And naturally, as Romano had predicted, the paparazzi got hold of the story within days.
Reporters congregated outside the castle gates. Photographers jostled with each other for pictures of any member of family or staff who happened to come or go, hungry for just one sensational shot of the happy couple.
‘Look at this,’ Libby wailed when one English tabloid, frustrated by her refusal to grant them an interview, printed its own story, which, true to its usual form when dealing with celebrities, included prying into her previous and very private life.
Under the heading ‘Supermodel to Marry One of Italy’s Most Eligible Bachelors’, it divulged,
…that supermodel Blaze is actually Elizabeth Vincenzo—or Libby Vincent, as she is known in less distinguished circles than the catwalk and the playgrounds of the rich. It’s also been revealed that while working as a part-time waitress seven years ago, and while still only eighteen, she met and married Romano’s younger brother, Luca, in a secret ceremony.
There was a short paragraph about the accident, which also included a reference to Libby’s father and his connection with the Vincenzo family. ‘It’s clear now,’ the column went on to disclose, much to Libby’s increasing distress, ‘that stunning supermodel Blaze is also the mother of Giorgio Vincenzo, Romano Vincenzo’s ward.’ There was a whole column dedicated to Romano. How rich and charismatic he was, with words like ‘Midas touch’, ‘billionaire’ and ‘tycoon’ thrown in, along with the speculation as to how much he was worth. ‘It seems the lovely Blaze has not only managed to capture one Vincenzo brother, but two,’ the journalist went on to express, ‘which could lead some hardened sceptics into saying that this young woman’s arctic image is finally melting, and that there is definitely fire beneath the ice.’
‘I don’t care about myself, it’s Giorgio I’m worried about!’ Libby objected bitterly when Romano tossed down the paper after reading the article himself.
‘Don’t worry,’ he advised, although she could tell from the grim set of his mouth that he hadn’t read the article with any more pleasure than she had. ‘He’s resilient enough to deflect any kind of cheap sensationalism that’s written about us like this. Besides…’ Putting an arm around her, he leaned down and kissed the top of her head ‘…they’ll forget all about us when we’re married.’
Which was probably true, Libby thought, but in the meantime they still had to face the clamouring reporters every time they went out, until it was agreed between them to grant one interview to several journalists at the same time, wherein Libby could also make known her intention to quit modelling.
When the day came it was held in the penthouse suite of one of the five-star hotels in a group the Vincenzos personally owned.
Standing there beside Romano—who, in a light beige suit and open-necked white shirt accentuating his olive skin, was dictating the terms of the whole interview with enviable self-assurance—Libby followed his lead, responding to the questions about their forthcoming wedding and the natural interest evoked by the news that she was giving up her career with relative ease.
What wasn’t so easy, however, was the much more personal question and answer session that followed, which was suddenly being directed solely at her.
Wasn’t she the mother of Romano’s brother’s child? How had she felt giving him up?
‘How would any mother feel?’ she answered honestly. ‘I was young. Confused. Afraid. But all that’s behind me—’ she smiled tensely at Romano ‘—behind us now.’
‘Indeed it is.’ The man who had posed the question, a rather flabby individual in a casual shirt and creased corduroys, thrust his voice recorder almost in her face. ‘In fact, some might say it’s a rather fairy-tale ending, especially after the tragic loss you suffered on the death of your fiance’s younger brother.’ A slight pause while he waited for everyone present to digest this—recall the events of six years ago. ‘There has been some speculation,’ he went on, ‘that your late husband and the young woman who was involved in that accident with him were linked in more ways than just professionally. Would you care to comment?’
Tense lines etched Libby’s profile. She wished she’d worn her hair loose to help shield her face from such relentless scrutiny when nausea seemed to rise up as distasteful bile in her throat.
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she replied, growing sticky beneath the long-sleeved white mini dress she was wearing, wanting to loosen the tapering gold belt at her waist. She sent a brief but meaningful glance towards Romano. ‘I’m only here to answer questions regarding myself and my engagement to the present Mr Vincenzo.’
‘Of course.’ The man smiled, looking like a wolf salivating over a lamb. He had a job to do, she accepted, but, as journalists went, she didn’t like him.
‘Tell me, Blaze…’ he was ploughing on like a relentless bulldozer ‘…was it love at first sight? I mean, what I’m sure most of us here are wondering—I know I certainly am—is…did that eighteen-year-old waitress who secretly married into such a prestigious family ever give any thought to one day scooping the biggest prize of all?’
He meant Romano, and his intimation was obvious.
At her side Romano’s sharp inhalation could have sliced through steel. The corduroy man was looking very pleased with himself, Libby noticed as somehow she managed to drag past a throat clogged with nausea and dizzying distaste, ‘I won’t even deign to answer a question like that.’
She staggered, felt a strong arm go around her, caught Romano’s curt, ‘I think we can consider this interview at an end.’ A brief nod punctuating that hard statement, he was leading Libby away.
For all his cool dismissal she could tell from the tight cast of his jaw as he guided her through a rear exit that he wasn’t that far from losing his temper.
