A Bride Worth Millions

She caught her breath when Luca slammed on the brakes as they approached a sharp bend in the road. Coming towards them was a fleet of silver saloon cars decorated with white ribbons—obviously heading for Woodley Lodge to drive the bride and groom and other members of the wedding party to the church.

Her heart juddered. Oh, God! What had she done? Had Charlie broken the news to his parents that the wedding was off and the reason why? What would her parents think when they heard that she had run away?

She remembered her mother’s hat, covered in lilac silk roses, the pride in her father’s voice, and suddenly the dam holding back her emotions burst. Tears poured in an unstoppable stream down her cheeks and she sniffed inelegantly, feeling more wretched than she had ever felt in her life.

‘Here,’ Luca said gruffly, pushing a tissue into her hands.

He had never seen a woman cry so hard before. He was used to crocodile tears when one of his mistresses wanted something. Women seemed to have an amazing ability to turn on the waterworks when it suited them, he thought sardonically. But this was different. Athena was clearly distraught and he felt uncomfortable with her raw emotions.

He reached into the glove box and took out a hip flask. ‘Have a few sips of brandy and you’ll feel better.’

‘I never drink spirits,’ she choked between sobs.

‘Then today seems a good day to start,’ he said drily.

Athena did not like to argue—especially when she glanced at Luca’s hard profile. She took a cautious sip of brandy and felt warmth seep through her veins.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’ve decided not to marry Charlie.’

‘Not particularly. Kadir asked me to make sure you were happy, and if not to stop the wedding. I’m not interested in the reason why you’ve changed your mind.’

‘Kadir asked you to stop the wedding?’

Luca glanced at her, and was relieved to see that the brandy had brought colour back to her cheeks. ‘Lexi was sure you were making a mistake, and Kadir would do anything to prevent his wife from worrying—especially when she’s about to go into labour.’

He had done what he had been asked to do, Luca brooded. But neither Kadir nor Athena seemed to have planned further than halting the wedding. He could not abandon her, but the only place he could think of taking her was back to his hotel. Perhaps she would get a grip on her emotions there and then take herself out of his life so that he could concentrate on his own pre-wedding problems with Giselle.

Athena took another sip of brandy and felt herself relax a little. She had a headache from crying and she closed her eyes, lulled by the motion of the car...

The strident blare of a horn woke her, and she was confused when she saw that they were in a traffic jam. A glance at her watch revealed that she had slept for forty minutes.

Her memory returned with a jolt. She had run away from her wedding—dubbed by society commentators as ‘the wedding of the year’. Luca De Rossi had helped her to escape in his sports car. For some reason the sight of his tanned hands on the steering wheel evoked a quiver in her belly. A picture flashed into her mind of those hands caressing her, his dark olive skin a stark contrast to her pale flesh.

She swallowed. ‘Where are we?’

‘London. Mayfair, to be exact. I’ve brought you to my hotel to give you time to decide what your plans are.’ Luca handed her another tissue. ‘You might want to clean yourself up before we go inside.’

Athena had recognised the name of the exclusive five-star hotel that overlooked Marble Arch and Hyde Park. Her heart sank when she pulled down the car’s sun visor to look in the vanity mirror and saw her face streaked with black mascara and red lipstick smudged across her chin like a garish Halloween mask.

She did her best with the tissue, and when Luca had parked in the underground car park and they’d taken the lift up to the hotel’s opulent reception area, she shot into the ladies’ cloakroom to avoid the curious stares of the other guests, who were clearly intrigued to see a tearful bride.

In one of the private cubicles she ran a sink of hot water and scrubbed the make-up off her face. Her elaborate bun had slipped to one side of her head, and she began the task of removing the dozens of hairpins before brushing her hair to get rid of the coating of hairspray. She gave a start when her phone rang from the depths of her bag, and the sight of her mother’s name on the caller display caused her stomach to knot with tension.

Out in the hotel lobby, Luca tapped his foot on the marble-tiled floor and tried to contain his impatience as he waited for Athena to emerge from the cloakroom. Long experience of women warned him that she might be in there for hours while she reapplied her make-up. While he was waiting he reread the latest text message he had received from Giselle.

I have decided to ask my four young nieces to be bridesmaids at our wedding and I’ve seen the most adorable dresses for them to wear.

