The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

ARCHIE WHIMPERED OUTSIDE the bathroom door.

‘You know you can do better than that,’ Cesare told him, tossing him a fragment of chicken from one of the plates on the table by the bed.

For a three-legged dog, Archie could move fast and he caught the scrap in mid-air.

‘Now...you have a mission,’ Cesare reminded the scruffy little animal. ‘You get her out of the bathroom.’

Archie hovered by the door, tried to push it but the balloon collar round his neck got in the way. Sitting back on his haunches, Archie loosed a sad howl that would not have shamed a banshee. Cesare threw him another piece of succulent chicken in reward. Archie gave a grand performance.

Lizzie woke up feeling cold, water sloshing noisily around her as she sat up wide-eyed. Archie was howling at the door...or had that just been a dream? Clambering hastily out of the bath, she snatched up a fleecy towel and wrapped herself in it, just as Archie howled again. Glancing at the watch on the vanity to see how long she had slept, she was taken aback to realise that a couple of hours had passed and that it was now almost one in the morning. Depressing the lock, she opened the door in haste.

‘Oh, pet, I forgot about you! Have you been lonely?’ Lizzie asked, squatting down to the little dog’s level.

‘Want some supper?’ Cesare asked lazily from the bed on which he reclined.

Small bosom swelling at that insouciant tone, Lizzie was about to tell him in no short order what he could do with supper and then her tummy growled and she registered in surprise that she was actually very hungry. Of course, she hadn’t eaten very much at dinner...

Straightening, she looped her damp hair back behind her ear and focused on Cesare’s lean, darkly devastating face, clashing with the banked-down glitter of his stunning eyes. ‘You still want answers, don’t you?’

‘I’d be a liar if I said otherwise,’ he admitted, sprawling back with his hands linked behind his head, a position which only threw into prominence the muscular torso and flat ribbed stomach beneath his black T-shirt.

Lizzie breathed in slowly, belatedly registering the table of snacks by the bed and the candles that must have been relit while she slept. A surprising sense of calm after the storm enclosed her. The worst had already happened, hadn’t it? What did she have to fear now? Not marriage, not sex, she decided, her chin coming up. Cesare had...briefly...scared her but that wasn’t his fault. No, that fault could be laid at the door of her late mother’s misjudgement of men and a stepfather who had given Lizzie nightmares long after he had passed out of her life.

‘You know, when you got so angry, you scared me,’ she told him baldly. ‘My mother was married to a man who beat her up when he got angry.’

Cesare sprang off the bed, a frown pleating his ebony brows. ‘I would never hurt you.’

‘I think I know that already,’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘But running is still a reflex for me when men get angry. I can’t help it. The two years Mum was married to that man were terrifying for Chrissie and me.’

‘Did he hit you as well?’ Cesare growled in disgust, appalled that he could have, however unwittingly, frightened her.

‘He tried to a couple of times but he was drunk and clumsy and we were fast on our feet,’ Lizzie confided. ‘Let’s not talk about it. It’s in the past. But I should make one thing clear...’ She hesitated. ‘I’m only willing to talk about Andrew if you’re willing to talk about Serafina.’

‘And exactly who has been talking to you?’ Cesare demanded, a muscle pulling taut at the corner of his stern, handsome mouth.

‘Your grandmother mentioned her...and I’m curious too,’ Lizzie confessed while she walked into the dressing room in search of a nightdress. Shedding the towel behind the door, she slipped it on, catching a glimpse of herself in a tall mirror. What remained of her fake glamour had evaporated in the long bath she had taken. The moist atmosphere had added frizz to her formerly smooth tresses and she suppressed a sigh. Cesare was getting the real Lizzie Whitaker on this particular night.

Emerging from the dressing room with Archie at her heels, she tried not to visibly shrink from Cesare’s acute appraisal. The silk nightie was long and, to her, the very antithesis of sexy because it revealed neither leg nor cleavage. Her face coloured as she stilled for a split second, disturbingly aware of the intensity of that assessment from his smouldering dark golden eyes. A wave of heat shimmied over her, settling at the tips of her breasts and between her thighs in a tingling, throbbing awareness that mortified her. She knew he was thinking about sex. She also knew that he was making her think about sex. And she didn’t know how he did it. Hormonal awareness was like an invisible electric current lacing the atmosphere.

Cesare watched the candlelight throw Lizzie’s slender legs into view behind the thin silk and his mouth ran dry while the rest of him ran hot and heavy. Her pert breasts shimmying below the material in the most stimulating way, she curled up at the foot of the bed and reached for a plate of snacks. ‘So, who goes first?’

‘I will,’ Cesare surprised himself by saying. Although he had initially been disconcerted by her demand he was now more amused that she should want to travel that far back into his past. It simply irritated him, though, that his grandmother was willing to credit that a youthful love affair gone wrong could still have any influence over him.

‘Serafina...it’s a beautiful name,’ Lizzie remarked thoughtfully.

‘She is very beautiful,’ Cesare admitted, quietly contemplative as he sprawled back indolently against the headboard of the bed. ‘We were students together. I was doing business, she was doing business law. It was first lo

ve, all very intense stuff.’

Lizzie watched him grimace at that admission. ‘My first love was a poster of a boy-band member on the wall,’ she confided in some embarrassment.

‘A poster would’ve been a safer option for me. I fell hard and fast and I wanted to marry Serafina. She said we were too young and she was right,’ he conceded wryly. ‘She was always ambitious and I assumed that I’d have to start at the bottom of the business ladder. But then I made a stock-market killing and took over my first company and my prospects improved. Serafina started work at an upmarket legal practice with some very rich...and influential clients...’

‘And at that point, you were still together?’ Lizzie prompted when the silence dragged, his delivery becoming noticeably less smooth.

‘Very much so. We were living together. Second week in her new job, Serafina met Matteo Ruffini and he invited her out to dinner with a view to offering her the opportunity to work on his substantial account.’ His beautiful mouth took on a sardonic slant. ‘Suddenly she became unavailable to me, working late in the evening, too busy to join me for lunch.’

His tension was unhidden. Lizzie registered that Serafina had hurt him and hurt him deep because he still couldn’t talk about the woman with indifference. ‘She was seeing Matteo?’