Читать книгу The Platinum Collection - Эбби Грин, Maisey Yates - Страница 35
ОглавлениеTHE MAKEOVER, ALONG WITH the shopping and the ultra-grooming at a very fancy beauty salon, shook Lizzie to her very depths.
She was transformed and she knew it and was surprised by how very much better it made her feel to see herself polished to glossiness, with that awful brown dye gone from the last few inches of her pale silvery hair. Every time she had seen that dye in the mirror it had reminded her of Andrew and the bad times, so it was a relief to be finally rid of it and stop wondering if he ironically had tried to change her into Esther, who had mud-brown hair of no great distinction. She regarded her long, glittery nails with positive girlish delight because she had never known such beauty tweaking could transform her work-roughened hands. The calluses were gone as well, her entire skin surface buffed and moisturised to perfection. There was no doubt about it: it made her feel like a new woman, a woman of greater assurance than she had been when she first slunk through the doors of the salon, feeling like a crime against femininity in her untouched, unpolished state.
How would Cesare view her now?
Her cheeks flushed at the thought. Why should that matter to her? What was his opinion worth? Presumably without the polishing he wouldn’t have wanted to be seen out with her in public and that was a lowering reflection, she acknowledged ruefully. She had been transformed and she appreciated it, best not to think too deeply beyond that, she decided wryly. And now all dressed up to the nines she felt more armoured to cope with the hen party ahead even if it was without the support of her sister.
Sadly, Chrissie had an exam the next day and there was absolutely no way she could join Lizzie and Cesare’s sisters. Lizzie was disappointed. She liked Cesare’s friendly siblings very much but they were still strangers and somewhat more uncomfortably, strangers she had to keep a front up with. They thought it was a normal wedding with a bride and groom in love and happy. Unfortunately, living up to that false expectation was a strain even on a shopping and beauty trip.
* * *
‘You mean, you really aren’t pregnant?’ Sofia, Cesare’s youngest half-sister, gasped as she watched Lizzie down a vodka cocktail with every sign of enjoyment. ‘Cesare told us you weren’t but we didn’t believe him.’
‘This conversation is not happening,’ Paola groaned in apology, the eldest of the trio of sisters, a teacher and married woman and rather more circumspect than her single, fun-loving sisters in what she chose to say. ‘I’m so sorry, Lizzie.’
Lizzie smiled, masking her loneliness and chagrin. ‘It’s all right. I’m not offended. I know you’re surprised that your brother’s getting married in such a hurry—’
‘When we never thought he’d get married at all,’ his third half-sister Maurizia slotted in frankly.
‘Obviously he’s nuts about you!’ Sofia giggled. ‘That’s the only explanation that makes sense. When I sent him that photo of you all dressed up to go out tonight, he wasted no time telling me that he wanted you to stay at home and that he saw no reason for you to have a hen night.’
Of course Cesare didn’t see any reason, Lizzie reflected ruefully, glugging her drink because she didn’t know what to say to his very accepting and loveable sisters or indeed to his pleasant stepmother, Ottavia, none of whom had a clue that the wedding wasn’t the real thing. She had guessed, however, that his father, Goffredo, was simply playing along with their pretence but she found that same pretence stressful and knew it was why she was drinking so much and living on her nerves. Luckily Cesare had not been required to put on much of an act, she conceded resentfully, as he had taken refuge in his city apartment, after marooning her in his unbelievably luxurious town house with his family, before flying off to New York on urgent business.
Apparently it was the norm for Cesare to move out of his flashy and huge town house into his exclusive city apartment when his family arrived for a visit. Lizzie had found that strange but his family did not, joking that Cesare had always liked his own space and avoided anything that might take his main focus off business, which evidently involved socialising with his family as well. Lizzie thought that was sad but had kept her opinion tactfully to herself.
He was so rich: in spite of the limo and the driver and the helicopter, she had had no idea how rich her future fake husband was. Lizzie was still in shock from travelling in a private jet and walking into a house the size of a palace with over ten en-suite bedrooms and innumerable staff. She had then done what she should have done a week earlier and had checked him out on the Internet, learning that he was the head of a business mega-empire and more in the billionaire than the multimillionaire category.
Indeed the house, followed by the experience of being literally engulfed by his gregarious family, had only been the first of the culture shocks rattling Lizzie’s security on its axis. Two solid days of clothes shopping followed by a physical head-to-toe makeover had left its mark. For that reason it was hardly surprising that she should be at last enjoying the chance to relax and have a few drinks in good company for the first time in more years than she cared to count.
