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
