But the truth was that Luca felt uncomfortable about his fake marriage. He was a world-weary cynic, but when he had acted as best man to Kadir at his wedding to his beautiful English wife, Lexi, nine months ago, Luca had witnessed the intense love between the couple and had briefly felt envious of something that he could never have.
‘Who is this sister-in-law of the Sultan that your friend Charles is marrying?’ Giselle flicked through the pages of a gossip magazine that she had brought with her because Luca only kept boring books at the penthouse. ‘Is she a celebrity?’
‘Unlikely.’ Luca had a vivid recollection of Athena Howard’s sapphire-blue eyes, her oval-shaped face, and the determined chin that hinted at a stubborn streak in her nature. In Zenhab he had felt curious because Athena shared no physical resemblance with her sister. Lexi, with her silvery-blond hair and slender figure, had been a breathtakingly beautiful bride, but her sister and chief bridesmaid had faded into the background.
Luca had simply been carrying out his duties as best man when he had stood beside Athena for the wedding photographs and later led her onto the dance floor. She was petite in stature, and the top of her head had only reached his mid-chest. Following Zenhabian tradition she had worn a headscarf during the wedding ceremony, but at the private reception Luca had been surprised to see her long braid of dark brown hair—until she had explained that Lexi was her adoptive sister and they were not related by blood.
A memory slipped into Luca’s mind of the perfume that Athena had worn at the wedding—an evocative fragrance of old-fashioned roses that had stirred his senses as they had walked together in the palace gardens. Stirred rather more than his senses, in actual fact, he recalled ruefully. He could not explain to himself why he had kissed Athena Howard, or why the memory of that brief kiss still lingered in his subconscious.
Giselle’s petulant voice pulled him from his thoughts. ‘Why can’t I come to the wedding with you? Anyone would think you were trying to avoid being seen with me.’
‘That’s not true, cara. But I can’t turn up at a wedding with an uninvited companion.’
The hard gleam in Giselle’s eyes warned Luca that damage limitation was needed. His fiancée had been blessed with beauty at the expense of brains, but she was well aware that his thirty-fifth birthday was two weeks away. He felt a surge of impotent fury that everything that mattered to him lay in the hands of a brainless bimbo. It wasn’t Giselle’s fault, he reminded himself. She was the solution—not the cause of his problems.
‘While I’m away, why don’t you visit the jewellers and buy that diamond necklace?’
He dropped a credit card onto the bed and Giselle snatched it up.
‘I might as well get the matching earrings, too.’
‘Why not?’ Luca murmured drily.
So what if his bride-to-be had an avaricious streak a mile wide? he thought five minutes later, as he walked out of the building and climbed into the chauffeur-driven car waiting to take him to the airport. What were a few diamonds when he would soon have everything he wanted?
Inexplicably, the memory of a pair of sapphire-blue eyes slid into his mind. He gave an indifferent shrug. Later today Athena Howard would become Mrs Charles Fairfax. He had only agreed to attend the wedding as a favour to Kadir.
Luca frowned, thinking of the phone call he’d received from the Sultan of Zenhab.
‘Lexi is upset that we can’t fly to England for her sister’s wedding because the baby is due any day. We’d both be grateful if you would attend the wedding in our place and try and talk to Athena. Lexi is worried that her sister is making a mistake by marring Charles. You and I both know from our schooldays that Charlie Fairfax is a charmless oaf,’ Kadir had reminded Luca. ‘But if Athena seems happy then you won’t need to hang around. However, if you detect that she’s having doubts about the marriage...’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Luca had demanded.
‘Stop the wedding from going ahead,’ Kadir had replied succinctly. ‘I don’t know how, exactly, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
* * *
She did not look so much like a meringue as a cream puff, Athena decided as she studied her reflection in the mirror in her bedroom at Woodley Lodge, the country house of Lord and Lady Fairfax. But it was too late now to wonder why she had allowed herself to be persuaded to choose this crinoline-inspired wedding dress with a skirt so wide that she could be mistaken for the White Cliffs of Dover. The puffed sleeves broadened her top half, while the enormous skirt with its layers of white satin ruffles accentuated her lack of height and made her look dumpy.
‘You’ll be marrying into the aristocracy in front of five hundred guests,’ her mother had reminded Athena when she had tentatively remarked that a simpler style of dress might suit her better. ‘You need a dress that will make you the centre of attention.’
Butterflies performed a clog dance in Athena’s stomach at the prospect of five hundred people looking at her as she walked down the aisle. Please God, she prayed she didn’t do something embarrassing like trip on her long skirt and annoy Charlie.
She hoped he was in a better mood than he had been the previous evening. She had felt awful when she’d spilt red wine on the cream velvet carpet in the sitting room. Lady Fairfax had said that it didn’t matter, although she’d compressed her lips into a thin line, but Charlie had made a fuss and had said she was like a bull in a china shop.
Athena bit her lip. Sometimes Charlie said quite hurtful things—almost as if he didn’t care about her feelings. During the past year that they had been engaged, she had tried her best to be a gracious and elegant hostess at the dinner parties he had asked her to organise. But she would be the first to admit that she was clumsy—especially when she was nervous—and she always seemed to do something wrong that earned Charlie’s criticism.
Heaven knew what he would say when he heard of her latest catastrophe. While inserting the contact lenses she wore because she was short-sighted she had dropped a lens—the last of her disposable lenses as it turned out—down the plughole of the sink, which meant that she would have to wear her glasses to the wedding.
Athena glanced longingly out of the window at the cloudless September sky. It was a beautiful day, and she would love to be outside, but she’d had to spend hours having her hair styled in an elaborate ‘up-do’, which required dozens of hairpins and so much hairspray that her hair felt as rigid as a helmet. And a make-up artist had applied a heavy foundation to her face which made her feel as though she was wearing a mask. Dramatic eye make-up and a cherry-red shade of lipstick certainly made her noticeable.
The person in the mirror did not look like her. Somewhere in all the wedding preparations Athena Howard had turned into someone she didn’t recognise, she thought ruefully.
She tried to reassure herself that the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach was just pre-wedding nerves. But her sense of panic would not go away. Her legs felt as if they had turned to jelly and she sank down onto the edge of the bed.
Why was she about to get married in a four-thousand-pound dress that did not suit her? That amount of money would keep the orphanage she supported in India running for months. She thought of the House of Happy Smiles in Jaipur, which was in desperate need of funds, and wished that instead of paying for an expensive wedding the money could have been donated to the fundraising campaign she had set up for the orphanage. She didn’t want an extravagant wedding—she
