Michelle Reid - Mediterranean Tycoons

‘You’ve used an “i” instead of an “e”,’ she insisted. ‘The sentence says, “This attitude is indecisive and unacceptable.”’ she read aloud. ‘It loses impact with the misspelling.’

‘You can read my writing from right over there?’ Setting his shoulders against the back of his chair, he looked at her curiously. ‘To the point that you can distinguish an “i” from an “e”?’

Lizzy nodded, still curled beneath the blanket. ‘Not if you were writing in Italian,’ she felt she should point out. ‘My Italian spelling isn’t good enough.’

‘Nor is your English.’

Lizzy glanced at his face. There wasn’t a flicker of uncertainty in his expression, yet she hadn’t seen him look down to check if she was right. Which meant that either he was too confident for his own good, or she had made a mistake.

Uncurling her feet from beneath her, she pushed aside the blanket and reached out and took the page from his lap. She read it carefully, then handed it back to him without uttering a single word.

His eyelashes flickered, uncertainty darkening the colour of his eyes, and she laughed softly, couldn’t help it—it felt so very good to be right.

He looked down, couldn’t help himself, then a rueful smile stretched his lips. ‘You aggravating ginger haired witch,’ he said, having to carefully turn an ‘i’ into an ‘e’.

‘My hair’s not ginger,’ Lizzy protested.

‘What is it, then?’ Tossing the work down on the table in front of them, he sat back and looked at her again.

‘Chestnut,’ Lizzy answered, and combed a set of fingers through it to push the curls away from her face. ‘With a will of its own,’ she added as a curl flopped down onto her brow.

‘Much like its owner.’

‘So you noticed.’ She gave the errant curl another hopeless swipe only to watch it spring back down again.

‘I noticed,’ he answered evenly.

‘Have you also noticed yet that I’m a virgin?’ she asked him casually.

IF LIZZY said it to shock Luc out of his cool composure, then she certainly succeeded, she saw, as burning dark colour swept across his high golden cheekbones and he launched to his feet sending paperwork scattering as he accidentally knocked against the table.

‘Is that your idea of a damn joke?’ His eyes flashed out a blaze of blistering fury that made her reach for and pull up the blanket.

‘I just—thought I should mention it before things go too—heated again,’ she explained, blushing herself because now that she’d said it she felt silly and stupid and—

‘A virgin,’ he snapped out from between his clenched teeth. ‘Where the hell did you get the idea to throw something like that at me from out of nowhere?’

‘Well, what would you have preferred me to do?’ Lizzy reacted hotly. ‘Have it written into that stupid prenuptial contract so you could take your time getting used to the idea?’

He was pale with anger now, not flushed. ‘We just almost made love—’

‘No, I stopped it,’ she reminded him, ‘being such a horrible tease.’

Grabbing the back of his neck, he spun away from her. Lizzy huddled in her seat. ‘I was going to tell you before in—in the bedroom but you turned nasty. Now I wish I hadn’t told you at all!’

‘So do I,’ he muttered, striding off towards the drinks cupboard.

‘Well, if it offends you this much, then why don’t you do your usual trick and chuck this bride out and put another more experienced one in her place?’

‘It does not offend me,’ he denied stiffly. ‘And I did not chuck Bianca out, as you so charmingly put it. She left me.’

‘Wise girl,’ Lizzy choked, fighting hurt tears now because hearing him say that made her remember that she wouldn’t be here having this conversation if Bianca hadn’t walked away from him.

Bianca, his first-choice bride!

‘Well…’ getting up, she began picking up scattered papers because she desperately needed something to do ‘—I am what I am, and you are what you are, which says to me that we don’t have m-much going for us in this stupid m-marriage. But I know I can’t bury my head in the sand and pretend I’m going to stop you every time you touch me because we both know I like it too much!’

‘Elizabeth—’

‘No,’ she choked out. ‘Just sh-shut up, because hearing you toss out one of your clever answers right now will just m-make me sick!’

He actually looked startled. ‘I was not about to—’

‘Yes, you were. You don’t know how not to.’ Swiping the tears from her eyes and that annoying stray curl from her brow, she gathered in his papers with trembling fingers, then came to her feet. ‘I don’t know how to deal with a man like you and it’s making this situation very difficult for me.’

‘You think I know how to deal with you?’ he hit back. ‘You are nothing like any woman I’ve ever encountered.’ He knocked his drink to the back of his tense throat. ‘You are quiet and shy and unbelievably sensitive in one disguise, then a flaming mix of defiance and passion in another!’

‘Well, now you know why.’ She put the papers on the table.

‘Yes, I know why,’ he accepted. ‘You’re a virgin—’

‘Trapped in a marriage I didn’t want.’

‘By a man that you do want.’

Lizzy swallowed thickly because she just had no defence to that. She did want him, even though she wished that she didn’t. She had wanted him for so long the guilty feeling still creased her insides.

‘I’m not going to fool myself that you really want me,’ she responded unsteadily, hunting around for her shoes now, though where the heck she thought she was going to go in them she hadn’t a clue. ‘Like you so love to say, you don’t hunt and I’m here. But if you’re daring to think that because I’m attracted to you I can’t m-mind that I come in second best for you, then forget it, because I do mind.’ She swallowed again. ‘And the fact that I’m not being given the choice as to who I give my virginity to hurts enough without you responding as if I’m offering you some dreadful social disease.’

‘I apologise if you feel I gave you that impression.’

He was coming over all cool and stiff now, which, Lizzy supposed, was typical of him.

‘You—surprised me,’ he added.

I surprised myself, Lizzy thought bitterly. I should have kept my big mouth shut.

‘And if the—sex between us is such an issue to you, then perhaps we can take it more slowly from now on.’

So he didn’t even want the sex with her now, Lizzy took from that smooth toned offer. ‘Thank you,’ she responded with chilly politeness.

The ‘fasten seat belts’ sign beeped into action then, saving her from the risk of sinking to the floor in a puddle of wretched tears. Instead she sat down, fastened her seat belt and occupied her trembling fingers by folding up the blanket.

A tinny voice came over the speaker system. ‘We will be landing in five minutes, Luc. The weather is dry with humidity at seventy-five degrees. The time is—twenty-one thirty-three. Santo is waiting with your car.’

Luc closed the drinks cabinet with a telling snap, then came to sit down himself. They didn’t look at each other as the plane began to make its descent and the silence between them was sharp enough to cut glass.

His hand still made that possessive anchor to her spine, though, when they left the plane, and the tense little quiver still made its strike down her front.

Formalities were swift and efficient. The night air was hot and heavy with the seductive aroma of spice. The car was a sturdy four-wheel drive with plenty of room to stack their luggage in the boot. And their driver, Santo, greeted them with a set of wonderful white teeth and the kind of warmth Lizzy didn’t think she was ever going to feel penetrate to her bones again.