The Italian Billionaire's Disgraced Fiancée

by Betsy Swann

  It looked perfect now, she decided after a quick inspection of the interior. All the house had needed was a good cleaning and a team of gardeners, and the company that had seen to that this morning had done a great job. The weeds had gone, the window panes sparkled, and they had even polished the silver.

  Contented Izzy went into the kitchen to find a vase and filled it with water for the roses she had brought. Once she was happy with her flower arrangement, she carried the vase into the living room and put it on the console table between the two sets of French windows. Lovely!

  Suddenly her smile faded. Was this the room where Enzo had been waiting for her on that fatal evening when her father had fallen ill, probably with flickering candles on the table and romantic music playing in the background?

  Izzy couldn’t even start to imagine how he must have felt when she hadn’t turned up. At the time, she hadn’t really thought about this. She had been too absorbed in her own despair to think straight, but now… Enzo had been let down by his nearest and dearest more than once. By his birth parents who had left him to die in a park. By his adoptive parents who ignored him in their will. By his brother who carelessly lost the home he loved.

  Clearly, Enzo hadn’t deserved to be stood up by his fiancé like that. If she could turn back the clock and change the chain of events, she would, but this was an impossible dream.

  Her phone beeped. A broad grin spread across her face when a wedding picture appeared on the screen. Bella was the most beautiful bride she had ever seen, and pure love shone from the eyes of her new husband.

  I’m so happy for you, Izzy instantly texted back. I wish you both all the luck in the world.

  Still smiling, she put the phone back into her pocket and left the house.

  Having to play a role and consequently lie to Enzo had deeply irritated her, but at least it had been worthwhile in the end. Bella had finally found true love in Luca’s arms, after all these miserable emoticons she had sent. Her sister thoroughly deserved her happiness. She had been so determined, so sure that Luca was the right man for her. And so terribly stubborn about not wanting to tell him who she really was until he professed his love. Izzy assumed that at this very moment Luca felt like the luckiest guy in the world. After the disaster of his first marriage he wouldn’t marry again without being truly in love.

  Which brought her thoughts back to Enzo, and how rotten it had all ended.

  ‘I love you more than anything,’ he had said to her during that last night. ‘But I hate you, because you’re a liar.’

  With Bella and Luca being married, he’d very soon find out just how much she had been lying to him during the past fortnight. She shivered when she envisaged his most likely reaction. His utter contempt.

  Practically everything had been a lie. Even the name on the CV had been false. She had tried her hardest to stick to the truth, but it had been impossible from the start. She could not possibly have risked her sister’s future happiness and blow her cover. And Enzo would have been furious had he known how the pair of them had tricked him into thinking that Bella had not followed Luca to Las Vegas.

  She looked up into the blue afternoon sky. How she wished that it had all been different. That her father were still alive. That she and Enzo had never broken up. That he loved her with all his heart… She sighed. Two days since she had last seen him, two very long days, and he hadn’t come after her. He hadn’t even tried to phone or send a text.

  His silence gave her a clear enough message, but what had she expected? A fairy tale happy-ever-after?

  After delivering the keys to the mansion to the solicitor of the Vallorini family, Izzy walked the short path from the promenade to the beach and sat on a low wall to remove her shoes. She looked towards the horizon. The soft rolling of the waves under the blue summer sky reminded her of Sardinia. How happy they had been, if only for a short while. Her heart clenched at the thought that it was all over now.

  Holding her sandals in one hand, she stepped onto the warm sand and went for a walk.

  ***

  Izzy hadn’t been in the office to clear her desk. Blankly Enzo Vallorini stared out of the window across sunny Green Park. Where the hell could she be?

  ‘The Doria papers are ready to sign,’ a prissy voice said behind him. ‘Nick Hetherington would also like to discuss another matter with you. Should I make an appointment for today?’

  He turned. ‘What other matter?’

  The temp shrugged her shoulders. Enzo had been at the office for one hour, and she was already getting on his nerves. ‘I’m sorry, she didn’t say. Would you like me to find out?’