‘Good girl,’ he breathed above a burst of clicking cameras and a sudden rumpus behind them as his aides restrained one or two determined individuals who would have pursued them. ‘Show them a glimpse of fear and they’ll hound you for every drop of blood they can squeeze. You handled things brilliantly in there.’
‘Did I?’ Libby croaked. She wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t help feeling as though she had made a total fool of herself, unlike Romano, who she knew from experience took even the toughest interviews in his stride. For Libby, though, who had always hated interviews, the whole thing had been purgatory, and now, as he ushered her out onto the roof of the building, where, amazingly, a helicopter was waiting for them, she sagged against him, glad of his supporting strength.
‘How are you feeling?’ Romano asked as soon as they were airborne.
He was concerned about her. She had been looking peaky for days. Was it the strain of the forthcoming wedding? he wondered. Was she having any misgivings about agreeing to marry him? Because there was no doubt in his mind that, contrary to what those journalists believed—what everyone would believe when they read the papers tomorrow morning—if it was not for Giorgio, then there was no way that his beautiful bride-to-be would ever have consented to be his wife.
‘They make me feel unclean,’ Libby expressed as the helicopter soared away over the commercial heart of the city, piloted by the thick-set Miguel, who had been their driver that day on Capri. ‘That’s how they make me feel. Exposed and vulnerable and somehow…dirty.’
‘It will pass, cara.’ Strong, warm fingers linked with hers. ‘That’s what comes of living life in a goldfish bowl when you really want to be a little mole and hide your head in the ground.’
Despite how she was feeling, Libby managed a wan smile. ‘Don’t you mean an ostrich?’ she supplied wearily.
‘Mole. Ostrich.’ He shrugged. ‘Although an ostrich only thinks she can’t be seen, while her whole body is still on view to the predators of this world. I’d prefer to keep every part of you for my eyes only.’
Her pulses leaped in response to the sensuality in his deeply accented voice. I want that too, she thought, aching for privacy.
She felt laid bare, as t
hough every ounce of guilt she had ever suffered had been exposed and hung up for the world to see. Unclean.
So unclean, she decided after the helicopter had touched down on the landing pad of Romano’s island retreat and he was letting her into the welcomingly secluded villa, that she wanted to scrub herself of the awful taste it had left in her mouth; of the blemishing marks that those dirt-digging questions seemed to have made on her skin…
‘Oh!’
As she stepped into the cool luxury of his private residence, coming through the archway into the quiet expanse of the lounge, serenity seemed to envelop her in the sights and scents that met her, and which had drawn that wondrous little gasp from her throat.
He had found gardenias. Dozens of them! In baskets. In garlands. In pots. Creamy white and highly perfumed, filling every corner, stand and surface of the magnificent room. And roses. White roses, their scent so sweet as they vied for supremacy with the gardenias and a star-petalled white jasmine, that she wanted to inhale and keep inhaling until her soul was filled with their fragrance.
Everything looked pure and fresh and so beautiful after the unpleasant experience she had just been through that tears pricked sharply behind her eyes. Had he known in advance? Anticipated how ugly she would feel? Emotion almost overwhelmed her, but she kept it in check, her face impassive as she turned around.
‘What would you do if you really loved a woman, Romano?’ The clash of his gaze with hers made her stomach clench with yearning. ‘Someone you believed really loved you?’
His slow stride over the marble tiles accentuated the aching silence. His eyes were fixed on hers with almost brooding intensity, before some emotion tugged his mouth down on one side. ‘What would you have me say?’
Of course. What had she expected? she thought as he took her hands in his, stood looking down at them as though studying the vital differences in the dark strength of his and the paler structure of hers. He turned them over, ran his broad thumb across the sparkling ring that bound her to him.
Tell me you love me, please! Her heart craved it with everything that was feminine in her, but her longing fell silently on the perfumed air.
‘Carissima…’ His hand lifted to brush away a tear that had strayed onto her cheek. ‘I didn’t mean for this—’ his chin embraced the flower-filled room ‘—to make you cry.’
‘You didn’t. Haven’t,’ she amended tremulously because he was so unbearably close. ‘It’s just a culture shock, that’s all. The silence…’ She glanced past him at the room dressed like a shrine to everything that was pure and honest and untainted by anything the outside world could throw at it. ‘The peace…’
He turned his hand against her cheek. It was warm and slightly rough and she leaned into it, wanting his touch, his tenderness; wanting him as she had never wanted anyone or anything in her life.
‘There is fire beneath the ice, carissima…’ his voice was a whisper, roughened a little by his need for her ‘…but only I know how fiercely it burns.’
‘Because only you can light it.’ She didn’t know why she whispered that back. Only that it had seemed like the most natural thing to do as she reached up, touched his lips tentatively with fingers that trembled.
‘I know that. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve always known it. The world can rage out there, but it will never equal the ravaging fire that burns when the two of us come together. You ensnare me, cara. Enslave me with the silk of your skin.’ His fingers lightly grazed her jaw. ‘Your hair.’ He laid his hard cheek against it, inhaling its perfumed softness. ‘Your velvet mouth…’
When his lips touched hers it was with almost reverential tenderness that sparked off sensations in Libby far more intense than any produced by their previous passion.