The message included a photo of a sickly-sweet child dressed in a shepherdess costume. Luca ground his teeth. Bridesmaids! Giselle was pushing his patience to its limit. And another text revealed that she knew she had the upper hand.

I hope you will be amenable, chéri, because I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you will be thirty-five in two short weeks.

The warning in Giselle’s second text was clear. Do what I want, or... Or what? Luca thought grimly. It was unlikely that his bimbo bride would give up a million pounds over an argument about bridesmaids, but he dared not risk upsetting her when he was so close to his goal.

His phone rang and he frowned when he saw that the caller was the other thorn in his side: his grandmother’s brother, Executive Vice President of De Rossi Enterprises, Emilio Nervetti.

‘This continued uncertainty about who will head the company is affecting profits.’ Emilio went straight for the jugular. ‘I intend to ask the board to support a vote of no confidence in your leadership. Under the terms of my dear sister Violetta’s will, two weeks from now you stand to lose your position as chairman unless you marry before your birthday—which you show no signs of doing.’

‘On the contrary,’ Luca said curtly. ‘My wedding is arranged for next week—before I turn thirty-five. My marriage will allow me to continue in my role as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises, and after I have been married for one year I will not only secure the chairmanship permanently, but also the deeds to Villa De Rossi, and the right to use the De Rossi name for the fashion label I created.’

For a few seconds an angry silence hummed down the line, before Emilio said coldly, ‘I am sure the board members will be relieved to know that you intend to give up your playboy lifestyle for a life of decency and sobriety. But I’m afraid I cannot be so confident. You inherited your mother’s alley-cat morals, Luca. And God knows what genes you inherited from your father—whoever he was.’

Luca cut the call and swore savagely beneath his breath. His great-uncle’s dig about his parentage was expected, but it still made him seethe. Emilio had only been given a position on the board of De Rossi Enterprises because his sister—Luca’s grandmother—had married Luca’s grandfather. He was the rightful De Rossi heir, Luca thought grimly, even though his grandparents had disapproved of him.

Luca’s grandfather, Aberto De Rossi, had lacked the vision of his father, founder of De Rossi Enterprises, Raimondo De Rossi. But at least Aberto had been a steady figure at the head of the company. With no son to succeed him Aberto had given his daughter Beatriz a prominent position on the board—with disastrous results.

Beatriz had been too busy with her party lifestyle to take an interest in running the company, and her scandalous private life had brought disrepute to the De Rossi brand name and resulted in falling profits.

Eventually Aberto had run out of patience with his daughter and had named his illegitimate grandson as his heir—with the stipulation that Luca could only inherit with his grandmother’s agreement, and only after her death. Aberto had also voiced his reservations about Luca’s decision to study fashion design alongside a business degree.

However, at the age of twenty Luca had presented his first collection at New York Fashion Week and received critical acclaim. The launch of his fashion label, DRD, had restored the De Rossi brand to the prestige it had known under the legendary Raimondo. But, according to the terms of Luca’s grandmother’s will, he faced losing everything. All his hard work and achievements had meant nothing to Nonna Violetta—and he knew why.

He was a bastardo—the product of a brief union between his mother and a croupier she had met in a casino—and in his grandparents’ eyes not a true De Rossi. He had inherited his talent for innovative design from his great-grandfather, but Luca had been a shameful reminder to his grandparents that their only daughter had made the family a laughing stock.

Luca’s jaw clenched. He had done everything he could to win his grandparents’ approval, but it had never been enough to earn their love. And after Aberto had died, Violetta had become increasingly demanding, saying that Luca must marry and provide an heir. Presumably she had believed that an heir from the bastardo De Rossi was better than no heir at all, he thought bitterly.

His grandmother had threatened to use her casting vote with the board to have him replaced as head of the company. And even after her death she still sought to control her grandson by stipulating in her will that he must be married by his thirty-fifth birthday or the Villa De Rossi would be sold to a consortium that was eager to turn the house into a hotel. Luca would also be removed from his role as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises and barred from holding any other position within the company. And, although he owned DRD, he would lose the right to use the De Rossi name for his fashion label.

Luca’s lip curled. Nonna Violetta’s ultimate betrayal had been that threat to ban him from using the name he had been given at birth for his design business. It was a vindictive reminder that he had only been called De Rossi because his mother hadn’t known his father’s surname. Despite everything he had done to restore the fortunes of the company, to his grandparents when they had been alive, and to some of the board members of De Rossi Enterprises, he would always be a bastardo.

