The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

by Lynne Graham

  Lizzie went downstairs for breakfast, Archie at her heels. The instant the dog saw Cesare, who spoiled him shamelessly and taught him bad manners by feeding him titbits during meals, Archie hurried over to greet him. Cesare vaulted upright the minute she appeared. Unshaven, noticeably lacking his usual immaculate grooming, he still wore the same jeans and shirt. He raked a long-fingered brown hand through his tousled hair, looking effortlessly gorgeous but possibly less poised than he usually was.

  ‘I won’t lock the bedroom door again,’ Lizzie promised, her heart-shaped face as still as a woodland pool. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think about what I was doing but the room’s free now.’

  ‘I’ll get a shower before we leave for the airfield,’ Cesare countered, his dark golden gaze scanning her expressionless face as if in search of something. ‘Lizzie, we need to talk.’

  Already having foreseen that he might feel that that was a necessity, Lizzie rushed to disabuse him of that dangerous notion. The very last thing she needed in her current shaky state of mind was a rehash of the breakdown of their relationship the night before. It wouldn’t smooth over anything, wouldn’t make her feel any better. How could it? Essentially he was dumping her and nothing he could say would ease that pain.

  ‘That’s the very last thing we need,’ Lizzie told him briskly. ‘All that needed to be said was said last night and we don’t need to go over it again.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘What you said made sense to me when I thought it over,’ Lizzie cut in, desperate to shut him up. ‘This is business, nothing else. Let’s stick to that from now on and I’ll keep to my side of the bargain while your grandmother is staying with us on the island. I see no reason why we shouldn’t bring this...er...project to a successful conclusion.’

  Cesare blinked, disconcerted by the sound of such prosaic language falling from her lips. He was relieved that she was calm and grateful that she now intended to accompany him to Lionos for Athene’s sake but he didn’t agree with a single word she was saying. While, uniquely for him, he hesitated in a frantic inner search for the right approach to take with her, Lizzie took the wind out of his sails altogether.

  ‘And that successful conclusion I mentioned?’ Lizzie continued, a forced brightness of tone accompanying her wide fake smile. ‘We’re almost there because I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ Cesare exclaimed in almost comical disbelief, springing back out of his seat again and yanking out the chair beside his own for her use. ‘Madre di Dio...sit down.’

  Taken aback by his astonished reaction to her news, Lizzie sank down on the chair. ‘It’s not earth-shaking, Cesare. Women get pregnant every day.’

  ‘You’re my wife... It’s a little more personal than that for me,’ Cesare parried thickly, stepping behind her to rest his hands down on her slim, taut shoulders.

  Alarmingly conscious of that physical contact, Lizzie froze in dismay. ‘Could I ask you not to do that?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Touch me,’ she extended in an apologetic tone. ‘I’ll understand if you’re forced to do it when your grandmother’s around to make us look like a convincing couple but we’re alone here and there’s no need for it.’

  Off-balanced by that blunt response, Cesare released her shoulders and backed away. He was thinking about the baby and he was fighting off an extraordinarily strong urge to touch her stomach, which he knew was weird, not to mention an urge destined to go unfulfilled.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he breathed abruptly. ‘My immediate response was to touch you because I am full of joy about the baby.’

  He had never looked less full of joy to Lizzie. In fact he looked a little pale and a lot tense, eyes shielded by his ridiculously long lashes, wide, sensual mouth compressed. She wanted to slap him so badly that her hands twitched on her lap. Like a magician pulling a white rabbit out of a hat, she had made her unexpected announcement, depending on it to wipe away the awkwardness lingering after their confrontation the night before. She had just let him know that he would never have a reason to touch her again because she had conceived. He should have been thrilled to be let off the hook when he didn’t deserve it. Instead, however, a tense silence stretched like a rubber band threatening to snap.

  ‘I didn’t think it would happen so...fast,’ Cesare admitted half under his breath.

