The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Even though I was already married to Matteo, Cesare still bought the farmhouse as soon as it came on the market,’ Serafina told her smugly. ‘Look across the valley in the evening from the pool terrace and you will see the Ruffini palazzo blazing with lights on the hillside. He wants me back, Lizzie, he’s simply too proud to admit it yet.’

  ‘I don’t think he would’ve married me if that was his intention,’ Lizzie commented in a deflated tone.

  ‘Oh, I guessed that he married you to get that stupid island back into the family,’ Serafina retorted with a wry little laugh and she shrugged. ‘I don’t care about that. Your marriage is temporary and I’ll be waiting when he decides to forgive me.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Lizzie mumbled, thrusting her chair back and rising. ‘You can hardly expect me to wish you luck with my husband and I really don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me in the first place.’

  ‘Because you can make things a lot easier for all three of us by quietly stepping back the minute Cesare admits that he wants his freedom back,’ the princess pointed out smoothly. ‘If it’s a question of money.’

  ‘No, I don’t need money and I can’t be bribed!’ Lizzie parried grittily, her cheeks reddening. ‘I wish I could say it was nice meeting you...but it would be a lie.’

  ‘You’re a farmer’s daughter with no education. Surely you don’t believe you have what it takes to hold a man like Cesare’s interest?’ Serafina fired back with a raised brow. ‘Cesare and I belong together.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  LIZZIE COMPRESSED HER LIPS, said nothing and walked back indoors.

  A pounding headache had developed at the base of her skull. How she got through what remained of the evening, she had no idea, but she smiled so much her mouth felt numb and she made polite conversation until she wanted to scream. She was angry with Cesare for ever loving a woman as selfish and grasping as Serafina. Serafina only wanted Cesare now because he had built up an empire worth billions. Nevertheless a few of her remarks stayed with Lizzie like a bruise that refused to heal.

  ‘You never forget your first love. He married you to hurt me. Cesare and I belong together.’

  And who was she to assume that that wasn’t true? Cesare had never dreamt of regaining the island of Lionos in the way his father and grandmother had. Never having seen it, he had never learned to care for it and could probably well afford to buy his own island should that have been his wish. Was it possible that Cesare had been willing to go through with marrying Lizzie because he had a stronger motive? A desire to punish Serafina for her betrayal all those years ago? Revenge? Certainly that was how the princess had interpreted his behaviour of getting married just at the point when she was finally free again. Exasperated by the pointless thoughts going round and round in her sore head, Lizzie tried to blank them out by acknowledging that she knew no more about what Cesare felt for Serafina than she knew about what he felt for herself.

  ‘You’ve scarcely spoken since we left the benefit,’ Cesare commented as the limo drew up outside the farmhouse. He had noticed that she had seemed unusually animated throughout the evening. That had proved a surprise when he had assumed she might feel the need to cling to him in such exclusive and high-powered company. When she failed to demonstrate any desire to cling, instead of being relieved he had felt strangely irked and could not explain why. He had always felt stifled by women who clung to him. He had always valued independence and spirit in a woman more than feminine weakness and soft words of flattery.

  Yet when the spirited and independent woman whom he had once loved had approached him at the benefit for a private word, he had been totally turned off by the experience, he acknowledged grimly.

  ‘I’m very tired,’ Lizzie said stiffly.

  Cesare followed her into the bedroom, unzipping her dress without being asked. Lizzie let the dress glide down to her feet, stepped out of it and, regal as a queen in her underwear, walked into the bathroom without turning her head even to look at him.

  He knew when he was getting the silent treatment. She was sulking and that was childish. He had never had any patience for sulks. He pulled a pair of jeans out of a drawer and stripped off his suit. Casually clad, he noted the beady little eyes watching him from below the canopy of the four-poster pet bed and surrendered. ‘Come on, Archie...time for something to eat...’

