Page 3 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

‘The associate I am meeting is running late and so I am at a loose end for the next hour. If you keep me company, I will be less likely to die of boredom.’

She’d grinned at his drollness.

His dimples had reappeared. ‘You will be doing me a favour. One drink and we will be even.’

Her smile at this declaration was so wide that for the first time in over three and a half years, Rebecca had felt the muscles of her cheeks working. ‘One drink. And I’m paying.’

He’d frowned and tutted. ‘A gentleman never lets a lady pay.’

She’d raised her eyebrows in her best schoolteacher fashion. ‘Did the turn of the twenty-first century pass you by?’

Amusement had danced between them and then they’d both started laughing, and to remember how it had been and the connection she’d felt with him right from the start and know it had all been staged, that he’d punctured her tyre himself...

The green light of the safe flashed and blinded the memories away. The reinforced door swung open.

Her heart wrenched to see her passport exactly where he’d put it, nestled on top of his.

Swallowing back another roll of nausea, Rebecca snatched hers up, pushed the safe’s door shut, then raced back into the corridor, ran up the closest stairs two at a time, and hurtled to the bedroom she’d used since her first visit to the villa all those months ago.

How long did she have, she wondered, her mind racing as to where Enzo could be. Would he think to look for her here? Or would he go straight to the hotel she’d stayed the night at and which they and their guests were supposed to head to for the evening celebrations?

Grabbing her handbag, she dropped her passport into it next to her purse. Her phone was at the hotel but that couldn’t be helped. She had enough cash to get to the airport and enough money in her bank account to get herself home.

About to leave the room, she caught sight of her appearance in the full-length mirror and almost crumbled. Her perfectly made-up oval face, perfect because it had been done by a professional makeup artist, was a mascara-streaked mess. Her large brown eyes were red-rimmed, her too-wide mouth pulled in tightly to stop the scream of anguish fighting to escape from it. The artful up-do the celebrity stylist had spent so long working on was gone, her honey blonde hair and ripped dress now giving her the look of someone who’d been dragged through a gooseberry bush backwards. Swallowing back the scream with all the strength her throat could muster, Rebecca yanked the clip holding what remained of the original do together. She was already out of the door before the rest of her hair fell to her shoulders.

As she hitched up the skirt of her ruined fairy-tale dress and flew back to the stairs and down to the ground floor, she imagined the shops at the airport. She’d be able to buy clothes to change into...

She skidded to a halt, the scream leaving her throat before her senses properly registered the man standing guard at the front door.

Rebecca’s heart, already pounding from the exertion of tearing around the villa, slammed hard into her ribs.

Towering over her, Enzo’s chiselled jaw was clenched. The colour had returned to his tanned olive skin but the designer messiness of his hair had lost the designer quality to it. The dusky pink cravat that had graced his strong neck in the cathedral had gone, the top buttons of his white shirt undone.

‘Get out of my way,’ she whispered, finding her voice.

His answer was to fold his arms across his broad chest.

It made her broken heart splinter that bit more to understand she must be seeing the real Enzo Beresi for the first time.

‘I said get out of my way.’

His folded arms tightened, the muscles visibly flexing. His nostrils flared. ‘No.’

A swell of rage punched through her. Launching herself at him, she pushed at him, trying to shove him away from the door. ‘Get out of my way!’ she shouted.

But he was too big, too muscular, toosubstantial. With an agility no man his size should possess, he held her arms to her sides and then twisted her around and pinned her to him so her back was pressed tight against his solid chest, his muscular arm trapping her to him.

‘Stop that,’ he snarled when she started kicking back at him and the heel of her bare foot made contact with his shin.

‘Let me go!’

‘When you are calm.’ His breath hot in her hair, his velvet, accented voice calmed as if to display what he required of her. ‘There is nowhere for you to run. I have sent your Vespa boys away.’

‘Then I’ll get a taxi.’

‘And go where? The airport?’

‘I want to gohome.’

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