  ‘No, this won’t be necessary,’ he replied. He’d find out about it soon enough.

  With a sigh of relief he saw her return to her desk to make the appointment with Hetherington.

  The moment Enzo stepped into Nick Hetherington’s office he felt his heart rate accelerate. Dio! He was nervous, an emotion he had never felt before in business matters. But Hetherington was no simple business partner. He was also someone close to Izzy’s heart. Why else would she display his photo in her living room and have secret meetings with him? And there was also the fact that he had given her that penthouse…

  Hetherington greeted him with a smile and a firm handshake. ‘I’m sorry it took so long to prepare the papers for the sale of the hotels, but obviously the owner needed to sign, and she was abroad.’

  ‘The owner?’ Enzo looked at him in astonishment. ‘I thought they were your hotels?’

  ‘They belong to my sister,’ Hetherington explained and went across the room to a table with a variety of refreshments. ‘Can I offer you something to drink or a snack?’

  The mermaid!

  ‘A whisky, please,’ Enzo replied, his eyes fixed at the huge painting on the wall behind the table. Hell, he needed a drink. Probably two. ‘I wanted to buy this picture once, but it was not for sale. How did you manage to buy it?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Hetherington replied and handed him the whisky. ‘Izzy gave it to me when her father died.’

  Enzo didn’t understand. Why would she give him a picture of her mother?

  ‘She is my mother too, you see,’ Hetherington said into the silence, as if he’d read his thoughts. ‘Izzy and I are brother and sister.’

  Enzo downed his drink. Siblings! He hadn’t seen that coming, never in a million years. ‘I haven’t… I assumed…’

  ‘I know, you took us for lovers. As did your brother.’ Hetherington grinned. ‘Thank God he didn’t break my nose. But quite frankly, I would have done the same thing, if I’d caught my girlfriend with another man.’ He looked at Enzo’s empty glass. ‘Another drink?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘So Izzy - Clarissa – is the one selling the hotels?’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve figured that one out?’

  Enzo nodded. ‘It took me a while,’ he admitted. ‘A very long while, actually.’

  Still shocked, Enzo went over to Hetherington’s desk and stared at the signature on the sales contract. Clarissa Doria Jones.

  ‘Our mother’s surname was Doria,’ Hetherington explained. ‘She brought the hotels into the family. When she died, Izzy inherited them.’

  Enzo didn’t reply. Too much was going through his head. Finally he took his pen from the inside of his jacket and signed.

  ‘About this other matter I wanted to talk to you about…’ Hetherington placed the glass of whisky next to the sales contract. ‘I guess you need this, when you hear what I have to say.’

  Enzo looked at the drink. This was it. The end. She wouldn’t come back to him and had asked her brother to give him the news.

  He took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was about to come.

  ‘This…’ Hetherington took a file from his desk and handed it to him. ‘This is your greatest wish come true. The deeds to your family mansion in Suffolk.’

  Enzo stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘Izzy was determined to acquire that house
for you,’ Hetherington went on. ‘I didn’t quite get why. Something about a lost boy…’

  The second whisky went down with another gulp. Dio! Why had he not seen what the whole world had seen? That she was kind and warm-hearted, one of a kind. What a fool he had been to throw her love back into her face and mistake her for a gold-digger when in truth she was a millionaire with a heart of gold. He could only hope and pray that it wasn’t too late. That she’d come back to him and forgive him.

  His phone vibrated. At the same moment, Nick Hetherington’s phone beeped. Simultaneously they checked their messages. Enzo paled when he saw the picture on the screen.

  It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

  ‘It seems your brother has married my sister,’ Hetherington said. ‘We’re family now.’

  ***

  For the next couple of hours Enzo had been too shocked to have a single clear thought. Even now, standing in the wood-panelled office of Stephen Bradshaw, the family solicitor, he wasn’t quite sure whether all of this wasn’t some kind of a bad dream. Maybe he’d wake up any minute, bathed in sweat, but relieved that it had been nothing but a nightmare.

