Michelle Reid - The De Santis Marriage

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 much to guess what had been going on! Did you know about what they were planning to do, Elizabeth—did you?’

The fierce accusation straightened Lizzy’s backbone. ‘ No ,’ she denied adamantly. ‘I’m as shocked about this as you are!’

‘Well, I hope that is true,’ Mrs Moreno said coldly. ‘For I will never forgive you if you played along with this inexcusable thing!’

‘I thought you meant she’d gone away with Vito,’ Lizzy murmured dazedly.

‘Vito? He’s her cousin! Are you trying to make this situation worse than it already is?’

Thoroughly chastened by the appalled response, Lizzy could only mumble out an apology.

‘Now someone is going to have to break the news to Luciano,’ Bianca’s mother sobbed. ‘Bianca has left him a note but Luciano went to his Lake Como villa last night to prepare for our arrival tomorrow and my husband has left for the city to see to some business this morning—he doesn’t even know yet what his wicked daughter has done to ruin our lives!’

The Villa De Santis stood on top of a rocky outcrop, its pale lemon walls kissed by the softening light of the afternoon sun.

Lizzy’s stomach gave a nauseous flutter as she stepped from the water taxi onto the villa’s private jetty with its newly painted ribs standing out in the brilliant sunshine against the darkness of the older wood. Another boat was already moored there, a sleek, racy-looking thing that completely demoralised the water taxi as it nudged in beside it.

Bianca’s father had arranged for a car to bring her as far as Bellagio. They’d discussed if they should ring Luc to break the news to him, then decided he should be told face to face. At first Giorgio Moreno was going to make the trip himself, but he’d looked so ill that Lizzy had offered to come in his place.

His heart wasn’t good and she felt responsible. How could she not feel responsible when it was her brother who’d caused all of this? But after her own utter stupidity of the night before the last thing she wanted to do right now was to come face to face with Luc De Santis.

The old quiver struck as she walked towards the iron gates that she assumed would lead to steps up to the villa. Behind her, she could hear the water taxi already moving away, its engines growling as it churned up the glinting blue water, leaving her feeling as if she had just been marooned on the worst place on earth.

A man appeared from out of the shadows on the other side of the gate, stopping her in her tracks with his piercing dark eyes that looked her up and down. She had to look a mess because she certainly felt one with her hair hanging loose round her pale face. And she was still wearing the same green top and white capris she’d pulled on so hurriedly this morning when Bianca’s mamma had knocked on her door.

‘May I help you, signorina ?’ the man questioned in coolly polite Italian.

Passing her nervous tongue across her lips, ‘I’ve come with a letter for Signor De Santis,’ Lizzy explained. ‘M-my name is Elizabeth Hadley.’

He nodded his head and produced a cell phone, his dark eyes not leaving her for a second while he spoke quietly to whoever was listening on the other end. Then with another nod he unlocked the gate and opened it. ‘You can go up, signorina ,’ he sanctioned.

With a murmured thanks Lizzy was about to step past him when a sudden thought made her stop. ‘I-I will need a water taxi back to Bellagio,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t think to ask the other one to wait.’

‘I will see to it when you are ready to leave,’ he assured her.

Offering another husky ‘thank you’, Lizzy continued on her way to discover a set of age-worn stone steps cut into the rock face. At the top of the steps she found soft green lawns and carefully tended gardens and a path leading to a stone terrace beyond which stood the villa with its long windows thrown open to the softest of breezes coming off the lake.

Beautiful, she thought, but that was as far as her observations went. She was too uptight, too anxious—scared witless, if she was going to be honest.

Another man was waiting for her on the terrace. He offered her a small stately bow and invited her to follow him. It was cool inside the villa, the decoration a mix of warm colours hung with beautiful tapestries and paintings in ornate gold frames. The man led the way to a pair of heavy wood doors, knocked, then opened one of them before stepping to one side in a silent invitation for her to pass through.

Needing to take in a deep breath before she could make herself go any further, Lizzy walked past the servant into a beautiful room with high stucco ceilings and long narrow windows that flooded the room with soft golden light. The walls were pale, the furniture dark and solid like the richly polished floor beneath her feet. Shelves lined with books filled narrow alcoves; a heavy stone fireplace dominated one wall. As she spun her gaze over sumptuously ancient dark red velvet chairs and elegant sofas she finally settled on the huge heavily carved desk set between two of the windows—and the man who was standing tall and still behind it.

Tension instantly grabbed hold of her throat and sent her heart sinking to her toes. He already knew about Bianca, Lizzy realised. It was stamped right there on his grimly cold face.

‘You have a letter for me, I believe,’ Luc De Santis prompted. No greeting, no attempt whatsoever to make this easier for her.

But then why should he—? ‘H-how did you know?’ Lizzy dared to ask him.

His eyes made a brief flick down her front, then away again. ‘She was to be my wife. The position made her vulnerable to a certain kind of low-life out on the make, so of course I had a security team watching her.’

But they didn’t stop her running away with Matthew? Lizzy would have loved to have asked the question but the way he was standing there in a steel-dark razor-sharp business suit and with his face carved into such cold, hard angles, the question remained just a thick lump in her throat as she made herself walk forward, feeling as if she were stepping on sharp needles all the way.

Coming to a halt in front of the desk, she set down the letter. Her heart was pounding in her ears as he held her still with his gaze for a taut second or two before he reached out and picked the letter up, then let yet another few seconds stretch before he finally broke the envelope seal.

After that there was nothing, just a long, long numbing silence while he stood behind his desk reading the words Bianca had used to jilt him with, and Lizzy stood with her eyes fixed helplessly on his lean dark face, aware that the power of his innate pride had to be the only thing stopping him from diminishing to a used and broken man.

‘I’m—sorry,’ she mumbled, knowing it was a wincingly inadequate thing to say but—what else was there for her to say?

He gave a curt nod of his head, eyes like gold crystal set between heavy black eyelashes still fixed on the single sheet of paper even as he slowly set it down on the desk.

‘You were offered no forewarning of this?’

Lizzy felt her nails bite into the tender skin of her palms as she closed them into tense, anxious fists. ‘Nothing,’ she answered.

‘Her family?’

She gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘Y-you were there last night—she looked radiant. She—’

‘My future bride basking in the glory of her good fortune,’ he drawled in a cold, mocking lilt.

Pressing her lips together, Lizzy lowered her gaze 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.