'Then-er-what was it?'
'The truth of what we're going to do. I can't say that I feel flattered
that you should assume that I would lie about something that important,'
Rio continued with a level cool that only made her own astonishment feel
all that more intense. 'We'll be married just as soon as I can get a
special licence arranged.'
Her knees felt as if they were fashioned out of cotton wool and wobbled
under her. She was finally looking at him for the first time that day
and only because she was reeling with shock. Blue eyes very wide, she
whispered unsteadily, 'You're not having me on?'
'I may have made you pregnant. I took advantage of you last night,' Rio
breathed, aggressive jawline clenched hard. 'You were very vulnerable
and I should have kept my distance. I took you to bed because I wanted-'
'That's OK. That's not taking advantage!' Holly protested with feverish
relief at what she assumed he was about to tell her.
'Sex. I wanted sex. It was as primitive as that.' His superb
bone-structure fiercely taut, Rio made an admission that slaughtered
Holly where she stood, for she had believed when she interrupted him
that he had been telling her that it was her, personally, that he had
wanted. Only that was not the case, was it? The truth was much more
painful. When a bloke said he had just wanted sex, it was
like saying that she had only been a convenient body, Holly reflected in
agony.
Deeply hurt by that confession, wishing he had thought enough of her
feelings not to have voiced it, Holly dropped heavily down onto the
nearest sofa, no longer trusting her weak legs to hold her upright. 'I
wanted you...just you,' she heard herself mumble like a foolish child,
digging herself into an even more embarrassing hole.
'I know...' That confirmation just splintered through her shrinking,
shaking body like the cruellest of knives, tearing tender flesh wherever
it touched. 'I must be honest with you, cara-'
'Don't call me that...whatever it means. You use it like it means
something and it doesn't.' Holly squeezed out that condemnation in a
voice that was far from level. 'So why are you talking about marrying
me...feeling like you do?'
'I like you, Holly. I like Timothy too. I believe I could become fond of
you.'
Holly wanted to die where she sat. Fond? She curved her arms round
herself, appalled at the emotional hurt he was inflicting on her in the
name of honesty. Even Jeff with his abuse had not wounded her as much as
Rio wounded her at that moment. Rio was ripping apart everything, every
naive and harmless belief, every tiny inner hope. He liked her, well,
whoopy-do! So she felt even more pathetic to be sitting there thinking
that she loved him while he hammered the self-esteem he had rescued for
her back into the ground again.
'Until relatively recently, I was engaged to another woman.'
That startling admission hung there like another giant in the face just
waiting for her to lift her cheek to receive it. But something stronger
than she was, the most powerful curiosity, forced Holly to lift her head
again. The
86
brilliant flare of anger lightening his gaze in the aftermath of that
acknowledgement did not match her expectations. There was none of the
regret or emotion that she had feared that she would see. In fact, his
darkly handsome features were set hard in stone.
'Engaged?' she prompted uneasily.
'I finished it. That's over and done with and in the past.' Beautifully
shaped mouth curling, glittering golden eyes resting on her, Rio
murmured, 'I only mentioned it because while I was engaged I got used to
the idea of being married, and I do still need a wife.'
'What for?' It sounded inane but Holly couldn't help it. But then, she
was weak with relief at the finality with which he had pronounced that
his engagement was over. It must have ended quite some time back, Holly
assumed, or he would hardly have been saying that it was in the past.
Rio spread his lean brown hands in a fluid expressive movement. 'Some
day I want a family of my own.'
'Oh...'
'I also need a wife to oversee my domestic arrangements and entertain
friends and family. A wife who will try to be a daughter to my mother,
who suffers a lot of ill-health,' Rio enumerated, very much more relaxed
now that he was getting to talk practicalities. 'A wife to make me more
comfortable, for I have got beyond the stage where I enjoy spending my
time, indeed, often wasting my time with a variety of different women.'
And he wanted superwoman as a wife. He had huge expectations, Holly
thought heavily, knowing she could never, ever measure up to such
requirements, and marvelling that he had not immediately realised that fact.
'You could learn to be the wife that I want,' Rio informed her confidently.
But it sounded as if lifelong training would be necessary.
She had been stymied by one trip to a fancy restaurant, A
near-hysterical giggle bubbled in her aching throat but she had never
been further from laughter.
