Though no one can despise me more than I despise myself for my criminal stupidity.
But if she told Mia, would it give Mia the courage to tell Luca she would not marry him? With a heavy heart, Ariana knew it would not. Nothing would give her gentle, doe-like cousin the courage to do anything she feared to do, anything that would cause upset, make others angry with her...
Claws pincered within Ariana as she finally got Mia off the line. If her cousin would not break her engagement, then only one other person could.
Luca Farnese must break it off.
And, though dread and revulsion filled her, she knew there was only one way to get him to do that.
I have to tell him who Mia is.
Though she would have given a million euros not to have to do so.
Luca snatched up his ringing phone in no good mood. He was back in Milan after a night in Geneva, and to his annoyed disappointment, when he’d phoned thepalazzofrom his hotel to discuss the wedding plans, he’d been informed that his fiancée had retired early. Well, he would try again tonight—and if he needed to he’d drive down the following day to see her in person.
There was the honeymoon to discuss too. He’d already suggested a choice between the Seychelles and the Maldives, and he wanted to settle it. Mia had said she was happy with either, but there was still the resort to be chosen. Somewhere very private—that was his only stipulation.
Veryprivate.
In his mind’s eye he could see her...her pale, slender beauty enhanced by the azure waters of the shallow sea, like Botticelli’sVenus, or theVenus de Milo, serene and tranquil. He would lift her into his arms, carry her into their shaded cabana, lay her down upon the waiting bed—
His vision cut out.
The woman had been replaced.
No pale beauty but sultry, dark-eyed, her hair a wanton cloud, her full breasts peaked and straining, her rich mouth lush and parted... She was lying there in his bed, waiting for him. A temptation impossible to resist...
Like a guillotine, he sliced away the forbidden memory.
‘What is it?’ His snap to his PA, who was calling him, was not civil.
‘I am so sorry, Signor Farnese, but this caller is really most insistent. She gives her name as Ariana Killane—’ she began.
For a moment that seemed to last for ever blackness filled Luca, obliterating everything else in the universe. Then it cleared.
‘Tell Signorina Killane that her services arenotrequired,’ he said. He drew a sharp breath, indenting his cheeks so that they hollowed starkly. ‘She is an interior designer I came across when I was in New York,’ he went on, giving his PA an explanation that she could use in future, ‘and she has been pestering me since.’ His mouth compressed. ‘Get rid of her.’
He replaced the phone, stared across the wide office. Black anger filled him. That she had the temerity to try and contact himnow, all these weeks later...
Did she not get the message clearly enough? The message that I don’t want anything more to do with her.
He sat motionless at his desk. It seemed to him that there was a precipitous drop in front of him. Ready to swallow him up if he did not keep very, very still.
Then he took another breath, slow and deliberate this time, and the sensation eased. His eyes dropped to the pink and white wedding folder. Just seeing it there was reassuring. Soon, in a few brief weeks, his fiancée—his ideal woman—would be his bride. And nothing...nothing...was going to stop that.
His eyes darkened.Shewas not going to stop it. The woman he had left behind in New York. The woman he should never have indulged in—who had called him every name under the sun, yelling at him, making a scene...
Memories fused within him. The woman in the bathrobe, yelling at him in front of an elevator. The woman from much longer ago, yelling at his father...
No!He would not allow such memories. Not any more. Never again. They would not,couldnot touch him. He would live his life exactly the way he wanted to, taking total control over everything. Making life do whathewanted.
Always.
‘Is that Ariana?’
The voice on her mobile was unknown to her, as well as the number calling.
‘Yes,’ she answered, in the language she’d been addressed in—English. ‘Who is this?’