Mediterranean Tycoons: The De Santis Marriage / The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife / The Sicilian's Virgin Bride

‘No comment,’ he mocked when she still said nothing. ‘I admit, when I saw it, it made me feel positively medieval.’ He put the pineapple into his mouth. ‘I half expected to arrive back here this lunchtime to see the evidence hanging from the window as proof of your chastity and my undoubtedly—’

With a stifled choke, Lizzy turned and ran, switching the cruel battery of his words off like a flick of a switch. As she made it into the hall without throwing up she wondered bitterly if the heavy crash she heard behind her was a sign that he was angry he’d been left mocking a lost audience!

Outside the heat was so intense she almost changed her mind and went back into the coolness of the house. But—no. Burning alive was a better option than going back in there, she thought painfully as she took off across the grass, heading for—she didn’t know where or care.

She did not understand what made him want to be so constantly cruel to her. Twenty-four hours as his bought bride and already she did not know how much more of it she could take.

Dropping down on the stone steps of the gazebo, she hugged her knees to her chest and stared out to sea. She was trembling, her mind filled with lurid images of giggling maids whispering their secret to the rest of the staff here. Luc had called it medieval, Lizzy wanted to call it—

A step sounded close beside her, shutting off her painful thought patterns to replace them with a whole aching set of new ones.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I’M—SORRY,’ Luc murmured tautly. ‘That was unforgivably brutal of me.’

So he was aware of it? Lizzy supposed it had to mean something at least. Though thinking that did not stop the glaze of hurt from washing across her eyes before she blinked it away again.

‘When you’ve had enough of punishing me for being the wrong woman you married,’ she whispered, ‘do me one small favour, Luc, and arrange my flight home for me, please.’

His sigh was carried away on the light breeze coming in from the ocean. When he dropped down into a squat in front of her and gently touched his fingers to her pale cheek, she refused to look at him and still just wanted to break down and weep.

‘I was shocked,’ he said gruffly, ‘when I saw the—evidence myself this morning. I felt I had stolen something from you that did not belong to me.’

‘That’s your only excuse?’ Lizzy still would not look at him.

‘No. I have others,’ he admitted, ‘though I don’t think you’re ready to hear them right now.’

He was probably right. She’d heard more than enough of his cynical view of everything. Her heart was breaking into little pieces in her chest and her eyes were still stinging.

‘I will not take the stick you should be beating Bianca with,’ she told him thickly. ‘You spoiled last night for me—twice, counting your performance just now—and I think you did it deliberately.’

‘I attack when I am on the defensive.’

Doesn’t everyone? Lizzy thought painfully.

‘I expected you to throw some deserved accusations at me just now, so I got in first.’

‘You know what you are, Luc?’ At last she turned her face to look at him, and felt no sympathy whatsoever for the now penitent expression she saw on his handsome dark face. ‘You’re so cold and cynical about everything you don’t recognise feelings in others. You believe you can treat me with contempt because I made it so obvious from the start that I’m—attracted to you.’

A strange smile touched his tense mouth. ‘Not contempt,’ he denied.

‘So there was blood on the sheets,’ Lizzy continued unsteadily. ‘A sensitive man would have gently pointed it out to me, but not you. You stride off into the day without a care as to what the embarrassment was going to do to me.’

‘I thought you would have noticed it for yourself.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’ She turned away again. In truth she hadn’t dared look at the bed once she’d scrambled out of it. ‘And what is it you find so wrong with my—inexperience?’ she challenged suddenly. ‘Why do you believe it’s okay to mock it, make a mockery of it?’

‘I can do better.’

Too late for Lizzy.

‘Yesterday I was—angry about a lot of things,’ he disclosed. ‘Things I should not have brought into our bedroom and should not have carried with me out of it this morning. Now I am asking you to accept my apology and my promise that I can and will do better from now on.’

Quite a speech for the sardonic man who believed himself above such things.

‘You’re hunting,’ she murmured absently.

There was a sharp moment of shock, then the soft sound of rueful laughter, then his fingers returned to her cheek and firmly turned her face.

‘I am hunting,’ he agreed with a real smile that actually relaxed his tense features, ‘which makes this a bad day for male lions, cara, because it means they must be feeling desperate.’

That was a message, Lizzy recognised, a serious hint wrapped up in a new kind of rueful warmth. She drew in a breath, wishing she could decide if this was just another one of his clever strategies aimed to keep his life running on its nice even keel.

‘Make me feel ashamed of you once more,’ she said finally, ‘and I walk away from this marriage no matter what you threaten me with.’

To her surprise he just nodded, no clever quick counterattack, face still serious, the dark golden eyes wrapped in luxurious dark eyelashes, an even shape to his beautiful mouth. He’d dropped the cool mask, Lizzy realised, and all she was seeing now was the too handsome, worryingly alluring man.

Then he was rising to his full height and holding out a hand for her to take so he could help her up. Lizzy stared at that hand for a few seconds, still hesitant to take what she knew it was offering, yet too aware of the tingling sting of enticement at work in her blood to stop her own hand from lifting and settling into his. His fingers closed around hers and he drew her upright. When she tried to take her hand back he held onto it and used it to bring her even closer until she was standing a mere breath away from touch-close to his lean, hard, now very familiar length.

Her heart began to thump. He was going to kiss her, and she couldn’t make up her mind if she wanted to be kissed right now. Tension inched up along the length of her spine and made the air shiver as it left her lungs.

‘I n-need some things your wonderful style team forgot to pack in my luggage.’ She went for a diversion on a quick agitated rush of speech.

‘Like what?’ he murmured.

The murmur was disturbingly husky. ‘A gentleman doesn’t ask that question,’ she responded distractedly.

‘I thought we had already established that I’m not one—a gentleman,’ he added.

She looked up, at his mouth, saw the hint of a grimace taking control of it, felt her own lips tremble and part. ‘A s-sunhat, then, and a truckload of sun screen,’ she compromised her answer, trying so hard not to sound as unnerved by his closeness as she actually felt.

But maybe he knew, maybe she even quivered. It was difficult for her to tell any more because tense inner quivers around him had become such a permanent thing she was learning she had to live with. Anyway, he gave a tug at her hand. The thin gap between them disappeared altogether, the warmth of his body heat stimulated every nerve-end she possessed and sent her eyes lifting up to clash warily with his.

Whatever he saw reflected in her eyes sent a strange kind of grimace moving across his lips. Then he did it—he kissed her.

It was such a brief embrace that it had gone before she could even think to react to it.

‘Then let’s go shopping,’ was all he said.

Lizzy knew then that they had just sealed yet another deal between them, though heck if she had enough sense left to work out what this one was about.

And he was back to playing it cool again, being the guy who liked to be in control of everything—including his renegade wife. He drove them into town in a soft-top sports car with the roof firmly in place to keep the heat of the sun off her fair skin. They strolled in and out of small shops painted in different pretty pastel shades, each one carrying the kind of interestingly individual things that made Lizzy want to linger and browse.

He chose her sunhat while she wasn’t looking, a wide, floppy-brimmed thing made of bright pink straw that he paid for, coolly put on her head, then walked her out of the shop without giving her the chance to object about the colour and the way it had to be clashing with the colour of her hair.

‘Arrogant,’ she muttered.

‘All of my life,’ he answered smoothly, and walked her into a pharmacy and proceeded to pick out the highest factor sun screen he could find and Lizzy let him because—