In the midst of the noise and excitement, Ellie suddenly noticed two blondes wielding their camera phones and giggling like drains as they urged Rio to look at them and smile. And it was them, unmistakably the identical twins who had gambolled naked on Rio’s bed in that Dharian hotel two years earlier. Ellie’s throat convulsed. She couldn’t have been mistaken, she thought angrily. They were highly noticeable women, blonde, beautiful twins, whippet thin and impossibly sparkly and effervescent in a way that was seen as ultrafeminine. Rio had actually invited the twins to their wedding. Ellie paled and compressed bloodless lips while the perplexed photographer urged her to smile.
She settled almost dizzily into the limousine beside Rio and looked at him. How could he do this to her? How could he be so insensitive to her feelings? Those blondes reminded her of the most humiliating moment of her life. Before Rio had opened the door to that hotel room she had been on a high, feeling like a sexy, attractive woman for the first time ever and ready to move forward, no longer feeling like the drab, clever redhead whom few men approached. And her first glimpse of the giggly twins on his bed had cut her like a knife, making her feel ridiculous and pathetic and useless.
‘Cosa c’e di sbagliato? What’s wrong?’ Rio asked as the car moved off to whisk them back to the palazzo where the reception was being held.
And Ellie didn’t know what to say. After all, he was entitled to a sexual past and in marrying him she had accepted that past. Exes at a wedding, well, not exactly what you wanted but not always avoidable either. But did the twins recognise her as the shocked woman in that doorway two years back? And would they mention that to anyone? Have a good giggle about it? She cringed inside herself and said nothing.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she assured him quietly. ‘It’s just all the wedding hullabaloo. When it comes all together, it leaves you feeling shell-shocked.’
‘I didn’t invite Becky and Roz,’ Rio breathed impatiently, cutting through her pretence.
So, he had noticed the twins. Well, really, how could he have missed them bouncing up and down with excitement only a few feet from him, determined to be noticed by him? Yet he had somehow contrived not to look once in their direction, nor had he shown the smallest hint of self-consciousness. But then why would he?
‘Is that their names?’ Ellie queried with a wooden lack of expression.
‘I told the wedding planner to contact Rashad for the list of our university friends because I haven’t kept up with their addresses,’ Rio explained. ‘They were invited to your sister’s wedding and that’s probably how they ended up at ours. If I’d taken a greater personal interest, I would’ve left them off the list.’
If anything, Ellie had grown even stiffer. ‘Of course, if they’re uni friends, why would you leave them out?’
‘Ellie, you’re putting out more sub-zero chills than a freezer,’ Rio said with sardonic bite. ‘But I can’t change the past and neither can you.’
‘I didn’t realise the twins had ever been actual friends of yours,’ Ellie admitted stonily, not best pleased to hear that information. ‘Probably because I’ve never slept with any of my male friends.’
‘Sadly, I wasn’t quite so particular,’ Rio countered in the same measured tone. ‘And neither were they. In those days I could only cope with casual—’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘And why was that?’
Rio squared his broad shoulders and settled back with a sigh. ‘I set up a property venture when I was nineteen. Beppe was pressuring me to go to university to study business but I thought I could take a shortcut to success,’ he admitted wryly. ‘My business partner, Jax, had the security of a wealthy background. The property market was booming and we were doing very well, which is when I met a gorgeous brunette. I fell in love with Franca, asked her to marry me and we moved in together.’
Ellie dragged in a startled breath, for what he had just admitted was the very last thing she had expected to hear from him. After all, she had simply assumed that Rio had always played the field without ever pausing to settle on one particular woman. Learning different shook her up, learning that he had found that one particular woman years earlier and presumably lost her again filled her with insecurity.
Rio skimmed narrowed dark eyes over the pale, still triangle of her face and his shapely mouth twisted. ‘The property market stalled and I was overstretched. I still believe I could have made it through but Jax pulled out and hung me out to dry...and Franca, who had been screwing him behind my back and who very much liked the luxuries of life, ran off with him.’
