Page 33 of Bound by a One-Night Vow

‘I’ll tell you how I felt. I felt guilty,’ Izzy said. ‘Guilty and disappointed and ashamed because I agreed to marry you for all the wrong reasons. I looked at Elena and Patrizio at the ceremony and saw two people who love each other. I want that. I want what they have.’

He frowned. ‘You want us to have a formal ceremony? Is that what you’re saying? You want a big fancy church wedding even though we’ve only got a few more months to the—’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Izzy’s heart felt as if it were being pulverised, along with her pride. ‘It’s not about having a big flashy wedding, Andrea. I want a genuine marriage, one where there isn’t a clock ticking. One where there isn’t pretence and lying and acting but real feelings. Feelings that last a lifetime.’

‘No one can guarantee that.’ His lips barely moved over the clipped words. ‘You can’t. I can’t.’

‘Maybe not, but I’d still like to try.’

The silence was so thick it was like a suffocating fog.

Andrea let out a long slow breath but there was no reduction of tension in his expression. ‘You’re asking for something I can’t give. We agreed on six months. I’ve told you what I’m prepared to give and a long-term commitment isn’t part of it.’

She searched his gaze, desperately hoping to see a flicker of warm emotion instead of clinical indifference. ‘But why isn’t it? Why is committing to someone so difficult for you?’

He opened and closed his mouth as if carefully monitoring his choice of words before he spoke. ‘I’m not prepared to discuss this now. We agreed on the terms and—’

‘I should never have agreed,’ Izzy said. ‘But I wanted my grandparents’ house so much it was all I could think about. But I realise now I want something else so much more. I can’t spend another minute of my life trying to be what other people want or expect me to be. I have to be me. I have to be true to myself. For most of my life I thought I never wanted to be married. I can’t believe I told myself such lies and for so long. But what I realise now is what I didn’t want was my parents’ marriage. My father didn’t love my mother. If he’d loved her he wouldn’t have tried to control her and squash her spirit.’

‘I have no interest in trying to control you or squash your spirit, so please don’t insult me by comparing me to your father,’ Andrea said through tight lips.

‘But you don’t love me, do you?’ Izzy felt as if she were stepping off a tall building into mid-air by asking such a question.

Every muscle on his face looked like it was having a spasm. Tension rippled along his jaw, his gaze as shuttered as a boarded-up window. ‘That wasn’t part of the bargain,’ he said in a voice so devoid of emotion he could have been a robot.

Izzy knew she had been asking for the impossible but still she had clung to hope. But that fragile hope was now in the final throes of survival, gasping for air even as death crept inexorably closer. ‘I don’t want a business contract for a relationship. I don’t want a bargain drawn up with terms and conditions and rules. I just want what most people want. Love. Commitment.’

‘Look, we’ll go back to our hotel and once you’ve had a good night’s sleep you’ll see this differently in the morning,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘You’re tired and emotional.’

Izzy knew if she went back to the hotel with him she would end up in bed with him. She would end up going back to Positano with him and would spend the next five months hoping he would change his mind. She had spent too much of her life hoping for things she couldn’t have. She had to be strong. She had to stand up for what she wanted. She owed it to herself. She couldn’t live by someone else’s agenda any longer. ‘I’m not going back with you, Andrea. Not to your hotel. Not to your villa. It’s over. We are over because we were never together in the first place.’

His eyes flinched as if too bright a light had struck him in the face. But then his expression turned to stone. ‘Are you doing this deliberately?’ He waved his hand towards the reception they could hear in the other room. ‘Is this what you planned? To jeopardise everything I’ve worked so damn hard for?’

Izzy let out a sigh. ‘That you would even think that proves how little you know me. I’m sorry if this ruins your merger but I consider my needs just as important as a business deal. I can’t pretend to be happy with what we agreed on. I’m not happy. I could never be happy with someone who is unable to love me.’

‘Are you saying you love me?’ His frown was so heavy it made him look angry rather than confused.

Izzy considered telling him of her feelings for him but knew it wouldn’t change anything. She had to keep some measure of pride. To offer her heart to him, only to have him hand it back with a Thanks, but no thanks would be too painful. ‘I’m saying I want more than you can give me.’

‘If you loved me, then you’d accept whatever I offered you,’ he said. ‘You’d accept it and be grateful because without me you’re going to lose every penny of your inheritance.’

Izzy wondered how she could have ever thought that money would have been enough. Twice or thrice the amount wouldn’t be enough in exchange for a loveless life. She only had to think of her mother to be reminded of how empty such a life could be. Even her dream of buying back her grandparents’ estate seemed a pointless mission. What she had been trying to buy back was her happiness—the happiness she had once felt and longed to feel again.

But she wouldn’t do it—couldn’t do it—if it compromised her sense of self. Her sense of worth.

‘I won’t live with you under those terms, Andrea,’ Izzy said. ‘I’d be little more than a paid mistress, waiting for you to call time on our affair. I want to be an equal partner in a relationship. Not a pawn on a chessboard.’

‘Your father was the one who put you on the chessboard, not me.’ His lips were so flat they turned white. ‘You should be grateful I was prepared to step in to help you. No one else was going to.’

‘Is that what I’m supposed to feel? Grateful?’ Izzy threw him an embittered glare. ‘For what, exactly? That you fancied me? But how long is it going to last? Another week or two? A month? You don’t stay with a lover longer than a few weeks. I can’t live like that. I won’t live like that.’

‘Go, then.’ He jerked his head towards the exit. ‘Leave, and see how far it gets you. You’ll be crawling back to me, begging me to take you back, before a day goes past.’

‘I don’t think you’re listening to me, Andrea.’ Izzy underscored her tone with a thread of steel. ‘I’m not going to change my mind. I’ve finally grown up, like you told me to do all those years ago. I know what I want and I won’t settle for anything less.’ She forced herself to hold his unfathomable gaze. ‘I’m going to collect my wrap and my purse from the reception and unless you want to create a scene that will be splashed over every newspaper and turn your friend’s wedding into more of a farce than ours, then I suggest you let me leave without a fuss.’

One side of his mouth tipped up in a cynical curl. ‘Blackmail, cara?’

Izzy raised her chin. ‘You’d better believe it.’

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