Anger burned in his gut, and with it another emotion he did not want to recognise. He had once assumed he had been hurt too often by his grandmother and no longer cared what she thought of him. But when he had heard the details of her will he had felt sick to his stomach.

He did not care so much if he lost control of De Rossi Enterprises, and he could always rename his fashion label—he might even enjoy the challenge of starting again and rebranding his designs, and he only wished he could stand at his grandmother’s grave and laugh at her attempt to manipulate him. But there was one very good reason why he couldn’t. Two reasons, he amended. The first was the Villa De Rossi and the second was his daughter Rosalie, whom he loved and was determined to protect at all costs—even if that cost was his pride.

His phone pinged, heralding another text from Giselle. Dio, he needed to return to Italy so that he could keep his future bride satisfied with sex until she had signed her name on the marriage certificate, Luca thought sardonically.

He glanced across the lobby and saw Athena walk out of the cloakroom. She looked younger without the heavy make-up, and now that her hair was loose he saw that it still fell almost to her waist and was not, in fact, a dull brown, but a warm chestnut shade that shone like raw silk.

As she came towards him he could see that she had been crying again. Behind her glasses her eyes were red-rimmed. He wondered if she was regretting her decision not to marry Charles Fairfax but reminded himself that he did not care.

Her wedding dress was drawing attention from the other hotel guests. He supposed he could take her up to his suite and ply her with the cups of tea that the British seemed to consume in great quantities in times of crisis, but he did not have the time or the patience to listen to her problems when he had enough of his own.

Another text arrived from Giselle. He would have to phone her—but while he did what could he do with Athena?

Luca spotted a waiter who worked in the hotel’s cocktail bar. ‘Miguel, this is Miss Athena Howard. Will you take her into the bar and make her a cocktail?’ He smiled briefly at Athena. ‘I have to make a phone call. I’ll join you in a few minutes.’

To Athena’s relief there were only a few people in the bar, and she was able to hide behind a large potted fern to avoid attracting more curious looks. She knew that one of her first priorities must be to buy some different clothes, but she did not relish the idea of walking along Oxford Street in her wedding dress.

‘Have you decided what you would like to drink?’

‘Um...’ She stared at the cocktail menu. She certainly wasn’t going to ask the waiter for a Sex on the Beach! ‘Can you recommend something fruity and refreshing?’

‘How about an Apple Blossom?’

It sounded innocuous enough. ‘That would be lovely.’

The waiter returned minutes later with a pretty golden-coloured drink decorated with slices of lemon. Athena sipped the cocktail. It tasted of apples and something else that she could not place, and it was warming as it seeped into her bloodstream.

Her mind replayed the phone call from her mother.

Veronica Howard, typically, had not given her daughter an opportunity to speak, but instead had launched into a tirade about how Athena had once again let her parents down.

‘How could you jilt poor Charles, almost at the altar, and run off with an Italian playboy who, I am reliably informed, changes his mistresses as often as other men change their socks? What were you thinking, Athena? Did you even stop to consider how mortified your father and I would feel when Lady Fairfax explained what you had done? Poor Charles is heartbroken.’

‘Wait a minute... Luca isn’t...’ Athena had tried to interrupt her mother. ‘How do you know about Luca?’

What she had meant was how did her mother know that Luca had helped her to run away from the wedding—but, as so often happened with Athena, her words had come out wrong.

‘Charles watched you drive off with this Luca in his flash sports car,’ Veronica had said shrilly. ‘Apparently he’d had suspicions that you were seeing another man behind his back, but he hoped that once you were married you would be happy with him. You can imagine how shattered poor Charles was when he discovered today that you are having an affair with his old school friend.’

‘I’m not having an affair with anyone. It’s Charlie who—’

Athena had been tempted to tell her mother the true reason why she had refused to marry Charlie, but despite the callous way he had used her she had been unable to bring herself to betray his deeply personal secret.

‘You need to persuade Charles to tell his parents the true situation,’ she had told her mother.

‘Actually, I need to go and talk to the photographer from High Society magazine and explain why they can no longer feature a five-page spread of your wedding in their next issue,’ Veronica had said coldly. ‘Your father and I will never live this down,’ she’d snapped as a final rejoinder, before ending the call.

