One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Presents

by Penny Jordan

  And she knew she was still the centre of a media frenzy because a maid had told her, giggling and excited about it, whereas all Lizzy could think was—how was she going to cope when her secure haven here in the villa had been taken away?

  The gown bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one that Bianca had been going to wear, she was relieved to discover.

  And it was truly beautiful. She hadn’t a clue how the designer had managed to make it to fit her so perfectly and refused to ask the question, but the romantic drift of floating white silk made in the Grecian style disturbed her oddly when she viewed the finished effect in the mirror because she looked so soft and sensually curvy and—vestal.

  Luc’s idea of how a bride should look?

  ‘Don’t chew your bottom lip like that, signorina,’ the designer advised with a critical frown. ‘Your mouth is ripe enough to drive Luciano crazy without you plumping it up some more.’

  Lizzy released her lip from her anxious white teeth and slithered her eyes over the silky fall of her hair. Carla the giggly maid had done it for her—washed it, conditioned it, actually almost tamed it. And the barely there hint of make-up applied by Carla’s steady fingers made her look—

  ‘It is now no mystery to me why he risked ridicule to replace la bella Bianca with what I see standing here,’ the designer said.

  ‘Don’t,’ Lizzy responded, her voice sounding shaky and thick the way it left her tense aching throat.

  Her loyalty to her best friend would not allow anyone to mock Bianca. And she missed her. She wanted to see her, talk to her, find out why she’d run away with Matthew, and if what Lizzy was about to do had her blessing because if it didn’t…

  Lizzy swallowed, the ache of tears threatening her eyes. A knock at the door revealed Luis the major-domo who’d first led her into this villa a long week ago.

  ‘It is time to leave, signorina,’ he advised.

  Her father met her at the church. He looked younger than he had when she’d left him in Sussex two weeks ago, the strain of worry having gone from his face, but the cold disappointment she saw in his eyes made her want to cry all the more.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘Just like your mother.’

  Just like her mother, Lizzy repeated bleakly as he bent to press a cool kiss to one of her cheeks.

  Then he walked her into a church packed with curious witnesses. The rippling hiss of softly voiced comments accompanied them down the long stone aisle towards the man she could see standing tall and straight at the other end.

  He was wearing morning grey—formal like her father, like the man standing beside him whom she vaguely recognized, but that was about as far as her ability to think about anything went.

  And she wanted Bianca. Bianca was supposed to always have been here with her for her wedding just as she was supposed to have been there for hers.

  And she wanted to stop and turn to her father and say sorry, beg his forgiveness because she couldn’t bear knowing that he was walking beside her likening what she was doing here with what her mother had done ten years before.

  The marriage-wrecker, the greedy little gold-digger only out to please herself. Being aware that she was just being silly believing her own press didn’t help.

  Then Luc turned to look at her, his lean, dark, sombre expression fixing on her like a magnet that pulled her the last few faltering steps to his side. Her father offered her hand to him, he took it, long brown fingers firm as they closed around the trembling state of her own. After that the rest became a hazy glaze of traditional solemnity wrapped in a muffling shroud of beautifully toned Latin that eventually joined them as man and wife.

  And the kiss Luc pressed to her lips was somehow piercingly poignant if only because it sealed this mad, ill thought-out union in front of a few hundred fascinated witnesses.

  Four euros, Lizzy found herself thinking as Luc lifted his mouth away again. It’s going to take me a lifetime to pay back what I owe him.

  As if he knew what she was thinking he grinned, all gleaming white teeth and mocking arrogance.

  The next thing Lizzy became aware of was stepping out of the church into brilliant sunlight and a cacophony of sound. Cameras flashed, her heart fluttered into sudden panic, the man standing beside her drew her closer into his side. Two rows of dark-suited security men formed a barrier to hold back the curious onlookers and Luc hurried her down through this corridor of safety to a waiting limousine, his arm not leaving contact with her until he had seen her safely shut behind the car door.

  The car sped off the moment he’d settled beside her. The hazy glaze lifted from her eyes. Silence stung. It was over. She’d done it. She’d married her best friend’s fiancé. The air sounded choked as it left her lungs.

  ‘So you do remember how to breathe,’ Luc’s quietly sardonic voice said beside her.

  Seems so, Lizzy thought without attempting to offer a reply.

  Instead she looked down at her hand where a traditional gold band now adorned her slender white finger. Across the gap separating them a matching band glowed against the brown of his skin. She hadn’t expected him to wear a ring too, it had come as a surprise when she’d been quietly instructed to place it on his finger.

  But, like the church and its packed congregation, she presumed the rings were the same rings he had bought for his marriage to Bianca.

  ‘I am not that insensitive,’ he said coolly.

  So he was reading her mind as if he owned it too now. ‘And at least the dress was mine.’

  She sensed his sharp look, the slight tensing of his muscles as he caught the bleakness threading her tone. ‘You don’t like the dress?’

  Was he blind? ‘I love it. It’s the most romantic and beautiful wedding gown I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘And you look beautiful in it—bellissima,’ he extended huskily. ‘No one watching you come down the aisle to me was left wondering why it was you I married today.’

