The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

And with that deeply unsettling comment, Cesare Sabatino swung on his heel and strode back out to the limousine sitting ready to depart. The driver leapt out to throw open the door for his passenger and Cesare lowered his proud dark head and climbed in.

Appealing? Lizzie pushed her hair back off her brow and caught her surprised reflection in the small age-spotted mirror on the wall. He was really saying that he could go to bed with her and conceive a child with her if she was willing: that was what he meant by the word appealing. Her face flamed. She was not willing. She also knew the difference between right and wrong. She knew that more money didn’t necessarily mean more happiness and that a child was usually better off with a mother and a father.

Yet the image of the tiny boy she had glimpsed cradled in her former fiancé’s arms after the child’s christening in the church had pierced Lizzie with a pain greater than that inflicted by Andrew’s infidelity. Lizzie had always wanted a baby and ached at the sight of infants. When Andrew had left her for Esther, she had envied Esther for her son, not her husband. What did that say about her? That she was as cold at heart and frigid as Andrew had once accused her of being? Even remembering that hurtful indictment, Lizzie winced and felt less than other women, knowing that she had been tried and found wanting by a young man who had only wanted a warm and loving wife. Lizzie knew that, in choosing Esther, Andrew had made the right decision for them both. Yet Lizzie had loved Andrew too in her way.

Her eyes stung with moisture, her fingers toying with the ends of the brown-tinted hair that Andrew had persuaded her to dye. The dye was growing out, a reminder of how foolish a woman could be when she tried to change herself to please a man...

But where on earth had her strong maternal instinct come from? Certainly not from her volatile mother, who in the grip of her wild infatuations had always focused her energies on the man in her life. Lizzie had not been surprised to learn of the impetuous way Francesca had evidently ditched Cesare’s father to marry Lizzie’s father instead. Hard Yorkshire winters and life on a shoestring, however, had dimmed Brian Whitaker’s appeal for her mother and within weeks of Chrissie’s birth Francesca had run off with a man who had turned out to be a drunk. His successor had been more interested in spending Francesca’s recent legacy following the death of her Italian parents than in Francesca herself. Her third lover had been repeatedly unfaithful. And the fourth, who married her, had been violent.

Lizzie had always found it very hard to trust men after living through her mother’s grim roll call of destructive relationships. She had struggled to protect the sister five years her junior from the constant fallout of moving home and changing schools, striving to ensure that her sibling could still enjoy her childhood and wasn’t forced to grow up as quickly as Lizzie had. Almost all the happy moments in Lizzie’s life had occurred when Chrissie was young and Lizzie had the comfort of knowing that her love and care was both wanted and needed by her sibling. When her sister left home to go to university it had opened a vast hole in Lizzie’s life. Archie had partially filled that hole, a reality that made her grin and shrug off her deep and troubled thoughts with the acknowledgement that it was time to get back to work and concentrate on what really mattered.

* * *

‘Marry him and stop making such a production out of it!’ Brian Whitaker snapped at his daughter angrily. ‘We don’t have any other choice. The rent is going up and the bank’s on the brink of calling in our loan!’

‘It’s not that simple, Dad,’ Lizzie began to argue again.

But the older man wasn’t listening. He hadn’t listened to a word his daughter had said since the letter from the bank had delivered its lethal warning. ‘Simple would have been you marrying Andrew. He would have taken on the tenancy. I could still have lived here. Everyone would have been happy but could you pull it off?’ he derided. ‘No, you had to play fast and loose with him, wanting to wait to get married!’

‘I wanted to get to know him properly, not rush in. I wanted our marriage to last,’ Lizzie protested.

‘You might as well have parcelled him up for Esther and handed him over. Andrew was our one chance to keep this place afloat and you threw him away,’ he condemned bitterly. ‘Now you’re mouthing off about all the reasons why you can’t marry a man and have a child just to improve all our lives!’

‘A lot of women wouldn’t want to do it!’ It was Lizzie’s parting shot, tossed over her shoulder as she stomped back into the yard with Archie dancing at her heels. A week had passed since Cesare Sabatino’s visit and her father had reasoned and condemned and outright ranted at her every day for her reluctance to accept Cesare’s proposal.

Hopefully, Chrissie would not be singing the same tune, Lizzie reflected ruefully as she drove her father’s ancient, battered Land Rover Defender down the lane to collect her sister off the train. She had told Chrissie all about Cesare’s visit on the phone and her sibling had urged her to follow her conscience and refuse to pay heed to her father’s grievances.