* * *
Seated on his jet, furiously checking his watch to calculate the landing time, Cesare enlarged the photograph on his tablet and scrutinised it with lingering disbelief.
Don’t you dare take Lizzie out dressed like that to a club! he had texted his half-sister Maurizia, with a confusing mix of anger, frustration and concern assailing him in a dark flood of reactions that made him uncomfortable to the extreme.
He still couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph: Lizzie smiling as he had never seen her and sheathed in an emerald-green, ‘barely there’, strappy short dress with perilous high heels on her shapely legs. It was an amazing transformation. A magic wand had been waved over the bag lady. She looked fantastic and would outshine every woman around her now that her natural beauty had been polished up and brought to the fore. Her glorious mane of hair had been restored as he’d instructed, not cut. It gleamed in a silken tumble of silver strands round her delicately pointed face, green eyes huge, pouty mouth lush and pink. Cesare swore under his breath, outraged by his sisters’ interference and the hen-party nonsense. Lizzie was no more fit to be let loose in a London nightclub than a toddler and now he would have to go and retrieve her!
* * *
‘You’re not supposed to be here... This is her night!’ one of his sisters carolled accusingly as soon as he arrived at the women’s table.
‘Where is she?’ Cesare ground out, unamused, while he scanned the dance floor.
Looking daggers at her big brother, Sofia shifted a reluctant hand to show him. ‘Don’t spoil her night. She’s having a whale of a time!’
Cesare centred his incredulous dark gaze on the sight of his bride-to-be, a pink hen-night sash diagonally dissecting her slender, shapely body as she danced, arms raised, silvery hair flying, feet moving in time to the fast beat. What infuriated him was the sight of the two men trying to attract her attention because she appeared to be dancing in a world of her own. Suddenly Lizzie teetered to a stop, clearly dizzy as she swayed on her very high heels. With a suppressed snarl of annoyance, Cesare, ignoring his siblings’ wide-eyed disbelief at his behaviour, stalked across the floor to hastily settle steadying hands on Lizzie’s slim shoulders.
‘Cesare...’ Lizzie proclaimed with a wide, sunny smile because it only took one lingering glance to remind her how tall, dark and sleekly gorgeous he was. He towered over her, lean bronzed face shadowed and hollowed by the flickering lights that enhanced his spectacular bone structure, stunning dark golden eyes intent on her. She was really, really pleased to see him, a familiar reassuring image in a new world that was unnervingly different and unsettling. In fact for a split second she almost succumbed to a deeply embarrassing urge to hug him. Then, luckily remembering that hugging wasn’t part of their deal, she restrained herself.
‘You’re drunk,’ his perfectly shaped mouth framed, destroying the effect of his reassuring presence.
‘Of course I’m not drunk!’ Lizzie slurred, throwing up her hands in emphasis only to brace them on his broad chest while she wondered why her legs wanted to splay like a newborn calf’s trying to walk for the first time.
‘You are,’ Cesare repeated flatly.
‘I’m not,’ Lizzie insisted, holding onto his forearms to stay upright, her shoe soles still displaying a worrying urge to slide across the floor of their own volition.
‘I’m taking you home,’ Cesare mouthed as the deafening music crashed all around them.
‘I’m not ready to go home yet!’ she shouted at him.
Lizzie couldn’t work out what Cesare said in answer to that declaration. His deep-set eyes glittered like banked-down fires in his lean, strong face and he had bent down and lifted her up into his arms before she could even begin to guess his intention.
‘Think we’re going home,’ Lizzie informed his sisters forlornly from the vantage point of his arms as he paused by their table.
‘You didn’t look after her!’ Cesare growled at one of his sisters, in answer to whatever comment had been made.
‘What am I? A dog or a child?’ Lizzie demanded, staring up at him, noticing that he needed a shave because a heavy five o’clock shadow outlined his lower jawline, making it seem even harder and more aggressive than usual. It framed his wide, sensual mouth though, drawing attention to the perfectly sculpted line of his lips. He kissed like a dream, she recalled abstractedly, wondering when he’d do it again.
‘Think we should kiss so that your sisters believe we’re a real couple?’ Lizzie asked him winningly.
‘If we were real, I’d strangle you, cara,’ Cesare countered without hesitation. ‘I leave you alone for three days and I come back and you’re going crazy on the dance floor and getting blind drunk.’
‘Not drunk,’ Lizzie proclaimed stubbornly.
