The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain(24)

‘I’m very tired,’ Lizzie said stiffly.

Cesare followed her into the bedroom, unzipping her dress without being asked. Lizzie let the dress glide down to her feet, stepped out of it and, regal as a queen in her underwear, walked into the bathroom without turning her head even to look at him.

He knew when he was getting the silent treatment. She was sulking and that was childish. He had never had any patience for sulks. He pulled a pair of jeans out of a drawer and stripped off his suit. Casually clad, he noted the beady little eyes watching him from below the canopy of the four-poster pet bed and surrendered. ‘Come on, Archie...time for something to eat...’

Archie limped across the floor. The cast had been removed from his broken leg only the day before but Archie still thought he was a three-legged dog and had yet to trust the fourth leg to take his weight again. Cesare scooped the little dog up at the top of the stairs and carried him down to the kitchen where he maintained a one-way dialogue with Archie while feeding them both as he raided the fridge.

Teeth gritted, Lizzie emerged from the bathroom to a frustratingly empty bedroom. She had decided that it was beyond cowardly not to ask Cesare why he hadn’t warned her that the benefit was being staged at his ex-girlfriend’s home. She had not been prepared for that confrontation and was convinced she would have made a more serious effort to look her very best had she known she would be meeting the gorgeous brunette. The problem was that she was jealous, she acknowledged ruefully, green and raw and hurting with ferocious jealousy. She looked out of the landing window at the dark silhouette of the old stone barn and her heart clenched as if it had been squeezed dry. Cesare had made love to Serafina there, love, not sex. He had loved Serafina, cared about her, wanted to marry her. Yet Serafina had turned her back on his love in favour of wealth and social status. Having achieved those staples, she now wanted Cesare back.

Pulling a silky wrap on over a nightdress, Lizzie headed downstairs. Cesare was sprawled on a sofa in the airy living room. In worn jeans and an unbuttoned blue shirt, he was a long sleek bronzed figure and heartbreakingly beautiful. Her heart hammered out a responsive and nervous tattoo as she paused in the doorway.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked abruptly.

Cesare always avoided dramatic scenes with women and walking out on the risk of one came as naturally as breathing to him. One glance at Lizzie’s set, angry face and the eyes gleaming like green witch fire in her flushed face was sufficient to warn him of what was coming. Springing lithely upright, he strolled out past her and swiped the car keys off the cabinet in the hall. ‘I’m going for a drive...don’t wait up for me. I’ll be late,’ he spelled out flatly.

Taken aback, Lizzie moved fast to place herself in his path to the front door. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Perfectly. I don’t want to argue with you, cara. I’m not in the mood. We’re flying to Lionos tomorrow and Athene will be joining us. That is enough of a challenge for the present.’

It was a shock for Lizzie to register how cold the smooth, perfect planes of his lean dark face could look. His spectacular eyes were veiled by his thick lashes, his superb bone structure taut, his shapely mouth, defined by a dark shadow of stubble, a hard line of restraint. Alarm bells sounded in her head. ‘You could’ve warned me that we were going to Serafina’s house and that she would be our hostess.’

‘I am not going to argue with you about Serafina,’ Cesare asserted, his jawline clenching hard as granite.

‘I’m not arguing with you,’ Lizzie reasoned curtly. ‘And why won’t you discuss her with me?’

Velvet black lashes flew up on scorching golden eyes. ‘She’s none of your business, nothing to do with you.’

Lizzie flinched and leant back against the door to stay upright. She felt like someone trying to walk a tightrope in the dark and she was terrified of falling. ‘She spent ten minutes talking to me outside on the terrace and made me feel very much as if she was my business.’

Feverish colour laced his incredible cheekbones. ‘You...discussed me with...her?’ he framed wrathfully.

Lizzie found it interesting that, instead of being flattered as Serafina had suggested, Cesare was absolutely outraged by the idea. ‘What do you think?’ She hesitated, hovering between him and the door. ‘I only wanted to know why you didn’t mention that she would be entertaining us.’

