrace she had not even known was here! Realisation hit as to how engrossed she must have been in him that he’d been able to manoeuvre her through a pair of open French windows out into the cooler evening air without her even being aware!
Once again she took a shaky step backwards—right out of his reach this time—and thankfully managed to remain safely upright. The music still droned somewhere in the near distance. Mortification riddled her blood. She wanted to die and she couldn’t look at him—didn’t know what to say in her own defence!
And he was so relaxed, his hips resting against a heavy stone balustrade, his arms lightly folded across his wide chest, and she had the sickly feeling he was thoroughly— thoroughly enjoying himself.
‘Blame the wine,’ he offered gently.
Lizzy nodded, pathetically grateful for the miserable excuse.
‘I’m not used to drinking so m-much.’
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘And Vito—’
‘Was constantly filling up your glass.’
She hadn’t been going to say that, but hearing him say it brought her eyes flickering up to his face. ‘He wasn’t!’ she protested, then swallowed and added helplessly, ‘W-was he?’
‘Poor Elizabeth,’ the cool brute murmured. ‘Caught by the oldest trick in the book.’
Then she remembered what she had been doing with him and she dragged her eyes away from him to wave a decidedly uncoordinated hand towards the French doors.
‘I th-think I should…’
‘Go back inside to him so he can intoxicate you some more?’
‘No.’ The waving fingers tightened into a fist and dropped to her side. ‘You have a very nasty sense of humour, signor.’
‘And you, signorina, have a very moist tongue and a warm, soft pair of lips.’
That was it, Lizzy couldn’t take any more of this, he’d had enough fun at her expense. Spinning on her heel, she turned towards the doors.
‘What are the two of you doing alone out here?’ a new voice suddenly intruded.
And nothing, nothing in all of her twenty-two years, had ever made Lizzy feel as bad as she felt then when her friend— her beautiful, happily in love loyal best friend—stepped through those same French doors.
‘Your—maid of honour was feeling the heat,’ Luc responded evenly. ‘She needed to breathe some fresh air.’
Barely holding herself together, Lizzy felt her insides squirm with guilt and shame when Bianca looked at her and said, ‘Are you okay, sweetie?’ with genuine concern. ‘Dio, you do looked flushed, Lizzy.’
‘Blame your cousin,’ Luc suggested. ‘He is the one who’s been topping up her wineglass all evening.’
‘Vito? Oh, the wicked boy. And I told him to take care of you for me…’ She floated across the terrace to place a comforting arm across Lizzy’s shoulders. ‘With your sternly temperate papa you’re just not used to late nights and partying are you, cara? In fact you are not used to drinking alcohol at all!’
‘My father isn’t that bad,’ Lizzy mumbled, feeling more uncomfortable by the second.
‘No, he’s worse,’ Bianca said curtly, doing nothing to hide her dislike of Lizzy’s father, the man she still blamed for breaking up her love affair with Matthew two years ago. ‘I’m still surprised that he actually allowed you to come here knowing you would have to enjoy yourself! I even had to provide you with clothes so you were not forced to turn out in those terrible modest sacks he prefers you to wear!’
Wanting to curl up inside her own skin now at this small piece of insensitivity, Lizzy wondered helplessly if this was punishment for what she’d been doing with Bianca’s man.
Surprisingly it was Luc De Santis who came to her defence, ‘That’s enough, cara,’ he said to Bianca. ‘Modesty is not a sin. And your friend has a—headache,’ he offered up. ‘Hearing you chatter on about things she would rather not discuss in front of me is making it worse.’
‘Oh, sorry, Lizzy. I’m such a mean mouthed thing,’ Bianca said contritely. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I take you back to the hotel? We could both do with an early night and Luc won’t mind, will you, caro?’
This could only get worse if a rat jumped over the balustrade and told Bianca the full gruesome truth about why her best friend was out here with her man, Lizzy thought as she suffered Bianca’s contrition with a lump in her throat that was threatening to turn into tears.
‘Of course not,’ the smooth-voiced man himself agreed.
‘N-no—really.’ She was almost consumed by self-hate, ‘I can’t let you leave your own party. Vito said he was going soon to catch up on his jet lag. I’ll—I’ll go back to the hotel with him.’