Cesare rolled his eyes and with scant ceremony stuffed her in the back of the waiting limousine. ‘Lie down before you fall over.’
‘You’re so smug,’ Lizzie condemned and closed her eyes because the interior of the limousine was telescoping around her in the most peculiar way.
Cesare consoled himself with the hope that such behaviour was not a warning sign of things to come. How could he blame her for wanting some fun? He had a very good idea of what life must have been like for her on that farm with her misery of a father, always there at her elbow, keen to remind her of every mistake and failure. For the very first time in his life he realised just how lucky he had been with Goffredo, who saw everything through rose-tinted, forgiving spectacles. In comparison, Brian Whitaker’s view of life was seriously depressing.
Lizzie opened her eyes. ‘Do you want to kiss me?’ she enquired.
Cesare skimmed his disconcerted gaze to her animated features, taking in the playful grin she wore. ‘Do you want me to kiss you?’
Lizzie flushed and shifted on the seat. ‘You’re not supposed to ask that.’
‘You expect me to act like a caveman?’
Lizzie thought about that. She had rather enjoyed being carried out of the club. Was that weird? She scolded herself for that enjoyment while mustering up a dim memory of her mother giggling and tossing her hair, eyes sparkling at the latest man in her life. Inwardly she cringed a little from the comparison she saw.
‘Only when you’re sober and you know what you’re doing,’ Cesare extended infuriatingly.
‘You believe I could only want to kiss you when I’m drunk?’
Cesare suppressed a groan and studied her. If truth be told, it would take very little encouragement for him to flatten her along the back seat and take inexcusable advantage of her delightfully feminine body. ‘We have a business arrangement,’ he reminded her doggedly, cursing the hot swell of the erection disturbing his poise because just the thought of doing anything to her turned him on hard and fast.
Her honey-brown lashes flickered. ‘I’m open to negotiation.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Cesare informed her grimly, lean bronzed face set in forbidding lines, mobile mouth compressed. ‘There will be absolutely no negotiation on that score tonight.’
Was it so wrong, Lizzie asked herself, that she should want to experience just once what other women commonly experienced? She had always wanted to be normal, to feel normal. Was that wrong? Indecent? Her cheeks burned. Naturally she had picked him. That kiss... Somehow he had become her forbidden object of desire. How had that happened? Treacherous heat curling in her pelvis, Lizzie breathed in slow and deep.
Cesare watched her feathery lashes dip and the sound of her breathing slow as she slid into a doze. Well, he wouldn’t be letting her loose around alcohol again. Sex, drink and business arrangements did not make for a rational or successful combination. And he was a very rational guy, wasn’t he? Here he was being a saint and protecting her from doing something she would regret. Or would she? he wondered with inbred cynicism. She was a gold-digger, after all, and sure to be on a high after the orgy of spending that had centred on her in recent days.
He was acting against his own nature, he acknowledged grudgingly. In reality, he wanted to fall on her like a sex-starved sailor on shore leave and keep her awake all night. Instead he was likely to spend half the night in a cold shower. He should have made more of an effort to see Celine. Clearly, it was the lack of regular sex that was playing merry hell with his hormones.
Lizzie awakened as Cesare half walked, half carried her into the town house only to stop dead as Goffredo and his stepmother, Ottavia, appeared in the doorway of the drawing room.
‘Your daughters are still partying,’ Cesare announced. ‘Lizzie was falling asleep, so I brought her home early.’
‘Cesare is a party pooper,’ Lizzie framed with difficulty.
Goffredo grinned and Ottavia chuckled and the older couple vanished back into the drawing room.
At the foot of the stairs, Cesare abandoned the pretence that Lizzie could walk unaided and swept her up into his arms.
‘I like it when you do this,’ Lizzie told him. ‘It’s so...so...masculine.’
‘We are lucky you don’t weigh more,’ Cesare quipped, barely out of breath as they reached the top of the stairs.
A sudden lurch in the stomach region made Lizzie tense and she crammed a stricken hand to her mouth, mumbling, ‘Cesare...’
To give him his due, Cesare was not slow on the uptake and he strode through the nearest door at speed and deposited her in a bathroom.
Lizzie was ingloriously ill. He pushed her hair out of the way, gave her a cloth, extended a toothbrush, which he unwrapped, and politely ignored her repetitive apologies for her behaviour. When she couldn’t stand up again, he removed her shoes for her and supported her over to the sink.
