A Bride Worth Millions

She swallowed. ‘Where are we?’

‘London. Mayfair, to be exact. I’ve brought you to my hotel to give you time to decide what your plans are.’ Luca handed her another tissue. ‘You might want to clean yourself up before we go inside.’

Athena had recognised the name of the exclusive five-star hotel that overlooked Marble Arch and Hyde Park. Her heart sank when she pulled down the car’s sun visor to look in the vanity mirror and saw her face streaked with black mascara and red lipstick smudged across her chin like a garish Halloween mask.

She did her best with the tissue, and when Luca had parked in the underground car park and they’d taken the lift up to the hotel’s opulent reception area, she shot into the ladies’ cloakroom to avoid the curious stares of the other guests, who were clearly intrigued to see a tearful bride.

In one of the private cubicles she ran a sink of hot water and scrubbed the make-up off her face. Her elaborate bun had slipped to one side of her head, and she began the task of removing the dozens of hairpins before brushing her hair to get rid of the coating of hairspray. She gave a start when her phone rang from the depths of her bag, and the sight of her mother’s name on the caller display caused her stomach to knot with tension.

Out in the hotel lobby, Luca tapped his foot on the marble-tiled floor and tried to contain his impatience as he waited for Athena to emerge from the cloakroom. Long experience of women warned him that she might be in there for hours while she reapplied her make-up. While he was waiting he reread the latest text message he had received from Giselle.

I have decided to ask my four young nieces to be bridesmaids at our wedding and I’ve seen the most adorable dresses for them to wear.

The message included a photo of a sickly-sweet child dressed in a shepherdess costume. Luca ground his teeth. Bridesmaids! Giselle was pushing his patience to its limit. And another text revealed that she knew she had the upper hand.

I hope you will be amenable, chéri, because I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you will be thirty-five in two short weeks.

The warning in Giselle’s second text was clear. Do what I want, or... Or what? Luca thought grimly. It was unlikely that his bimbo bride would give up a million pounds over an argument about bridesmaids, but he dared not risk upsetting her when he was so close to his goal.

His phone rang and he frowned when he saw that the caller was the other thorn in his side: his grandmother’s brother, Executive Vice President of De Rossi Enterprises, Emilio Nervetti.

‘This continued uncertainty about who will head the company is affecting profits.’ Emilio went straight for the jugular. ‘I intend to ask the board to support a vote of no confidence in your leadership. Under the terms of my dear sister Violetta’s will, two weeks from now you stand to lose your position as chairman unless you marry before your birthday—which you show no signs of doing.’

‘On the contrary,’ Luca said curtly. ‘My wedding is arranged for next week—before I turn thirty-five. My marriage will allow me to continue in my role as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises, and after I have been married for one year I will not only secure the chairmanship permanently, but also the deeds to Villa De Rossi, and the right to use the De Rossi name for the fashion label I created.’

For a few seconds an angry silence hummed down the line, before Emilio said coldly, ‘I am sure the board members will be relieved to know that you intend to give up your playboy lifestyle for a life of decency and sobriety. But I’m afraid I cannot be so confident. You inherited your mother’s alley-cat morals, Luca. And God knows what genes you inherited from your father—whoever he was.’

Luca cut the call and swore savagely beneath his breath. His great-uncle’s dig about his parentage was expected, but it still made him seethe. Emilio had only been given a position on the board of De Rossi Enterprises because his sister—Luca’s grandmother—had married Luca’s grandfather. He was the rightful De Rossi heir, Luca thought grimly, even though his grandparents had disapproved of him.

Luca’s grandfather, Aberto De Rossi, had lacked the vision of his father, founder of De Rossi Enterprises, Raimondo De Rossi. But at least Aberto had been a steady figure at the head of the company. With no son to succeed him Aberto had given his daughter Beatriz a prominent position on the board—with disastrous results.

Beatriz had been too busy with her party lifestyle to take an interest in running the company, and her scandalous private life had brought disrepute to the De Rossi brand name and resulted in falling profits.

Eventually Aberto had run out of patience with his daughter and had named his illegitimate grandson as his heir—with the stipulation that Luca could only inherit with his grandmother’s agreement, and only after her death. Aberto had also voiced his reservations about Luca’s decision to study fashion design alongside a business degree.

However, at the age of twenty Luca had presented his first collection at New York Fashion Week and received critical acclaim. The launch of his fashion label, DRD, had restored the De Rossi brand to the prestige it had known under the legendary Raimondo. But, according to the terms of Luca’s grandmother’s will, he faced losing everything. All his hard work and achievements had meant nothing to Nonna Violetta—and he knew why.

He was a bastardo—the product of a brief union between his mother and a croupier she had met in a casino—and in his grandparents’ eyes not a true De Rossi. He had inherited his talent for innovative design from his great-grandfather, but Luca had been a shameful reminder to his grandparents that their only daughter had made the family a laughing stock.

Luca’s jaw clenched. He had done everything he could to win his grandparents’ approval, but it had never been enough to earn their love. And after Aberto had died, Violetta had become increasingly demanding, saying that Luca must marry and provide an heir. Presumably she had believed that an heir from the bastardo De Rossi was better than no heir at all, he thought bitterly.

His grandmother had threatened to use her casting vote with the board to have him replaced as head of the company. And even after her death she still sought to control her grandson by stipulating in her will that he must be married by his thirty-fifth birthday or the Villa De Rossi would be sold to a consortium that was eager to turn the house into a hotel. Luca would also be removed from his role as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises and barred from holding any other position within the company. And, although he owned DRD, he would lose the right to use the De Rossi name for his fashion label.