  ‘Well, it saves us a lot of hassle that it has,’ Lizzie pronounced with as much positive emphasis as she could load into a single sentence. Hovering on the tip of her tongue was the highly inappropriate reminder that, after the amount of unprotected sex they had had, she thought it was more of a surprise that they hadn’t hit the jackpot the first week.

  ‘Hassle?’

  ‘If we’d had to go for the artificial insemination, it might have been a bit...icky,’ she mumbled, momentarily losing her grip on her relentless falsely cheerful front.

  Icky, Cesare repeated inwardly. It was a pretty good description of how he was feeling. Icky. He had suffered a Damascene moment of revelation while he was with Serafina the previous night. A blinding light that even he could not ignore or sensibly explain away had shone over the events and emotions of the past month and he had finally understood how everything had gone so very wrong. Unfortunately for him, since Lizzie had joined him for breakfast, he had realised that ‘wrong’ was an understatement. He had dug a great big hole for himself and she was showing every intention of being perfectly happy to bury him alive in it.

  Cesare went upstairs, ostensibly for a shower but he wanted privacy to make a phone call. In all his life he had never ever turned to Goffredo for advice but his father was the only touchy-feely male relative he had, who could be trusted to keep a confidence. His sisters were too young and out of the question. Each would discuss it with the other and then they would approach Lizzie to tell all because she was one of the sisterhood now and closer to his siblings than he was. Goffredo had one word of advice and it was an unpalatable one. Heaving a sigh, he then suggested his son imagine his life without her and take it from there. That mental exercise only exacerbated Cesare’s dark mood.

  * * *

  Lizzie wore a floaty white cotton sundress to travel out to the island and took great pains with her hair and make-up. She knew that in the greater scheme of things her appearance was unimportant but was convinced that no woman confronted by a beauty like Serafina could remain indifferent to the possibility of unkind comparisons.

  Close to running late for their flight, Cesare strode down the steps, a cool and sophisticated figure in beige chinos and an ivory cotton sweater that truly enhanced his bronzed skin tone and stunning dark eyes. Climbing into the car, he barely glanced at Lizzie and she knew all her fussing had been a pathetic waste of time.

  Archie sat right in the middle of the back seat, halfway between them like a dog trying to work out how he could split himself into two parts. To Lizzie’s intense annoyance, her pet ended up nudged up against a hard masculine thigh because Cesare was absently massaging Archie’s ear, which reduced her dog to a pushover.

  By the time they reached the airfield and boarded the helicopter, Lizzie was becoming increasingly frustrated. Cesare’s brooding silence was getting to her and she wanted to know what was behind it. How could he simply switch off everything they had seemed to have together? It hadn’t ever just been sex between them. There had been laughter and lots of talking and an intense sense of rightness as well. At least on her side, she conceded wretchedly.

  His long, powerful thigh stretched as he shifted position and a heated ache blossomed between her thighs. That surge of hormonal chemistry mortified her. She reminded herself that that side of their marriage was over, she reminded herself that she was pregnant and she still ended up glancing back at that masculine thigh. Suddenly she was remembering that only the day before she would have stretched out a hand and stroked that hard male flesh, taking the initiativ
e in a way that always surprised and pleased him. How had they seemed to be so attuned to each other when they so patently could not have been? Had she deceived herself? Had she dreamt up a whole fairy tale and tried to live it by putting Cesare in a starring role? Was this mess all her own wretched fault?

  With such ideas torturing her and with a companion, who was almost as silent, it was little wonder that Lizzie had been airborne for over an hour when she was jolted by Cesare simply and suddenly turning round from the front passenger seat of the helicopter and urging her to look down at what he called ‘her’ island.

  ‘And Chrissie’s,’ she said unheard above the engine noise, stretching to peer over his broad shoulder as the craft dipped. She saw a long teardrop-shaped piece of land covered with lush green trees. ‘That’s Lionos?’ She gasped in astonishment for it was much bigger than she had expected. In her head she had cherished a not very inviting image of a rocky piece of land stuck in the middle of nowhere, for her mother had not made it sound an attractive place. At the same time their inheritance had never seemed very real to either her or her sister when they could not afford even to visit it.