‘I don’t make a habit of this,’ she declared, rinsing her mouth several times over while hanging onto the vanity unit.
‘I should hope not, bellezza mia.’
‘What does that mean? The Italian bit?’
And he told her that it meant ‘my beauty’.
‘But that’s a downright lie,’ she protested, studying her bleary-eyed reflection in dismay. The make-up girl’s artistry and the hairdresser’s skill were no longer apparent in the flushed face, smudged eyeliner and tousled hair she now saw in the mirror.
‘You need to lie down,’ Cesare asserted, lifting her again so that the bathroom spun and then the bedroom that followed.
Lizzie lay flat and dead still on the bed, afraid to move lest her surroundings began revolving again. ‘Where’s Archie? I want Archie.’
‘Archie stays downstairs.’ Cesare reminded her of the household rule, announced by Primo, his imperturbable manservant, on the day she moved in.
‘But that’s just mean... He always sleeps with me,’ she mumbled.
Cesare almost groaned out loud. She lay splayed across his bed, clearly trusting him when he didn’t trust himself because she was displaying a wanton amount of bare slender thigh.
‘If I can’t have Archie for company, I’ll have you,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘Lie down.’
Cesare snatched up the phone and issued a terse instruction. Within the space of a minute, Primo arrived at the door with Archie. Cesare clasped Archie and carried him over to the bed, whereupon the dog curled up obediently at Lizzie’s feet with his head resting across her ankles.
‘You should get into bed...you can’t sleep in your clothes,’ Cesare told her.
‘Why not?’
Cesare released his breath in an exasperated hiss and came down on the bed beside her to run her zip down.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered curiously as he smoothed the straps of the dress down off her slim shoulders.
‘Making you more comfortable.’ Business arrangement, business arrangement, bloody business arrangement, Cesare was dutifully repeating inside his head as he eased her out of the dress to expose a filmy and provocative bra and panties set in turquoise lace. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t reacting, he told himself doggedly while his dark golden gaze clung of its own volition to the surprisingly full, plump curves swelling the lace cups, revealing pale pink nipples that made his mouth water and the shadowy vee at her crotch. He yanked the sheet over Lizzie’s prone length so fast that she rolled and, having been disturbed and crammed in below the sheet without warning, Archie also loosed a whimper of complaint.
Lizzie stretched out a searching hand, her eyes closed. The room was going round and round and round behind her lowered eyelids and she felt lost and nauseous. ‘Where you going?’
Weary after a day spent travelling and his last-minute sprint to deal with Lizzie, Cesare surrendered to the obvious. If he left her alone, might she wander off? Sleep on the floor? Have an accident? Stumble into the wrong bedroom? And what if she was sick again? ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ He stripped down to his boxers and lay down on the other side of the bed. A small, callused hand closed over the thumb of his right hand and held on tight. He wasn’t used to sharing a bed and he liked his own space.
Lizzie settled up against a warm solid shape while Archie tunnelled below the sheet to settle down by a less restive set of feet.
Lizzie wakened with a desperate thirst at some timeless hour of the night while it was still dark. She slid her feet off the side of the bed, her soles finding the floor, and slowly straightened. A wave of dizziness immediately engulfed her and she compressed her lips hard, sober enough now to be furious with herself. Despite having hardly eaten all day she had foolishly downed all that alcohol and got carried away by the party atmosphere. Suppressing a groan of frustration, she fumbled for the switch on the bedside light and then stared in bewilderment round the unfamiliar room before focusing on the male sharing the wide bed with her.
Cesare was half naked and lying on top of the sheet she had been lying beneath. He was beautifully built with a broad bronzed torso and corded abdomen that rippled with lean muscle. One long, powerful, hair-roughened thigh was partially raised, the other flat. Unshaven, he exuded a rough, edgy masculinity that made her breath hitch in her throat as she peered down at him in the lamplight. His lashes were like black silk fans and almost long enough to touch his amazing cheekbones.
She remembered asking him if he wanted to kiss her, absolutely angling for his attention, and she almost screamed out loud at that demeaning memory. She headed for the bathroom with hot cheeks and a frustrated sense of self-loathing and shame that she could have been so silly. Had she asked him to stay with her as well? For goodness’ sake, it was obviously his bedroom and he had only brought her there the night before because it was the nearest option when she felt sick. Now he had seen her in her underwear and she was mortified, although not as mortified as she would have been had he removed that as well. Her head throbbing, she drank about a gallon of cold water and freshened up as best she could without her own toiletries. She crept out of the bathroom in search of something to wear so that she could return to her own room.
