The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain(21)

‘I liked and appreciated him but I never wanted him that way,’ Lizzie admitted with regret. ‘I still feel guilty about it because I was too inexperienced to realise that he was just the wrong man for me...and my rejections hurt him.’

‘He seems happy enough now.’ Cesare toyed with another piece of chicken.

Encouraged to think that further treats were in the pipeline, Archie got up on his haunches and begged.

‘Oh, my goodness, look what he’s doing!’ Lizzie exclaimed, sitting forward with wide eyes to watch her pet. ‘He can beg...I didn’t even know he could do that.’

Cesare rewarded Archie with the chicken because he had made his mistress smile and laugh.

‘Of course, I’ve never fed him like that. If he’d come to me for food when I was eating my father would have called that bad behaviour and he would have blamed Archie. I kept Archie outside most of the time.’

‘I suspect Archie would’ve been clever enough to keep a low profile around your dad,’ Cesare surmised.

‘Did you ever have a pet?’

‘I would have liked one when I was a kid,’ Cesare confided. ‘But I was constantly moving between my grandmother’s home and Goffredo’s apartment and a pet wasn’t viable.’

‘Did you organise all this food?’ she asked, smothering a yawn.

‘The staff are in bed. I don’t expect service here late at night,’ he told her quietly. ‘I emptied the refrigerator.’

‘And let Archie up to lure me out of the bathroom,’ Lizzie guessed, settling their discarded plates on the low table and clambering in the far side of the bed to say apologetically, ‘I’m tired.’

‘Brides aren’t supposed to get tired, particularly not when they’ve been lazing in the bath for hours,’ Cesare informed her, amusement dancing in his dark golden eyes.

He could still steal her breath away at one glance, she acknowledged wearily as she closed her eyes. It was, as he had termed it, ‘just sex’ and she had to learn to see that side of their relationship in the same casual light. She wondered if that would be a challenge because she was already drifting dangerously close to liking him.

‘Archie can sleep under the bed,’ Cesare decreed. ‘He’s not sharing it with us.’

‘We can’t do anything, you know,’ she muttered in a sudden embarrassed surge, her cheeks colouring. ‘I’m...I’m sore...’

‘It’s not a problem.’

Relieved, she smiled and closed her eyes. As he stripped by the side of the bed Cesare studied her relaxed features and thought, Mission accomplished, honeymoon back on track. It was the same way he handled problems at work, mentally ticking off items on a to-do list while always seeking the most successful conclusion. But as he slid into bed beside Lizzie he reached for her and it wasn’t a pre-programmed task. He reasoned that she was a very restless sleeper and if he left her free to move around she would annoy him.

Strangely enough, he acknowledged, in spite of the bathroom shenanigans, she hadn’t annoyed him once. But then she wasn’t the greedy, grasping type of woman he had deemed her to be. Why had he been so biased? After all, he had a stepmother, a grandmother and three sisters, none of whom were rich or avaricious. Had he deliberately sought out lovers who only cared about his wealth? And if he was guilty of that, had it been because he genuinely only needed carefree sex with a woman? Or because he preferred to avoid the possibility of anything more serious developing? Almost ten years had passed since Serafina had waltzed down the aisle to her prince. He refused to think that she had burned him so badly that he had declined to risk getting deeply involved with anyone else. Yet he hadn’t even got an engagement or a live-in relationship under his belt during those ten long years.

In the darkness, Cesare’s wide, sensual mouth framed a silent but vehemently felt swear word. He did not appreciate the oddity of having such thoughts about the sort of thing he had never ever felt the need to think about before. It was that ring on his wedding finger that was getting to him, he brooded impatiently. It was feeling married and possibly just a tiny bit trapped...with Archie snoring beside the bed and Lizzie nestled up against him like a second skin.

