by Abby Green
Ciro shrugged. ‘Seems an awful waste to buy a new ring when we can use the old one.’
A million questions collided in Lara’s head at once, chief of which was, How did he still have the ring? She would have thought he’d thrown it away in disgust after she’d walked out.
He started to open the box, and Lara wanted to tell him to stop, but the words stuck in her throat. And there it was—revealed. The most beautiful ring in the world. A pear-shaped sapphire with two diamonds on either side in a gold setting. Classic, yet unusual.
Lara looked at Ciro. ‘I don’t want this ring.’ She sounded too shrill.
Ciro looked at her. ‘I suppose you hate the idea of recycling? Perhaps it’s too small?’
‘No, it’s not that... It’s...’ She trailed off ineffectually.
It’s perfect.
Lara had a flashback to Ciro telling her that the sapphire had reminded him of the colour her eyes went when he kissed her... That was why she didn’t want it. It brought back too many bittersweet memories that she’d imbued with a romanticism that hadn’t been there.
She managed to get out, ‘Is this absolutely necessary?’
Oblivious to Lara’s turmoil, Ciro plucked the ring out of the box and took her left hand in his, long fingers wrapping around hers as he slid the ring onto her finger, where it sat as snugly as if it had never been taken off.
‘Absolutely. I’ve already issued a press release with the news of our re-engagement and upcoming marriage.’
There was a sharp cracking sound and Lara only realised what had happened when she felt the sting in her finger. She looked down stupidly to see blood dripping onto the cream leather seat, just as Ciro issued a curt order and the flight attendant took the broken glass carefully out of Lara’s grip.
She was up on her feet and being propelled to the back of the plane and into a bathroom before she’d even registered that she’d broken her champagne glass. Ciro was crowding into the small space behind her, turning on the cold tap and holding her hand underneath.
The pain of the water hitting the place where she’d sliced herself on the glass finally made her break out of her shocked stasis. She hissed through her teeth.
‘It’s a clean cut—not deep.’ Ciro’s tone was deep and unexpectedly reassuring.
He turned her around to face him and reached for a first aid kit from the cabinet above her head, pulling out a plaster which he placed over the cut on the inside of her finger with an efficiency that might have intrigued Lara if she’d not been so distracted.
He said with a dry tone, ‘While I will admit to relishing your discomfort at the prospect of marrying me, Lara, I’d prefer to keep you in one piece for the duration of our union.’
Lara’s finger throbbed slightly, and just when she was going to pull her hand back he stopped her, keeping her hands in his. He was frowning, and Lara looked down. He was turning her hands over in his and suddenly she saw what he saw. She tried to pull them back but he wouldn’t let her.
The glittering ring only highlighted what he was looking at: careworn hands. Hands that had been doing manual work. Not the soft lily-white hands she used to have. Short, unvarnished nails.
Suddenly he let her hands go and said curtly, ‘You’ve been neglecting yourself. You need a manicure.’
Lara might have laughed if the space hadn’t been so tiny and she hadn’t been scared to move in case her body came into contact with Ciro’s. Panic rose at the thought that Ciro might kiss her. She didn’t need her dignity battered again.
She scooted around him and into the relative spaciousness of the plane’s bedroom, hiding her hands behind her back. She wasn’t unaware of the massive bed in the centre of the room but she ignored it.
‘You could have told me you were putting out a press release. This affects me too, you know.’
Ciro looked unrepentant. ‘Oh, I’m aware of that. But as soon as you agreed to marry me you set in motion a chain of events which will culminate in our wedding within a week.’
‘A week!’ Lara wanted to sit down, but she didn’t want to look remotely vulnerable. So she stayed standing.
Ciro shrugged. As if this was nothing more to him than discussing the weather. ‘Why not? Why drag it out? I’ve got a busy schedule of events coming up and I’ll need you by my side.’
Lara felt cornered and impotent. She’d walked herself into this situation after all. ‘Why not, indeed.’
A knock came on the door and a voice from outside. ‘We’ll be landing shortly, Signor Sant’Angelo.’
Ciro took Lara’s arm in his hand, as if to guide her out, but when he didn’t move she glanced at him and saw him direct an expressive look from her to the bed.
‘Pity,’ he said silkily. ‘Next time.’
An immediate wave of heat consumed Lara at the mere thought of such a decadent thing, and she pulled her arm free and muttered a caustic, ‘As if...’
All she could hear as she walked back up the plane was the dark sound of Ciro’s chuckle.
* * *
Lara was very aware of the ring on her finger. She turned it absent-mindedly as she looked out of the window at the view of Rome.
She was glad they were here and not in Florence. Florence held too many memories...and nightmares.
It was where she’d met Ciro on a street one day and her world had changed for ever. He’d been in Florence to close a major deal which would convert one of the city’s oldest palazzos into an exclusive hotel. Something the Sant’Angelo name was famous for.
Not that she’d had any clue who he was at first.
She’d been pushed into the road by another tourist, blind to everything but the beauty of Florence, when someone had grabbed her and pulled her back from the oncoming cars.
