by Lynne Graham
'What's going on? Who are those people?'
'The press.'
'But why would they be interested in our wedding?'
'Rio getting married is news,' the older man advanced. 'Nobody knows who
you are either, and that was sure to whip up a storm.'
At that point the double doors near by were opened wide from the other
side and organ music flooded out from the main body of the church.
Holly gazed in horror at the packed pews she could now see, the
swivelling heads of those keen to see the bride, and she backed out of
sight again at speed. 'I can't do this!' she gasped in genuine panic.
'Not walk down that aisle on my own without my dad or any bridesmaids.
Why didn't Rio warn me it would be like this?'
'He probably didn't think. You'll be fine,' Ezio Farretti soothed.
Holly liked and trusted the older man. She scanned his smart appearance
in his well-cut suit and mustered the courage to make a special request.
'You could give me away...' A note of entreaty underlined her strained
voice. 'That way I wouldn't look so odd and I wouldn't be alone.'
Ezio dealt her a startled look and then absorbed the fact that she was
still backing in the direction of the exit. With a slow smile, he
straightened his shoulders and extended his arm. 'I would be honoured.
But remember that this was your idea, not mine,' he warned her gently.
However, if Rio was taken aback to see her approach the
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altar in tandem with his security chief, Holly was too enervated to
notice. No sooner had she arrived than the priest began to speak, and as
she looked at Rio and met his brilliant dark eyes her heartbeat just
went haywire. The instant the ring went on her finger was so precious to
her but it also made her regret that she had not thought to ask him if
he would have liked to receive a ring too.
But then, he would have had to buy that for himself as well, Holly
realised with a stab of mortification. She wondered how it was that when
life had been normal she had never worried quite so much about money nor
felt so much of a pauper. It hurt her pride that not a shred she wore
even on her own wedding day had been paid for with her own money, for
she had nothing that he had not given her.
'You look really stunning in that gown.' Rio flashed her an appreciative
smile while they stood on the church steps being filmed and photographed.
His smile filled her with warmth and security. Without him by her side,
Holly knew she would have bolted for cover. Never before had she been
the target of so many speculative stares and she had never dreamt even
in her wildest fantasies that she would ever marry a male likely to
attract such enormous attention from the media. She fingered the slender
band of gold on her wedding finger as if it was a talisman that might
yet make her feel that she was really and truly Rio Lombardi's bride.
But just then, regardless of the winging sense of happiness
strengthening her, it still felt like a crazy daydream.
As a limousine whisked them away from the church she turned to him, her
lovely face betraying her continuing strain. 'Why didn't you tell me
that there would be so many people coming?'
Rio elevated a smooth ebony brow and responded with
his own question. 'Why would you have thought otherwise?'
'You told me to leave Timothy at home-'
'I thought that that would be more relaxing for you,' Rio slotted in
smoothly. 'Nor would Timothy enjoy being deprived of his mother and
surrounded by strangers.'
Both statements were indisputably correct but Holly could not help
wondering if her son's exclusion might also have been linked to a
certain unwillingness on Rio's part to brandish the fact that his bride
was already a parent, and to a child who was not his.
Rio rested knowing dark golden eyes on her. 'You're wrong.'
Holly flushed. 'I didn't say anything!'
'You don't need to. I also once sat through a wedding during which a
baby screamed continuously. It left a lasting impression on me,' Rio
mocked, reaching for the taut fingers coiled on her lap and closing his
hand over hers in reassurance. 'I will look on Timothy as my son and
treat him accordingly. Didn't I promise you that?'
'Yes...' Holly's throat had thickened with tears because she was ashamed
that her own insecurity had made her doubt him.
'If I kiss you now I'll wreck your make-up,' Rio teased.
'To heck with that...' she muttered in a wobbly undertone.
With a husky masculine laugh, Rio laced indolent fingers into the bright
fall of her hair and crushed her soft mouth under his own with a hunger
that sent miniature lightning bolts stabbing to every sensitive spot in
her quivering body. 'Enough,' he groaned, setting her back from him. 'We
still have a reception to get through, although I'm not planning on a
lengthy stay.'
Holly tensed. 'A reception?'
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'Feeding one's guests is an inescapable duty,' Rio quipped. 'Sometimes I
wonder if we grew up on the same planet, cara.'
At that crack, Holly paled and said defensively, I just didn't know we
were going to have a proper wedding.'