‘No, I won’t hear of it,’ her wretched best friend said firmly. ‘And Vito can come back with us so I can tell him off for getting you sloshed. Luc will organise a car.’
Dutifully, Luc De Santis straightened out of his relaxed pose against the balustrade. Lizzy cringed inside and refused to look at him as he strode past them to go inside.
She should confess, she needed to confess—but how could she? Bianca would be shocked. She might never forgive her. Their friendship would be over for good.
But what if Luc told her first? What if he thought it would make an amusing story to relay to his betrothed? How was she ever going to live with it if he did?
They were about to step into the limo when Luc touched Lizzy’s arm. ‘Don’t do it, she will never forgive you,’ he warned so softly that only she could hear him, shocking her further that he could read her mind. ‘And if you have any sense you will steer clear of Vito Moreno,’ he added grimly.
Then he turned to his fiancée to offer her a brief kiss good- night.
Vito’s company in the car made the journey a whole lot easier for Lizzy because she could pretend to doze while he and Bianca talked. It vaguely occurred to her that the conversation was hushed and heated, but she assumed Bianca was keeping her promise to give him a hard time for the trick with the wine so she didn’t listen.
And anyway, she did have a headache, one of those dull, throbbing aches that came when you didn’t like yourself and knew the feeling was not going to change any time soon. When the two cousins decided to have a last drink in the bar before they went to their rooms, Lizzy made her escape and spent the night with her head stuffed beneath her pillow, trying not to remember what she had done.
But she should have listened to what the other two had been saying, she discovered early the next morning when hell arrived with the sound of urgent knocking on her door. If she’d listened she might have been able to stop Bianca from making the biggest mistake of her life.
As it was, all she could do was stand and listen in growing horror while Sofia Moreno poured it all out between thick, shaking sobs.
‘She’s gone!’ Bianca’s mamma choked out hysterically the moment that Lizzy open her door. ‘She just packed all her things in the middle of the night and left the hotel! All this time and she never showed a single sign that they were planning this between them! How could she? How could he? What are people going to say? What about Luciano? Oh, I don’t think I can bear it. She has thrown away a wonderful future. How could she do this to us? How could your foolish brother just turn up here and steal her away?’
Having assumed that Mrs Moreno had been referring to Vito, ‘Matthew?’ Lizzy choked out in disbelief. ‘Are you sure you meant my brother, Mrs Moreno?’ she prompted unsteadily.
‘Of course I mean Matthew!’ the older woman shook out. ‘He arrived here yesterday afternoon, apparently. He was hiding in Bianca’s bathroom when I went to see her yesterday! Can you imagine it? She wasn’t dressed and the bed was rumpled! Dio mio, it does not take much to guess what had been going on! Did you know about what they were planning to do, Elizabeth—did you?’
The fierce accusation straightened Lizzy’s backbone. ‘No,’ she denied adamantly. ‘I’m as shocked about this as you are!’
‘Well, I hope that is true,’ Mrs Moreno said coldly. ‘For I will never forgive you if you played along with this inexcusable thing!’
‘I thought you meant she’d gone away with Vito,’ Lizzy murmured dazedly.
‘Vito? He’s her cousin! Are you trying to make this situation worse than it already is?’
Thoroughly chastened by the appalled response, Lizzy could only mumble out an apology.
‘Now someone is going to have to break the news to Luciano,’ Bianca’s mother sobbed. ‘Bianca has left him a note but Luciano went to his Lake Como villa last night to prepare for our arrival tomorrow and my husband has left for the city to see to some business this morning—he doesn’t even know yet what his wicked daughter has done to ruin our lives!’
The Villa De Santis stood on top of a rocky outcrop, its pale lemon walls kissed by the softening light of the afternoon sun.
Lizzy’s stomach gave a nauseous flutter as she stepped from the water taxi onto the villa’s private jetty with its newly painted ribs standing out in the brilliant sunshine against the darkness of the older wood. Another boat was already moored there, a sleek, racy-looking thing that completely demoralised the water taxi as it nudged in beside it.
Bianca’s father had arranged for a car to bring her as far as Bellagio. They’d discussed if they should ring Luc to break the news to him, then decided he should be told face to face. At first Giorgio Moreno was going to make the trip himself, but he’d looked so ill that Lizzy had offered to come in his place.