  Archie limped across the floor. The cast had been removed from his broken leg only the day before but Archie still thought he was a three-legged dog and had yet to trust the fourth leg to take his weight again. Cesare scooped the little dog up at the top of the stairs and carried him down to the kitchen where he maintained a one-way dialogue with Archie while feeding them both as he raided the fridge.

  Teeth gritted, Lizzie emerged from the bathroom to a frustratingly empty bedroom. She had decided that it was beyond cowardly not to ask Cesare why he hadn’t warned her that the benefit was being staged at his ex-girlfriend’s home. She had not been prepared for that confrontation and was convinced she would have made a more serious effort to look her very best had she known she would be meeting the gorgeous brunette. The problem was that she was jealous, she acknowledged ruefully, green and raw and hurting with ferocious jealousy. She looked out of the landing window at the dark silhouette of the old stone barn and her heart clenched as if it had been squeezed dry. Cesare had made love to Serafina there, love, not sex. He had loved Serafina, cared about her, wanted to marry her. Yet Serafina had turned her back on his love in favour of wealth and social status. Having achieved those staples, she now wanted Cesare back.

  Pulling a silky wrap on over a nightdress, Lizzie headed downstairs. Cesare was sprawled on a sofa in the airy living room. In worn jeans and an unbuttoned blue shirt, he was a long sleek bronzed figure and heartbreakingly beautiful. Her heart hammered out a responsive and nervous tattoo as she paused in the doorway.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked abruptly.

  Cesare always avoided dramatic scenes with women and walking out on the risk of one came as naturally as breathing to him. One glance at Lizzie’s set, angry face and the eyes gleaming like green witch fire in her flushed face was sufficient to warn him of what was coming. Springing lithely upright, he strolled out past her and swiped the car keys off the cabinet in the hall. ‘I’m going for a drive...don’t wait up for me. I’ll be late,’ he spelled out flatly.

  Taken aback, Lizzie moved fast to place herself in his path to the front door. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Perfectly. I don’t want to argue with you, cara. I’m not in the mood. We’re flying to Lionos tomorrow and Athene will be joining us. That is enough of a challenge for the present.’

  It was a shock for Lizzie to register how cold the smooth, perfect planes of his lean dark face could look. His spectacular eyes were veiled by his thick lashes, his superb bone structure taut, his shapely mouth, defined by a dark shadow of stubble, a hard line of restraint. Alarm bells sounded in her head. ‘You could’ve warned me that we were going to Serafina’s house and that she would be our hostess.’

  ‘I am not going to argue with you about Serafina,’ Cesare asserted, his jawline clenching hard as granite.

  ‘I’m not arguing with you,’ Lizzie reasoned curtly. ‘And why won’t you discuss her with me?’

  Velvet black lashes flew up on scorching golden eyes. ‘She’s none of your business, nothing to do with you.’

  Lizzie flinched and leant back against the door to stay upright. She felt like someone trying to walk a tightrope in the dark and she was terrified of falling. ‘She spent ten minutes talking to me outside on the terrace and made me feel very much as if she was my business.’

  Feverish colour laced his incredible cheekbones. ‘You...discussed me with...her?’ he framed wrathfully.

  Lizzie found it interesting that, instead of being flattered as Serafina had suggested, Cesare
was absolutely outraged by the idea. ‘What do you think?’ She hesitated, hovering between him and the door. ‘I only wanted to know why you didn’t mention that she would be entertaining us.’

  Cesare ground his perfect white teeth together because he had thought of mentioning it, only to run aground on the recollection that theirs was not a normal marriage. They were not in a relationship where he was bound to make such personal explanations, were they? He focused on Lizzie’s pale face on which colour stood out only on her cheeks. She looked hurt. He saw that hurt and instinctively recoiled from it, frustration rippling through him. He didn’t want to share what had happened earlier that evening with Lizzie, not only because it would rouse her suspicions, but also because it was tacky and he refused to bring that tacky element into what had proved to be a glorious honeymoon.

