and said nothing. It was so obvious now that Bianca had been putting on a fabulous act aimed to fool all of them last night. Now it all felt so horrible, the extravagantly romantic glitter and gloss just a huge cruel con. She’d floated around like a princess in her gold silk. She’d clung to this man, smiled at him so starry-eyed and in love. And everyone had smiled as they’d watched her, everyone had remarked on what a fabulous couple they made. Even Luc with his rather sardonic way of looking at everything had smiled for his beautiful betrothed. In some dark corner of her being, Lizzy had been dreadfully envious because not many women got to live their childhood dream of falling in love with and marrying her prince.
Not that Luc De Santis was a prince, because he wasn’t. He was just formed from the same mould handsome princes came out of, with his tall dark good looks and his perfectly constructed body and the added kudos of inherited vast wealth that had come to him down through centuries of careful De Santis bridal selection.
Dynasties, Bianca had called it. ‘I’m marrying into a dynasty because I have the right name and the right genetic fingerprint.’
It had been such a cynical thing to say that Lizzy had been shocked. ‘But you love him, don’t you?’
‘Are you joking, cara?’ she’d laughed. ‘You’ve seen him. What girl in her right mind wouldn’t fall in love with Luc? Even you if you were given the chance.’
Lizzy’s slender shoulders twitched in guilty response to the sound of that airy challenge ringing inside her head, because she knew she had already developed a kind of fascination for this man and it nagged her conscience to death— especially after last night. But she also frowned because it was only now as she stood here having to face the fallout from her best friend’s stunning deception that it was occurring to her just how cleverly Bianca had skirted around the question of her loving this man.
She watched as Luc picked up the letter again, long brown fingers lifting up the single sheet of snowy white of paper to re-read yet again what Bianca had written to him. His face remained cold—completely expressionless—yet Lizzy discovered that she couldn’t breathe. It had something to do with the way his lips were being held in such a steady flat line and the way his nostrils flared as he drew in a breath.
He was angry, she realised, and she didn’t blame him. Whether his heart was devastated was difficult to tell. The few occasions she’d been in his company—even last night—he’d always struck her as someone who did not feel much of anything.
Cold, hard, unemotional, arrogant, she found herself listing as she stood here waiting for him to speak. She supposed she could tag on other words like tall, dark and disgustingly gorgeous but all those words did was to describe his potently masculine outer shell. It was the first description that really said it all about the inner man.
The long silence dragged until it picked at her nerve-ends. In one part of her consciousness Lizzy knew she should be getting out of here now that she’d delivered the letter, but she was oddly reluctant to leave him alone.
She still felt responsible—though her common sense told her she wasn’t. She felt—pity for him, though she knew he would probably be utterly contemptuous of her for daring to feel it.
Strange man, she thought, not for the first time, as she stood on the other side of the desk unable to take her eyes off his face. For all of his wealth and his power and high standing in Italian society she had never seen him as anything other than a man who stood alone. Even when he’d been with Bianca she’d sensed a reserve in him she had never been able to adequately explain.
‘I…I suppose you’re wondering where your engagement ring is,’ she blurted out, needing to say something to fill in the unbearably tense empty space, and the ring had come up in discussion when Bianca’s mother had said the same thing.
‘No,’ he denied without any inflection whatsoever. ‘I would imagine that running off with a poor man has already sealed the ring’s fate.’
Lizzy winced, cheeks heating at this cool reminder of the other issue in all of this she was having to deal with—the fact that the man Bianca had run off with also happened to be her very own brother.
‘Matt isn’t poor.’ She felt compelled to defend Matthew’s middle class earnings. It was, after all, the only thing about him she felt she could defend right now.
‘In your estimation or mine?’
Oh, that was so very arrogant of him. Lizzy felt anger begin to rise even though she knew she didn’t have the right to let it. ‘Look—’ with a tense twist she turned to the door ‘—I think I had better leave you to—’
‘Running away like the other two?’ he mocked her.
‘No,’ she denied that. ‘I just think it’s better that I go before I lose my temper.’
‘So you have one?’
‘Yes.’ She swung back round only to find that he had come around the desk so quickly and silently she hadn’t heard him move. Now he was leaning against it with his arms folded across his chest, Bianca’s letter lying discarded on the desk behind him.
Surprise brought a soft gasp whispering from her throat. And a new kind of tension flared in the pit of her stomach at the way he was studying the little green top and white capris she’d pulled on so hurriedly this morning, and the wildly unruly state of her hair.
Last night she’d made a fool of herself with him. This morning she’d been awoken by hysterics and accusations from Bianca’s parents that still rang in her head. Now this— this deeply unsettling man she’d been sent to face because Bianca’s parents couldn’t bring themselves to do it—and he was looking her over as if he couldn’t believe she would dare to walk out of her room looking as she did.
Well, you try applying make-up when your fingers won’t stop shaking, she told him silently as she suffered his cool appraisal that was so spiked by the glint of contempt. You try wondering what clothes to wear for an audience with a jilted man when your nerves were shot to death at the very prospect.
‘During the week you have been here in my country I’ve watched you play the straight man to Bianca’s high-strung and volatile temperament,’ he said so suddenly it made Lizzy blink. ‘I’ve watched you soothe her, calm her and even humour her. But I do not recall seeing you threaten to lose your temper with her even when she took it upon herself to mock or embarrass you, so why do you feel the need to lose your temper with me?’
‘Y-you attacked my family.’
‘I attacked your brother,’ he amended. ‘You don’t believe I have the right?’
Of course he had the right. This time yesterday he had been one half of a glittering couple, his marriage to Bianca only a short week away. It was supposed to be the wedding of the year here in Italy, now it was about to become juicy fodder for every media outlet and it was her very own brother who’d turned it into that.
Lizzy moved jerkily, offering a small conciliatory flip of one hand despite feeling as though she were being whipped by his smooth cutting tone. ‘I give you the right to despise my brother,’ she acknowledged. ‘I will even give you the right to be angry with me because I’m the sister of the man who ran off with your bride. But I will not—’ and her chin came up, eyes sparking with challenge ‘—stand here and let you deride the fact that we are not rich like you.’