Tiptoeing like a cat burglar, she opened the door into a massive wardrobe and eased back a sliding door to yank a man’s white shirt off a hanger. The bra was digging into her midriff and she released the catch and removed it and the panties, wondering if she dared go for a shower. Donning the shirt, she rolled up the sleeves and buttoned it.
Being around Cesare made her feel out of control but was that so surprising? She hadn’t dated since Andrew, hadn’t seen the point, and before him there had only been a handful of unremarkable men. In recent times, she had had no social outlets and had only occasionally left the farm. It cost money to socialise and there had been none to spare. Being with Cesare’s light-hearted sisters had been so much fun that she had forgotten to monitor how much she was drinking. One glimpse of Cesare when she was in that weakened condition had had the same effect on her as a hit man shooting her directly between the eyes. He was a very good-looking male, that was all. Noticing the fact simply meant she was female and alive and not that she wanted to pursue anything with him.
Hovering by the bed, Lizzie tried to work out how to get Archie out from below the sheet without either hurting him or waking Cesare.
‘What are you doing?’ Cesare husked as she yanked at the sheet to try and reach her dog. Blinking up at her with frowning dark eyes, he lifted a muscular arm to check the gold watch he still wore. ‘Inferno! It’s three in the morning.’
‘I should go back to my own room.’
‘Don’t wake up the whole household. Stay and go back to sleep,’ Cesare advised her drily, flipping onto his side in a display of indifference that made her grit her teeth.
Would she wake anyone up? Stifling a sound of frustration, Lizzie doused the light and snaked back below the sheet.
Early morning was sending pale light through the blinds when she next surfaced, feeling considerably healthier than she had earlier but decidedly overheated. An arm was draped round her ribcage and she was locked intimately close to a very male body, a very aroused male body. A surge of heat that had nothing to do with his higher temperature pooled in Lizzie’s pelvis. She eased over onto her back and looked up unwarily into heavily fringed eyes the colour of melted bronze. Her throat ran dry, her breathing ruptured.
‘You’re a very restless sleeper, cara mia,’ Cesare censured softly, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘I had to clamp you in one place to get peace.’
‘Oh...’ Lizzie framed dry-mouthed, entranced by her view of his lean, darkly handsome features in the golden dawn light, even her hearing beguiled by his melodic accent.
‘Archie, on the other hand, sleeps like the dead and doesn’t move at all,’ Cesare quipped. ‘I’ve never had a dog in my bed before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘First and last,’ he stressed. ‘Unfortunately you wouldn’t settle without him last night.’
‘I’m sorry I drank too much.’ Colour slowly rose to drench her porcelain skin as he stared down at her. ‘Was I really awful?’
Long fingers stroked her taut ribcage, making her violently aware of the breasts swelling mere inches above. ‘No, you were bright and breezy until the alcohol took its toll.’
Her breathing pattern fractured as she felt her nipples pinch tight while a hot, achy sensation hollowed between her legs. ‘I’m not used to drinking like that,’ she muttered jaggedly.
His golden eyes smouldered down at her and a wicked grin slanted his shapely lips, ensuring that the rate of her heartbeat accelerated. ‘Don’t make a habit of it.’
‘Of course, I won’t,’ she began with a frown, tightening every muscle in an urgent, almost panic-stricken attempt to smother the sexual responses trickling through her and awakening every skin cell.
Cesare, who planned everything in Machiavellian detail, had not planned to kiss Lizzie. Having decided not to touch her, he fully expected to abide by that prohibition because he virtually never gave way to impulses. Unhappily for him, the burning desire to pin Lizzie to the bed and have wild, sweaty sex with her had no rational base: it was driven by pure instinct. And when she shifted her hips below the shirt that had most definitely ridden up to ensure that bare skin met bare skin, Cesare was lost.
One minute, Lizzie was drowning in dark golden eyes framed by lashes longer than her own and downright jealous of the fact, and the next Cesare brought his mouth crashing down on hers with the kind of raw, driving passion that she was defenceless against. It was glorious and the taste of his tongue delving deep into the moist interior of her mouth was unsurpassable and an intoxication in its own right.
He traced the pointed bud of a straining nipple and her spine undulated of its own accord, sensation piercing straight to her pelvis. Her breasts had suddenly become achingly sensitive to the palms cupping them and the fingers tugging gently on the prominent tips. That felt amazingly good. A stifled gasp was wrenched from low in her throat and her spine arched, her body rising up to cradle his in an involuntary move of welcome as old as time. He skated his fingers along a slender thigh to discover the hot wet core of her, sliding between the delicate folds to moisturise the tiny bud of thrumming nerve endings above with a skilled fingertip.
