The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

‘Yes, I’m Lizzie Whitaker...’

Only the British could take a pretty name like Elisabetta and shorten it to something so commonplace, Cesare decided irritably. ‘I’m Cesare Sabatino.’

Her jade eyes widened. His foreign-sounding name was meaningless to her ears because she barely recognised a syllable of it. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that...’

His beautifully sensual mouth quirked. ‘You don’t speak Italian?’

‘The odd word, not much. Are you Italian?’ Lizzie asked, feeling awkward as soon as she realised that he somehow knew that her mother had been of Italian extraction. Francesca had actually planned to raise her daughters to be bilingual but Brian Whitaker had objected vehemently to the practice as soon as his children began using words he couldn’t understand and from that point on English had become the only language in their home.

‘Sì, I’m Italian,’ Cesare confirmed, sliding a lean brown hand into his jacket to withdraw a business card and present it to her. The extraordinary grace of his every physical gesture also ensnared her attention and she had to force her gaze down to the card.

Unfortunately, his name was no more comprehensible to Lizzie when she saw it printed. ‘Your name’s Caesar,’ she pronounced with some satisfaction.

A muscle tugged at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘Not Caesar. We’re not in ancient Rome. It’s Chay-zar-ray,’ he sounded out with perfect diction, his exotic accent underlining every syllable with a honeyed mellifluence that spiralled sinuously round her to create the strangest sense of dislocation.

‘Chay-zar-ray,’ she repeated politely while thinking that it was a heck of a fussy mouthful for a first name and that Caesar would have been much more straightforward. ‘And you’re here because...?’

Cesare stiffened, innate aggression powering him at that facetious tone. He was not accustomed to being prompted to get to the point faster and as if the dog had a sensor tracking his mood it began growling soft and low. ‘May we go indoors to discuss that?’

Bemused by the effect he was having on her and fiercely irritated by his take-charge manner, Lizzie lifted her chin. ‘Couldn’t we just talk here? This is the middle of my working day,’ she told him truthfully.

Cesare gritted his perfect white teeth and shifted almost imperceptibly closer. The dog loosed a warning snarl and clamped his teeth to the corner of his cashmere overcoat, pulling at it. Cesare sent a winging glance down at the offending animal.

‘Archie, no!’ Lizzie intervened. ‘I’m afraid he’s very protective of me.’

Archie tugged and tugged at the corner of the overcoat and failed to shift Cesare an inch further away from his quarry. To the best of his ability Cesare ignored the entire canine assault.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Archie!’ Lizzie finally exclaimed, crouching down to physically detach the dog’s jaw from the expensive cloth, noting in dismay that a small tear had been inflicted and cherishing little hope that the damage would not be noted.

Whoever he was, Cesare Sabatino wore clothing that looked incredibly expensive and fitted too well to be anything other than individually designed for its wearer. He wore a faultlessly tailored black suit below the coat and his highly polished shoes were marred only by the skiff of mud that continually covered the yard at damp times of the year. He looked like a high-powered businessman, tycoon or some such thing. Why on earth was such a man coming to visit the farm?

‘Are you from our bank?’ Lizzie asked abruptly.

‘No. I am a businessman,’ Cesare admitted calmly.

‘You’re here to see my father for some reason?’ Lizzie prompted apprehensively.

‘No...I’m here to see you,’ Cesare framed succinctly as she scrambled upright clutching the still-growling dog to her chest.

‘Me?’ Lizzie exclaimed in astonishment, her gaze colliding with glittering eyes that gleamed like highly polished gold, enhanced by the thick black velvet fringe of his long lashes. Below her clothes, her nipples pinched almost painfully tight and a flare of sudden heat darted down into her pelvis, making her feel extremely uncomfortable. ‘Why on earth would you want to see me? Oh, come indoors, if you must,’ she completed wearily. ‘But I warn you, it’s a mess.’

Trudging to the side of the house, Lizzie kicked off her boots and thrust the door open on the untidy kitchen.

Cesare’s nostrils flared as he scanned the cluttered room, taking in the pile of dishes heaped in the sink and the remains of someone’s meal still lying on the pine table. Well, he certainly wouldn’t be marrying her for her housekeeping skills, he reflected grimly as the dog slunk below the table to continue growling unabated and his reluctant hostess removed her coat and yanked off her woolly hat before hurriedly clearing the table and yanking out a chair for him.

‘Coffee...or tea?’ Lizzie enquired.

Cesare’s entire attention was still locked to the wealth of silver-coloured silky hair that, freed from the woolly hat, now tumbled round her shoulders. It was gorgeous in spite of the odd murky brown tips of colour that damaged the effect. Dip-dying, he thought dimly, vaguely recalling the phrase being used by one of his team who had showed up at the office one day with ludicrously colourful half-blonde, half-pink locks. He blinked, black lashes long as fly swats momentarily concealing his bemused gaze.

‘Coffee,’ he replied, feeling that he was being very brave and polite in the face of the messy kitchen and standards of hygiene that he suspected might be much lower than he was used to receiving.

In a graceful movement, he doffed his coat and draped it across the back of a chair. Lizzie filled the kettle at the sink and put it on the hotplate on the ancient coal-fired cooking range while taking in the full effect of her visitor’s snazzy appearance. He looked like a city slicker who belonged on a glossy magazine cover, the sort of publication that showed how fashion-conscious men should dress. To a woman used to men wearing dirty, often unkempt clothing suitable for outdoor work, he had all the appeal of a fantasy. He really was physically beautiful in every possible way and so unfamiliar was she with that level of male magnetism that she was challenged to drag her eyes from his lean, powerful figure.

