Buch lesen: «The De Santis Marriage»

‘You will marry me, just as everything has been arranged already,’ he countered. ‘You will accept with grace anything I choose to bestow on you, and you will not go back to work.’

Lizzy swung to face him and was shocked by the kick she received low in her gut because he was so— ‘Y-you can’t just slot me into Bianca’s place just like that,’ she fed, over what her body was trying to make her feel. ‘The authorities won’t allow it!’

‘At the risk of sounding boringly repetitive, money talks.’

Money talks. And so it did. ‘I think I hate you,’ she whispered.

‘Nevertheless you will take up Bianca’s place with pride and dignity, and fool the world into thinking it was you and I who discovered we couldn’t live without each other. And you will not pay me back with anything other than with our first child, seeded in your womb. With that goal in mind you will come to our marriage bed with warmth and honesty—which means you will not fight against what we both desire.’

Michelle Reid grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without, and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE MARKONOS BRIDE

THE ITALIAN’S FUTURE BRIDE

THE DE SANTIS MARRIAGE

BY

MICHELLE REID

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

THE WHOLE pre-wedding party thing was revving up like a gigantic engine and Lizzy had never felt less like partying in her entire life.

Now a night at La Scala, dear God, she thought heavily. For here she stood surrounded by luxury in this posh Milan hotel suite, about to put on a posh designer dress that must have cost more money than she dared let herself think about, so she could look the part for a posh gala evening spent at La Scala, while back home in England the family business was about to go under taking everything they owned along with it.

She had not wanted to come to her best friend’s wedding but her father had insisted. Her brother Matthew had gone a whole step further and become really angry. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he’d snapped at her. ‘Do you want Dad to feel worse than he already does about this mess? Go to Bianca’s wedding as planned,’ he’d instructed, ‘and while you’re there wish her all the damn best from me with her super-rich catch.’

It had been said with such bite it made Lizzy wince to recall him saying it. Matthew was never going to forgive her best friend for falling in love with another man.

Then Bianca and her parents had put even more pressure on her to come to Milan and in the end it had been easier to give in and do what everyone wanted her to do when all she’d wanted to do was to be at her father’s side supporting him.

But instead she had to shimmy into this dress, Lizzy told herself, puffing back an unruly curl when it flopped across one eye as she settled the straps onto her shoulders then turned to the mirror to check out the finished effect.

What she saw reflected back at her sent instant horror pouring into her expressive face. The dress was way too clingy in all the wrong places and the silver-grey colour looked awful against her pale skin! And it was not for the first time in her twenty-two years that she wished with all her heart that she were a delicate and sweet fine-boned brunette like Bianca.

But she wasn’t. She was a long curvy redhead with an unruly long mop of glossy chestnut curls that just refused to stay confined no matter how much torture she put herself through in an effort to pin them up. Add skin so startlingly white it looked dreadful against the silver-threaded grey silk and it was like looking at a ghost!

When Bianca had bought the dress a couple of months ago to wear to her betrothal party she’d looked fabulous in it— pure sensation on legs. Yesterday she’d tossed it at Lizzy in disgust. ‘I don’t know why I bought it. I hate the colour. The length is not right and my boobs don’t fill it.’

Well, there was no chance of that problem here, Lizzy thought, small white teeth biting down into her full bottom lip as she hitched the tightly fitted basque top further up the pale plump slopes of breasts and grimly thanked the boning in the bodice for helping it to stay put.

The rest, she saw on second inspection, didn’t cling quite as badly as she’d first thought it did and—Face it, Lizzy, she then told herself firmly, beggars cannot be choosers, girl, so you should—

The sudden knock sounding at her suite door diverted her attention. ‘Are you ready, Elizabeth?’ Bianca’s mother called out. ‘We must not be late for La Scala.’

Certainly not, Lizzy thought dryly. ‘Just one more minute!’ she called back.

La Scala waited for no man, not even the higher echelons of Italian society she was about to mingle with, she mocked as she slid her feet into a pair of high slender heeled silver mules, then turned to apply a coating of clear gloss to her lips. She refused point-blank to use the seduction red colour Bianca had supplied along with the dress.

Standing back to give her reflection the final once-over, she suddenly found the humour in standing here in her ill- fitting borrowed feathers and laughed for the first time in weeks. All she needed now was for her best friend to toss her that fabulous diamond ring her betrothed had presented her with and she’d be sorted. All family debts paid via the first pawn brokerage she could find.

