Page 46 of Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
Why would she not react the way anyone would react and assume that he was fabricating a story simply to get things back to where he wanted them to be?
Why wouldn’t she treat whatever he had to say with the cynicism he so richly deserved?
Luca went from pale to sickly ashen as his mind began running away with possible outcomes.
She’d wanted love and marriage and all that stuff he had spent a lifetime writing off as unreasonable nonsense. It was hers for the taking now, but would she believe him or would it be too little, too late?
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you refused to listen to a word I have to say,’ he told her with wrenching honesty. ‘And even if youdidhear me out, I wouldn’t blame you if you sent me packing, but I really...need...to...explain myself.’
‘But I thought youneverexplained yourself to anyone, Luca,’ Cordelia said coldly. ‘I thought that if you said “believe me”it was my duty to ask no more questions.’
‘Once upon a time, I may have thought like that. I gave orders and people followed them without question,’ Luca said quietly, ‘but then I met you and it seems that everything changed. I don’t know when and I’m not sure how, I just know that I am not the man I once was.’
‘Oh, please.’ She turned to look away because she could feel his words dragging her back to a place she didn’t want to revisit, but he placed one finger on her chin and tilted her back to look at him and she couldn’t resist.
‘You are the best thing that ever happened to me and I was an idiot for not realising that sooner.’ He looked at her and breathed in deeply. This was foreign territory and he had to grope his way to find the right words. ‘I met you and I was a different man with you. I was the man I was meant to be and not the man I had been conditioned into becoming. You freed me, my darling, but I didn’t pause to analyse why that had happened or what it meant. I just assumed that I acted differently with you because you didn’t know me as the billionaire who could have whatever he wanted. I left but my mind kept returning to you and, again, I never asked myself why. I simply ploughed on because that was what I did and what I’d always done. I faced my destiny and my destiny was to marry Isabella and I didn’t question it because...that was how it was.’
Cordelia stiffened. The mention of Isabella was a timely reminder of what she had witnessed and, as if sensing her withdrawal, he leaned forward, his body language imparting a searing sincerity that held her spellbound against her better judgement.
‘Then you came. You showed up. In all your stunning glory.’
‘Don’t, Luca,’ she whipped back.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Try to get under my skin again. I’ve had it with you doing that.’
‘You thought you walked in on me sharing something intimate with Isabella and, yes, you did, but not in the way you think. Isabella is gay. I’ve known that for a long time and that’s why the marriage made sense. I didn’t believe in love. It wasn’t for me. And Isabella wanted the cover of a traditional marriage to hide her sexuality from her parents. Not ideal and I tried to persuade her to come out, but she refused, and I suppose, in a way, the arrangement suited me as it stood.’
He sighed, wondered where doing what was right stopped and doing what was convenient began. The lines had become blurred over time when it came to Isabella. ‘She was crying because she’d finally decided to tell her parents so that she could be with her partner of eighteen months. She was a wreck and I was trying to comfort her and tell her that it would be okay. That was the scene you interrupted and I was a fool for not explaining myself immediately, for telling you that you had to trust me. Who the hell did I think I was?’
‘Isabella is gay? But you were planning on getting married...’
‘And who knows? Maybe we would have if she hadn’t met the woman she’s in love with. Or maybe, if I hadn’t broken it off, the worst would have happened and she would have married me because it would have been what tradition demanded. We would have both been miserable in the end.’
‘Luca... I wish you had said something. Told me the situation from the start. You have no idea...what’s been going on in my head.’
‘Old habits die hard.’ He grimaced. ‘And besides,’ he admitted, ‘I might have been forced to recognise what I’d been hiding from myself.’
‘What’s that?’ Cordelia asked breathlessly.
‘That I’m in love with you. That you were the woman I have been waiting for all my life.’
Afterwards, everything happened very fast. It was a blur. He loved her. She’d questioned him, of course she had. He could be making it up! But she knew he wasn’t because it just wasn’t something he would ever make up.
He’d never believed in love, he’d told her. Love had destroyed his father. He had lost his only love and then worse had followed when he had reacted by hurtling from one ghastly and costly mistake to another. And he, Luca, young and grieving the loss of his mother, had been a casualty.
What was there to admire about that lifestyle? Only a fool, Luca had confided, would have chosen to emulate it. Only a fool would have blithely believed in the restorative power of love, having witnessed first hand its ability to destroy.
Not for him, and that was the rule he had lived his life by. He would marry for convenience and that way he would never risk getting hurt.
Every word had been music to her ears.
She had had to pinch herself several times because she couldn’t believe that the man she had given her heart to had given his heart back to her, not when she had spent so long bracing herself for just the opposite.
Now, back in the gown but on cloud nine, she slipped her hand into his and gazed at him at the top of the stairs.
Her father was due any minute. Preparations were well under way. Noise levels had escalated. As she gazed down, she could see that the hall was festive with lights and flowers and the smell of food was wafting through the house, making her mouth water.