Athena finished her drink and the waiter immediately reappeared with another. She blinked away her tears as she sipped the second cocktail. Her parents—particularly her mother—had never listened to her, she thought miserably.

When she was a child they had ignored her requests to give up the tennis lessons and violin lessons, the ballet classes in which she had been the least graceful dancer—more like an elephant than a swan, as the other girls had taunted her. It hadn’t been until she’d left school, having scraped her exams, with the words ‘Athena is an average student’ written on every school report and emblazoned on her psyche, that her parents had given up their hope that she would show late signs of academic brilliance.

Even when she had qualified as a nursery assistant—a job that she loved—they had kept on at her to reapply for university so that she could at least train to be a teacher. She believed she had been a disappointment to her parents all her life. It was partly for that reason that she had never told them she had been sexually assaulted by her Latin tutor when she was a teenager. She had always wondered if the assault had somehow been her fault, she brooded, as she drained her glass and took a sip of the second cocktail that the waiter had brought over to her—or was it the third?

If she had betrayed Charlie she would have had to admit to her parents the humiliating fact that her ex-fiancé preferred his best man to her. Was she really so unattractive that no man would want her, as Charlie had said? He had accused her of having a hang-up about sex, and the truth was that he was right, Athena acknowledged, swallowing a sob and gulping down the rest of her cocktail.

The waiter must have noticed her empty glass, because he arrived at her table with another drink. She had lost track of how many cocktails she’d had—and actually she didn’t care.

Through the door of the bar she could see Luca De Rossi in the lobby, talking into his phone. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and she noticed every woman who walked past him paused to give him a lingering look. He seemed unaware that he was the centre of attention, but it was more likely that he was used to women staring at him, Athena thought ruefully. A man like Luca would not have to try very hard. One smile from his sensual mouth and most women would melt—like she had in Zenhab.

A memory slipped into her mind of him kissing her when they had been in the palace gardens. She had been watching the water droplets from the fountain sparkle like diamonds in the moonlight, but at the same time had been intensely aware of Luca standing beside her. When he had bent his head and brushed his lips over hers she had responded unthinkingly, beguiled by his simmering sensuality.

Why had he kissed her?

She watched him walk into the bar and stride over to where she was sitting. His charcoal-grey suit was expertly cut to show off his superb physique and his silky black hair was just a fraction too long, curling over his collar. He was dark, devastating, and undoubtedly dangerous—and it suddenly seemed imperative to Athena to find out the reason he had kissed her at her sister’s wedding.

The room spun when she stood up, and the floor seemed strangely lopsided as she walked towards him. She felt oddly brimming with self-assurance—as if all her inhibitions had disappeared. Even Charlie’s cruel taunt that no man would want a twenty-five-year-old virgin no longer hurt. Luca De Rossi, sex god and notorious womaniser, had kissed her once before, and it was possible—likely, even, she decided with a whoosh of confidence—that he wanted to kiss her again.

Perhaps inevitably, she tripped on the hem of her wedding dress, but Luca caught her in his strong arms as she had known he would. He was her hero and her handsome knight, she thought, giving him a beaming smile.

‘I think I might be a bit tipsy,’ she announced, trying to focus on him. ‘Although I don’t know why. All I’ve had to drink are a few lovely cocktails called Apple Bosoms.’ She giggled. ‘Oops, I didn’t mean to say bosom.’

The word had come into her mind because while she had been admiring Luca she’d felt a tingling sensation in her breasts and her nipples had felt hot and hard beneath the stiff bodice of her wedding dress. ‘I meant Apple Blossoms,’ she said carefully, wondering why her tongue felt too big for her mouth. ‘Anyway, the cocktails are made with apple juice.’

‘And calvados and vodka,’ Luca murmured as he attempted to unwind Athena’s arms from around his neck.

At least she had stopped crying, but she had clearly had too much to drink, and her wedding dress was still attracting attention from the hotel guests who had come into the bar.

‘I think I had better take you up to my room and order you some strong coffee,’ he told her, keeping his tone light and hoping he could whisk her out of the bar without her causing a scene.

She swayed, and would have fallen if he had not caught her. ‘Santa Madonna!’ he growled beneath his breath, his patience ebbing away fast. It was obvious that she could not walk, so he did the only thing he could and swept her up into his arms.

‘I think that’s a very good idea,’ Athena said over loudly. ‘Take me upstairs, Luca, and kiss me like you did in Zenhab.’

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