Michelle Reid - Mediterranean Tycoons

‘I thought you said there would only be pelicans here,’ she said as they skirted above what looked like a pretty town clustered around a horseshoe-shaped harbour where she could see the yachts swaying gently in the moon-washed night.

Luc didn’t answer for a moment—long enough to inch up the tension between them some more. Then, ‘I was being sardonic.’

It was death to any vague hope Lizzy might have had that they could return to some kind of normality after the ugly scene on the plane. Pressing her lips together, she said nothing else, just stared at the shadowy shapes of an alien landscape sweeping past her window. It was only as they turned in through a pair of gates and she saw a beautiful sugar-pink plantation house standing in front of them that she suddenly wondered if this was where he’d meant to bring Bianca too.

Then— Don’t! she told herself angrily. Stop playing this pathetic torment with yourself. Aren’t things bad enough as they are?

A swarm of staff came out to meet the vehicle. Doors were opened for them, the still heat of the night became filled with warm smiles and even warmer congratulations that included hugs and happiness on their behalf until Luc gave the order for it to stop.

The house itself looked as if it had been transported here right off the set of a period movie. Lizzy could almost see the ladies in crinolines gliding out onto the front porch.

She could hear and smell the ocean though she couldn’t see it, and the heavy scent of tropical jasmine hung like a drug in the air.

‘Come,’ Luc said, making another one of those small hesitations, then rested an arm about her shoulders—for the comfort of the staff, Lizzy realised, and didn’t push him away.

But those hesitations were beginning to speak volumes. He didn’t want to touch her. Her silly confession about her lack of sexual experience had given him the biggest turn-off of his life. Now a wall was up and the detached cool was back, and it showed in the way he walked and the way he spoke so smoothly and quietly to the milling staff.

Inside the house was just as beautiful as his Lake Como villa, but decorated differently in cool pastel shades.

Lizzy stepped away from him as soon as she dared to, to glance around the huge open hallway with a white marble staircase sweeping upwards to a galleried first floor. A huge fan hung from the ceiling gently humming away and disturbing her hair as she spun slowly on the heels of her shoes.

‘We will do the proper introductions tomorrow, but this is Nina, cara…’

Swinging to face Luc, she found him standing with his eyes carefully hooded and his face like a blank golden space. Her own eyes flickered slightly as she moved them sideways to where a tiny creature with beautiful dark brown skin stood smiling shyly at her.

‘Nina manages the house and the staff,’ Luc’s carefully modulated voice explained, ‘so if you need anything go to her.’

Finding a smile from somewhere, Lizzy stepped up to say hello and to offer Nina her hand.

‘I am very happy to see you here, Signora De Santis,’ Nina returned with a smiling formality that made Lizzy feel like a fraud. ‘May I offer you both our delighted congratulations on behalf of all the staff here?’

Considering the rush of congratulations they’d just received outside, Nina’s carefully rehearsed speech kind of fell flat. Still Lizzy managed an adequate reply while sensing the tension that hit the man standing at her side.

‘My wife will want to go upstairs to—freshen up and change,’ he said calmly, with the ‘my wife’ sounding hollow to Lizzy’s sensitised ears.

‘I will show you, signora,’ Nina said. ‘Please,’ she invited, ‘this way…’

Lizzy walked in Nina’s wake, aware that Luc remained standing where he was watching her. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard his footsteps echo off the tiled floor, but refused to look down and check where he’d gone.

The bedroom suite was beautiful, a soothing melody of pale blues and ivory and soft eau-de-Nil. Two maids were busy unpacking their bags for them. Another fan spun quietly above a huge mahogany four-poster bed, and yet another one hummed across the room above the French windows in front of which a table and two chairs stood, already set for two.

‘There is a bathroom, signora, through here,’ Nina was saying, pulling Lizzy’s attention to the door she was holding open to reveal soft gold and cream tones of Italian marble. ‘Would you like one of the maids to draw you a bath?’

‘Oh, n-no—thank you,’ Lizzy murmured shyly. ‘I think I’ll just—explore first if that’s okay.’

‘Of course. You want to settle in.’ Nina nodded, let go of the bathroom door, then clapped her hands at the two hovering maids. ‘Come, both of you, we will leave the new signora to catch her breath.’

Well, that was one way of putting it, Lizzy supposed as she kept her smile fixed until all three had left the room.

Then she wilted like a dying flower into a chair, shoulders sinking, face paling, eyes feeling suddenly very empty as she stared at the huge four-poster bed with its drapes of fine white silk.

One huge bed, two large dark mahogany wardrobes—her gaze drifted over to them next—and two sets of fancy luggage standing half unpacked in front of each. One large very classy bathroom—from what she’d glimpsed through the gap when Nina had held the door open—and a table set for two by the window with a single red hibiscus flower standing in a tiny white vase, and two ivory-white candles floating in frosted glass bowls of water, just waiting to be lit.

Plus one wilting bride sitting here and a reluctant groom out there somewhere, probably downing brandy by the glassful while grimly ruing his lot.

The perfect honeymoon in paradise.

Getting up, she walked over to the suitcases to check which set belonged to her. She recognised nothing either in the cases or from what was hanging already in the wardrobe. She was a bought bride with just about every detail of her old life stripped away from her—except for the one thing he didn’t want to have and wished weren’t there at all.

Bending down, she flicked through a stack of soft designer lingerie. Sexy, every single set—purchased to seduce—plus bikinis in different styles and colours but no modest one-piece. Then there were the clothes that shrieked designer at her—bright, modern, chic and sassy to reflect current fashion trends.

Great.

Sighing, she turned and headed for the bathroom, then stood looking around it. One wickedly decadent deep plunge bath with optional whirlpool, two big shower cubicles, one toilet bowl and two white porcelain basins standing side by side above which hung mirrors and several glass shelves filled with bottles and tubes and jars of every beauty aid a woman could wish for.

And she refused—absolutely—to let herself question if all of this had been meant for Bianca.

Instead she stripped off, picked a shower cubicle and stepped into it.

Ten minutes later she walked back into the bedroom, wryly unsurprised to find that the maids had been in and finished the unpacking while she’d been showering.

Wrapped in one of the towelling bathrobes she’d found hanging behind the door, she rubbed at her wet hair with a towel as she wandered over to the window to look out. On impulse she tried the handle and found that the window was unlocked. Pushing it open showed her a bleach-boarded veranda with white slatted rails. The wood was warm beneath her bare feet as she stepped onto it, the heat of the night kind of soothing, and she stood leaning lightly against the rail and rubbing her hair while she tried to make out what the view in front of her was like.