Page 28 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

STILLDAZEDATthe teabag find, Rebecca carried her mug up to the roof terrace, a sprawling area with a swimming pool and seating dotted around its perimeter. The last time she’d come up here it had been in the dead of night with Enzo, when romantic solar-powered lights had guided their way. That early morning, a glimmer of orange lined the horizon. The sun was waking up.

Inhaling the sweetly scented air of the climbing flowers around the perimeter wall, she peered out of the section that overlooked the front of Enzo’s grounds. Looking hard, she could make out the shadows of the reporters still camped on the other side of the electric gate and her heart sank. Barely half a day ago she’d been fully prepared to give them all the ammunition they needed to destroy Enzo. But that was before. Before she’d found paradise in his arms.

She could no more destroy him than she could kick a puppy.

To stay though, would be to destroy herself.

Enzo’s villa was located on the top of a hill with some of the best views money could buy. Curled up on a white sofa on the other side of the terrace, she watched the sun rise over a sleeping Florence.

The morning after he’d proposed, Enzo had woken her early and insisted she join him in this exact spot to enjoy this exact view. He’d watched her reaction, his dimples prominent.

He’d wanted to share it with her. He’d wanted her to love the sunrise as much as he did.

Suddenly unable to bear the memories the beautiful sunrise was evoking, Rebecca pulled her phone out of her robe pocket and, in desperate need of distraction, finally turned it on.

She’d guessed there would be numerous messages left on it but had massively underestimated. Messages from names she’d hardly thought of in years were interspersed with family, friends and recent colleagues. All the messages were a variant of the same theme.

What’s happened?

Are you okay?

Please let me know you’re okay.

Call me.

Let me know you’re safe.

Taking a deep breath first, she got busy replying, prioritising her aunt and cousins.

I’m fine, I promise. Will explain everything when I see you.

Would she really? Could she really do that? Explain that the great love of her life and the romantic story it had been based upon had all been a lie? Put Enzo at risk of someone sensing a way to make themselves some money and tip a reporter off?

She almost laughed. She was worried about putting him at risk? Seriously, someone needed to give her a martyr’s badge or something. She wasn’t going to lie for him. He’d made his bed. He didn’t need her protection. Besides, he could afford some swanky lawyers to suppress any rumours, she was sure. That’s what rich people did when it came to stopping the exposure of stories with narratives they didn’t like, wasn’t it?

But there was nothing he could do to stop them reporting Rebecca’s jilting of him at the altar, and before she could talk herself out of it, she keyed in the name of the UK’s biggest selling tabloid.

Its homepage filled her screen.Jewellery Magnate Jilted!screamed the headline. Two photos lay beneath it. One was a distant, blurry image of Rebecca climbing onto the back of her saviour’s Vespa. The other was a close-up of Enzo on the cathedral steps, his gaze fixed into the distance. Searching. Searching forher. His handsome features—and, God, didn’t the camera just adore him—were tight, giving nothing away. But his eyes... They were wild. If she looked closely enough she could imagine she saw distress in them.

Unable to endure the image a second longer, Rebecca swiped the page away and sucked in a huge gulp of air.

What had she done?

Hold on a minute, what hadshedone? Was she really that desperate for a martyr’s badge that she’d forgotten this was all on Enzo? If he’d told her the truth about her grandfather’s will from the beginning then none of this would have happened and she’d never have gone to the cathedral in such an emotional state. And if she accepted that he’d been too angry at her grandfather’s trick to want to discuss it with her—and he was right in that he hadn’t known her back then—then why hadn’t he paid his swanky lawyers to talk to her? Wasn’t that what lawyers were paid to do? Overcome obstacles? But it had been the will itself that was the biggest obstacle so why not try to overturn it? His excuses on this score were only plausible when you weren’t talking about a multibillionaire. Enzo could afford the finest legal team money could buy. She would have been no match for him.

Movement behind her cut her thoughts off in their tracks.

Twisting her head, her insides contracted as Enzo’s messy dark brown hair appeared at the top of the stairs. The rest of him appeared in stages until he was stalking the terrace towards her wearing nothing but a pair of black swim shorts.

All the mornings they’d spent together and this was the first time she’d seen him not fully clothed. The first and the last.

Rebecca swallowed and smiled a greeting at the man she knew it would take every ounce of her strength to walk away from.

He gazed at her, nostrils pulling in at the deepness of his breath. And then his dimples flashed. ‘Enjoying the view, Miss Foley?’

She let her gaze drift down to his chest, her heart swelling, pulses stirring. ‘Very much.’

Eyes glittering, he sat himself on the chair beside hers, stretched his long legs out and looked out at the colourful city of his birth under the cloudless sky. ‘All your grandfather’s liquid assets have been transferred to you. The house is yours. The shares will be yours within hours. When the banks open tomorrow you will be rich enough to buy yourself a view anywhere you want.’

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