His heart wasn’t good and she felt responsible. How could she not feel responsible when it was her brother who’d caused all of this? But after her own utter stupidity of the night before the last thing she wanted to do right now was to come face to face with Luc De Santis.
The old quiver struck as she walked towards the iron gates that she assumed would lead to steps up to the villa. Behind her, she could hear the water taxi already moving away, its engines growling as it churned up the glinting blue water, leaving her feeling as if she had just been marooned on the worst place on earth.
A man appeared from out of the shadows on the other side of the gate, stopping her in her tracks with his piercing dark eyes that looked her up and down. She had to look a mess because she certainly felt one with her hair hanging loose round her pale face. And she was still wearing the same green top and white capris she’d pulled on so hurriedly this morning when Bianca’s mamma had knocked on her door.
‘May I help you, signorina?’ the man questioned in coolly polite Italian.
Passing her nervous tongue across her lips, ‘I’ve come with a letter for Signor De Santis,’ Lizzy explained. ‘M-my name is Elizabeth Hadley.’
He nodded his head and produced a cell phone, his dark eyes not leaving her for a second while he spoke quietly to whoever was listening on the other end. Then with another nod he unlocked the gate and opened it. ‘You can go up, signorina,’ he sanctioned.
With a murmured thanks Lizzy was about to step past him when a sudden thought made her stop. ‘I-I will need a water taxi back to Bellagio,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t think to ask the other one to wait.’
‘I will see to it when you are ready to leave,’ he assured her.
Offering another husky ‘thank you’, Lizzy continued on her way to discover a set of age-worn stone steps cut into the rock face. At the top of the steps she found soft green lawns and carefully tended gardens and a path leading to a stone terrace beyond which stood the villa with its long windows thrown open to the softest of breezes coming off the lake.
Beautiful, she thought, but that was as far as her observations went. She was too uptight, too anxious—scared witless, if she was going to be honest.
Another man was waiting for her on the terrace. He offered her a small stately bow and invited her to follow him. It was cool inside the villa, the decoration a mix of warm colours hung with beautiful tapestries and paintings in ornate gold frames. The man led the way to a pair of heavy wood doors, knocked, then opened one of them before stepping to one side in a silent invitation for her to pass through.
Needing to take in a deep breath before she could make herself go any further, Lizzy walked past the servant into a beautiful room with high stucco ceilings and long narrow windows that flooded the room with soft golden light. The walls were pale, the furniture dark and solid like the richly polished floor beneath her feet. Shelves lined with books filled narrow alcoves; a heavy stone fireplace dominated one wall. As she spun her gaze over sumptuously ancient dark red velvet chairs and elegant sofas she finally settled on the huge heavily carved desk set between two of the windows—and the man who was standing tall and still behind it.
Tension instantly grabbed hold of her throat and sent her heart sinking to her toes. He already knew about Bianca, Lizzy realised. It was stamped right there on his grimly cold face.
‘You have a letter for me, I believe,’ Luc De Santis prompted. No greeting, no attempt whatsoever to make this easier for her.
But then why should he—? ‘H-how did you know?’ Lizzy dared to ask him.
His eyes made a brief flick down her front, then away again. ‘She was to be my wife. The position made her vulnerable to a certain kind of low-life out on the make, so of course I had a security team watching her.’
But they didn’t stop her running away with Matthew? Lizzy would have loved to have asked the question but the way he was standing there in a steel-dark razor-sharp business suit and with his face carved into such cold, hard angles, the question remained just a thick lump in her throat as she made herself walk forward, feeling as if she were stepping on sharp needles all the way.
Coming to a halt in front of the desk, she set down the letter. Her heart was pounding in her ears as he held her still with his gaze for a taut second or two before he reached out and picked the letter up, then let yet another few seconds stretch before he finally broke the envelope seal.
After that there was nothing, just a long, long numbing silence while he stood behind his desk reading the words Bianca had used to jilt him with, and Lizzy stood with her eyes fixed helplessly on his lean dark face, aware that the power of his innate pride had to be the only thing stopping him from diminishing to a used and broken man.
‘I’m—sorry,’ she mumbled, knowing it was a wincingly inadequate thing to say but—what else was there for her to say?