She’d looked up to see who was holding her arm with such a firm grip and laid eyes on Ciro Sant’Angelo for the first time. He’d fulfilled every possible cliché of tall, dark and handsome and then some. And, even though Lara had seen plenty of tall, dark, handsome Italian men by then, it had been this one who had stopped her heart for a long second. When it had started beating again it had been to a different rhythm. Faster.
Lara had been excited and terrified in equal measure. Because no one had affected her heart in a long time. She’d locked it away after losing her family. Closed it up tight to protect herself. And yet, in that split second, on that sunny day in Florence, she’d felt it start to crack open again. Totally irrational and crazy. But it had opened and she’d never managed to close it up again.
She’d looked him up on the internet a couple of days after meeting him and absorbed the full extent of his fame and notoriety as a playboy who came from a family steeped in Sicilian Mafia history.
She’d told him that she’d looked him up. His expression had shuttered immediately, and she’d seen him drawing back into himself.
He’d said to her, ‘Find anything interesting?’
She’d known instinctively that the moment was huge, and that she trusted him. So she’d said, ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to know more about you, and it was hard to resist, but I should have asked you about yourself face-to-face.’
After a long moment he’d extended a hand and said, ‘Ask me now.’
She’d taken his hand and asked him about Sicily, about his business. His deep voice had washed over her and through her, binding her even tighter into the illusion that there was something real, palpable, between them.
Lara turned away from the bird’s eye view of the iconic Colosseum, visible in the distance, and looked around the bedroom. When they’d arrived yesterday evening every bone in her body had been aching with fatigue. They’d eaten a light meal of pasta, prepared by Ciro’s unsmiling housekeeper, and Lara had been glad that conversation had been kept to a minimum.
It had been an ironic reminder of other meals with Ciro, when they’d be
en happy just to be near each other. Not speaking.
That had always surprised her about him—that he didn’t feel intimidated by silence. It had reminded her of when her brother would tug playfully on her hair and say, ‘Earth to Lara—where are you in the world?’ because she’d used to get so lost in her daydreams.
She diverted her mind away from the painful memory of her brother. And from daydreams. They were a thing of the past. A vulnerability she couldn’t indulge in. She didn’t believe in dreams any more. Not after losing her entire family in one fell swoop. Not after being betrayed by her uncle. And certainly not after having her heart broken into a million pieces by Ciro Sant’Angelo.
The bedroom was spacious and luxurious without being ostentatious—much like the rest of the apartment. A pang gripped her. She knew how hard Ciro had worked for this—to show the world that he was different from the Sant’Angelos who’d used to rule and succeed through crime and brute force.
Lara sighed. She hated it that she still cared enough to notice that kind of thing.
She caught her reflection in a full-length mirror and considered herself critically, noting the puffiness under her eyes. She’d had a shower in the en suite bathroom and was dressed in slim-fitting capri pants and a T-shirt. No make-up. Totally boring. Not designed to attract the attention of a playboy like Ciro.
Surely when he saw her in the cold light of morning he’d wonder what on earth he’d done?
After pulling her hair back in a low ponytail and slipping on flat shoes, she went in search of Ciro, vaguely wondering if it had all been a dream and she’d find herself back in London.
Liar, whispered an inner voice, you don’t want it to be a dream.
She ignored it.
But when she walked into the big living and dining area reality was like a punch to the gut. This was no dream.
Ciro was sitting at the top of a huge table with breakfast laid out before him, reading a newspaper. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle and he was looking as relaxed as if it was totally normal to have whisked your ex-fiancée off to another city straight after the funeral of her husband because you were bent on retribution.
He looked up when she approached the table and Lara immediately felt self-conscious. She wished she had some kind of armour to protect herself from that laser-like brown gaze.
He stood up and pulled out a chair to the right of his. Ever the gentleman. Lara murmured her thanks and sat down. The housekeeper appeared and poured her some coffee. Lara forced a smile and said her thanks in Italian, but the housekeeper barely acknowledged her.
‘She’s deaf.’
It took a second for Lara to realise that Ciro had spoken. She looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Sophia...my housekeeper. She’s deaf. Which is why it can sometimes feel like she’s being rude when she doesn’t acknowledge you.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m telling you because I don’t want you to upset her.’
Affronted, Lara said, ‘Why would I upset her?’
‘Just don’t.’
It struck at Lara somewhere very vulnerable to hear Ciro defend his housekeeper. It struck her even deeper that he would think her capable of being rude to someone with a disability. But then, she’d given him that impression, hadn’t she? When she’d convinced him she’d been with him purely for her own entertainment.
‘You didn’t have much luggage.’
Lara felt a flush working its way up her body. A burn of shame and humiliation. ‘I brought what I needed.’
Ciro inclined his head. ‘And I guess you’re counting on me buying you an entirely new wardrobe of all the latest fashions.’
She hated the smug cynicism in his voice, but she wasn’t about to explain that once her husband had become incapacitated, and blamed her, she’d been reduced to being little more than unpaid help. With very little money of her own, and none from her husband, Lara had had to resort to selling her clothes and jewellery online to try and make money when she needed it.