  ‘Serafina is very much part of the local scenery. Many of my friends are also hers. I have no reason to avoid her. Seeing her is no big deal,’ he delineated stiffly, reluctantly, willing to throw that log on the fire if it satisfied her and closed the subject.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Lizzie whispered unhappily. ‘If it had been no big deal, you would’ve mentioned it.’

  ‘You know me so well?’ he derided.

  Lizzie paled even more. ‘I thought I did.’

  Cesare closed his hands firmly to her ribcage and lifted her bodily away from the door.

  ‘If you walk out, I’m not going to Lionos with you!’ Lizzie flung the worst threat she could think to make in an effort to stop him in his tracks.

  ‘In what fantasy world are you living that you think you can threaten me?’ Cesare breathed, freezing with the door ajar so that cooler night air filtered in to cool her now clammy skin.

  ‘I only wanted you to explain.’

  ‘I have nothing to explain,’ Cesare parried drily. ‘But you will definitely be telling me at some point what Serafina said to you.’

  ‘Honesty has to be a two-way thing to work. We’ve been living like a married couple.’

  ‘Because we are married.’

  ‘You know what I mean...’ Lizzie hesitated, reluctant to probe deeper but driven by turbulent emotional forces she could not suppress. ‘You’ve been treating me as though I’m really your wife.’

  There it was—the truth Cesare had hoped to evade because he didn’t know how that had happened, didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t even know how he felt about that development. Why did women always have to drag unmentionable issues out into the open and do them to death at a time of their choosing? How the hell had he got himself into such an untenable situation? He had started out fine, he acknowledged broodingly, laying down the rules, seeing what made sense, knowing what he should not do lest it lead to exactly this situation. And somehow it had all gone to hell in a hand basket in spite of all that careful pre-planning, all that practical knowhow and knowledge of the female sex. And here he was trapped as he had never wanted to be trapped...

  ‘I want to know what Serafina said to you.’

  ‘That she wants you back, that you married me to punish her, that I wasn’t educated enough to hold you... Oh, yes,’ Lizzie recounted and then, with a ghastly attempt at an amused smile, added, ‘and that this was your mutual dream house, planned by you both on the wet night you made love in the barn...’

  Cesare’s eyes flashed flaming gold, his outrage unconcealed. He closed a hard hand to the edge of the door as if to emphasise the fact that he was still leaving. ‘Madonna diavolo! She shouldn’t have involved you in this.’

  At those words, at that suggestion that there was an involvement that she was unaware of, Lizzie swore her heart cracked right down the middle. ‘No,’ she agreed woodenly, because it was true.

  Cesare steeled himself. He knew he had to speak, could not comprehend why ESP was suddenly warning him to shut up and say nothing. ‘We don’t have a genuine marriage. We are not a couple in the true sense of the word. We both know that...’

  He paused as if he was hoping she would leap in and say something but Lizzie couldn’t have found her voice had her life depended on it. At that moment she felt as if her life’s blood were draining away in a pool on the floor and that dramatic image made her feel dizzy.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she mumbled, knowing that she was lying, knowing that sleep had never been further from her mind, but it seemed so incredibly important in that silence to act as if she were still able to function normally even if it was a complete lie to try and save face.

  ‘This is all my fault,’ Cesare breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Don’t think I’m not aware of that. I shouldn’t have brought something as volatile as sex into the equation.’

  ‘And you were still doing it...only a few hours ago,’ she framed unevenly.

  Unusually indecisive, Cesare hovered in the rushing silence. Archie was looking at him from across the hall as if he had two heads, which absolutely had to be his imagination playing tricks on him, he reasoned wildly. He felt sick, he felt bad, he felt... No, he was being dangerously emotional and he knew what emotion did to him: it made him irrational and reckless and he wasn’t going to go there again...ever! He was taking the right approach in correcting a serious mistake before it did any more damage. Aside of that aspect, they were both consenting adults.