But Bianca wasn’t quite that giving—not that Lizzy resented her for that. Bianca Moreno had been her closest friend since the day they had both found themselves stuck in the same strict English boarding-school feeling like a pair of aliens dropped in there from outer space. Bianca had come to the school directly from a carefree lifestyle in Sydney with her Italian born parents. They’d gone from ordinary to mega-rich overnight when an uncle in England had died suddenly making Bianca’s father the main beneficiary of the London based Moreno Inc.

Whereas Lizzy, well, she had been sent to the same school after her mother had caused a terrible scandal by having an affair with their local, very married MP. She had been so mercilessly teased and bullied at her old school about the affair that her father had decided to remove her from the situation by placing her in a school hundreds of miles away from the fuss.

Did it stop the teasing? No, it didn’t. Did she tell her father that? No, she did not, because he’d already been too cast down by the scandal and the fact that their mother had walked out and left them taking with her what funds she could grab. So Bianca had become her close friend and confidante. They looked out for each other. Bianca was the black-haired black- eyed spitfire with a solid grounding in good Australian spunk and Lizzy the much quieter one with her natural spirit squashed by the bullies and a mother who’d never bothered to get in touch again after she’d walked out.

From the age of twelve to their present twenty-two, she and Bianca had rarely done anything without the other one knowing about it. Now her friend was about to marry into one of Italy’s finest families and, despite not wanting to be here, Lizzy was ready to shelve her own worries and do whatever it was going to take to help make Bianca’s wedding day next week absolutely perfect. It was Bianca’s family who’d paid to bring her over here. They had provided her with everything from room and board to clothes to suit every glittering occasion, even if they were Bianca’s cast-offs.

And she was grateful to them—she was, because she could not have afforded to come otherwise, no matter what her father had said. So here she was, one week into a two-week sabbatical from family troubles, joining in the partying runup to Bianca’s glossy marriage to her super-rich, supersophisticated beau.

Luciano Genovese Marcelo De Santis, the thirty-four- year-old supreme head of the great and vast De Santis banking empire—Luc to his very close friends.

A tense little quiver made a sudden strike down Lizzy’s front and in pure self-defence she snatched up a silvery silk crocheted snug from the bed and hurriedly tied it across her front while wishing to goodness that she didn’t experience that same crazy tense quiver every time she let herself think about him.

He was strange—a truly intimidating mix of smoothly polished cool sophistication and lean, dark, sexy good looks. Bianca purred around him like a sleek kitten, which seemed to amuse him, but then Bianca was Italian and as a race of people they were like that, open and warm and more touchy-feely than the British—her, Lizzy thought, making the rueful distinction.

She’d never purred around any man and couldn’t envisage ever wanting to—which made the way she quivered around Luc De Santis all the more disturbing to her peace of mind. He wasn’t her type. He was too much of everything. Too big and tall, too lean and dark, too sexy and handsome—too crushingly cool and terrifyingly enigmatic, she decided as she hooked up her little silver beaded evening bag and headed for the door.

They’d met only once before she’s come to Milan, in London several months ago at the private dinner Bianca’s parents had held to introduce their future son-in-law to their English friends. Luc had come as such a shock to Lizzy that she had not been able to stop her eyes from constantly drifting in his direction because he was so far away from her idea of the kind of man her friend liked.

‘What do you think?’ Bianca asked her.

‘Intimidating,’ she said, because that evening was the first time the tense quiver had struck. ‘He scares me to death.’

Bianca just laughed, but then she’d been laughing at everything. Happy—in love again—high as a kite. ‘You’ll get used to him, Lizzy,’ she promised. ‘He isn’t nearly as awesome once you get to know him.’

Want to bet?

The next time she’d met him had been just a week ago, she recalled as she pushed the button to call the lift. He’d arrived here at the hotel looking for Bianca and found Lizzy standing in Reception having just arrived in Milan. He’d come over to her—of course, he would do with impeccable manners like his, she reasoned. Yet she still had not been able to stop the next quiver from making its strike.

He’d been angry that Bianca had not been at the airport to meet her—she’d seen the anger snap at his handsome dark features just before he’d blanked it out. When she’d said quickly that she hadn’t been expecting to be met, his wide, sensual mouth had tugged into a telling flat line of disapproval.

Cool, calm and used to ordering people about, he’d then taken it upon himself to organise her arrival by making sure she had a nice suite of rooms and had even gone as far as to escort her up here to check the suite out for himself.