  ‘One more goal on your pride-saving agenda successfully accomplished?’

  Lifting her chin, Lizzy looked at him for the first time since they’d kissed as man and wife—then instantly wished that she’d kept her eyes lowered because he looked so bone-shiveringly breathtakingly devastating and perfect—the true handsome prince she had bagged for herself by foul means.

  A bitter little smile caught hold of her mouth. ‘Well, don’t look to me for congratulations because you’re not going to get any,’ she told him, turning her eyes away.

  ‘You feel cheated,’ he murmured.

  Of what? Lizzy wondered. Of choosing her own wedding dress? In truth she felt cheated of a lot of things today, not least the given right to choose her own husband, or having her best friend there to share her day with her, or seeing pride, not disapproval, on her father’s face.

  A sigh shot from her. ‘I’ve hurt and disappointed my father with all of this.’

  ‘And now you are in danger of disappointing me.’

  It was the way he said it that made Lizzy look back at him, wary tension uncoiling inside her when she saw the almost savage glint of anger hardening his face.

  ‘We made a deal,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘One where neither of us would deny the one basic ingredient that will make this marriage work.’

  He meant the mutual attraction. Lizzy pulled in a breath, her lips parting in readiness to say something cutting about that, but he stopped the words by reaching across the gap to press a set of cool fingers over her mouth.

  ‘Be careful, la mia moglie bella, that you don’t talk yourself into trouble with that unruly tongue of yours,’ he advised. ‘Your father will recover from his disappointment once he begins to consider the good fortune our marriage has blessed him with,’ he assured with hard cynical bite. ‘Just as you will learn to get over your disappointment in me as your husband because I intend to see to it that you do with the first bed and opportunity we get. And,’ he continued in a dark driven undertone without letting her eyes break contact with his, ‘I will reco
ver from my disappointment in you when you stop feeling sorry for yourself and remember just who you are now, Signora De Santis. For this name makes you my wife, my lover, the future mother of my children and the gracious custodian of the De Santis good name.’

  Wow, was all Lizzy could think when he finally fell into a simmering silence. Somewhere in this strange conversation they’d been having she’d hit a raw nerve when she hadn’t thought he had any!

  Lifting up her hand, she caught hold of his fingers and pulled them away from her mouth. ‘That was really good,’ she commended. ‘Quite breathtakingly arrogant and rightfully proud of your mighty fine self, in fact, and it should really have put me squarely in my lowly place.’

  ‘But it didn’t?’ He raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Lizzy shook her head, aware that her heart was pounding erratically, but unaware that she was still holding onto his fingers—or that those fingers had curled around hers.

  ‘You are still the guy who blackmailed me into marrying you to salve your ravaged pride and I am still the woman you paid to salve that ravaged pride!’

  ‘You believe that there are no other women out there who would have jumped eagerly into your shoes?’

  ‘I would imagine there are hundreds,’ Lizzy said coolly. ‘But aren’t you the one that told me you could not be bothered to hunt?’

  ‘Quick.’ He smiled—then tugged on her fingers. Next thing she was lying in a slither of bridal silk across his chest. Her surprised gasp had barely broken free of her lips before she received the full passionate onslaught of his kiss. And this time it was hot and hard and deeply probing, as if he was deliberately piling on the passion in each kiss by carefully calculated degrees. By the time he raised his head again Lizzy felt dazed and shaken, her breathing fast and thick. Her lips felt bruised and the way he ran a finger across their warm, pulsing surface was a source of mockery in itself.

  ‘As you see,’ he murmured softly, ‘I still do not need to hunt.’

  It was such a slap at the way she’d gone into the kiss without putting up a fight that Lizzy paled and scrambled off his lap. Her dress was dishevelled, and as she tried to smooth it with unsteady fingers she felt the sultry burn of his eyes as he watched her, felt the drumming pulse of his sexual domination and the worst feeling of all—his amusement.

  ‘I did warn you once, cara, that I am more experienced at these games than you are,’ he reminded her from his languid sprawl on the other side of the car. ‘Be a little wiser and stop trying to take me on.’

  The car slowed then, sending her eyes to the side window to see that they’d arrived back at the villa without her noticing. Though her biggest surprise was that she hadn’t known there was a different way into the villa other than via the lake. Now a huge pair of heavy iron gates were in the process of swinging open. The car glided through them and on through extensive gardens to pull to a smooth halt beneath a covered portico to the side of the house.

  She hadn’t dared to come outside while she’d been staying here because she hadn’t wanted any members of the press to snatch a picture of her from their siege position on the lake. But glancing towards the lake now as Luc helped her alight from the car, she was stunned to see that it was no longer there! All view of the lake had been totally blanked out by a wall of sturdy white canvas that had been erected along the cliff edge—she assumed to frustrate greedy camera lenses from taking pictures of the wedding celebration about to take place.

  The whole celebrity-style over-the-top show intimidated her from that moment onward. If Bianca had been here Lizzy would have taken it all in her stride with a dose of healthy humour to help her along. But then if Bianca had been here, she would have been the bride at this wedding and taking the sparkling centre of attention as her due, with Lizzy happy to fade into the background, as she liked to do.