Ellie winced and dropped her gaze, imagining the sting of that double blow of financial loss and treachery. ‘I’m really sorry that that happened to you,’ she murmured ruefully. ‘It must’ve been very hard to pick yourself up after that experience.’
‘It taught me a valuable lesson. At university I learned enough to ensure that I would never leave myself that vulnerable in business again,’ he confided. ‘I succeeded but after Franca, I avoided any kind of serious involvement with women. What the twins offered suited me at the time. No strings.’
‘I can understand that,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘You know...er...that night at Polly’s wedding, after we parted... I’ve always wondered what happened—’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Rio cut in succinctly, his tone cold as ice water.
And in telling her that he had told her everything there was to know, she acknowledged in consternation, just as suddenly furious with him. She had rejected him that night and had raced back to her room at the palace to take refuge in time-honoured tears and self-recriminations. But Rio had taken solace where he could find it and what right had she to object? Finding that out annoyed and disturbed her though. Rio could divide sex from emotion and treat sex like an athletic pursuit and he had done so for years before he met her. Could Rio really change? Could he switch back to the young, optimistic male he must once have been when he fell in love with Franca? And what exactly did it take to make Rio fall in love?
Rio was watching Ellie as the limo drove through the palazzo gates. Her delicate little profile was set, her brain running at a mile a minute on thoughts he didn’t want to share. Maybe he should have lied. But lies would catch up with him sooner or later. Did she realise that she really wanted him to be perfect? Prince Charming straight out of a fairy story? And that he could never be perfect? Frustration and growing anger raged through his lean, powerful frame. He could not pretend to be something he was not in an attempt to impress her. And why would he want to anyway? Ellie would smell a rat sooner than most women because she was always looking below the surface, weighing pros and cons, picking up on inconsistencies, seeking out flaws. And he had still to confess his biggest flaw of all to a woman who had chattered animatedly about how her discovery of Beppe would now enable her to chart the previously unknown paternal half of her medical history.
In the greeting line, Becky and Roz made much of Rio and their previous acquaintance while acting as if they had never laid eyes on Ellie before. They didn’t recognise her, she registered with relief, didn’t remember her at all from that fleeting glimpse of her in the hotel doorway that night. But instead of being relieved at that realisation, Ellie was angry with Rio and angry with herself. She had agonised so much over that night and she had been so hurt but their backfired encounter had not had a similar effect on Rio’s tough hide. She needed to guard herself from being too emotional and vulnerable around him. She had to toughen up, she told herself urgently.
Polly whisked her off after the meal. ‘What on earth’s wrong between you and Rio?’ she demanded.
‘There’s nothing wrong—’
‘Even Rashad’s noticed the atmosphere and to be honest he’s not usually that quick to notice that sort of stuff,’ her sister admitted.
And Ellie spilled the whole story from its start two years earlier to the presence of the twins at the wedding. She was too upset to hold it all in any longer and Polly’s shocked face spoke for her. It was several minutes before she could even move her sister on from repeatedly saying ‘Both of them?’ as if she had never heard or dreamt of such behaviour before. Her attitude did nothing to improve Ellie’s mood.
‘And that night you met...?’ Polly pressed. ‘He told you that?’
‘Yes, Polly,’ Ellie confirmed wearily. ‘I’ve married an unashamed man whore.’
‘If Rashad had ever done anything like that, nothing would persuade him to admit it to me,’ Polly declared wryly. ‘But at least Rio is honest, well, brutally so.’
‘I think he was just thoroughly fed up with me asking awkward questions.’
‘I suspect he’s already heard more than enough about that night and you shot him down in flames, which is not the sort of treatment he’s used to receiving from women,’ Polly pointed out grudgingly in Rio’s defence. ‘Let it go, Ellie. It’s in the past and you weren’t dating him or anything, so you can’t fairly hold it against him. He didn’t cheat on you. As for those blondes, ignore them, forget they’re here!’