'You need to know that I've good reason other than the risk that you may
already be pregnant to talk of marriage,' he continued in his dark, deep
drawl that flowed like honey even now down her sensitive spine.
'But we're probably worrying about nothing-'
'Are we? You're young and fertile and I would prefer not to wait for
proof one way or the other.' Rio expelled his breath in a measured hiss.
'If we wait and a child is eventually born there will be those who
believe that I was forced to marry you. That would be humiliating for you.'
He really did expect the worst. He really did believe that there was a
very strong chance that he might have impregnated her. His certainty
scared her. But how could she marry a man who felt nothing for her? Did
that mean that she was considering his offer? Of course she was.
Dredging her attention from his lean, strong face, she knew she did not
even have to take her own feelings for him into account to make that
decision. She had nothing to offer Timmie, who would no doubt thrive as
Timothy. If she married Rio her baby would want for nothing. He would
have a home, love and security and a bloke who was willing to be his
adoptive father. Rio liked kids. He Liked her son already. In fact she
had pretty much hit the equivalent of the jackpot falling in front of
his limo, she acknowledged guiltily, feeling that she would very much be
taking advantage of him.
She linked her trembling hands together, hugely worked up but trying so
hard to emulate his calm and logical approach. 'When did you start
thinking of all this?'
'Ten minutes after you fled from my room last night,' Rio admitted,
bringing her bright head up again. I have never felt so guilty in my
whole life.'
88
'Thanks...' Her voice wobbled again and she pushed her lips together
hard, striving to will back the tears threatening behind her eyes.
'I'll look after you and your son. You need me. I like to be
needed. I'm
used to being needed,' Rio completed with a shrug of Latin acceptance.
He was so volatile. So very, very volatile and until now she had not
even recognised that reality. He had seemed so controlled and reserved
at their first proper meeting at the hospital, only to overturn that
impression with his angry, intimidating reaction when he had found her
trying to sneak away from the Lombardi hospital. Ever since then he had
alternated between fiery heat and indolent cool. He could switch from
one mood to the other within seconds. He fascinated her.
'You might go and fall madly in love with someone else...' she heard
herself say, although it was an effort to make herself say that.
'You must be joking,' Rio said in a tone of icy derision.
He was so sure of himself, so sure he knew everything there was to know.
Recalling all the awful anxiety she had suffered just struggling to
survive, she felt reassured by that infinite confidence of his. So how
could she hold his patent belief that she would snatch at his offer of
marriage against him?
After all, here she was, dead keen on him and incapable of hiding it,
not to mention homeless and broke. Had he pretended a little uncertainty
as to his reception it wouldn't really have been convincing, she told
herself. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and a huge catch for
someone like her. But he was also feeling guilty as hell over taking her
to bed, she reminded herself reluctantly. She really ought to be turning
him down flat. Wasn't it wrong to let him make such a massive mistake?
He didn't love
her, he hardly knew her, and in time he might even come to despise her
for the mistakes she would make trying to fit into his world. But he was
right, she could learn, and a part of her that she wasn't very proud of
desperately wanted that chance.
'I shouldn't say yes to this,' Holly breathed unevenly.
'But you will.' Rio leant down and closed his hands round hers to pull
her up to him. His sudden flashing smile as her cheeks blossomed with
self-conscious colour made her tummy somersault with excitement. The
warm, intrinsically familiar scent of him made her ache. The mere fact
that he was only inches away reduced her to quivering, melting
compliancy and, guilty as hell aside, she could see that he liked that,
he liked that very much. That she did not mistake.
He gave her the kind of brief kiss that he excelled at, provocative,
intimate, intensely erotic. Then he set her free again when she was
desperate to cling and every nerve-ending craved the heat of his passion.
"We'll be very uncool and wait for our wedding night,' Rio decreed, soft
and husky and boundlessly sure, it seemed, of his welcome.
And for the very first time Holly realised that she could crave him like
an addict and still want to scream at him.
91
Three days later Holly climbed into the limousine that would ferry her
to the wedding that had been arranged and the ceremony that would make
her Rio Lombardi's wife.