  Within minutes the helicopter was descending steeply to land in a clearing in the trees and for the first time in twenty-four hours a feeling of excited anticipation gripped Lizzie. Ignoring Cesare’s extended hand, she jumped down onto the ground and stared up at the white weatherboard house standing at the top of a slope. Like the island, it was bigger than she had expected.

  ‘Athene told me that her father built it in the nineteen twenties and she had five siblings, so it had to be spacious,’ Cesare supplied as he released Archie and the dog went scampering off to do what dogs did when they’d been confined for a long time. ‘Primo says it really needs to be knocked down and rebuilt but he’s done his best within the time frame he’s had.’

  ‘He’s frighteningly efficient,’ Lizzie remarked, mounting the slope, striving to ignore and avoid the supportive hand Cesare had planted to the base of her spine and a little breathless in her haste.

  ‘Take it easy. It’s hot and you’re pregnant,’ Cesare intoned.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Lizzie snapped. ‘I’m only a tiny bit pregnant!’

  In silence, Cesare rolled his eyes at that impossibility. He had all the consolation of knowing that he was reaping what he had sowed. Lizzie was not naturally either moody or short-tempered. In fact, in spite of her troubled childhood she had a remarkably cheerful nature, he conceded grimly. At least she had had a remarkably cheerful nature until he had contrived to destroy everything in what had to be an own goal of even more remarkable efficacy.

  Primo greeted them at the front door and spread it wide. ‘Workmen are still finishing off the utility area,’ he admitted. ‘But I believe the house is now presentable.’

  Wide-eyed, Lizzie drifted through the tiled hall, which had been painted white, and moved on into a spacious reception room furnished with pieces that were an elegant mix of the traditional and the more contemporary. French windows draped with floral curtains opened out onto a terrace overlooking a secluded sandy cove. The view down the slope of a path through the trees to the beach was incredibly picturesque and unspoilt.

  She walked through the house and as she peered into rooms some of her tension began to evaporate. In the wake of her mother’s unappreciative descriptions, she was surprised to discover that it was actually a very attractive house and full of character. A room with a bathroom had been prepared for Athene’s use on the ground floor. Lizzie mounted the stairs, which had wrought-iron ornamental balusters and a polished brass handrail. A bedroom had been sacrificed to provide en-suite bathrooms. Everywhere had been freshly decorated and kitted out, fabrics stirring softly in the breeze through open windows.

  ‘What do you think?’ Cesare asked from his stance on the landing.

  ‘It’s magical. I can understand why your grandmother never forgot this island. It must’ve been a wonderful house for kids,’ she confided.

  ‘Soon our child will follow that same tradition,’ Cesare said gruffly.

  ‘Well, possibly when he or she is visiting you. I won’t be here as well,’ Lizzie pointed out, quick to puncture that fantasy.

  Cesare hovered in the strangest way, moving a step forward and then a step back, lashes suddenly lifting on strained dark golden eyes. ‘And what if I wanted you to be here as well?’

  ‘But you wouldn’t want that,’ Lizzie countered with unwelcome practicality. ‘You will either have remarried or you’ll have a girlfriend in tow.’

  ‘What if I don’t want that? What if I want you?’ Cesare shot at her without warning, unnerved by that veiled reference to the divorce that would be required for his remarriage.

  Lizzie lost colour, wondering what he was playing at, wondering if this was some new game on his terms. ‘But you don’t...want me, that is. You made that quite clear last night.’

  ‘I do want you. I want to stay married,’ Cesare bit out almost aggressively. ‘Last night, you took me by surprise and I was confused. I made a mistake.’

  Lizzie shook her pale head slowly and studied him in angry wonderment, temper stirring from the depths of the emotional turmoil she had been enduring since he had blown all her hopes and dreams to dust. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. First you ask me for a business-based marriage, then you ask me to give our marriage a try and then you tell me we don’t have a real marriage. As I see it, that’s pretty comprehensive and not open to any other interpretation!’

