The Italian's Wife

brow. She was far too sensitive, she told herself. So Rio didn't talk

about his emotions, but could she consider that unusual? Even the day

her own father had cried over her being pregnant the older man had

uttered few words. Her male schoolmates had been more given to

off-colour jokes and clumsy flirtation, and Jeff had never really talked

about anything but himself.

'Go to sleep...' Rio urged lazily. 'We have a very early start in the

morning.'

During the flight the next day, Rio was fully occupied with his laptop.

Bored with watching the films on offer, Holly went to check on Timothy,

but he was sound asleep and their nanny was catnapping too. With a smile

at the

picture they made, Holly returned to the main cabin and decided to

entertain herself with the pile of glossy magazines which she had seen

Sarah absorbed in earlier.

She leafed through the pages, pausing to admire the fabulous fashion,

only to be bemused by the belated acknowledgement that she could now

probably afford to buy anything she liked, courtesy of her incredibly

generous husband. Shooting his darkly handsome profile at the other end

of the cabin a tender lingering scrutiny, she settled down to read.

A full-page shot of a vaguely familiar beautiful blonde wearing the

ultimate in country casuals caught her attention and she scanned the

name below. Of course, she had known that face! It was Chrissie Kent,

the model who had become a household name after doing an entertaining

series of luxury car advertisements on television a couple of years

earlier. Holly admired the handsome pair of springer spaniels seated at

Chrissie's feet and thought that the model must be a genuinely nice

person if she made time for pets in her jet-set existence. She then

turned to the opposite page, only to be confronted by a far more

familiar face.

Billionaire Italian tycoon, Saverio Lombardi, escorting his fiancée at

the Cannes Film Festival.

A fevered pulse beginning to thump like mad at what felt like the foot

of her convulsing throat, Holly read and re-read that single line and

then fixedly studied the picture of Rio and Chrissie Kent together.

Perspiration beaded Holly's short upper lip. She was in shock, so much

shock that she just sat there for a long time. Rio had been engaged to

Chrissie Kent?

Christabel...of course, Christabel. The woman was incredibly beautiful,

pale blonde hair falling waterfall-straight

126

either side of her stunning face. Her fantastic figure was sheathed in a

daring cerise-pin satin gown slit to the thigh and so tight that only

one in a million women could have got away with it. She even had legs

that went on and on and on to the most abnormal but flattering length.

Tummy unsettled by the revelation that had burst like a bombshell upon

her, Holly began to read the article and turned the page, only to see

Christabel seated on a silk-upholstered sofa in the town house where she

herself had once dared to sit. Without warning, Holly also remembered

how she had posed and clowned for Rio while she paraded designer fashion

and pretended to be a model. Instantly she wanted to jump out of his jet

without a parachute. Instantly she felt humiliated beyond belief.

But what shook her most of all was that the magazine was not that old an

issue. Only six weeks ago Rio had still been engaged and had still been

committed to a summer wedding with another woman. Like a bloodhound on

the scent, Holly began to leaf frantically through the remaining

magazines in search of further information. But when she found the facts

that she had believed she wanted in a weekly magazine of much more

humble origin, she wished that she had missed seeing it.

The issue which announced the sudden 'shock' break-up of Rio and

Christabel had come on sale only a week after Holly had first met Rio,

and indeed also featured a small grainy photo of her own wedding and

much speculation about her identity. There she was, posed on the church

steps with huge scared eyes, hanging on to Rio with an extreme lack of

cool. Wild curly hair was blowing round her in a messy tangle. She

looked a total fright. She looked like the bride of Frankenstein...

127

'You've been very quiet,' Rio told Holly in the limo that collected them

from the airport to ferry them home to the town house. 'Are you feeling

all right?'

'I'm fine.' Even to Holly's own ears, her voice sounded strained, but a

more expansive response was impossible with Sarah and Timothy seated

beside them.

In any case, Holly still had no idea what she planned to say to Rio when

she did finally get him alone. She was still mentally reeling, her mind

awash with a crazy cascade of ever more confused thoughts. The anger

surging higher and higher inside her was no help to her concentration.

Behind the anger lurked pain and fear and a terrifying sense of

betrayal. Without the smallest warning, her confidence in what she had

believed to be a happy marriage had been smashed to pieces. It seemed

that their relationship was built on the proverbial shifting sands

rather than on firm foundations.

Faced with such unpalatable and humiliating facts, what else was she to

think? Rio had bedded her within days of breaking up with one of the

most beautiful women in the world. Christabel Kent was an icon, every

male fantasy combined, but, worst of all, she was ten times closer to

being Rio's equal in looks, sophistication and importance than Holly

could ever hope to be. Indeed, Christabel was exactly the kind of female

that men like Rio Lombardi did marry: a trophy wife, famous in her own

right.

Common sense told Holly that Rio had married her on the rebound, and

that was very bad news, she thought

128

wretchedly. Rio could not have been thinking straight when he swept her

off to bed on a passionate impulse. Nor could he have seriously

considered what he was doing when he then insisted that he wanted her to

marry him.

Only now was Holly recalling Ezio Farretti's prophetic warnings. 'He's

just not himself right now and you don't want to get your feelin

gs

hurt.' Older and wiser, and knowing the situation as Holly had not, Ezio

had recognised the high risk factors at play. Holly's vulnerability,

Rio's volatile temperament and simple proximity had been a dangerous

combination.

After all, Rio must have been with Christabel for quite some time and

breaking up with her must have been traumatic, Holly reasoned painfully.

Hence Rio's short temper, his need for a distraction, his sudden

startling susceptibility to a youthful redhead incapable of concealing

her starry-eyed admiration. In the normal way of things, Holly reckoned

that Rio would barely have noticed that she was alive.

'I'll be heading back to the airport in a couple of hours,' Rio reminded

her as they entered the town house. 'I'm going for a shower.'

Before she could follow him she was held back by their nanny, who needed

to discuss arrangements for the weekend off she was about to take.

Agreeing that Sarah could depart that afternoon, Holly then hurried off

in Rio's wake.

He was in their bedroom, already half-undressed, his shirt hanging

loose, a bronzed, energising slice of muscular, hair-roughened chest on

view, his potent and entirely natural sex appeal pronounced. Holly came

to a halt just inside the door, her heartbeat accelerating, her mouth

running dry, no matter how hard she tried not to react to him. He was so

gorgeous, from the crown of his proud, dark head to the soles of his

bare brown feet, and she loved him as she had

never known she could love anybody. But what she had learnt from those