‘I came as soon…’
With one look at her his words died on his tongue. She was wearing the dress. His blood pumped harder, louder in his veins, spiralling warmth and pride through him. Soon, she would be his.
‘Beautiful,’ he said, his tone almost worshipping. ‘Just stunning. The most beautiful bride ever.’
She sniffed, raising her chin and rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand, and it was then that he noticed her eyes, large and luminescent as if he’d startled her with his sudden appearance, yet smudged around the edges, almost as if she’d been crying.
She dropped her arm to the side and brought herself up taller and suddenly her eyes looked less doe-like and more glacial, and set amongst features that seemed to harden even as he watched.
‘Do you think so?’ she said, her lips tilting into a harsh curve. She looked down at the dress. ‘I was thinking of it more as a going-away outfit.’
‘What do you mean?’
She turned her eyes back up at him. Back to where their frosty spears could inflict the most damage. ‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Were you going to spring it on me before I’d walked down the aisle, or wait until we were hitched? Or even better, maybe you were saving it for a honeymoon treat?’
‘Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?’
‘It must have been challenging—always finding ways of keeping me here. But you sure came up with the trump card to beat all today. You love me. Yeah, right. What were you going to try if that didn’t work?’
Breath rushed out of his lungs on a growl and he closed the space between them, latching on to her shoulders. ‘What’s happened?’ he said.
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, wincing, looking pointedly down on his hands. ‘You were planning on physically restraining me. Nice touch. No doubt there’s a dungeon somewhere down below where I can be kept for as long as it takes.’
He cursed as he flung his hands from her shoulders, pacing to the desk, where he took two steadying breaths before being able to face her again. ‘Something’s happened,’ he said. ‘Are you going to share it with me or are you going to make me stand here and play twenty questions?’
She waved her hand in the direction of the letter, its pages still abandoned in the corner, where they’d fluttered down onto the floor. ‘Paolo wrote to me,’ she said. ‘And it made for interesting reading, the story of your vendetta against him.’
Her eyes glittered blue ice, her chin was set and defiant and inside he felt sick. This was not the way she should have found out.
He crossed the room, snatching up the pages and scanning their contents.
‘This whole trip, my whole reason for being here, was simply so you could satisfy your desire for revenge.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he snapped, though he knew it was, at the start.
‘Oh? What was it like then? Surely you’re not going to tell me you stumbled upon me by accident, completely unaware of my connection with Paolo?
‘Oh,’ she said, throwing her head back, ‘I’m so stupid, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to work it all out. You planned this whole fiasco from the start. How convenient that I’m a designer. How easy that proved to be to get me here—all you had to do was pay enough to Gianfranco and he just about pushed me onto you. And once here, you had no intention of letting me go.’
He dragged in a short, sharp breath. ‘No! Though it’s true I have a score to settle with Paolo.’
‘And taking me away from him was part of that vendetta.’
‘Why should he have you? He doesn’t deserve you. Yes, in the beginning, all I wanted was revenge. But that was before I met you. Then I knew he wasn’t good enough for you. That you deserved better.’
‘And you were supposed to be better? I believed you, you know. I stood up for you against Paolo when he pleaded with me not to come to Jebbai. I actually felt sorry for your “fiancée”, too ill to be able to take part in her own wedding preparations, and yet you were using me the whole time. Using me to get back at him.’
‘Maybe it was like that at the start,’ he admitted. ‘But not all the time. I wanted revenge, that’s true, but once I met you I knew you were not just some possession of Paolo’s that I had to have. I wanted you for myself then, for the woman you are. I had to have you, body and soul.’
She crossed her arms, the expression on her face mirroring her body language and screaming her disbelief. ‘Tell me about Helene,’ she said. ‘What was so special about her that you couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else having her?’