The De Santis Marriage

And just out there tied to his private jetty floated his sleek glinting white private power boat that could spin her back across the lake in ten minutes—but he was refusing to give the order because he felt the need to kick someone around a bit and she happened to be conveniently there.

Lizzy looked away from him then back again, not at all sure what to do next. ‘You do know you’re being petty,’ she sighed out finally.

‘Green,’ he murmured.

‘Green—what?’ she flicked out, completely thrown by the comment.

‘Your eyes when you’re angry,’ he provided. ‘Most of the time they are a soft placid grey.’

‘They can spit pretty sharp daggers too when I’m cornered,’ she reacted.

‘Let me test that,’ he offered. ‘You have known all along what they were planning.’

It was not a question. ‘No,’ Lizzy insisted. ‘I told you I did not know.’

But even as she said it her insides were creasing guiltily because perhaps she had seen it coming only it had been so much simpler to just block it out.

‘I did not have you down as a liar, Elizabeth,’ he said coolly.

‘I’m not lying!’ Frowning—annoyed with herself as well as with him and this horrible position she’d been put in, ‘I did not see it coming,’ she insisted a second time, ‘but I admit I feel some responsibility because I think I should have done.’

‘Because you knew they were lovers?’

Did he have to put it as calmly as that? Shifting her tense stance, ‘Yes,’ she answered, deciding to be blunt with him since he didn’t seem to possess a single sensitive nerve in his body. ‘For a while, several years ago.’

‘Childhood sweethearts.’ His hard mouth flicked out the semblance of a smile.

A bit more than that, she thought as she pinned her lips together and made no comment at all. Then, because she couldn’t take the probing glint in his eyes, she let out a sigh. ‘You were right about the wealth difference meaning something. He’s never going to be good enough for her you know.’

‘Whereas I hit all the right criteria for a Moreno?’

Lizzy offered a shrug this time—what else could she do? He did hit all the right criteria. He was everything the Morenos expected their beautiful daughter to marry. Matthew wasn’t. Matthew came right out of middle class England. He’d enjoyed the necessary public-school education to give him a great kick-start in life but that was about it. Until this recent financial crisis her family had survived comfortably on its small business income—no more, no less. Matthew was expected to take over the business from their father one day and to marry some nice middle class Englishwoman who would not demand more from him than he was able to provide.

Bianca on the other hand was always going to expect more. She was always going to have what she wanted in life even if it meant providing it herself. Matthew wouldn’t be able to cope with that. His ego would take such a hard knocking he’d never be happy, whereas this man had so much money of his own he wouldn’t give a toss as to how his beautiful wife spent her own money, and his ego would stay firmly intact.

‘She will come back,’ she promised. ‘She just needs time to—sort her head out.’

‘Not her heart?’ The dry distinction made Lizzy wince.

‘I’m sure she loves you,’ she persisted. ‘She’s just not ready to commit to marriage. If you just give her time, then I—’

Black eyebrows with a fascinating silken gloss arched her a curious look. ‘Are you actually standing there, Miss Hadley, suggesting that I should wait for Bianca to sort her head out?’

Well, was she? Lifting her chin, ‘If you love her—yes,’ she insisted.

‘Then you are a romantic fool because it is not going to happen.’ He moved suddenly, straightening away from the desk. ‘There is a wedding arranged for next Saturday morning and I intend to make sure that it goes ahead.’

Without a bride? Lizzy stared at him. ‘You mean—you’re going to find her and drag her back to marry you?’ A silly kind of laugh left her throat at the very image of Bianca being dragged by this man down the church aisle kicking and screaming.

‘No.’ Reaching behind him, his long fingers picked Bianca’s letter up again—this time to fold it with slow, neat precision. ‘I mean to replace her with someone else.’

She was pretty much held in his thrall by now. ‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’ He nodded and made her gasp as he ripped the letter into small pieces, then calmly dropped them into the waste-paper basket standing by the desk.

It was such a cold act of dismissal of Bianca and everything she should mean to him that Lizzy began to feel slightly sick.

‘You will have to move quickly to put your life in order, of course, but with my assistance I think it can be achieved in time.’

She dragged her eyes up from the discarded pieces of paper. It took a few seconds for his words to actually sink in— then they did sink in and Lizzy took a jerky step backwards.

‘M-my life is fine as it is.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he acknowledged. ‘But will it be fine by tomorrow when I inform the authorities that your brother has emptied your company bank account?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘TH-THAT was not in the least bit funny,’ Lizzy husked out, her heart beginning to thump heavily against her ribs because this conversation had just taken a sinister turn for the bad. ‘I know you’re hurt and angry, and I accept you feel the need to kick someone around in response. But that doesn’t give you the right to lie about my family!’

‘Your brother.’ Once again Luc made the distinction. ‘I restrict my accusations to only one member of your family. The rest I will honour with the benefit of the doubt—for now.’

He was losing her with every cool word he threw at her. ‘You suspect my father of being a crook? Where do you get off believing you can say something like that?’

‘I “get off”, as you so nicely describe it, by being a banker,’ he responded. ‘And being a banker I am not prone to let my heart rule my head.’

‘You’ve lost me.’ Lizzy stared at him in bewilderment.

‘Then let me explain. Bianca is a very wealthy woman.’

‘I know that,’ she snapped out.

‘A little—shall we call it family ingenuity?—and she could be misled into believing that her childhood sweetheart had hit it rich.’

‘I think you need time on your own for some quiet contemplation,’ Lizzy told him curtly, and did what she should have done minutes before and turned on her heel to leave.

‘Your—close relationship to her made me curious,’ he continued smoothly as she walked. ‘So I decided it would be wise to have you and your family checked out.’

‘Checked out?’ Once again she swung round to stare at him. ‘So where the heck do you get off now thinking you have the right to do that?’

‘The right of Bianca’s future husband who was—er— puzzled by your close friendship to her. You’re not her type, Miss Hadley,’ he stated bluntly. ‘Anyone with eyes can see that Bianca comes from a different side of the fence, yet here you are, staying in the best hotel in Milan paid for with her family’s money, wearing clothes she has bought for you so you would not look out of place in the company of her rich friends, and about to play the honoured role at her wedding as her chief bridesmaid.’

‘Was about to,’ she hit back, infuriated by the nasty slant he was putting on everything.

‘Was,’ he acknowledged with a cool dip of his dark head. ‘So I decided to do some checking, and guess what I found out? Hadley’s is not merely enjoying a temporary cash crisis as I was given to believe, it is about to go under altogether. Your father is in debt up to his neck. Your brother hates the whole engineering scenario and resents the fact that he is expected to stay in the business.’

Lizzy flushed. ‘Matthew wanted to be an artist.’

‘Oh, how romantically right for him,’ her persecutor mocked. ‘With his golden good looks and his ravaged sensibilities he makes the perfect rescue for an impressionable thing like Bianca—whereas you,’ he went on before Lizzy could say anything, ‘you make the perfect level-headed foil to keep Bianca’s starry eyes blinded to what your brother is really about.’