  As it was, she wasn’t allowed to fade anywhere. She had to stand beside her new husband and welcome their guests in from the church.

  His guests, she reminded herself. His wedding day. None of her friends had been invited, just her father, whose disapproval still showed when he arrived and gave her a stiff hug.

  Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding, but all he saw when he looked at her was a woman like her mother, and there was no forgiveness in him at all. It was like being deserted by her only ally and she found she had to fight back the tears as she watched him turn his back on her and walk away.

  ‘Explain to me what the hell that was about,’ the man standing beside her demanded.

  But Lizzy just gave a silent shake of her head and blinked the tears away. A man like Luc would never understand what it felt like to be crushed beneath the weight of someone’s disapproval. The feeling would be as alien to him as—as feeling uncomfortable with the sensation he’d caused with his quick change of bride! In all the years since her mother had left them, Lizzy had tried her best to show none of her wayward traits. But as she stood here now in this beautiful villa, wearing this beautiful gown, feeling so rejected by the one person she should have been able to rely upon for support, she had to ask herself if spending her life trying to earn her father’s approval had just been a useless waste of her time.

  And her now very crushed heart.

  The endless stream of elegant guests kept on coming. She smiled, she endured the looks of cool interest, the polite comments and the sometimes not so polite. Hurt clung heavily to her chest while her face maintained its placid composure and Luc kept her close to him, with his arm strapped at an angle across her back so his hand could rest in the indentation of her waist.

  Eventually they began to circulate. No one got to speak to either of them individually. His hand remained a firm clamp at her waist. He was showing a united front and no amount of teasing from his closer friends about his possessive attitude to his bride could budge him from her side.

  They ate from a beautiful serve-yourself banquet—Lizzy nibbled sparingly, held her untouched glasses of bubbling champagne and endured the amused, mostly ironical speech from Luc’s best man with her eyes carefully lowered, Luc with a wry but complacent smile on his face.

  Nothing touched him, she noticed. The man had nerves of steel and no emotion at all. Yet she knew by the changing grip of his fingers on her waist that sometimes something violent erupted inside him, especially when they caught the edges of hushed conversations discussing Bianca and the fact that the poor jilted bride seemed to have slipped off the face of the earth.

  Was his response due to anger or pain? When she glanced up at his face, it, of course, revealed nothing.

  She caught fleeting glimpses of her father in the crowd and wanted to go and ask him if he’d heard from Matthew, but every time the thought hit, Luc was guiding her off in the opposite direction.

  The afternoon wore on with agonising slowness until she began to really feel the strain of maintaining her smile. So when Luc bent his head to tell her quietly that it was time for her to go and change out of her dress, she was so pathetically relieved to be given an excuse to escape she didn’t even bother to ask him why she needed to change.

  Carla the giggly maid was waiting for her when she reached her bedroom. She provided the answers as she helped her out of her wedding dress.

  ‘It is such a shame that you must remove this beautiful gown so soon, signora.’ Carla sighed wistfully. ‘But with your new clothes all packed in your bags and already on their way, it must be so exciting and romantic to be swept away by the signor to your secret honeymoon destination.’

  Honeymoon—?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OH, PLEASE don’t, Lizzy thought helplessly, so horrified that Luc was intending to take this romantic stuff that far that her lips came together with a snap to stop the groaned protest from slipping out.

  But the protest glowed in her eyes as she came back downstairs dressed in a soft green wraparound dress that clung lovingly to her figure and swirled around her knees.

  Luc was already waiting at the bottom of the stair
s for her. He had changed too, into a soft coffee-coloured linen suit and a simple tee shirt that made him look cool and casual and superbly stylish and just too darn sexy to be fair.

  He looked up at her and something flared in his eyes that made her steps falter as her heart gave a fluttering stir. Then the expression was gone and he was holding out a hand in a silent command for her to continue down the rest of the stairs.

  When she came close enough, he took hold of her hand and drew her towards him. His lips arrived at her temple; she felt the heat from his body warm against hers.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he husked.

  So are you, Lizzy thought helplessly, but she didn’t say it. ‘Where are we going?’ she whispered instead, sharply aware of all the people standing around watching them.

  ‘Where all newly married couples go.’ He took the cream jacket she had draped across her arm. ‘Somewhere we can be alone.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be alone with you.’ She frowned as he draped the jacket across her shoulders.

  ‘You don’t? I am devastated.’

  He just sounded sardonic to her. ‘I thought we would be staying here. Can’t we just stay here?’ She glanced up at him anxiously. ‘I’m used to being here now. It’s—comfortable.’

  In the process of gently releasing her hair from inside the jacket, Luc paused to look down at her, a strange expression swirling around in his dark golden eyes.

  Then the smile was back. ‘It is traditional to change venue.’

  Lizzy stepped a little closer to him, her voice a hurried confiding whisper aimed at the taut solid skin at his throat. ‘It’s silly.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The rest of this.’ Her eyes gave a quick restless flick of the waiting crowd. ‘If we’re supposed to be leaving, won’t they all be leaving too?’