Page 4 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

‘Youarehome.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. Salt water spilled down her cheeks to remember the joy that had consumed her to imagine filling this beautiful villa with Enzo’s babies and the blissfully happy life they would have together. ‘No.’

‘Why did you do it?’ he asked, not loosening his hold around her. ‘Tell me, Rebecca. Tell me why you did it.’

‘Why do youthink? And if you don’t let me go this second I’m going to scream loud enough for the whole of Florence to hear.’

He spun her round with the same speed and agility he’d pinned her to him. Large hands gripping her shoulders, rage contorted the handsome features bearing down on hers. ‘You dare play the injured party when you were planning to take your passport and run away from me without a word of explanation or goodbye? When you have humiliated me in front of the whole damn world? I had to steal a Vespa to get here before you could run. Tell me why you did that to me. You owe me that much.’

‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she cried, pushing at his chest. ‘I know, damn you. I know exactly why you were marrying me. It was all a set-up!’

For the second time in less than an hour the colour drained from Enzo’s face. He staggered, groping behind him for the door which he propped himself up against. His throat moved before he whispered, ‘Rebecca...’

‘Don’t! I don’t want to hear your lies. I know everything.Everything.You never loved me or wanted me. The only thing you wanted was my inheritance.’

CHAPTER TWO

WATCHINGENZOCOMPOSEhimself was something that in ordinary circumstances Rebecca would marvel at, was something shehadmarvelled at. Never had she been in greater awe at this ability than the few times he’d come close to losing his control and making love to her as she’d pleaded for him to do. His breaths would be hot and heavy, his skin fevered, his arousal solid and visible through the clothes he always kept on, but always he would pull himself back. One long, deep breath through his nose and the passion that had blazed from his eyes would vanish and his composure would be assured.

At least she knew now how he’d been able to manage that side of things so well. While she’d been sitting there physically aching with need for him, it had been no real effort on his part to disengage his brain from his body’s responses. His responses to her had been nothing but an automatic reaction. She could have been any reasonably attractive woman.

Back straight, his light brown eyes locked on hers. ‘How did you find out?’

She laughed through the tears. ‘Is that the first thing you think to ask? All you care about?’

‘I ask because it’s important.’

‘A package marked urgent was delivered by a woman to the hotel reception for me. I don’t know or care who the woman was.’

A swathe of emotions flickered over his darkening features. ‘It was a copy of your grandfather’s will?’

Another swell of rage pulsed through her from deep in her stomach all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Once, over the course of a meal, Rebecca had mentioned that she’d never met her mother’s parents because of an estrangement that had occurred before she was born. Only now did she make the link to his brief show of sympathy and then an abrupt changing of the subject to it being because it was something he already knew. Enzo knew her past better than she did.

He knew it because he’d been her grandfather’s business partner and the man her grandfather had trusted enough to appoint as executor to his will.

That meant Enzo must have known about her parents too. The evening Rebecca had cuddled into him with her head on his chest and relayed how her dad had suffered a fatal heart attack only three days after her mother’s death from blood cancer, a blow that had rocked the foundations of her world, a grief she’d never believed she would recover from, Enzo had stroked her back and murmured words of comfort and he’dalready known.

‘How could you do this to me?’ Her anger was such that to hear the pain resonate in her voice only added fresh anguish, because it meanthecould hear it too. ‘All this time. All those lies. You told me you loved me and all you ever wanted was his business. Now let me go. It hurts to even look at you.’

Not an ounce of remorse flickered on his set features.Nothingflickered. His self-control was too strong. ‘Remember all the press covering our wedding? They are already outside the gates. Leave now and they will eat you alive.’

‘As if you care what happens to me.’

‘I care.’

‘Don’tlie,’ she screamed, losing control again and hurtling her handbag across the room. It hit an eighteenth-century eighteen-inch marble statue, knocking it off its plinth and sending it to the floor where it shattered with an ear-piercing shriek. The way Rebecca felt, she could make her way through the entire villa and systematically destroy every object he held dear, shatter it all into the same fragments Enzo had shattered her heart into. ‘Every word ever exchanged between us has been a lie.’

Chiselled jaw clenched, he shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Another lie! I gave up everything for you and it was all a lie. You wanted an explanation as to why I humiliated you in the cathedral and now you’ve heard it. I don’t want to spend another second in your company so get out of my way and let me leave. I never want to see you again.’

The clear brown eyes she’d gazed into with her heart filled with such love and hope held hers without expression before closing. His throat moved and his chest rose slowly as if he were trying to control emotions she now knew he didn’t possess. And then he walked away from the door and crunched over the shards and splinters of marble to pick up her bag and hold it out to her.

Without a word, she plucked it from his hand and headed out of the door.

The moment her bare feet touched the marble steps, a cacophony of noise and light that rivalled the beaming sun engulfed her. Straight ahead, at the end of the driveway, behind the high electric gates, the press and paparazzi who’d lined the cordons outside the cathedral stood packed and jostling for position. The scramble of questions being shouted at her came close to being drowned out by the helicopter swooping in her direction overhead.

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