Lizzie tore her lips from his to cry out, hungry beyond bearing for that sensual touch and plunging her fingers into his tousled black hair to hold him to her. She was no more capable of thinking about what she was doing than she was of stopping breathing on command. Her heart was thumping, her ragged gasping breaths audible, her entire body was tingling madly with seething heat and need. With his free hand, he ripped at the buttons of the shirt. The shirt fell partially open, exposing the rounded fullness of a breast crowned by a pale pink nipple. He closed his mouth there, teasing the distended bud with the flick of his tongue and the graze of his teeth while his fingers stoked an erotic blaze at her feminine core. She shuddered, talon claws of fierce need biting into her, shock assailing her that anything physical could feel so intense that she could neither fight it nor control it.
‘I love the way you respond to me, mi piace,’ Cesare growled with satisfaction while switching his attention between her pouting breasts and sending fantastic ripples of ravishing sensation right down to her unbearably hot core.
Lizzie couldn’t find her voice, her breath or a single functioning brain cell. Her entire being was welded to his every caress, wanting, needing more. And kissing an erotic path down over her flat, quivering stomach, Cesare gave her much more and she didn’t have the strength of will to deny him.
With ruthless cool he zeroed in on the tender heart of her with every weapon in his erotic mastery, stroking delicate flesh with his tongue and his mouth and his expert fingers. Lizzie careened into shock at the intimacy and then moaned below the onslaught of wicked, delirious excitement. Intense pleasure followed, sweeping her up into a wild, yearning climb towards a peak that she felt she would never reach. But that climb was unstoppable. Suddenly her body wasn’t her own any more and she was flying like a comet into the sun in a climax so powerful it brought shaken tears of reaction to her eyes.
Still ragingly aroused, Cesare sprang out of bed, his fists angrily clenched. What the hell had he been thinking of? No matter how great the temptation, he should never have touched her. They had a business agreement and a planned marriage of convenience ahead of them. They were not lovers, not friends with benefits. He did not want to muddy the waters with the kind of physical intimacy that women often assumed meant more than it did. If he wasn’t careful, he might find himself more married than he had ever wanted to be, he acknowledged grimly.
Paralysed by a crazy sense of peace in the aftermath of orgasm, Lizzie closed her eyes, her body still trembling from the sweet aftermath of agonising pleasure. The mattress gave but she didn’t open her eyes again until a phone rang, shattering her dream state. The phone fell silent in answer to a man’s voice speaking Italian. Her lashes lifted then and she stared at Cesare while he paced the floor, mobile phone clamped to his ear. He still wore his boxers and his state of arousal was blindingly obvious. An almost painful tide of colour burned her face.
He tossed the phone down by the bed. ‘Do you want the shower first?’
That prosaic question made Lizzie frantically pull the edges of the shirt she wore closed and she sat up in an agony of discomfiture. ‘I’ll go back to my own room.’
As she scrambled out of bed and reached for Archie, Cesare murmured without any expression at all, ‘We made a mistake and we won’t repeat it.’
Clutching Archie in an awkward hold, Lizzie attempted to pick up her discarded clothing one-handed. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she prompted shakily.
‘It was just sex...nothing worth fussing over,’ Cesare opined in a tone that was as cold as a winter shower on her overheated skin. ‘Look, I’ll see you downstairs in an hour. I have some papers you have to sign before I leave.’
‘You’re going away again?’ she asked in surprise, fighting the roar of temper rising from a secret place deep down inside her.
‘We have forty-eight hours to go before the wedding and I intend to use it,’ he advanced calmly, deep-set dark eyes hooded, wide, sensual mouth clenched hard.
Just sex...nothing worth fussing over? Lizzie mulled that putdown over while she showered. She wasn’t hurt by his dismissal, of course she wasn’t. A mistake that would not be repeated. Didn’t she feel the same way as he did? What had happened shouldn’t have happened. It was much more sensible if they stayed uninvolved and detached. So, if he had left her feeling a little crushed and foolish, it was her own fault for acting like an idiot and inviting such a denouement. If she couldn’t quite shake off the sense of intimacy he had imbued her with, it was only because she had been more intimate with him than she had ever been with anyone else but that was a secret not for sharing...