Sliding her arms around his warm, lean waist beneath the exquisite tailoring of his jacket, her head tipping back to accept the deepening possession of his kiss, she groaned into his mouth, wanting the moment to last, knowing that there was something special about it and that whatever else came her way, or wherever destiny took her, it was something that she would remember all the days of her life.
She scarcely knew how it happened, but one of the white leather sofas had been pulled into service of a sensuously inviting bed and Romano was lying there with her, his kisses unhurried, gentle, his dispensing of her clothes so deftly achieved there seemed to be no interruption in those skilfully arousing lips against her flesh.
‘Romano…’
‘Hush…’ He murmured something softly in Italian and laid a gentle hand across her eyes.
He proceeded to arouse her then, his long, dark fingers blotting out the rest of the world in an incredibly erotic experience, sharpening her remaining senses only to his touch, the sound of his voice and the drugging scent of the flowers.
Guided by him in her blindness, saturated by the infinite tenderness with which he made her his, as he bore her with him to another place, another world, another universe, she seemed to be free falling in a sensual heaven, and suddenly nothing could restrain the sobbing admission that tumbled from her lips. ‘I love you! I love you! I love you!’
She couldn’t look at him when, some time later, he got up and moved away.
He had lain there, holding her, for a long time, and yet he hadn’t said a word.
Neither had he undressed fully, she realised, watching him with guarded eyes as he tucked his shirt into the trousers he had just pulled on, his features so closed and distant that she had a job reconciling them with those of the man who had just made such exquisite love to her as though he had meant it.
‘What’s wrong?’ she ventured with a queasy little feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Wrong?’ He glanced down at her, a tight, tense smile curving that masculine mouth. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Why should there be?’
Her loosened hair rippled with the movement of her shoulder. ‘You seem…upset about something.’
‘Upset?’ He laughed then, a sound that didn’t quite ring true before stooping to plant a perfunctory kiss on the top of her head. ‘You’re imagining things, cara. Come here.’ His hands, still tender, reached for hers, pulling her up off the bed. ‘Why on earth would you imagine that I could ever be upset with you?’
She gave him a wan smile, closing her eyes as his mouth claimed and moved gently over hers.
As he drew her close, Libby leaned into him, every part of her yearning for him with aching sensitivity. But suddenly he was pulling back from her, saying with a wry twist of his lips, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you got dressed.’
For Libby his urbane yet unfeeling rejection was like being plunged into a tub of icy water. She hadn’t intended to reveal to him exactly how she felt. But she had, she realised, humiliated, because it was quite apparent he hadn’t welcomed her reckless admission.
She just couldn’t believe that any man could make love to a woman in the way he had just made love to her without feeling something for her. But it seemed Romano could, she accepted with a hollow emptiness creeping through her. Otherwise why hadn’t he acknowledged that involuntary declaration of her love?
Even if she was just a proposed bride of convenience, wouldn’t it be a feather in his cap and an added bonus if he thought his prospective wife was totally besotted with him? Unless he was totally devoid of emotion, or, she reasoned as the thought occurred to her, he had been so badly affected by some previous relationship that he had shut himself off so as never to risk getting hurt again.
She’d wanted to tell him about the baby too, she thought achingly, stifling a sob. But now was definitely not the time!
Grabbing her clothes, her throat clogged with emotion, she fled into the bathroom, locking the door so that he wouldn’t come in and realise how much it hurt.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT HAD been arranged that the wedding would take place on Capri. An open-air ceremony in the grounds of the villa. It had also been arranged that Romano would spend their wedding eve there, much to Sophi
a’s grudging approval that it was “bad luck” for a bride and groom to spend it under the same roof.
Not that Libby harboured any superstition about luck—good or bad. She was going into this marriage with her eyes wide open and, while Romano still hadn’t expressed any real feelings for her, she was determined to work at winning his love—eventually. Neither had he made any reference to that unintentional outpouring of her feelings for him that last time he had made love to her at the villa. And, though they had made love many times since—in fact, they seemed to spend more time in bed than out of it—she had been very careful not to do it again.
With the wedding only hours away, he managed to whip her into a frenzy of longing with the hungry possession in his kiss before he left that afternoon, claiming as he brought their embrace to a premature end, ‘The next time we do this, carissima, you will be my wife.’
She was therefore surprised when, later that evening, on her way down to the kitchen to get some dry biscuits to help alleviate the morning sickness she certainly didn’t want to contend with on her wedding day, she heard his raised voice filtering out through a crack in his study door.
‘I was hoping you’d come around. See it as a sure-fire way of always keeping Giorgio with us—keeping him happy.’
‘By torturing me instead!’ It was Sophia, her voice, like Romano’s, so clear and raised that Libby had very little difficulty in translating what was being said. ‘And what would your father, what would Luca say? If you’re so determined to go ahead with this…fiasco…you’ll not only be mocking their memory, you’ll be doing something that hardly renders you fit to be called my son!’
Blackmailed For Her Baby (Bought For Her Baby Series Book 4) Page 16