It had been the moment when his hand arrived at the base of her spine to politely usher her out of the lift that the next quiver had struck, shooting down her front like a flaming arrow and making her jerk away from him like a scalded cat, only to feel really foolish for doing it. Other than to send her one of his cool, steady looks, he’d let his hand fall to his side and thankfully made no comment.

Now here she was waiting to ride the same lift down to the mezzanine floor of the hotel where they were all gathering for drinks before they left. And if she’d avoided Luc De Santis like the absolute plague for the rest of this week Lizzy had a horrible suspicion she was not going to be able to do that tonight. The party was too small, the reserved boxes at La Scala too intimate. Her only hope was to manage to wangle it so she sat in a different box from him.

There was a mirror hanging on the wall by the lift and she diverted her attention to it to push the stray curl off her brow. It flopped back down again like a renegade. She should not have decided to pin it all up because it just wasn’t going to behave, she predicted. But giving in and letting her hair hang down around her shoulders in a tumble of loose glossy corkscrews had only made her face look paler and her grey-green eyes look too big.

Like a frightened rabbit, she likened, wrinkling her nose as she gave the errant curl a teasing tug and watched it spring back into place again. certed to keep the dismay

It had to be that precise moment that the lift doors slid open to reveal none other than the great man himself. Their eyes clashed for a startled second. Knowing he’d caught her pulling silly faces at her own reflection was enough to flood colour into Lizzy’s cheeks.

‘Oh,’ she said, just too disconcerted to keep the dismay from sounding in her voice. ‘Are you staying here too? I didn’t know.’

Brief amusement lit the unusual gold colour of his eyes. ‘Good evening, Elizabeth.’ He always called her Elizabeth in that dark, deep, slightly lilting Italian accent of his. ‘Are you coming in?’

Coming in—heck, she thought, letting her eyes run over him. He was wearing a conventional black silk dinner suit and was leaning casually against the rear wall of the lift, which should have helped to diminish his daunting height a little and that overwhelming sense of presence he always carried around everywhere with him—but didn’t.

And the idea of stepping into a lift with him again did strange things to the nerves in her legs as she made them move. Finding a tense smile to flick his way, she then turned her back on him to watch as the doors closed them in.

Silence hummed as they waited. She could feel his eyes on her. Tension made her bite into the soft tissue of her inner lip.

‘You look very beautiful tonight,’ he murmured softly.

Lizzy had to fight down an inner wince. She knew what she looked like and she knew what he was seeing—the poor best friend decked out in the dress his betrothed had worn a couple of months ago at the party in London.

So, ‘No I don’t,’ she therefore responded curtly.

It was a relief when the lift doors opened onto the elegant splendour of the hotel’s mezzanine lounge bar. As she went to step out that hand arrived at the base of her spine again and this time she froze where she stood.

It just wasn’t fair. Why did she always do something like this around him?

‘Shall we?’ he prompted smoothly.

Lizzy made herself walk forward, stingingly aware how his hand remained exactly where it was this time—as if he was taunting her silly reaction to him. The first person her eyes focused on was Bianca’s mother, looking stunning in sparkling diamonds and unrelieved black.

‘Oh, there you are, Lizzy,’ she said, hurrying towards them with an anxious expression threatening to ruin her perfectly made-up face.

‘Luciano,’ she greeted, her dark eyes skimming warily over her future son-in-law’s face before she returned them to Lizzy. ‘I need a quick word with you, cara,’ she begged.

‘Of course.’ Lizzy smiled, automatically softening her tone for this tiny, elegant woman whose nervous disposition made her worry about everything—and everything usually encompassed her beautiful daughter. ‘What’s Bianca done now?’ she asked.

Meant as a light tease, it was only when the man standing behind her said coolly, ‘Nothing, I hope,’ that she realised she’d spoken out of turn in front of him.

Sofia Moreno went pale. Lizzy got defensive on Bianca’s mamma’s behalf because she’d noticed before that Sofia was not comfortable in Luc’s presence.

‘It was a joke,’ she said sharply—too sharply by the sudden stillness she felt hit the man behind her and the flick of tension she felt play along the length of her spine until it gathered beneath the light pressure of his hand.

Next second he was leaning past her to brush kisses to Sofia’s cheeks. Having to stand here, trapped between the hard warmth of his body and Sofia’s delicate one, Lizzy felt a twinge of remorse because his gesture was so obviously offered as a gentle soothe to his future mother-in-law’s frazzled nerves.

‘I will leave you both to—confide together,’ he murmured then, and his hand slid away from Lizzy’s back.

He strode away towards the bar to greet some friends, the loose-limbed elegance with which he moved holding Lizzy’s gaze though she didn’t want it to.