  She swivelled on her heel and deliberately walked past him to enter the room on the other side of the landing.

  ‘I’m trying to say I’m sorry and you’re not even listening!’ Cesare growled from behind her.

  ‘You can’t apologise for what you feel...neither of us can,’ Lizzie parried curtly as she lodged by a window, hoping to look as though she were entranced by the view when in actuality all she could think about was escaping this agonising going-nowhere conversation with Cesare, who seemed not to have the first clue about how she might be feeling. ‘I’m going to get changed and go off and explore.’

  ‘Alone?’ Cesare exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. I like my own company. I had to—I worked alone for years,’ she reminded him doggedly, walking past him on the landing, relieved when she saw the cases being carried upstairs into the master bedroom. ‘I realise once Athene arrives tomorrow it’ll be “game on” or whatever you want to call it...but could we...please not share a bedroom tonight?’

  ‘Why are you not listening to anything I’m saying?’ Cesare demanded in apparent disbelief. ‘You won’t even look at me!’

  Lizzie had only felt free to look at him when he was hers. Now that he wasn’t any more, she didn’t want to fall victim to his essential gorgeousness all over again. Not looking was a form of self-defence, she reasoned wildly.

  ‘Lizzie...’ he breathed in a driven undertone.

  Lizzie stiffened, tears prickling behind her wide eyes. ‘I can’t afford to listen to you. You upset me a lot last night and I really don’t want to talk about that kind of stuff. It’s pointless. I’m not really your wife. I may be living with you—’

  ‘Expecting my child!’ Cesare slotted in with greater force than seemed necessary.

  ‘But you didn’t choose to marry me because you cared about me, therefore it’s not a proper marriage,’ Lizzie replied as she reluctantly turned back to face him. ‘And in your own immortal words everything else we’ve shared can be written off as “just sex”.’

  Cesare flinched at that reminder, his pallor below his bronzed skin palpable. ‘I care about you now. I want to keep you.’

  ‘I’m not a pet, Cesare...’ Lizzie stared at him and frowned. ‘Are you feeling all right? You know, you’re acting very oddly.’

  Goffredo’s one-word piece of advice returned to haunt Cesare. ‘I’m fin
e,’ he said brusquely, lying through his teeth.

  All of a quiver after that pointless exchange, her nerves jangling, Lizzie vanished into the bedroom, closed the door and opened her case to extract a sun top and shorts. She needed to blow the cobwebs off with a good walk. Cesare was nowhere to be seen when she went downstairs again and she went into the kitchen where Primo reigned supreme and eventually emerged with Primo’s luxury version of a picnic meal and a bottle of water. With a little luck she could stay out until dark, then dive into bed and wake up to a new day and the big show for his poor grandmother’s benefit.

  Cesare was furious when he discovered that Lizzie had left the house. He strode down to the beach but there was no sign of her and not even a footprint on the pristine strand to suggest that she had come that way.

  Several hours later, sunburned, foot weary and very tired after her jaunt across Lionos, Lizzie returned to discover that Cesare had gone out. Thankful, she settled down to supper as only Primo could make it. Sliding into her comfortable bed, she slept like a log.

  Athene arrived mid-afternoon the next day. Cesare decided to be grateful for that because it brought Lizzie out of hiding. It had not once crossed his mind that she could be so intractable that she wouldn’t even give him a hearing and then he thought of all the years she had slaved for her unappreciative and critical father and realised that she would have needed a strong, stubborn backbone.

  Relaxed and colourful in a red sundress, Lizzie ushered Athene into her former childhood home. Tears shone in the old lady’s eyes as she stood in the hall, gazing down the slope at the beautiful view. ‘I thought it would all be overgrown and unrecognisable.’

  ‘You showed me a photo once. I had the trees cut back,’ Cesare told his grandmother softly. ‘Shall I show you around?’