Dredging her thoughts from the weird sticking point they had reached, she went to the door of the lounge. A businessman, she reminded herself doggedly. Successful businessmen—and he looked very successful—were cold-blooded, calculating individuals, ready to do anything for profit and divorced from sentiment. He certainly emanated that arrogant vibe with his polished image that was so totally inappropriate for a male visiting a working farm. ‘Dad? We have a visitor. Do you want tea?’

‘A visitor?’ Brian Whitaker rose with a frown from his chair and came with shuffling, poorly balanced steps into the kitchen.

Lizzie removed mugs from the cupboard while the two men introduced themselves.

‘I’m here about the island that Lizzie and her sister inherited from your late wife,’ Cesare explained calmly.

The silence of astonishment engulfed his companions. Lizzie studied him wide-eyed while her father turned his head towards him in a frowning attitude of incredulity.

‘It’s a rubbish inheritance...nothing but a bad joke!’ Lizzie’s father contended in a burst of unrestrained bitterness. ‘It stands to reason that an inheritance you can’t use or sell is worthless... What use is that to anyone? So, that’s why you’re here? Another fool chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?’

‘Dad!’ Lizzie exclaimed in consternation at the older man’s blatant scorn.

She wished she had guessed why the Italian had come to visit and scolded herself for not immediately making the association between his nationality and the legacy left to her and Chrissie by their mother. Over the years the island that couldn’t be sold had been a source of much bitterness in her family, particularly when money was in such short supply. She lifted the kettle off the range and hastily made the drinks while she wondered what on earth Cesare hoped to achieve by visiting them.

‘I’ll put your tea in the lounge, Dad,’ she said, keen to remove her father from the dialogue, afraid of what he might say in his blunt and challenging way.

Brian Whitaker stole a glance at the Italian’s shuttered dark face, not displeased by the effect of having had his say. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. After all, the only reason he could be here is that he’s coming a-courting!’ he completed with a derisive laugh that sent a hot tide of colour flaring below Lizzie’s pale skin. ‘Good luck to you! Lizzie was ditched by the neighbour a couple of years ago and she hasn’t been out on a date since then!’

CHAPTER TWO (#u86d8b11d-ad06-599c-ba51-1806a61806af)

LIZZIE WANTED THE tiled floor to open up and swallow her where she stood. Being humiliated in front of a stranger felt even more painful than the snide comments and pitying appraisals from the village locals that had followed the ending of her engagement to Andrew Brook two years earlier. A month later, Andrew had married Esther, who had already been pregnant with their son. She stiffened her facial muscles, made the tea and the coffee and even contrived to politely ask if the visitor took sugar.

Wide, sensual mouth set in a grim line, Cesare surveyed Lizzie’s rigid back view, noting the narrow cut of her waist and the slender, delicate curves merely hinted at by the overalls. Her father had been cruel taking her down like that in front of an audience. Not a date since, though? He was astonished because, unflattering as her clothing was, Cesare had immediately recognised that she was a beauty. Not perhaps a conventional beauty, he was willing to admit, not the kind of beauty that set the world on fire but certainly the type that should make the average male look more than once. What was wrong with the local men?

‘Sorry about Dad,’ Lizzie apologised in a brittle voice, setting the coffee down carefully on the table in front of him, catching the evocative scent of some citrusy cologne as she briefly leant closer and stiffening as a result of the sudden warmth pooling in her pelvis. Never had anyone made her feel more uncomfortable in her own home.

‘You don’t need to apologise, cara,’ Cesare parried.

‘But I should explain. My parents resented the will—personally, I never think about it. Unfortunately, the island was a sore point in our lives when I was a child because money was tight.’

‘Have you ever visited Lionos?’

‘No, I’ve never had the opportunity. Mum went once with one of her boyfriends and stayed for a week. She wasn’t too impressed,’ Lizzie revealed ruefully while she scanned his lean, strong face, taking in the high cheekbones, straight nose and hard, masculine mouth before involuntarily sliding her gaze upward again to take another sweep of those absolutely devastating dark golden eyes of his. ‘I think Mum was expecting luxury but I believe the accommodation was more basic.’

‘The will endowed the island with a trust and I understand a caretaker and his family live nearby to maintain the property.’

Lizzie cocked her head to one side, her shattered nerves slowly stabilising at his lack of comment about her father’s outburst. Pale, silky hair slid across her cheekbone and Cesare looked up into those wide hazel-green eyes framed with soft honey-brown lashes, and suddenly he was aware of the heavy pulse of heat at his groin and the muscles in his broad shoulders pulled taut as ropes as he resisted that sirens’ call of lust with all his might.

‘Yes. But the trust only covers maintenance costs, not improvements, and I understand that the house is still firmly stuck in the thirties. Mum also assumed that the caretaker would cook and clean for them but instead the man and his wife told her that they weren’t servants and she had to look after herself,’ Lizzie volunteered wryly. ‘All in all she found it a very expensive jaunt by the time they’d paid someone to take them out to the island and deliver food while they were there.’

‘Naturally you want to know what I’m doing here,’ Cesare murmured smoothly.

‘Well, I don’t think you’ve come a-courting,’ Lizzie fielded with a shrug that dismissed her father’s gibe but completely failed to hide her discomfiture at that crack.