Page 14 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

She swallowed back the heavy wave of nausea rising up her throat and strove for strength in her voice. ‘Going back to your mother... You were telling me about her criminal masterminding ways and contradictory morality.’ Strangely enough, it took no stretch of the imagination to imagine Silvana as a criminal mastermind, not in the way it did to imagine Enzo as being like that.

‘Let me give you an example. You have heard of the Hollywood producer Rico Roberts? He was accused of groping young actresses last year. There were voice recordings.’

‘It rings a vague bell.’

‘Six years ago, two million dollars’ worth of jewellery was stolen from Rico’s LA home while he and his wife were at a movie premiere.’

‘Your mother?’

‘She was in Florence at the time but they were stolen on her orders, I am certain of it. She had met Rico and his wife at a party some years before the break-in and took a dislike to them. Rumours that he was a sex pest had circulated for years but until the recent scandal, there was no proof and he was too big a player in the movie industry to bring down without concrete evidence. Those were the kinds of rich people my mother targeted. People she didn’t have to feel guilt over.’

‘A modern-day Robina Hood?’

The corners of his lips twitched again. ‘Yes, but with the proceeds only filling her own coffers. If she had liked Rico and disbelieved the rumours then I am certain he and his wife would still be in full possession of their jewellery collection. I am certain that if she’d been presented with an opportunity to steal from someone she knew and liked, and given a cast-iron guarantee that she would get away with it, she would have refused. If she decides she likes someone then she will be their friend for life. And you, Miss Foley, she likes.’

‘I’m flattered,’ she said drolly and was rewarded with a widening of Enzo’s mouth and a flash of his dimples.

‘You should be. She’s never liked any of my other lovers.’

The lightening of the atmosphere came crashing down. ‘We were never lovers,’ Rebecca said, trying hard to keep the hurt from her voice. ‘I suppose that’s one thing I should thank you for, that you never let it go that far. I don’t think I could cope knowing you’d made love to me on a lie too.’

Her cheeks scalded to think of all the times she’d begged him to make love to her, her hunger for him the flame of a lit candle whose wick never tapered even when they were apart.

What, she wondered desperately, would it take to douse the flame? Because even now, with Enzo’s lies exposed, the flame burned as brightly as it ever had, the sticky heat of arousal and awareness as thick in her as it had ever been.

Enzo had induced the flame. Deliberately. He’d fed it and nurtured it and stoked it.

She couldn’t hate him more.

‘Why do you think I never allowed it to happen between us?’

‘Because you didn’t have to.’ Bitterness crept back into her tone. ‘I guess you didn’t want me enough. As soon as you established I was a virgin you used it as an excuse not to—’

He sprang from a recline to his haunches before she could finish her sentence.

‘Yes,’ he said savagely, hands pressed down on the padded egg chair either side of her hips, eyes boring deep into hers. ‘I used it as an excuse because I had to. When I first set out to seduce you into marrying me, I told myself you were your grandfather’s blood and likely to be as devious as him. You can have no idea the depth of betrayal I felt when I read his will. I didn’t think of you as a person but as an obstacle, and an underserving obstacle at that—you’d never met him and had turned down his requests to meet. You returned his cards and cheques. You’d made it clear you wanted nothing to do with him or his money and still he left you everything, including the half of our shared business that he’d promised me; that heowedme. Believe me, I was prepared to hate you in the flesh as much as I hated the very idea of you and when I met you it was a relief to find you attractive enough to not have to fake desire for you along with everything else.’

Somehow, while he’d been making his biting but impassioned speech, Enzo’s hands had taken hold of Rebecca’s waist. Trying desperately not to fall into the hypnotic swirl of his eyes was as impossible as telling her flesh not to react to his grip on her, the ache at his touch too strong for her to find the sense needed to shove his hands off and push him away as she knew she should. She’d been a slave to his touch from their very first kiss.

His fingers tightened their grip, the tip of his nose almost touching hers. ‘Do you remember our first date? By the end of it...’ He sucked a sharp breath in through his teeth. ‘Dio, you can have no idea how sexy you are. The way your lips move when you eat...’ His eyes flashed. ‘But as soon as you told me you were a virgin it changed everything for me. It didn’t matter how much I wanted you—I knew on a fundamental level that making love to you on a lie was unforgivable.’

Fighting with everything she had against the tumult of emotions Enzo’s words and closeness had induced, Rebecca had to plead with herself not to fall into the trap he was laying, to keep her hands tightly fisted at her sides, to stop herself inhaling too deeply so his divine scent couldn’t snake its way down to her lungs and tip her over the edge.

‘What about our wedding night?’ she whispered raggedly. ‘Would you have gone ahead with it without telling me the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even though it would have still been unforgivable, what with it still being based on the same lie?’

‘Yes. Because by then you would have been my wife and tied to me, and I would never have let you go.’

And then his mouth found hers.

CHAPTER FIVE

REBECCA’SFISTSWEREclenched so tightly in her vain attempt to keep her lips clamped and airways closed that her nails dug sharply into her palms.

There was nothing she could do to stop the violent trembling of her body or the thumping tattoo of her heart against her ribs. Those reactions were involuntary and completely beyond her control; physical reactions fighting with equal ferocity to the sane part of her brain pleading with her mouth to stay clamped and not give in to the desperate, burning ache for him.

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