The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

‘I want to know what Serafina said to you.’

‘That she wants you back, that you married me to punish her, that I wasn’t educated enough to hold you... Oh, yes,’ Lizzie recounted and then, with a ghastly attempt at an amused smile, added, ‘and that this was your mutual dream house, planned by you both on the wet night you made love in the barn...’

Cesare’s eyes flashed flaming gold, his outrage unconcealed. He closed a hard hand to the edge of the door as if to emphasise the fact that he was still leaving. ‘Madonna diavolo! She shouldn’t have involved you in this.’

At those words, at that suggestion that there was an involvement that she was unaware of, Lizzie swore her heart cracked right down the middle. ‘No,’ she agreed woodenly, because it was true.

Cesare steeled himself. He knew he had to speak, could not comprehend why ESP was suddenly warning him to shut up and say nothing. ‘We don’t have a genuine marriage. We are not a couple in the true sense of the word. We both know that...’

He paused as if he was hoping she would leap in and say something but Lizzie couldn’t have found her voice had her life depended on it. At that moment she felt as if her life’s blood were draining away in a pool on the floor and that dramatic image made her feel dizzy.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she mumbled, knowing that she was lying, knowing that sleep had never been further from her mind, but it seemed so incredibly important in that silence to act as if she were still able to function normally even if it was a complete lie to try and save face.

‘This is all my fault,’ Cesare breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Don’t think I’m not aware of that. I shouldn’t have brought something as volatile as sex into the equation.’

‘And you were still doing it...only a few hours ago,’ she framed unevenly.

Unusually indecisive, Cesare hovered in the rushing silence. Archie was looking at him from across the hall as if he had two heads, which absolutely had to be his imagination playing tricks on him, he reasoned wildly. He felt sick, he felt bad, he felt... No, he was being dangerously emotional and he knew what emotion did to him: it made him irrational and reckless and he wasn’t going to go there again...ever! He was taking the right approach in correcting a serious mistake before it did any more damage. Aside of that aspect, they were both consenting adults.

‘So, it’s back to the business arrangement,’ Lizzie assumed in a tight little voice.

‘I think that would be wiser, don’t you?’

Not recognising that cold, detached intonation, Lizzie finally dared to look at him again. He was poised by the door, devastatingly handsome, a long slice of bare brown torso showing between the parted edges of his shirt, tight jeans defining long, powerful thighs and lean hips. Slowly she raised her gaze, determined to be brave, determined to hold on to her pride even though he had rejected her in the worst possible and most hurtfully humiliating way. He had made it clear where he stood and she supposed that brutal honesty was for the best.

‘Goodnight,’ Lizzie said quietly and she turned on her heel.

In a split second the front door closed and he was gone. The Ferrari engine growled to life and she literally ran out to the terrace above the pool, frantically determined to see if she could pick out the Ruffini palazzo on the hillside. And there it was, a big white classical building lit up like a fairground. She had noticed it before but had never thought to ask about it. Now she watched the lights of Cesare’s car heading down into the valley and she stood and she stood, arms wrapped defensively round herself while she waited to see if her very worst suspicions were correct.

At such a distance, she could not have been a hundred per cent certain but she was convinced that it was the Ferrari that she saw heading up the long, winding, steep drive to the palazzo. Cesare was going straight to see Serafina. Lizzie was in shock. Perhaps he had been seeing the other woman all along; Lizzie hadn’t been keeping tabs on him everywhere he went. It seemed pretty obvious to her that Cesare had a dark side and more secrets than she had ever had cause to suspect and she had been ignorant and irresponsible and very naive not to smell a rat sooner...but it wasn’t much good or any comfort to feel wise after the event, was it?

CHAPTER TEN

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, with her heart beating very fast, Lizzie studied a test wand, relieved that she had taken the opportunity to discreetly buy a pregnancy kit some weeks earlier.

And there it was straight away, the result she had both feared and craved: she was pregnant. It changed everything, she acknowledged in shock, and she walked out to the bedroom and unlocked the door she had locked the night before. Cesare would need access to his clothes but had she cared about that last night when her dream world had collapsed about her ears? No, she had not.

But now that she knew for sure that she was carrying Cesare’s baby, she had to look to the future and beyond the business agreement they had origin

ally made. She could not afford to be at odds with her child’s father. That would only foster resentment between them and their child would suffer in that scenario. Unfortunately that meant that she had to be a bigger person than she felt like being just at that moment. She had to rise above what had happened, bury the personal aspect and stick to the rules from here on in.

He’d broken her heart. Well, she’d recovered from Andrew; she would eventually recover from Cesare. Of course, she had never loved Andrew the way she loved Cesare; consequently getting over Cesare would be more of a challenge. Andrew had hurt her self-esteem and damaged her trust but Cesare had torn her heart out. To think of living even one day without Cesare somewhere nearby tore her apart, teaching her how weak and vulnerable her emotions had made her.

Yes, Lizzie acknowledged, tidying her hair, adding more concealer to hide the redness of her eyes, she had a long, long way to go in the recovery process. But now that she knew about the baby, it would have to start right now. She would have to put on the act of the century. She couldn’t afford to show the smallest interest in what was going on between Serafina and him. He had made it clear that she had no right to ask such questions and she would have to respect that.

Had Cesare behaved badly? She thought he had. Scrapping the business-agreement-based marriage had been his idea, not hers. But honesty forced her to acknowledge that he had suggested at the time that they would have to see how well their marriage worked. In short, their marriage as such had been on a trial basis. And obviously, while it had worked incredibly well for Lizzie, it had not worked at all for Cesare. That hurt; that hurt her very much. It was a complete rejection of everything they had shared in and out of bed over the past month and it made her feel such an idiot for being so deliriously happy with him while failing utterly to notice that he did not feel the same way.

Lizzie went downstairs for breakfast, Archie at her heels. The instant the dog saw Cesare, who spoiled him shamelessly and taught him bad manners by feeding him titbits during meals, Archie hurried over to greet him. Cesare vaulted upright the minute she appeared. Unshaven, noticeably lacking his usual immaculate grooming, he still wore the same jeans and shirt. He raked a long-fingered brown hand through his tousled hair, looking effortlessly gorgeous but possibly less poised than he usually was.

‘I won’t lock the bedroom door again,’ Lizzie promised, her heart-shaped face as still as a woodland pool. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think about what I was doing but the room’s free now.’

‘I’ll get a shower before we leave for the airfield,’ Cesare countered, his dark golden gaze scanning her expressionless face as if in search of something. ‘Lizzie, we need to talk.’

Already having foreseen that he might feel that that was a necessity, Lizzie rushed to disabuse him of that dangerous notion. The very last thing she needed in her current shaky state of mind was a rehash of the breakdown of their relationship the night before. It wouldn’t smooth over anything, wouldn’t make her feel any better. How could it? Essentially he was dumping her and nothing he could say would ease that pain.

‘That’s the very last thing we need,’ Lizzie told him briskly. ‘All that needed to be said was said last night and we don’t need to go over it again.’

‘But—’