  ‘So, it’s back to the business arrangement,’ Lizzie assumed in a tight little voice.

  ‘I think that would be wiser, don’t you?’

  Not recognising that cold, detached intonation, Lizzie finally dared to look at him again. He was poised by the door, devastatingly handsome, a long slice of bare brown torso showing between the parted edges of his shirt, tight jeans defining long, powerful thighs and lean hips. Slowly she raised her gaze, determined to be brave, determined to hold on to her pride even though he had rejected her in the worst possible and most hurtfully humiliating way. He had made it clear where he stood and she supposed that brutal honesty was for the best.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Lizzie said quietly and she turned on her heel.

  In a split second the front door closed and he was gone. The Ferrari engine growled to life and she literally ran out to the terrace above the pool, frantically determined to see if she could pick out the Ruffini palazzo on the hillside. And there it was, a big white classical building lit up like a fairground. She had noticed it before but had never thought to ask about it. Now she watched the lights of Cesare’s car heading down into the valley and she stood and she stood, arms wrapped defensively round herself while she waited to see if her very worst suspicions were correct.

  At such a distance, she could not have been a hundred per cent certain but she was convinced that it was the Ferrari that she saw heading up the long, winding, steep drive to the palazzo. Cesare was going straight to see Serafina. Lizzie was in shock. Perhaps he had been seeing the other woman all along; Lizzie hadn’t been keeping tabs on him everywhere he went. It seemed pretty obvious to her that Cesare had a dark side and more secrets than she had ever had cause to suspect and she had been ignorant and irresponsible and very naive not to smell a rat sooner...but it wasn’t much good or any comfort to feel wise after the event, was it?

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, with her heart beating very fast, Lizzie studied a test wand, relieved that she had taken the opportunity to discreetly buy a pregnancy kit some weeks earlier.

  And there it was straight away, the result she had both feared and craved: she was pregnant. It changed everything, she acknowledged in shock, and she walked out to the bedroom and unlocked the door she had locked the night before. Cesare would need access to his clothes but had she cared about that last night when her dream world had collapsed about her ears? No, she had not.

  But now that she knew for sure that she was carrying Cesare’s baby, she had to look to the future and beyond the business agreement they had origin
ally made. She could not afford to be at odds with her child’s father. That would only foster resentment between them and their child would suffer in that scenario. Unfortunately that meant that she had to be a bigger person than she felt like being just at that moment. She had to rise above what had happened, bury the personal aspect and stick to the rules from here on in.

  He’d broken her heart. Well, she’d recovered from Andrew; she would eventually recover from Cesare. Of course, she had never loved Andrew the way she loved Cesare; consequently getting over Cesare would be more of a challenge. Andrew had hurt her self-esteem and damaged her trust but Cesare had torn her heart out. To think of living even one day without Cesare somewhere nearby tore her apart, teaching her how weak and vulnerable her emotions had made her.

  Yes, Lizzie acknowledged, tidying her hair, adding more concealer to hide the redness of her eyes, she had a long, long way to go in the recovery process. But now that she knew about the baby, it would have to start right now. She would have to put on the act of the century. She couldn’t afford to show the smallest interest in what was going on between Serafina and him. He had made it clear that she had no right to ask such questions and she would have to respect that.

  Had Cesare behaved badly? She thought he had. Scrapping the business-agreement-based marriage had been his idea, not hers. But honesty forced her to acknowledge that he had suggested at the time that they would have to see how well their marriage worked. In short, their marriage as such had been on a trial basis. And obviously, while it had worked incredibly well for Lizzie, it had not worked at all for Cesare. That hurt; that hurt her very much. It was a complete rejection of everything they had shared in and out of bed over the past month and it made her feel such an idiot for being so deliriously happy with him while failing utterly to notice that he did not feel the same way.