Page 32 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

‘Is it? Do you think I am kidding myself that these aren’t the last hours I’ll ever get to spend with you? My relationship with my mother is as beyond repair as my relationship with you is. I don’t expect your forgiveness,cara. All I hope for is that you leave Florence knowing in your heart that what I did to you was never about you, and that it is something I will regret to my dying day. But I cannot forgive her. My mother betrayed me for vengeance and betrayed me in the worst possible way.’

She swallowed. ‘Because she knew you’d be publicly humiliated?’

A contortion of emotions showed in his tightened features before he flashed a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. ‘Come, Miss Foley, let me give you the tour.’

It was the first time since she’d demanded honesty from him that he’d evaded answering a question. Some instinct warned her not to probe.

Taking a subtle deep breath, Rebecca followed him into the apartment then found herself blinking in reaction to the sudden brightness surrounding her.

‘Has it changed much since you lived here?’ she asked.

‘Not much.’ His voice had regained the lightness from earlier but she detected an edge behind it. ‘The colour scheme is the same as it has always been.’

Colour scheme? Is that what he called it?

Silvana’s apartment was essentially a condensed version of her villa. Everything was white, from the soft furnishings to the marble flooring to the frames of the few paintings hanging on the white walls. Even the paintings themselves were daubed in muted hues. The only real colour came from the sun filtering through the window. Enzo’s villa had the same pristine quality to it but it also had an abundance of colour and warmth. Once Rebecca had got over her shock at its palatial size and quality, she’d felt comfortable enough in it to snuggle on any of the myriad of sofas with her feet tucked under her bottom.

She didn’t imagine anyone would ever feel at ease enough to sit in this sterile place: she imagined visitors just hovered. She could not begin to imagine how a small boy used to running and playing coped with being plunged into a sterility a hospital would be proud of, and as images came to mind of Enzo as that small boy, she quickly shoved them away.

She didn’t want to think about his childhood. She didn’t want another heartfelt conversation. Too many of his revelations had hurt her heart and all it served was to make her vulnerable when she needed to be strong in the face of what was shortly coming for her.

All she wanted now was to recapture the fizz and energy that had been alive in her veins and the light-hearted mood they’d shared since Enzo joined her on the roof terrace and, for these last few hours together, to forget the past, forget the future and live for a present she would never have again.

Grabbing his hand, she tugged at it and smiled brightly. ‘Come on, you, give me the grand tour you promised me.’

It took a moment for his dimples to appear. ‘Miss Foley, your wish is my command.’

She would not think about how he’d picked up on her need for lightness without her having to say anything. Or think that maybe he needed the lightness too.

With Enzo now playing the role of tour guide, Rebecca was led into a pure white kitchen that had to be a nightmarish magnet for sticky fingers, a dining room that no one in their right mind would dare drop so much as a crumb in and then the tidiest office in the entire world. So this was where Silvana had masterminded her criminal empire...

At the other end of the apartment were the bedrooms.

‘The guest room,’ Enzo announced, opening the first door to which Rebecca’s only thought was,God help any guest who suffered a nosebleed in the night...before he opened the next door. ‘Robina Hood’s room.’

She snickered before poking her head into a much larger room dominated by a white bed carved in the shape of swan, and then Enzo opened the last door with a flourish and Rebecca found her eyes adjusting to a space so dark he switched the light on so they could see properly.

The walls were painted a deep grey, the bedding on the king-sized bed a deep blue that matched the carpets and curtains, the wardrobes, desk and dresser black. She didn’t have to ask to know he’d chosen the colour scheme and that part of it had been with annoying his mother in mind. Well-thumbed books, mostly biographies of sports stars, lined the shelves and on the wall to the left of the bed hung a faded poster of a scantily clad, pouting supermodel.

She turned to him and fixed him with her best unimpressed face.

He stalked over to her with an unapologetic shrug. ‘I put that up when I was seventeen.’

‘That’s the kind of woman you go for?’ She turned her back to him and looked again at the long-legged glossy beauty with eyes that purred seduction and experienced a sudden urge to tear it from the wall and rip it into tiny pieces.

‘It was when I was a Vespa boy.’

How pathetic that she could feel jealousy towards an airbrushed woman on a teenage boy’s poster. ‘You must have been thrilled when you made it to the big time and could date those women.’

He slid his arms around her waist and pressed himself against her back. ‘It wasverythrilling, Miss Foley,’ he murmured, resting his chin on the top of her head. ‘Beautiful women like the ones I once fantasised about threw themselves at me. For a long time I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’

‘I’ll bet.’ She had no control over the tartness in her voice, but thrills of her own were zinging through her veins and she leaned back into his strength and closed her eyes to the poster her fingers still itched to destroy.

One of Enzo’s hands splayed over her stomach and up her ribs to cup a breast that was much smaller than even the skinny supermodel’s, the other flattening against her belly, holding her securely as he ground himself against her. His erection jammed hard into the small of her back. She raised herself onto her toes and pushed back against it with a moan that deepened when he squeezed her breast with just the right amount of pressure to send the zing she’d been trying so hard to find back into her veins, but deeper, needier...

‘Yes, Miss Foley, I thought I’d found heaven.’ He dipped his head and nipped at her ear. ‘But when the thrill wears off and you find yourself sharing your breakfast with a beautiful woman you feel nothing for and who you know feels nothing for you, you quickly learn heaven is nothing but an illusion.’

The sensation of Enzo’s lips and breath against her sensitive skin was so electrifying that when he twisted her so they no longer faced the poster but a full-length mirror, she hardly noticed until she opened her eyes and saw their reflection.

---