‘Lizzy, you have to tell me what’s wrong with Bianca,’ Sofia Moreno insisted, setting Lizzy’s eyelashes flickering as she moved them away from Luc. ‘She is behaving strangely and I cannot seem to get a pleasant word out of her. She should be down here by now standing with Luciano to greet their guests, but when I went to her suite after I knocked on your door she wasn’t even dressed!’

‘She had a headache at lunch and went to her room to rest,’ Lizzy recalled with a frown. ‘Perhaps she fell asleep.’

‘Which would explain the rumpled bed,’ Bianca’s mother said tensely, ‘and the way she looked like she’d just fallen out of it and the way she snapped off my head!’

‘Give her a few more minutes to get herself together,’ Lizzy suggested soothingly. ‘If she still hasn’t put in an appearance, I’ll go up and chivvy her on.’

‘In the bad mood she’s in, only you dare to do it, cara,’ Bianca’s mother said tautly.

Not Bianca’s betrothed? Lizzy wondered dryly as she linked her arm through Mrs Moreno’s and led her back to where the rest of the guests were gathered. A few seconds later she was being warmly greeted by Bianca’s father, Giorgio, and introduced to a cousin of Bianca’s she hadn’t met before.

Vito Moreno was about her own age and blessed with the Moreno dark good looks and a pair of laughing blue eyes. ‘So you’re Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘I’ve been hearing a lot about you since I arrived here this afternoon.’

‘Who from?’ Lizzy demanded.

‘My dear cousin, of course.’ Vito grinned. ‘Bianca insists you are the one person who saved her from a life of rebellion and wickedness when she had to leave Sydney to live in the UK and attend the “stuffiest school around”.’

Ah. ‘You’re one of the Sydney Morenos,’ Lizzy realised. ‘I recognise the accent now.’

‘I used to be Bianca’s partner in crime before you took my place,’ he explained.

‘You’re that cousin?’ She laughed up at him. ‘I’ve heard all about you too.’

‘That’s my pulling power shot to death.’ Vito sighed.

A long fluted glass of fizzing champagne appeared in front of Lizzy and she glanced up as she accepted it to find Luc standing over her like some dark towering giant.

‘Oh—thank you,’ she murmured.

He just nodded his dark head, sent an acknowledging nod towards Vito and drifted away again leaving Lizzy feeling— odd.

Then Vito said something and with a mental shrug she pushed Luc De Santis to one side and wished to goodness he would stay there for good. The minutes wore on, the mezzanine bar slowly filled with guests and still there was no sign of Bianca. Eventually people began to get restless, checking the time on their watches.

Lizzy’s gaze drifted towards Luc De Santis. He was standing apart from everyone else talking into his cell phone—and was not very happy by the stern look on his face.

Was he talking to Bianca? She would not be surprised because she’d seen him angered before by Bianca’s habit of always being late.

Well, get used to it, she told him silently as she watched him snap shut his mobile and slide it into his jacket pocket. Bianca’s blithe lack of awareness to time and space was the constant bane of her mother’s and Lizzy’s lives. He could count himself lucky if she managed to turn up on time at the church next week.

As the minutes dragged on, though, even Lizzy found she had to fight the need to keep checking her watch, and Sofia Moreno was sending her pleading looks. She was about to excuse herself to go and find out what Bianca was doing when there was a sudden stir by the lifts.

Everyone turned to look as one. The following silence held like a shaken heartbeat because there, at last, was Bianca, looking an absolute vision dressed in billowing gold silk. Her long dark hair was up in a dramatically simple style that showed off the sweet perfection of her face and the slender length of her creamy smooth neck. Diamonds sparkled at her ears and her throat.

Thread a tiara into her hair and she could be a princess, Lizzy thought fondly as eyes like huge pools of liquid dark chocolate scanned her audience, then her soft mouth took on an apologetic tilt.

‘Sorry I’m so late, everyone,’ Bianca chanted quietly, and the mezzanine bar stirred to the sound of a beautifully directed indulgent response.

‘That’s my brave girl,’ Lizzy thought she heard Vito murmur beneath his breath and she glanced at him sharply, but saw nothing in his expression to warrant such a strange remark.

Then Luc was striding forward to take hold of Bianca’s slender fingers and lifting them to his lips. Whatever he said to his betrothed brought a sheen to Bianca’s eyes and a vulnerable tremor to her oh, so beautiful mouth.