Just like him, she was in this marriage for the end game and the prize, he reminded himself squarely. It wasn’t a normal marriage but, if they planned to conceive a child, the marriage had to work on a daily basis and why should physical intimacy always lead to a closer involvement than he wanted? The answer was that sex didn’t need to lead to anything more complex, he reminded himself stubbornly, certainly nothing that would break his rules of never getting more closely involved with a woman. And it was no wonder that he was feeling unsettled when he was in such unfamiliar territory. He hadn’t tried to please a woman since Serafina and he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself trying to please Lizzie, was he?

Archie’s snores filtered up in direct disagreement.





CHAPTER EIGHT

CESARE GLANCED AT his wife and then at the party of men watching her every move in a pantomime version of dropped jaws as she alighted from his Ferrari. She was a lissom figure in a turquoise sundress, her gorgeous silvery mane blowing back from her delicately flushed face in the breeze, her shapely legs tapering down to impossibly delicate ankles and high-heeled sandals. He pushed up his sunglasses and gave the men a warning look before closing his hand round Lizzie’s in a display of all-Italian male possessiveness that he could not resist.

Lizzie sank down at the table in the piazza and the waiter was at their side within seconds, doubtless drawn by one glimpse of Cesare’s sleek sophistication. He had an air of hauteur and command that got them fast service everywhere they went and it was so inbred in him to expect immediate attention that he rarely even noticed the fact, although she was very sure he would notice if he didn’t receive it.

Now she feasted her attention on his lean bronzed face. She was magnetised by his stunning dark golden eyes as they rested on her and wondered what he was thinking. She was always wondering what he was thinking, had to bite her tongue not to ask, but it was hardly surprising that she was living in a state of constant befuddlement because their business-based marriage of convenience had become something else entirely...at least for her...

They had now been in Italy for a solid month. Cesare had made several business trips. He had flown his family and Chrissie in to visit for one weekend and the two days had passed in a whirlwind of chattering liveliness and warmth. Lizzie had never been so happy before and it scared her because she knew she was nourishing hopes that would ultimately lead to disappointment and the stark biting pain of rejection. What? Only possibly? jibed her more truthful self. Lizzie’s emotions had got involved the very first night they’d slept together and she’d wakened in the morning to find herself secure in Cesare’s arms.

For four whole weeks she had been living an idyllic life with an attentive husband, who was also a passionate lover, by her side. He had taken her out sightseeing, shopping, out to dinner in sun-baked piazzas, fashionable squares, and to wander through old churches lit by candles and the sunlight piercing the stained-glass windows. Today they had walked the seventeenth-century ramparts of Lucca. Her fingers toyed momentarily with the slender gold watch encircling her wrist, her most recent gift. If he went on a trip or even noticed that she lacked something he considered essential, he bought it for her. He was incredibly generous in bed and out of it. He was curious about her, knew everything there was to know about her childhood. His interest was intoxicating because she had never seen herself as being particularly interesting. In fact, being the focus of attention of a very handsome, entertaining male had made her see herself in a kinder, warmer light.

In truth, when Cesare Sabatino was faking being a husband, he faked with the skill and panache of a professional, she conceded ruefully. He hadn’t asked her to fall in love with him. It wouldn’t occur to him that bringing an ordinary woman out to beautiful Tuscany and treating her like a much appreciated, highly desirable wife while keeping her in luxury might turn her head. But Lizzie knew her head had been thoroughly turned. She found him fascinating. He was a spellbinding mix of rapier-sharp intellect and disconcerting emotional depth and, of course, she had fallen head over heels for him. Archie now rejoiced in a collar with his name picked out in diamonds and a four-poster bed of his own. How could she not love the man who had given her adored pet those quite unnecessary, ridiculously expensive but deeply touching things?

And the result was that now she was terrified of falling pregnant, fearing that that announcement would ensure that their marriage cooled back down to a businesslike arrangement in which Cesare would expect her to be terribly civilised and behave as if she didn’t give a damn about him. Within days of the wedding she had had the proof that she had not yet conceived and Cesare had just laughed and said that they had all the time in the world, as if it truly didn’t matter to him if it took months to reach that goal.

‘What if there’s something wrong with one of us and it doesn’t happen?’ she had asked him anxiously.