'No. Sunny told me why you had to get married!' Jessica slung rawly. 'And I refuse to be part of it!'
'Why do I have to get married?' Carlo invited very softly. 'I really would like to know.'
'You lied to me,' Jessica condemned fiercely. 'Every
thing you told me was a lie... you played on my sym
pathy when all the time you were just using me '
'Do you ever get to the punchline?'
'You have to be married to inherit your father's
money!'
After a staggered pause, Carlo threw back his dark imperious head and laughed uproariously, utterly incredulous at the charge.
It was not the reaction Jessica had expected. Her
mouth fell open.
'Dio... is that the best she could do?' His amusement spent, Carlo studied Jessica with narrowed eyes, his hard mouth compressing. 'And you believed her, didn't you?'
Suddenly less sure, Jessica said, 'I '
Carlo cut across her. 'I have been my father's heir since the day I was born because his blood runs in my veins. And no matter what bitterness or resentment lay
between us that has never changed. Why would he demand that I marry?'
'Because he wants you to settle down,' Jessica suggested tremulously.
'Lukas Philippides wants me to do what he never did himself?' Carlo elevated a sardonic winged brow. 'Settle down? He didn't settle down through four marriages and countless mistresses... why should he seek to interfere in my private life?'
Jessica was not prepared to cede the point without a fight. 'Well, then, you tell me why both your father and your sister are so damned glad that you're getting married?' she demanded, shooting what she knew to be the last bolt in her argument.
His hard features perceptibly darkened, his mouth
tightening as though she had drawn blood. Glittering
golden eyes rested on her coldly. 'OK, I'll tell you. Ten
years ago, my father went to bed with the woman I had
asked to marry me '
'He what1?' Jessica mumbled in shock, certain she could not have heard him correctly.
"Thus a decade of mutual silence,' Carlo pointed out grimly.
'But how... I mean, whyV she whispered.
'Lukas invited me to visit him. I brought my fiancee
with me,' Carlo murmured in a flat, unemotional tone.
'You see Lukas now, a shadow of the man he was then.
In those days he was still virile and attractive to women.