inside her, whether she believed it or not. The accident that was proof that those stolen hours in Monaco hadn’t been a dream, after all—that what had happened between her and this startlingly handsome stranger had been real. It was something she could cling to no matter how much of a mess she found herself in now.
But that wasn’t what had her stomach in knots tonight.
No. It was the way Renzo was looking at her.
As if he hated her.
Which was fair enough. Sophie wasn’t too fond of herself at the moment, now she knew the truth about the headaches she’d been having the past week or so, and that oddly thick sensation that wasn’t quite nausea—
But Sophie wasn’t sure she could bear it. Not from him.
Her distant father, more calculator than human, was one thing. Her even more remote and disinterested fiancé another.
But Renzo was the only thing in her life that had never been a part of this grim little march toward fulfilling the sacred duty that she’d been told was her responsibility since her birth. Every single part of her life had been orchestrated to lead directly and triumphantly toward her wedding tomorrow. She had been raised on dire warnings about the perils of shirking her obligations to her family and endless stories about the many ancestors who would rise from their vaults in protest should any hint of a scandal taint their name.
There had never been any light. Or hope. Or anything like heat.
Sophie was so cold. Always and forever frozen solid, no matter the weather.
Because she’d been aware since she was very small that the sorts of things that warmed a body—strong spirits, wild passion, scandalously revealing garments of any kind—were not permitted for the Carmichael-Jones heiress.
She was to be without stain. Virginal and pure until she handed herself over to her husband, a man chosen by her father before she could walk.
Because the world kept turning ever closer to a marvelous future, but Sophie had been raised in the past. The deep, dark past, where her father didn’t condescend to ignore her wishes—Sophie had been raised to know better than to express one. Even to herself.
Everything had been ice, always.
So Sophie had made herself its queen.
But Renzo had been all the light and hope and heat she’d given up believing was possible, packed into that one long, glorious night.
Every wild, impetuous summer Sophie had ever missed out on. Every burning hot streak of strong drink she’d never permitted herself to taste. Every dessert she’d refused, lest her figure be seen as anything but perfectly trim while clad in the finest couture, the better to reflect both wealthy families of which she was the unwilling emblem.
Renzo had been lazy laughter and impossible fire, intense and overwhelming, vast and uncontainable and so much more than she’d been ready for that she still woke in the night in a rush, her heart pounding, as if he was touching her again—
“Why am I here?”
He sounded impatient. Bored, even. Something in her recoiled instantly, because she knew that particular tone of voice. Her father used it. So did her fiancé. They were busy, serious men with no time for the frothy, insubstantial concerns of the woman they traded between them like so much chattel.
She wasn’t a person, that tone of voice told her. She was made of contracts and property, the distribution of wealth and the expectations of others. Hers wasn’t a life, it was a list of obligations and hefty consequences if she failed to meet each one.
The old Sophie would have slunk off, duly chastened. She would never have come out here in the first place.
But that Sophie was gone, burned to a crisp in Monaco. Forever ruined, in every sense of the term.
This Sophie tried to find her spine, and then straightened it.
“You contacted me.”
“Is that the game you wish to play, cara?” Renzo lifted an indolent shoulder, then dropped it. “You sent me newspaper clippings of your engagement. The wedding of the year, I am to understand. A thousand felicitations, of course. Your fiancé is a lucky man indeed.”
Sophie didn’t particularly care for the way he looked at her as he said that, but she was too busy reeling to respond to it.
“Newspaper clippings...?”
But even as she asked the question, she knew.
She hadn’t sent Renzo anything. It wouldn’t have occurred to her, no matter how many times she woke in the night with his taste in her mouth. But she knew someone who would have.
Poppy.
Dear, darling Poppy, Sophie’s best friend from their school days. Romantic, dreamy Poppy, who wanted nothing but happiness for Sophie.
And who had never seemed to understand that for all Sophie’s advantages, and she knew they were many, happiness was never on offer.
“Don’t be tiresome, my dear,” her mother had sighed years ago, when Sophie, trembling, had dared to ask why her own choices were never given the slightest bit of consideration. “Choice is a word that poor people use because they have nothing else. You do. Try being grateful, not greedy.”
Sophie had tried. And over the years she’d stopped longing for things she knew she could never have.
That wasn’t Poppy’s way.
“You demanded I meet you here,” Renzo was saying, a different sort of laziness in his voice then. This one had an edge. “And so, naturally, I placed my entire life on hold at such a summons and raced to your side like a well-trained hound.”
He made a show of looking around, but there was nothing for miles but fields and hedges. No prying eyes. No concerned relatives who would claim to their dying day they only had Sophie’s best interests at heart.
The stately house where her wedding was to be held in the morning was over the next hill and Sophie, who had never sneaked anywhere in her life before that night in Monaco, had felt a sickening combination of daring and scared as she’d crept out of her room and run from the hall tonight.
It was pathetic, really.
How had she lived twenty-six long years and failed to recognize how sad and small her life really was?
Renzo wasn’t finished. “Now that we’re both caught up, perhaps you can tell me why I’ve been called upon to take part in this latest episode of what appears to be a rather melodramatic and messy life?”
Sophie swallowed. The words melodramatic and messy had never applied to her life. Not ever. Not until she’d met him. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
That was the real story of her life.
Her heart was beating so loudly she couldn’t understand how Renzo didn’t hear it.
His mouth moved, then, but she would