He loves her, Lizzy realised in that moment. An odd little sensation clutched at her chest. Frowning slightly, she turned away from the two lovers and was relieved to feel the sensation fade.

They were ferried to the opera in a fleet of sleek limousines. Vito Moreno was obviously meant to partner her tonight and he made her laugh, which made her relax more and more as the evening wore on. La Scala was fabulous, an experience Lizzy really enjoyed—mainly because she’d successfully managed to avoid being placed anywhere near her best friend’s disturbing fiancé. Afterwards they moved on to have dinner in a beautiful sixteenth century palazzo on the outskirts of Milan.

It was all very stylish, very much a glimpse of how the richer half lived. There was dancing as well as dining, and because Vito kept on filling her wineglass Lizzy was tipsy by the time Luc De Santis arrived by her chair to invite her to dance.

There was a hovering second while she hunted around for an excuse to refuse him, then his hand arrived beneath her elbow to propel her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ he said dryly. ‘It is expected that the groom dances at least once with his bride’s maid of honour.’

Lizzy thought that was supposed to happen after the wedding, but the telling quiver struck again making her too tense and too breathless to say it as he drew her against him on the dance floor and smoothly urged her to dance.

The lights were low, the music a slow romantic ballad accompanied by a female singer with a stirringly deep and sensual voice. She felt her heart begin to pump to a heavier beat as they moved together and she absorbed the full disturbing impact of his masculine warmth and his muscular hardness pressing against her tense, softer shape.

‘Relax,’ he prompted after a few seconds. ‘This is supposed to be an enjoyable pastime.’

Lizzy looked up, caught the mocking glow in his eyes and felt the sting of heat flush her cheeks. ‘I’m just not used to—’

‘Being held this close to a man?’ he mocked.

‘Dancing in these shoes!’ she corrected hotly. ‘And that wasn’t a very nice thing to say.’

He just laughed, the sound low and deep and disturbingly intimate the way it resonated against the tips of her breasts. ‘You are an unusual creature, Elizabeth Hadley,’ he informed her then. ‘You are very beautiful but you don’t like to be told so. You are tense and defensive around me yet you can completely relax with a serial womaniser like Vito Moreno.’

‘Vito isn’t a womaniser,’ Lizzy rejected. ‘He’s too laid back to be a womaniser.’

‘Ring any telephone number in Sydney and just mention his name.’

And that was cynicism, not mockery, she noted. ‘Well, I like him,’ she stated stubbornly.

‘Ah, I see he is beginning to reel you in.’

‘And that wasn’t very nice, either!’

His dark head suddenly dipped, bringing his lips very close to her cheek. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, mia bella—I am not very nice.’

He was so close now she could smell the masculine pull of his tangy scent. Lizzy jerked her head back. ‘Well, you had better be nice to Bianca,’ she warned loyally.

He just laughed as he straightened up again, then drew her even closer so he could control her movements with a cool, casual strength. He was taller than her by several impacting inches, which put her eyes on a level with his strong, chiselled chin. They didn’t speak again, and as the dance wore on maybe it was the fault of too many recklessly consumed glasses of wine that made her so aware of everything about him. Even the smooth feel of his silk lapel beneath her fingers fascinated her, and the bright whiteness of his shirt against the natural olive tones of his throat.

He was gorgeous. There was just no use in trying to deny it. Everything about him was so perfectly presented from the neatly styled gloss of his satin black hair to the length of his very Italian nose and the truly beautiful shape to his mouth.

And the singer droned on, low and soulful. Lizzy felt the sensual pull of the melody percolate her system as potently as the wine she had been drinking all evening and like a fool she closed her eyes and just let the sensation carry her away. One set of his long golden fingers lightly clasped her pale slender fingers, the other set rested low in the arch of her back. She had no idea how her fingers were stroking the silk lapel of his jacket or that she had moved in so close to him that her breath was softly feathering his throat. She just moved where he guided her, aware of the tingling tension affecting her body but unaware that it was affecting him too. His fingers moved slightly against her clasped fingers, the hand at her back glided upwards to the centre of her spine and gently urged her into even closer contact with him.

It was—nice. Kind of tingly and floaty and she hadn’t a clue as to how much she had relaxed into him until she felt the living warmth of taut skin brush against her lips and tasted it on the tip of her tongue.

With a jerk of shock Lizzy flicked her eyes open and pulled back her head. Dismay instantly curled its way through her body accompanied by a wave of mortified embarrassment that flooded like fire into her face when she realised what she had done.

She had just brushed her lips against Bianca’s fiancé’s throat and tasted him with her tongue!