wretched magazines had ripped her apart, not least because she knew that
she should have received that same information from him. And the very
fact that Rio had not told her only made her feel that her every worst
fear was justified.
Rio surveyed her with level dark golden eyes. 'There is no point
throwing a three-act tragedy, cara. It won't change anything.'
Totally disconcerted by that statement, Holly stared at him. 'What are
you talking about?'
Unimpressed, Rio slanted a dark brow. 'You've been hi a hellish sulk
ever since it dawned on you that I'm leaving you to your own devices for
the next week,' he informed her drily. 'But you'll have to get used to
the idea of getting by without me when I'm away on business.'
'Will I?' Something close to a hysterical giggle feathered in Holly's
tight throat as she realised how he had interpreted her silence and how
he had put his own rather demeaning spin on what lay behind her behaviour.
'It'll be a challenge for you at first because you haven't made friends
yet. But by this time next year you won't be dependent on me for
company,' Rio asserted with confidence, strolling closer and reaching
for her hands. 'You'll learn to lead your own life while I'm abroad. My
mother will support you. She knows a lot of people and you can get
involved in the charities we support through the foundation or, indeed,
in whatever else interests you.'
Her hands jerked in the warm hold of his. Her husband knew how besotted
she was with him and he thought that her poor little heart was just
breaking at the prospect of surviving an entire seven days without him.
And the way he was talking about a future in which they led separate
lives chilled her to the marrow.
130
As Holly yanked her fingers free of his hectic colour fired over her
cheekbones. 'Is that what Christabel would have done?'
Rio's sculpted mouth tightened, eyes hardening at what he clearly
translated as an ungenerous and potentially catty response. 'What she
might have done hardly concerns us.'
'Are you going to tell me why I had to read a flippin' magazine just to
find out that your ex-girlfriend is the world-famous model Chrissie
Kent?' Holly demanded half an octave higher.
Rio went very still, golden eyes gleaming from below luxuriant black
lashes. 'I don't quite understand the relevance of Christabel's public
profile.'
'Like heck you don't!' Holly snapped, her temper provoked by that cool,
snubbing response. 'You knew I had no idea. Couldn't you at least have
told me that much about her?'
Rio expelled his breath in an impatient hiss. 'I knew you'd be
intimidated. I knew you would beat yourself up making stupid
comparisons. So, no, I wasn't in a hurry to ram that fact down your throat.'
At that disconcertingly honest response, Holly lost every scrap of her
feverish colour. She felt as if she was standing there naked and as
see-through as clear glass. She felt humiliated that he should
understand her that well and face her with her own insecurity. 'Yes, it
would be a very stupid comparison to even try to attempt...wouldn't it?'
'Santo cielo...that's not what I meant!' Now anger brightened Rio's
gaze, tautened his lean, strong face. 'I just felt that you'd be better
equipped to deal with all that after we'd been married for a while.'
Holly's hands coiled into hurting fists. 'Oh, you know me so well, do
you? You think you can predict how I'm likely to react to everything?'
'It seems that on that particular score I was accurate.'
Holly refused to be squashed. 'But then your ex-girlfriend's public
profile, as you called it, was only the tip of the iceberg, wasn't it?
Like when were you planning to tell me just how little time passed
between you breaking up with her and getting involved with me?'
Perceptibly, Rio's big, powerful frame tensed.
'I want a date,' Holly told him feverishly. 'I want to know how much of
a time lag there was.'
'Believe me, bella mia...you don't,' Rio countered flatly.
'It was barely even a couple of weeks...I'm right, aren't I?' Holly
persisted, determined to get the truth out of him. 'Going by the date on
that magazine article, it couldn't have been much longer than a couple
of weeks since you'd broken up. Why else was Ezio warning me that you
weren't yourself when I first met you?'
His darkly handsome features froze. 'Thank you, Ezio. Tell me, do you
make a habit of discussing me with my employees?'
'Oh, I'll be sure to make a habit of it from here on in. It seems to me
I've got more chance of getting an honest answer from other people than
from you!' Holly condemned, refusing to be embarrassed by his freezing
disapproval and defending herself. 'I still remember what you said when
you asked me to marry you. You said you had been engaged "until
relatively recently". Which hardly suggests a gap of less than a month-'
'Leave it,' Rio cut in with ruthless bite. 'I'm going for that shower
before this ridiculous argument escalates any
more-'
In incredulous, seething frustration, Holly watched him resume stripping
off his clothes. Clad only in his Calvin Kleins, he headed for the bathroom.
'I could ask Ezio,' Holly threatened between gritted
132
teeth, although she knew that now that they were married she would never
ever go behind Rio's back like that, or indeed place the older man in
such an awkward position.
'I parted from Christabel an hour before you walked out in front of my
limo.'
Holly blinked. Those words hit her as though they were in a foreign
language she could not fathom, for in a self-protective act her brain
seemed to throw up barriers to her understanding. And then, without
warning, she grasped what he had said and there was no hiding from it,
no avoiding the reality that what he had just admitted was a hundred
times more devastating than she had expected.
Rio swung round, scanned her pale, shattered face and swore in roughened
Italian, but as he moved back towards her she backed away.
Holly parted dry lips. 'An...hour?'
Strong jawline clenching, he studied her with grim golden eyes. 'I don't
see that the precise amount of time is material in this particular case...'
An uneven laugh was dragged from Holly as she collapsed down on the side
of the bed, fearful her knees were about to give way under her. An hour.
Only an hour had passed between him leaving Christabel and first meeting
her, and forty-eight hours later he had hauled her off to bed. And he
expected her to accept that there was nothing relevant in that
super-shrunken timeline?
'You couldn't possibly have known what you were doing,' she said sickly.
No way did she need huge experience of men to make that statement. An
hour. It was laughable, terrifying, outrageous. And only two days later
Rio had proven that reality to her beyond all possible doubt by doing
something that she knew in her heart had been quite out of character for
him: taking her to bed.
&nb
sp; He wasn't the sort of bloke who went in for one-night stands. He wasn't
the sort of bloke who got a kick out of going to bed with some woman he
hardly knew just for the sheer hell of it. There were men like that but
Rio wasn't one of them. Rio had a real good-taste threshold. Rio had a
conscience. Rio was not an oversexed teenager with out-of-control hormones.
But Rio had one quirk which had betrayed both her and him: it would take
torture to make him talk about his own feelings. He would probably
sooner slow-roast over a hot fire than admit that he had been upset and
off-balance after breaking off his engagement. In fact, that was an
understatement, she recognised, and hadn't she seen the evidence of how
he was feeling for herself? His emotions had been seething, but more