Ezio Farretti beamed at her in flattering admiration of her bridal
regalia but it felt so very strange to be alone, with neither friends
nor family for support, indeed none of the more personal trappings Holly
had once naively assumed would be part and parcel of such an event.
She had thought of phoning her parents and telling them that she was
getting married but had given up on the idea when it occurred to her
that naturally her parents would want to know all about her relationship
with Rio. How on earth could she admit that she was marrying a man she
had known for less than a week? She would have to wait until her
marriage was already an established fact before meeting up with her
parents again.
For three solid days she had done little but shop, first for her gown
and then for clothes for both her and Timothy that would suit a warmer
climate. That last instruction from Rio had actually caused a panic when
it had emerged that he was planning to take them abroad after the
wedding and she had confided that neither she nor her son had a
passport. Fortunately it had proved possible to redress that oversight,
but Rio's incredulity that anybody should be without a passport had
reminded her all over again of how different her world was from his, for
her parents had never been abroad in their entire lives.
Emerging from that recollection, Holly rearranged the skirt of her
dress, fearful of creasing the delicate folds before she arrived at the
church, desperately wanting to look the very best she could for Rio. She
had fallen in love with her ivory and gold wedding gown at first sight,
but Rio had told her to pick something traditional and a dress strongly
anxiously.
Long pointed sleeves ornamented the boned V-shaped silk bodice which was
decorated with exquisite gold embroidery and laced tight at her tiny
waist, and the skirt was long and elegant. A fabulous sapphire and
diamond tiara was lodged in her bronze curls and she wore a matching and
equally impressive necklace and drop earrings. The set was Lombardi
family jewellery sent from Tuscany by special courier and Rio had
requested that she wear the items. She had had to tie on the earrings
with thread because her ears were not pierced and, terrified of losing
the earrings, she checked that they were still in place every few minutes.
In fact, nerves were eating Holly alive, for Rio had been abroad and she
had only spoken to him on the phone in recent days. Indeed, at one stage
she had honestly believed that the wedding might have to be cancelled.
The same day that she had agreed to marry him Rio had flown out to
Stockholm on business before travelling on to Florence to call on his
mother. Rio had hoped to bring the older woman back to London with him
to attend their wedding but Alice Lombardi had felt too weak to make the
trip.
'I was going to fly you out for the day so that you could meet,' Rio had
informed Holly on the phone twenty-four hours earlier before he
explained why he could not return that evening as he had hoped. 'But she
had palpitations and I had to call her doctor in. He prescribed complete
bedrest.'
Holly had repressed the troubled suspicion that her future mother-in-law
might have been felled by sheer horror that
92
her only son was about to wed a stranger who was not only an unmarried
mother but also a young woman from a background that in no way matched
their own. Since that possibility did not appear to have occurred to
Rio, she had not liked to mention it.
'What's Mrs Lombardi like?' she had asked Ezio.
'A fine woman,' he had responded. 'But a martyr to ill-health.'
'Maybe the wedding will have to be put off.' Holly had felt horribly
guilty at the dismay which had filled her at that prospect.
'Mrs Lombardi has a remarkable ability to pull back from death's door,'
Ezio had asserted bracingly. 'In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the
&nb
sp; lady outlives all of us.'
As the limousine turned off the road Holly was amazed to see that the
church appeared to be buried in a sea of parked cars and that there were
a lot of people standing outside the iron railings bounding the car
park. Had there been a wedding booked before their own and had it run on
late? Or was she arriving too early?
Leaning forward, she lifted the car phone to ask Ezio.
'They're all here for your wedding,' the older man informed her, his
astonishment at her question audible.
All those cars? Holly was aghast. She had assumed that there would be no
guests, had believed that their wedding would be a very quiet and
private affair. True, Rio had not said that, but he had told her to
leave Timothy at home with Sarah, and in the time frame concerned and
with him out of the country who on earth could have made arrangements
for so many people to attend?
As she emerged shakily from the car a seething crowd seemed to come out
of nowhere at her. Security guards held back the crush while aggressive
men with cameras shouted and urged her to look up. In the midst of that
fracas, she
was seized by a shock and fear so profound that had Ezio not seized her
elbow and hurried her on into the church she would have shot back into
the limousine and screamed at the chauffeur to drive off again.
In the church porch, she shivered and stared at Ezio in incomprehension.