Cesare ground his perfect white teeth together because he had thought of mentioning it, only to run aground on the recollection that theirs was not a normal marriage. They were not in a relationship where he was bound to make such personal explanations, were they? He focused on Lizzie’s pale face on which colour stood out only on her cheeks. She looked hurt. He saw that hurt and instinctively recoiled from it, frustration rippling through him. He didn’t want to share what had happened earlier that evening with Lizzie, not only because it would rouse her suspicions, but also because it was tacky and he refused to bring that tacky element into what had proved to be a glorious honeymoon.

‘Serafina is very much part of the local scenery. Many of my friends are also hers. I have no reason to avoid her. Seeing her is no big deal,’ he delineated stiffly, reluctantly, willing to throw that log on the fire if it satisfied her and closed the subject.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Lizzie whispered unhappily. ‘If it had been no big deal, you would’ve mentioned it.’

‘You know me so well?’ he derided.

Lizzie paled even more. ‘I thought I did.’

Cesare closed his hands firmly to her ribcage and lifted her bodily away from the door.

‘If you walk out, I’m not going to Lionos with you!’ Lizzie flung the worst threat she could think to make in an effort to stop him in his tracks.

‘In what fantasy world are you living that you think you can threaten me?’ Cesare breathed, freezing with the door ajar so that cooler night air filtered in to cool her now clammy skin.

‘I only wanted you to explain.’

‘I have nothing to explain,’ Cesare parried drily. ‘But you will definitely be telling me at some point what Serafina said to you.’

‘Honesty has to be a two-way thing to work. We’ve been living like a married couple.’

‘Because we are married.’

‘You know what I mean...’ Lizzie hesitated, reluctant to probe deeper but driven by turbulent emotional forces she could not suppress. ‘You’ve been treating me as though I’m really your wife.’

There it was—the truth Cesare had hoped to evade because he didn’t know how that had happened, didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t even know how he felt about that development. Why did women always have to drag unmentionable issues out into the open and do them to death at a time of their choosing? How the hell had he got himself into such an untenable situation? He had started out fine, he acknowledged broodingly, laying down the rules, seeing what made sense, knowing what he should not do lest it lead to exactly this situation. And somehow it had all gone to hell in a hand basket in spite of all that careful pre-planning, all that practical knowhow and knowledge of the female sex. And here he was trapped as he had never wanted to be trapped...

‘I want to know what Serafina said to you.’

‘That she wants you back, that you married me to punish her, that I wasn’t educated enough to hold you... Oh, yes,’ Lizzie recounted and then, with a ghastly attempt at an amused smile, added, ‘and that this was your mutual dream house, planned by you both on the wet night you made love in the barn...’

Cesare’s eyes flashed flaming gold, his outrage unconcealed. He closed a hard hand to the edge of the door as if to emphasise the fact that he was still leaving. ‘Madonna diavolo! She shouldn’t have involved you in this.’

At those words, at that suggestion that there was an involvement that she was unaware of, Lizzie swore her heart cracked right down the middle. ‘No,’ she agreed woodenly, because it was true.

Cesare steeled himself. He knew he had to speak, could not comprehend why ESP was suddenly warning him to shut up and say nothing. ‘We don’t have a genuine marriage. We are not a couple in the true sense of the word. We both know that...’

He paused as if he was hoping she would leap in and say something but Lizzie couldn’t have found her voice had her life depended on it. At that moment she felt as if her life’s blood were draining away in a pool on the floor and that dramatic image made her feel dizzy.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she mumbled, knowing that she was lying, knowing that sleep had never been further from her mind, but it seemed so incredibly important in that silence to act as if she were still able to function normally even if it was a complete lie to try and save face.

‘This is all my fault,’ Cesare breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Don’t think I’m not aware of that. I shouldn’t have brought something as volatile as sex into the equation.’

‘And you were still doing it...only a few hours ago,’ she framed unevenly.

Unusually indecisive, Cesare hovered in the rushing silence. Archie was looking at him from across the hall as if he had two heads, which absolutely had to be his imagination playing tricks on him, he reasoned wildly. He felt sick, he felt bad, he felt... No, he was being dangerously emotional and he knew what emotion did to him: it made him irrational and reckless and he wasn’t going to go there again...ever! He was taking the right approach in correcting a serious mistake before it did any more damage. Aside of that aspect, they were both consenting adults.