'What else could we have had?' Rio regarded her in polite bewilderment.
'What did you expect?'
'Just us.'
'Just us?' Rio stressed in patent astonishment at the idea. 'Don't you
think that would have looked very odd? In the circumstances, the very
last thing I would wish is the suggestion that there is anything odd
about our marriage.'
'So who arranged all this stuff, then?'
'My staff. I have an extensive staff,' Rio pointed out gently.
Her mouth still tingling from the smouldering contact of his, Holly
nodded hurriedly in receipt of that information and strove not to look
as if her own ignorance was embarrassing her when indeed it was.
In the grand and exclusive hotel where the reception was staged, she
shook hands with a countless number of people and later recalled not a
single face or name. Rio's relations, his business connections and
personal friends got all mixed up inside her buzzing head. During the
superb meal that was served, a lot of the conversation around her kept
on switching from English into Italian and she tried not to feel
excluded and tried not to seem conscious of the enormous curiosity
behind the lingering appraisals she received. Obviously learning to
speak Italian was going to be one of her first challenges, she told
herself, but it was something of a shock to meet with that language
barrier and to sit there feeling like the quietest bride that had ever
existed.
She angled her head closer to Rio's and whispered, 'I'm just going to
find a phone to ring Timothy.'
Rio interrupted his conversation to turn questioning eyes on her.
'Ring...Timothy?'
Holly reddened. 'Yes. Sarah can hold the phone to his ear so that I can
talk to him.'
Rio eased a hand into his pocket and withdrew his cellphone. 'Be my guest.'
'I wouldn't know how to use it-'
'It's simple.'
Accepting the phone, Holly slipped away from the table to find a quiet
spot in the foyer, but no matter how many buttons she stabbed she
couldn't work out how to use the darned thing and got nothing but words
coming up on the tiny screen. Peering down at it in frustration, she
only then noticed that the same words seemed to be going round and
round: 'I love u. Call me.'
A chill ran down her sensitive spine. As she stood there by the wall,
two women engaged in animated conversation strolled out of the crowded
function room. 'Well, all I can say is...if the baby bride stole Rio
from Christabel, there's hope for all of us!'
'Did you hear that hilarious accent of hers? I almost burst out
laughing! She talks like a hayseed-'
'I could practically see Rio wincing. He is so refined. And she
obviously doesn't have a single presentable relative because I know
everyone here.'
'Poor Christabel,' the first woman said with mocking sympathy. 'Just
imagine the agony of being that beautiful and being replaced by a
creature with red hair like an electrified ragdoll! What did you think
of her wedding dress?'
If you're that skinny, you should hide it, not flaunt it!'
'It was so cheap-and-nasty-looking too. Bargain basement. You could tell
he hadn't paid for it.'
Her back pinned to the wall, her tummy churning at those comments, and
trembling, Holly waited until the women
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had moved out of sight before setting off without even knowing where she
was going. She just wanted to hide somewhere. Rio was getting love
messages on his phone and everybody was laughing at her. In an archway,
she stumbled as her gown caught on her heel and she had to pause to free
the hem. When she looked up she realised that she was in a bar and that
people were looking at her. Espying a cloakroom at the far end, she
began to walk fast towards it, head held as high as she could manage.
'I'm telling you...' a loud, very upper-class male voice proclaimed full
of amusement just as she moved past the bar. 'I'll lay you a grand that
I'm right. Rio's bride is preggers. He's been playing away behind
Christabel's back and then bang...his perfect life just went up in smoke!'
Holly stopped dead behind the tall blond man in full flood. 'If that's
what you think, why did you come to our wedding? Guests are supposed to
want to wish the bridal couple well...fat chance!' Holly snapped with
stinging disgust, her charged voice falling into a deathly silence that
she was quite beyond noticing. 'The likes of you are too nasty to wish
anybody well!'
The young blond man swung round. Warm colour flooding his fair, open
face, he stared down at her with appalled blue eyes. 'Oh, no...I am so
sorry!'
Holly only dimly recalled him from the long procession of guests she had
been forced to greet. But, without another word, she headed on into the
cloakroom. She wondered dismally if she could brick herself up in one of
the cubicles and stay there for ever undiscovered. She studied her
'electrified ragdoll' hair and her 'cheap' dress, which she had believed
was so lovely, and tears started streaming down her face. On her terms
the gown had been quite expensive enough for something that would only
be worn once, but
probably by rich people's standards it had been bargain basement.