Luca’s lip curled. Nonna Violetta’s ultimate betrayal had been that threat to ban him from using the name he had been given at birth for his design business. It was a vindictive reminder that he had only been called De Rossi because his mother hadn’t known his father’s surname. Despite everything he had done to restore the fortunes of the company, to his grandparents when they had been alive, and to some of the board members of De Rossi Enterprises, he would always be a bastardo.

Anger burned in his gut, and with it another emotion he did not want to recognise. He had once assumed he had been hurt too often by his grandmother and no longer cared what she thought of him. But when he had heard the details of her will he had felt sick to his stomach.

He did not care so much if he lost control of De Rossi Enterprises, and he could always rename his fashion label—he might even enjoy the challenge of starting again and rebranding his designs, and he only wished he could stand at his grandmother’s grave and laugh at her attempt to manipulate him. But there was one very good reason why he couldn’t. Two reasons, he amended. The first was the Villa De Rossi and the second was his daughter Rosalie, whom he loved and was determined to protect at all costs—even if that cost was his pride.

His phone pinged, heralding another text from Giselle. Dio, he needed to return to Italy so that he could keep his future bride satisfied with sex until she had signed her name on the marriage certificate, Luca thought sardonically.

He glanced across the lobby and saw Athena walk out of the cloakroom. She looked younger without the heavy make-up, and now that her hair was loose he saw that it still fell almost to her waist and was not, in fact, a dull brown, but a warm chestnut shade that shone like raw silk.

As she came towards him he could see that she had been crying again. Behind her glasses her eyes were red-rimmed. He wondered if she was regretting her decision not to marry Charles Fairfax but reminded himself that he did not care.

Her wedding dress was drawing attention from the other hotel guests. He supposed he could take her up to his suite and ply her with the cups of tea that the British seemed to consume in great quantities in times of crisis, but he did not have the time or the patience to listen to her problems when he had enough of his own.

Another text arrived from Giselle. He would have to phone her—but while he did what could he do with Athena?

Luca spotted a waiter who worked in the hotel’s cocktail bar. ‘Miguel, this is Miss Athena Howard. Will you take her into the bar and make her a cocktail?’ He smiled briefly at Athena. ‘I have to make a phone call. I’ll join you in a few minutes.’

To Athena’s relief there were only a few people in the bar, and she was able to hide behind a large potted fern to avoid attracting more curious looks. She knew that one of her first priorities must be to buy some different clothes, but she did not relish the idea of walking along Oxford Street in her wedding dress.

‘Have you decided what you would like to drink?’

‘Um...’ She stared at the cocktail menu. She certainly wasn’t going to ask the waiter for a Sex on the Beach! ‘Can you recommend something fruity and refreshing?’

‘How about an Apple Blossom?’

It sounded innocuous enough. ‘That would be lovely.’

The waiter returned minutes later with a pretty golden-coloured drink decorated with slices of lemon. Athena sipped the cocktail. It tasted of apples and something else that she could not place, and it was warming as it seeped into her bloodstream.

Her mind replayed the phone call from her mother.

Veronica Howard, typically, had not given her daughter an opportunity to speak, but instead had launched into a tirade about how Athena had once again let her parents down.

‘How could you jilt poor Charles, almost at the altar, and run off with an Italian playboy who, I am reliably informed, changes his mistresses as often as other men change their socks? What were you thinking, Athena? Did you even stop to consider how mortified your father and I would feel when Lady Fairfax explained what you had done? Poor Charles is heartbroken.’

‘Wait a minute... Luca isn’t...’ Athena had tried to interrupt her mother. ‘How do you know about Luca?’

What she had meant was how did her mother know that Luca had helped her to run away from the wedding—but, as so often happened with Athena, her words had come out wrong.

‘Charles watched you drive off with this Luca in his flash sports car,’ Veronica had said shrilly. ‘Apparently he’d had suspicions that you were seeing another man behind his back, but he hoped that once you were married you would be happy with him. You can imagine how shattered poor Charles was when he discovered today that you are having an affair with his old school friend.’

‘I’m not having an affair with anyone. It’s Charlie who—’

Athena had been tempted to tell her mother the true reason why she had refused to marry Charlie, but despite the callous way he had used her she had been unable to bring herself to betray his deeply personal secret.

‘You need to persuade Charles to tell his parents the true situation,’ she had told her mother.

‘Actually, I need to go and talk to the photographer from High Society magazine and explain why they can no longer feature a five-page spread of your wedding in their next issue,’ Veronica had said coldly. ‘Your father and I will never live this down,’ she’d snapped as a final rejoinder, before ending the call.

Athena finished her drink and the waiter immediately reappeared with another. She blinked away her tears as she sipped the second cocktail. Her parents—particularly her mother—had never listened to her, she thought miserably.

When she was a child they had ignored her requests to give up the tennis lessons and violin lessons, the ballet classes in which she had been the least graceful dancer—more like an elephant than a swan, as the other girls had taunted her. It hadn’t been until she’d left school, having scraped her exams, with the words ‘Athena is an average student’ written on every school report and emblazoned on her psyche, that her parents had given up their hope that she would show late signs of academic brilliance.

Even when she had qualified as a nursery assistant—a job that she loved—they had kept on at her to reapply for university so that she could at least train to be a teacher. She believed she had been a disappointment to her parents all her life. It was partly for that reason that she had never told them she had been sexually assaulted by her Latin tutor when she was a teenager. She had always wondered if the assault had somehow been her fault, she brooded, as she drained her glass and took a sip of the second cocktail that the waiter had brought over to her—or was it the third?