He gave a curt nod of his head, eyes like gold crystal set between heavy black eyelashes still fixed on the single sheet of paper even as he slowly set it down on the desk.
‘You were offered no forewarning of this?’
Lizzy felt her nails bite into the tender skin of her palms as she closed them into tense, anxious fists. ‘Nothing,’ she answered.
‘Her family?’
She gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘Y-you were there last night—she looked radiant. She—’
‘My future bride basking in the glory of her good fortune,’ he drawled in a cold, mocking lilt.
Pressing her lips together, Lizzy lowered her gaze and said nothing. It was so obvious now that Bianca had been putting on a fabulous act aimed to fool all of them last night. Now it all felt so horrible, the extravagantly romantic glitter and gloss just a huge cruel con. She’d floated around like a princess in her gold silk. She’d clung to this man, smiled at him so starry-eyed and in love. And everyone had smiled as they’d watched her, everyone had remarked on what a fabulous couple they made. Even Luc with his rather sardonic way of looking at everything had smiled for his beautiful betrothed. In some dark corner of her being, Lizzy had been dreadfully envious because not many women got to live their childhood dream of falling in love with and marrying her prince.
Not that Luc De Santis was a prince, because he wasn’t. He was just formed from the same mould handsome princes came out of, with his tall dark good looks and his perfectly constructed body and the added kudos of inherited vast wealth that had come to him down through centuries of careful De Santis bridal selection.
Dynasties, Bianca had called it. ‘I’m marrying into a dynasty because I have the right name and the right genetic fingerprint.’
It had been such a cynical thing to say that Lizzy had been shocked. ‘But you love him, don’t you?’
‘Are you joking, cara?’ she’d laughed. ‘You’ve seen him. What girl in her right mind wouldn’t fall in love with Luc? Even you if you were given the chance.’
Lizzy’s slender shoulders twitched in guilty response to the sound of that airy challenge ringing inside her head, because she knew she had already developed a kind of fascination for this man and it nagged her conscience to death— especially after last night. But she also frowned because it was only now as she stood here having to face the fallout from her best friend’s stunning deception that it was occurring to her just how cleverly Bianca had skirted around the question of her loving this man.
She watched as Luc picked up the letter again, long brown fingers lifting up the single sheet of snowy white of paper to re-read yet again what Bianca had written to him. His face remained cold—completely expressionless—yet Lizzy discovered that she couldn’t breathe. It had something to do with the way his lips were being held in such a steady flat line and the way his nostrils flared as he drew in a breath.
He was angry, she realised, and she didn’t blame him. Whether his heart was devastated was difficult to tell. The few occasions she’d been in his company—even last night—he’d always struck her as someone who did not feel much of anything.
Cold, hard, unemotional, arrogant, she found herself listing as she stood here waiting for him to speak. She supposed she could tag on other words like tall, dark and disgustingly gorgeous but all those words did was to describe his potently masculine outer shell. It was the first description that really said it all about the inner man.
The long silence dragged until it picked at her nerve-ends. In one part of her consciousness Lizzy knew she should be getting out of here now that she’d delivered the letter, but she was oddly reluctant to leave him alone.
She still felt responsible—though her common sense told her she wasn’t. She felt—pity for him, though she knew he would probably be utterly contemptuous of her for daring to feel it.
Strange man, she thought, not for the first time, as she stood on the other side of the desk unable to take her eyes off his face. For all of his wealth and his power and high standing in Italian society she had never seen him as anything other than a man who stood alone. Even when he’d been with Bianca she’d sensed a reserve in him she had never been able to adequately explain.
‘I…I suppose you’re wondering where your engagement ring is,’ she blurted out, needing to say something to fill in the unbearably tense empty space, and the ring had come up in discussion when Bianca’s mother had said the same thing.
‘No,’ he denied without any inflection whatsoever. ‘I would imagine that running off with a poor man has already sealed the ring’s fate.’
Lizzy winced, cheeks heating at this cool reminder of the other issue in all of this she was having to deal with—the fact that the man Bianca had run off with also happened to be her very own brother.
‘Matt isn’t poor.’ She felt compelled to defend Matthew’s middle class earnings. It was, after all, the only thing about him she felt she could defend right now.