Yet all she could really think about at that moment was the woman
sending 'I love you' text messages to Rio on his phone. A woman called
Christabel, the same name that the beauty-salon owner, Sly, had
mentioned that day she trimmed Holly's hair. Christabel, who was so
obviously Rio's former fiancée. Beautiful Christabel, whom Rio had
evidently dumped and yet nobody seemed to have the slightest idea why.
Unless it was because he had got Holly pregnant behind Christabel's back.
But only time would take care of that kind of spite and, knowing her own
luck in the fertility stakes, time might yet convince people that their
suspicions had been entirely correct. Furthermore, Rio had married her
but he didn't love her and she had better get used to that reality. How
could she demand the same boundaries as any other new bride? It was not
a normal marriage. Mopping her damp face dry, powdering her shiny nose
and repairing her lipstick, Holly headed back into the fray.
As she recrossed the bar, looking to neither left nor right, the young
blond man fell into step beside her. 'Go away,' she spat out of the
corner of her mouth.
'I don't think you even know who I am. I'm Jeremy, from the English side
of the Lombardi clan-'
'Didn't know there was an English side-'
'But Rio's mother, Alice, is English...she's also my mother's sister,'
Jeremy remarked, his surprise at her ignorance unconcealed.
Holly walked away from him. Unable to face returning to the function
room until she had got a better grip on her overtaxed emotions, she
picked one of the sofas in the seating area just off the main foyer. Her
unwanted companion
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infuriated her by throwing himself down beside her and reaching for her
hand.
'Look, I'm willing to grovel. What I said was utterly indefensible but I
was sounding off for a laugh,' Jeremy asserted earnestly. 'I would
sooner have cut off my right arm than hurt you like that-'
'It's not too late. Go ahead,' Holly told him.
Amused respect flared in Jeremy's eyes. 'All right, so I was laying on
the syrup a bit thick.'
Without the smallest warning, Rio strode into the alcove. His sudden
appearance made Holly jerk in dismay, and Jeremy hurriedly removed his
hand from hers. His devastatingly handsome features set like steel, Rio
flashed scorching golden eyes over the two of them and then settled his
hard gaze on Holly with intimidating force. 'Where have you been all
this time? Sitting out here flirting with my layabout cousin?'
Jeremy shot upright, visibly disconcerted by the speed with which that
accusation had emerged from the bridegroom. 'I was trying to make a
grovelling apology to Holly-'
'What were you apologising for?' Rio demanded of the
younger man.
'Oh, leave it, for goodness' sake!' Attempting to reclaim some dignity,
Holly got up. 'I still have to ring Timothy.'
Jeremy had already started to speak to Rio in a low-pitched flood of
Italian. It was just as though she wasn't there, and she had had enough
of that throughout that endless meal. She had married an Italian, she
reminded herself ruefully. Had she really thought that his family would
talk in English just for her benefit? What was she...stupid or something?
She located the public phones and called the town house. However,
Timothy was having a nap. Sarah offered to wake him but Holly told her
not to be daft and just to leave him sleeping. Even so, denied even the
small comfort of talking to her baby, Holly felt tears sting her eyes
afresh. She had never felt so alone in her life.
'Holly...Jeremy told me what happened.'
It was Rio's dark, rich drawl, his hand comi
ng to rest on her taut
shoulder, and Holly gulped, fighting for composure before she could turn
round. 'It doesn't matter-'
'It does matter-'
Holly spun round. 'Just before that, I heard another couple of your
charming guests talking about my cheap dress, my hilarious accent and my
electrified ragdoll hair-'
'Who the hell-?' Rio growled after a shaken pause at that outburst of
confidence.
'They're all the same...horrible!' Holly was feeling so alienated from
him that she was in no mood to accept sympathy. 'You know, my friends,
had they been invited, might have drunk too much and laughed a lot
louder, but they wouldn't have attended only to pull the bride or the
groom to shreds. Where I come from, weddings are happy occasions. I've
had more fun at a wake than I've had today!'
'Really?' Rio breathed glacially.
Finally, Holly thrust his phone back at him. 'I don't know how to get
rid of that stupid message going round and round,' she framed jaggedly.
'But either you're making a mug of me or you're being too refined to
tell her where to get off!'
His dense black lashes screened his gaze as he studied his phone. With a
fingertip he jabbed a button and the screen went blank. Even the ease