  ‘Your parents would be so happy to know that the house has fallen back to you,’ Bradshaw said from across his Victorian writing desk. ‘They tried so hard to bend the rules of the inheritance line and find some kind of loophole, but there wasn’t one. As much as they wanted to bequeath the mansion to you, they couldn’t.’

  Enzo stared at him in disbelief. Surely he must have misheard. ‘Come again?’

  ‘The first owner of the mansion decreed that the property may only be passed on to the closest legitimate blood relation, never to children born out of wedlock or to adopted members of the family.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, all this is not relevant anymore, because in the meantime the property has been in different ownership altogether.’

  Enzo bent forward. ‘Are you saying the reason I didn’t inherit the house was, because I was adopted?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ Bradshaw looked surprised. ‘When the will was read out, you seemed upset. But as you never asked, I naturally assumed…’

  Stepping outside into the fresh summer breeze, Enzo took a deep breath.

  But as you never asked…

  Dio! Obviously he had done the same mistake before, not just with Izzy. All these years he had believed that his parents had preferred his brother to him, because Luca was of their own blood, when he couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  He swiftly walked the short distance to the mansion and opened the gate. Everything was still as he remembered. The gravel path leading to the house. The manicured lawn. The pillared portal.

  Home. He was finally home again. His greatest wish.

  The house smelled nice, he realised as soon as he opened the front door. Of bees wax polish, and summer and something else. Something lemony, like Izzy.

  The sound of his heels echoed through the hall as he crossed the parquet floor. Through the open doors he could see the antique sideboard between the two sets of French windows in the drawing room. Someone had put a vase of roses on top. They were beautiful, white with a golden centre, and somehow they as well reminded him of Izzy. He went closer and carefully touched the petals. They felt soft, almost like silk, and he briefly closed his eyes as the memory of Izzy’s silky skin hit him.

  He felt lonely in the big house, he suddenly realised. What the mansion needed was a family. Happiness. The patter of tiny feet. Not a lone man who had lost the love of his life to his brother. Who had been so inexcusably arrogant that he had driven her away. He had no idea how to ever put this right.

  Wearily he left the house and instinctively headed in the direction of the graveyard. His parents deserved an apology from him. It was the least he could offer, and while he stood at their grave in silence, he sincerely hoped that they would forgive him.

  As he turned to leave his parents’ final resting place, a vase of roses caught his eye. White with a golden centre, the same ones he had seen in the mansion. Slowly he went closer until he came to a halt in front of a simple marble gravestone. Enzo froze, when he read the inscription.

  Dio! Izzy’s father was buried here. He had died two years ago, on her birthday. Enzo’s mouth went dry.

  ‘I swear, I spent the night at the hospital,’ he heard Izzy say again in his mind. ‘Please let me explain…’

  And then his cousin telling him ‘No luck, just some guy with the name of Jones who died last night in one of the Suffolk hospitals…’

  Shattered, he drew both hands through his hair. He had gotten it so wrong, so terribly, utterly wrong. Izzy had told the truth, but his arrogance had not permitted him to trust her. And now it was too late. She was married to Luca.

  Another scene flashed through his mind, the night when Izzy had returned to the hotel and made love to him.

  ‘I will never marry Luca,’ she had whispered into his ear. ‘I have never loved or looked at anyone but you.’

  Deep in thought Enzo stared at the roses that so reminded him of her.

  ‘I will never marry Luca…’

  Izzy hadn’t lied to him, he realised. She loved him, and God help him, he had done it again. He had seen a photo of her, a wedding picture, and had held it against her. She wasn’t married, she couldn’t be. He had to find her and talk to her. Now.

  She was here in Suffolk, he suddenly knew. She was the one who had put the roses on the grave and also into his drawing room. Her lemony scent had still fragranced the air when he had arrived at the mansion.