At one point when she’d needed money for something she’d had to sell her mother’s wedding dress—a beloved heirloom that she’d always hoped to wear when she married for love, and not because she was being forced into it. The fact that it was gone for ever seemed darkly apt.
Ciro took a sip of coffee. ‘You’ll need to look the part as my wife. I have standards to maintain.’
Lara realised that she wouldn’t survive for a week, let alone months, if she didn’t do something to distance herself from Ciro’s caustic cynicism and bad opinion of her. She needed to develop a hard shell around her heart. He mustn’t know how deeply he affected her or his revenge would be even more cruel.
She shrugged and affected a look of disdain. ‘Well, you couldn’t very well expect me to wear clothes two seasons out of date, could you?’
Ciro took in Lara’s expression. There she was. The Lara who had shown her true face in his hospital room two years ago. Making him the biggest fool on the planet. And yet it didn’t make him feel triumphant. Because there were those disconcerting moments when for a second she looked—
He shook his head. This was Lara Templeton. Spoilt and manipulative. Prepared to marry a man just because he was from the right side of society.
‘I’ve arranged for a stylist to come and take you shopping today. You’ll also be fitted for your wedding dress. I’ve pre-approved the design, so you don’t have a choice, Lara. I want to make sure you’re suitably attired for this wedding.’
Suddenly the disdain was gone. ‘What will people think of me? Marrying again so soon?’
‘They’ll think you’re a woman who has a strong sense of self-preservation. And they’ll think you’re a woman who knows she made a bad choice and is now rectifying the situation.’
‘They’ll think I’m nothing but a gold-digger.’
Ciro tensed. ‘You walked out on your injured fiancé to marry a man old enough to be your father within weeks of the day our own wedding was due to take place, so don’t try to pretend a sudden concern about what people think.’
Lara’s cheeks whitened dramatically, but Ciro put it down to anger at the fact that he could see right through her.
He hated it that he was so aware of her with every pulse of blood through his veins. He had no control over it. It hardened his body, made him a slave to his libido.
She wasn’t even trying to entice him. He wasn’t used to women not preening around him. Or he hadn’t been until he’d met Lara and she’d stunned him with her fresh-faced beauty.
She was fresh-faced this morning, with not a scrap of make-up, right down to the slightly puffy eyes. Something about that irritated him intensely. It was as if she was mocking him all over again. As if she knew that she didn’t even have to make an effort to have an effect on him.
He gestured towards her with a hand. ‘I don’t know what you’re angling for with this lack of effort in your personal appearance, Lara. But after you’ve met with the stylist, and once we are married, I’ll expect a more...polished result.’
Her eyes flashed bright blue at that. And then she lowered them in a parody of being demure. ‘Of course.’
That irritated him even more. It was as if there was some subtext going on that he wasn’t privy to.
He stood up. ‘I have back-to-back meetings all day at my head office. If you need anything, this is my private secretary’s number.’
He put a card down on the table in front of her. Lara picked it up. Was it his imagination or was there a slight tremor in her hand?
She still didn’t look at him as she said, ‘So not even your fiancée gets your personal number?’
He reached down and tipped up her face with a finger under her chin, ‘Oh, some people have my personal number, Lara. The people I trust most in the world. I have a business dinner this evening, so don’t wait up. The marria
ge will take place this Saturday, so you’ll be kept busy between now and then.’
This Saturday.
Lara jerked her chin away from Ciro’s finger. Even that small touch was lighting her insides on fire. Not to mention the nearness of the whipcord strength of his body, evident even though he was dressed in business attire of dark trousers and a white shirt. It was as if mere clothes couldn’t contain the man.
‘Worried I’ll abscond?’
Ciro stepped back and put out his arm. ‘You’re not a prisoner, Lara. You’re free to leave. But we both know that you won’t—especially when you see the very generous terms of the pre-nuptial contract. I know the real you now. You don’t need to pretend to be something else. This will be a very mutually beneficial arrangement.’
And she knew the real him. The man who wanted her only for her connections and her class. She was tempted to stand up and walk out with her head held high. Claim back her life. But she’d agreed to this because she knew what had been done to this man was her fault.
He might not have loved her, but he hadn’t deserved to be treated the way she had treated him, and he certainly hadn’t deserved to be kidnapped and almost killed. She had no choice but to stay. Not if she wanted to live the rest of her life with a clear conscience.
Ciro looked at his watch. ‘The stylist will be here at midday and some of my legal team will come before that with the pre-nuptial contract. An assistant will set you up with a mobile and laptop—whatever you need.’
Then he was gone, striding out of the room before she could say anything.
Lara looked at the delicious array of food on the table and her stomach churned. The coffee she’d drunk sat heavily in her stomach.
The housekeeper came back just as Lara was standing up and Lara touched her arm gently. The woman looked at her questioningly and Lara smiled and said grazie. The woman smiled widely and nodded, and Lara felt for a second as if she’d scored some kind of tiny victory.
