Page 29 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

The anger that usually flared at the mention of the shares refused to rise. Whether it was the realisation that this, here, now, was the beginning of the end for them or because she could still see the tabloid headline and feel the tendrils of guilt at the scandal that had erupted about them, or because of the buzz in her veins to be sat next to a semi-naked Enzo; whatever the reason, the tempest in her chest had receded.

She didn’t want to argue any more.

Rebecca lifted her face to the lightening sky and tried not to wish that this was the sky she woke to for the rest of her life. ‘I’m not keeping any of it. Don’t ask about the shares—I need time to think about what I’ll do with them and I can’t think straight when I’m sitting next to you, but I know I won’t keep the rest of it.’

The Claflin Diamond shares were a quandary to be resolved when she was alone but whatever she did with them, she knew now that she would never use them as a weapon against Enzo. Even if he did deserve it.

He was quiet for a long time. ‘I understand why you would want to reject it but do not make any hasty decisions.’

‘He never told my mum my grandmother died. Did you know that? She only learned her own mother had died by chance—a friend of hers read the obituary. Can you imagine what that did to her?’ Broke her mother’s heart is what it did to her. ‘How can I keep the money when it comes from someone who caused such pain?’

There was another long pause of silence. ‘All I will say is that you’re feeling raw. Do not make the same mistake as me and let betrayal and grief take you in a direction you come to regret. I know you found my world overwhelming at times but I also witnessed your happiness at seeing new countries and in all the new experiences we shared. Do you really want to go back to a world limited by suburbia?’

‘It wasn’t limited,’ she disagreed.

‘That is not what I observed from your reactions to my world.Cara, your parents felt it too. They had plans to travel. You told me. They were waiting for you to finish your degree and to pay off their mortgage.’

‘Travelling was their dream, not mine.’

‘That money will free you,’ he told her bluntly.

‘I already live mortgage-free.’ The rent Rebecca currently received for her house would pay for her to rent somewhere until the tenancy ran out and she could move back in.

Such sad irony though, that her parents had to die to be free of all their debts, their insurance paying the remainder of their mortgage off, and as she thought this, she realised that, as when they’d talked about the shares, yesterday’s pain had receded. She had a strong suspicion it wouldn’t last but for now it was bearable. She would take that.

In the distance, breaking the early morning silence, a horn tooted. The sound reminded her of the way her Vespa boy saviour had tooted at pedestrians in lieu of running them over when she’d run from the cathedral.

She turned her face to Enzo and smiled. ‘You stole a Vespa.’

His lips pulled into a grin. ‘Sì. I took the keys from the hand of a delivery boy.’ He twisted in his chair and leaned into her to rub a finger over the rim of her ear. ‘You have made a criminal of me.’

She arched a brow, shivering at the pleasure of his light tough. ‘Made a criminal of you? Are we really going to go there?’

He shook his head and threaded his fingers through her hair. ‘I have already made contact with him and transferred the value of the Vespa with extra for the inconvenience.’ Something sparked in his stare and for a moment he gazed intently at her before his dimples reappeared. ‘Shall we go for a ride?’

‘A ride?’ she echoed.

‘The Vespa is now mine. Let’s take it for a ride. Enjoy the morning before the sun gets too hot for your delicate English skin to cope with.’

His teasing made her mouth smile and her heart twist. There had always been so much teasing between them. In seven hours or so, there would be no more. They would never tease each other again.

‘What about the press?’

His dimples deepened and he lowered his face to whisper in her ear, hand slipping through the gap in her robe to grip her hip. ‘There is a secret route off my land.’

His touch and breath on her skin provoked another, deeper shiver of pleasure, and Rebecca did the only thing that made sense and closed the small distance between them so her breasts were flush with his chest, and turned her face so their mouths brushed together. ‘You’ve never mentioned it,’ she murmured, arousal turning her veins to hot, thick treacle.

Teeth tugged gently at her bottom lip in complete contrast to the delicious pain of his fingers digging harder into her hips before splaying down to her bottom and diving beneath the silk negligée to clasp a bare buttock.

‘That’s because a car cannot travel it.’ His voice was hoarse. Ragged. His other hand stole around to the small of her back then drifted lower to hold her other buttock. ‘A Vespa can.’

One moment she was on her chair, the next lifted off it and straddling Enzo’s lap. His erection jutted hard through his shorts. She writhed against him and groped for the button of his shorts.

How was it possible to still feel such dizzyingneedfor him after the night they’d just shared and with hardly any sleep?

A moment later, his erection was freed. The moment after that Rebecca stopped thinking at all.

Florence was on the cusp of waking up when Rebecca and Enzo escaped the villa. Those of its people not enjoying a Sunday morning lie-in would be opening their eyes to another beautiful summer’s day. Rebecca doubted that anyone would appreciate it in the way she was determined to.

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