  Enzo turned and ran out of the cemetery and all the way to her father’s house. The gallery next door had changed ownership and was now called Polly’s Tea Room, he noticed from the corner of his eye. He was utterly relieved to see Izzy’s car being parked in the driveway. Thank God, she was still here, she hadn’t left! Breathing heavily after the run, Enzo knocked at the front door. No reply. He tried again and again, but there was still no answer.

  Anxiously he looked around. Where on earth could she be?

  ***

  Slowly Izzy walked back along the shore line, her feet in the water, and soft white sand under her soles. She felt at home here and would have loved to stay a bit longer, but with Enzo as the mansion’s new owner, this was too risky. He must turn up any day now to take possession of the house, and she was not ready yet to face his wrath. Her pain was too fresh, her heart too badly injured to deal with his cruel words. Maybe in a couple of months…

  She stilled when she saw a tall, familiar figure walk towards her, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze. Her heartbeat accelerated. It couldn’t be him, could it?

  He had started to run now, and with every step his identity became clearer.

  ‘Enzo,’ she whispered and turned around to flee. But he was already there and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to face him.

  He looked shattered, she realised. Utterly worn down and distraught. A lost boy.

  ‘Izzy, please don’t go,’ he pleaded and pulled her close. ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry.’

  She didn’t understand. ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘Dio, where do I start?’ He forked his hand through his hair. ‘For not listening. For not trusting you. For never believing a single word you said. Oh Izzy, can you ever forgive me?’

  She just stared at him in amazement, unable to reply.

  ‘Please say something,’ he begged, desperation in his eyes. ‘I was so stupid, such an utter fool. Only when you asked me to listen to my heart, I finally understood what I should have realised long ago. That I love you more than anything and that I trust you with my life.’ Slowly he bent down on his knee. ‘Nothing, nothing, can shatter my love for you. You are the only one for me. So please Izzy, would you do me the great honour to become my wife? I promise to trust you and to love and cherish you for the rest of my life.’

  Shaking, Izzy lowered herself into the sand beside him. Carefully she lifted her hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes. They l
ooked so hopeful, so earnest. ‘Two years ago you promised exactly the same, Enzo,’ she whispered. ‘How can I be sure you mean it this time?’

  ‘You told me you loved me, and that love is nothing without trust,’ he replied, gripping her hand. ‘Please trust me here, cara, and believe my word. Just as I believe yours. When Luca sent this wedding photo I fell for it initially, but then I remembered what you had said. That you loved me, only me, and that you’d never marry Luca.’ Lovingly he guided her hand to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Suddenly I just knew that you had not lied to me.’

  He trusted her. A wave of warmth and love washed over Izzy. He finally trusted her.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘My answer is yes. I’d love to become your wife.’

  With a sigh of relief Enzo took her into his arms. He pulled her into the warm sand and kissed her with all the love he had to give. ‘I love you, Izzy. More than anything.’

  ‘I love you, too. So much.’ Snuggled into his arms, she smiled at him. ‘And now I’d like to explain some things you should know about me – and what really happened two years ago.’

  ‘I should have let you explain long ago,’ Enzo said, a guilty look on his face. ‘All this wouldn’t have happened, if I hadn’t been so arrogant. If I had listened to what you had to say.’

  She brushed his mouth with her lips. ‘My parents made the same mistake,’ she started. ‘Clarissa Doria, my mother, was a very rich woman with a chain of hotels in Italy and France, and when she fell in love with my father, her family was against a wedding. They had already chosen a suitable husband for her and tried to convince her that, being a poor artist, my father was just after her money.’

  ‘And she believed them?’

  ‘Not at first,’ Izzy explained. ‘But when he asked her for a large sum of money, he broke her heart. My mother was so shocked that she ran back to her family without even talking to him. Had they communicated, she might have found out that he wanted the money to pay for the operation of a critically ill relative.’

  Enzo looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, she might have found out?’

  She sighed. ‘My father didn’t try to communicate with her either. He was convinced that, if she really loved him, she would just know that he was not interested in her money.’