white teeth on edge, sending another wave of annoyance crashing through him.
‘Lizzie!’ her father called as Andrew strode back home across the couple of fields that separated their properties.
Lizzie turned her head and focused in bewilderment on the tall, darkly handsome male poised by her father’s side. Her heartbeat suddenly thudded like a crack of doom in her ears and her throat tightened. Sheathed in an immaculate grey pinstripe business suit worn with a white shirt and scarlet tie, Cesare looked very much at odds with his surroundings but he still contrived to take her breath away and leave her mind briefly as blank as white paper. ‘Good grief, when did you arrive? I didn’t see a car.’
‘I came in a helicopter...’
Lizzie, the Land Rover keys clenched tightly in one hand, froze. She blinked in fleeting bewilderment and then headed towards Cesare in a sudden movement, rage boiling up through the cracks of anxiety and concern for her dog and her flock. ‘You’re the bloody idiot who let a helicopter land in a field full of stock?’ she raked at him incredulously.
In all his life, nobody had ever addressed Cesare with such insolence. A faint frown line etched between his ebony brows, he stared at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. Indeed he was much more concerned with the reality that, in spite of her awareness of his visit, his bride-to-be still looked as though she had strayed in from a hostel for the homeless. A streak of dirt marred one cheekbone and her clothes were caked in mud and displaying damp patches. But when he glanced higher and saw the luminous colour in her cheeks that accentuated her hazel-green eyes and the contrast of that tumbling mane of admittedly messy white-blonde hair, he registered in some astonishment that even had she been wearing a bin liner it would not have dampened her physical appeal on his terms. His usual high standards, it seemed, were slipping.
‘What’s the problem?’ Cesare enquired with perfect cool, reasoning that some sort of cultural misunderstanding could have provoked her sudden aggressive outburst.
‘The problem is...’
‘Don’t shout at me,’ Cesare sliced in softly. ‘I am not hard of hearing.’
‘Your pilot landed that helicopter in a field full of sheep...and he should be shot for it!’ Lizzie framed rawly. ‘They were so terrified they fled. All of them are pregnant, only days off lambing. If any of them miscarry after that crazed stampede, I’ll be holding you responsible!’
For a fraction of a second, Cesare recalled the pilot striving to persuade him to land a couple of fields away but the prospect of a time-wasting muddy trek to the cottage had exasperated him and he had insisted on being set down as close as possible to his destination. ‘The mistake was mine, not the pilot’s. I chose the landing spot,’ Cesare admitted, startling her with that confession. ‘I know nothing about farming or the care of animals. Naturally I will compensate you and your father for any loss of income that results.’
‘Well, the man can’t say fairer than that,’ Brian Whitaker cut in, sending his furious daughter a warning glance. ‘Let that be the end of it.’
‘Archie was hurt!’ Lizzie protested fierily, shooting Cesare a seething look that warned him that even admitting his mistake was insufficient to soothe her. ‘The flock trampled him at the river. I’m taking him to the vet now for emergency treatment and I haven’t got the time...or the patience...to deal with you!’
Cesare watched in disbelief as his future bride unlocked the rusty vehicle several feet away and began to climb in.
‘You’ve done it now. She treats that stupid dog like her firstborn!’ Brian Whitaker muttered impatiently and retreated back indoors, bowing out of the situation.
With the split-second timing that matched Cesare’s lightning-fast intellect, he strode forward and opened the passenger door of the Land Rover to take the only step left open to him. ‘I’ll accompany you to the vet’s,’ he informed her flatly.
Very much disconcerted by that announcement, Lizzie flicked him a frowning appraisal. ‘You’ll have to hold Archie.’
Cesare, so far out of his comfort zone that he already felt as if he were trapped in something of a nightmare, finally noticed that it was a two-seat vehicle and that the scruffy dog lay comatose on the only seat available for his own use.
Lizzie leapt back out of the car. ‘I’ll move him and then you can get in,’ she told him, racing round the back of the vehicle to scoop up Archie in trembling hands and usher him in.
‘I could drive,’ Cesare pointed out drily.
‘You don’t know where you’re going and I know where the potholes are,’ Lizzie told him incomprehensibly as she very gently rested Archie down on Cesare’s lap. ‘Please make sure he doesn’t fall.’
Tears were choking Lizzie’s throat. Archie was so quiet and he had never been a quiet dog. Right at that very minute, he could be dying, his brave little life and loving spirit ebbing away, and that was why she wasn’t going to waste time arguing with Cesare Sabatino about anything.
‘Is he still breathing?’ Lizzie demanded, turning out onto the road.
‘I can feel his heart beating,’ Cesare proffered quietly, blocking out his uneasy awareness that the vehicle stank of animals and was far from clean. He stroked the still body for want of anything else to do and was startled when the dog twisted his head to lick at his hand.
‘He trusts you,’ Lizzie informed him.
‘He doesn’t have much choice in the matter,’ Cesare fielded, reckoning that he had been sent to Yorkshire solely to suffer. In his opinion she drove like a maniac. He had spent the day travelling and his day had started at six in the morning in Geneva. Now it was eight in the evening and, not only had he not eaten for hours, but he was also convinced that many more hours would pass before he could even hope for the opportunity. He knew she had no idea that he had planned to take her out to dinner and, since he didn’t have a woolly fleece and cloven hooves, it would never occur to Lizzie to feed him.
Unaware of her unwelcome passenger’s thoughts, Lizzie rammed the Land Rover to an abrupt jolting halt in a small car park. Carefully carrying Archie, Lizzie stalked into the surgery, leaving Cesare, a male who was unaccustomed to being ignored, to follow her. An older man greeted them and carried the dog off to be X-rayed, leaving Lizzie and Cesare in the small, dull waiting room.
In consternation, Cesare watched Lizzie fighting off tears again. Driven by a desperate masculine urge to shift her thoughts to what he viewed as more positive issues, he murmured, ‘So, we’re getting married?’
Lizzie marvelled at his lack of compassion and understanding. Did he really think she was in any frame of mind to discuss that while she was waiting to hear whether Archie would live or die? ‘Yes, but it won’t really be a marriage,’ she parried, striving not to look at him because he really had the most stunning dark golden eyes and every time she looked she ended up staring and she didn’t want him to notice her behaving like a silly schoolgirl.
‘We’re not going for gold, then,’ Cesare assumed, referring to the requirement for a child in the will while surveying her down-bent head with a sense of deep dissatisfaction that took him aback. Why was he feeling that way? Common sense suggested that he should settle for taking Athene for a visit to Lionos and think himself lucky to have gained that much from the exchange.
A tangle