That was, however, proving a much more major challenge than she had expected, Lizzie acknowledged heavily. Almost insurmountable problems were forming ahead of her like a string of dangerous obstacles. They could not afford to pay a higher rent when the tenancy came up for renewal and that reality would render them homeless. They could not even afford to live if the bank demanded that the loan be repaid as they were threatening to do. And where would they live, if the worst came to the worst? Her father had no savings. Yes, it was all very well following her conscience, Lizzie conceded wretchedly, but right now it was no good at all as a blueprint for economic survival.

Sadly, the stress of the constant arguments and anxiety was taking the edge off Lizzie’s usual happy anticipation at the prospect of having her sister home for a couple of days. Chrissie, pale silver hair caught up in a sensible ponytail, blue eyes sparkling with affection, was waiting outside the station, two big cases by her side and a bulging rucksack on her slender shoulders.

‘My goodness, you’ve brought back a lot of luggage...but it’s not the end of term,’ Lizzie remarked in bewilderment, thinking out loud while Chrissie concentrated on giving her a fierce hug of welcome.

‘I’ve missed you so much,’ her sibling confessed. ‘And I’m going to ask you all over again—why have you still not had your hair dyed back to normal?’

‘I haven’t had the time...or the cash,’ Lizzie muttered, hoisting a heavy case and propelling it across to the Land Rover.

‘No, you’re still punishing yourself for not marrying Andrew.’

‘They’re teaching you psychology now on your English course?’ Lizzie teased.

Luggage stowed, Lizzie drove back home. ‘I should warn you...Dad’s on the warpath.’

‘He wants you to marry the Italian and make our fortunes, right?’ Chrissie groaned in despair. ‘Dear old Dad, what a dinosaur he is. He tried to pressure you into marrying Andrew for the sake of the farm and now he’s trying to serve you up on the altar of that stupid island! Well, you don’t need to worry, you’re not going to come under any pressure from me on that score. We’ve lived all our lives without the excitement of being rich and what you don’t have, you don’t miss!’

In spite of her stress level, Lizzie managed to smile. After an unrelieved overdose of her father’s reproaches, Chrissie, with her positive outlook, was like a little ray of sunshine. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed even though she knew that her kid sister was not very grounded. Chrissie had always been a dreamer, the creative one with the fluffy romantic and idealistic ideas.

In fact, while she watched Chrissie hurtle across the yard to pet her elderly pony, Hero, and feed him an apple from her pocket, her heart sank from so bald a reminder of her sister’s tendency to always look on the bright side even if there wasn’t one. Didn’t Chrissie appreciate that if they lost their home, Hero would be one of the first sacrifices?

‘I’ve got a surprise for you...’ Chrissie told her, almost skipping back to Lizzie’s side to help her unload her luggage. ‘I’m home for good!’

Lizzie turned incredulous eyes on the younger woman. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m dropping out of uni...I’m coming home,’ Chrissie proffered, her soft mouth set in an unusually firm and purposeful line. ‘Even with the two jobs and the student loan, I can hardly afford to eat and my overdraft is massive, Lizzie. I’m fed up with it, especially when I know you’re slogging away here every hour God gives and still barely scratching a living. I’m going to get a job and help you whenever I can. I’m all grown up now—it’s past time I pulled my weight on the home front.’

Shock was reverberating through Lizzie, closely followed by dismay. Much as she missed her sister, the very last thing she wanted was to see Chrissie throw away her education to come home and vegetate. In any case, it was a moot point that they would even have a home to offer her sibling in a few weeks’ time. ‘I didn’t realise that you were having such a struggle.’

‘I didn’t want you worrying,’ Chrissie confided. ‘But I’ve learned a lot. I’d no idea it cost so much just to live. I can’t possibly work any more hours, though. I’ve already had a warning from my tutor about my standard of work slipping... I’m so tired I’m falling asleep in lectures.’

And that was the moment when Lizzie reached her decision. What security her family had was vanishing fast but it was within her power to change everything for the better. How could she stand by and simply do nothing for her family while their lives fell apart? At the very least she should go through with the wedding to enable Cesare to take his grandmother back to the island for a visit. Whatever he paid her for that service would surely settle their outstanding bills and enable her to find a rental property in the village. But how could she go further than that? How could she have a child with him so that he could legally buy Lionos and resolve all her family’s financial problems?

The answer came to Lizzie in a blinding flash of light and she could barely credit that she had not seen the solution sooner. Cesare had said he was very practical and the answer she came up with would not only make the threat of intimacy with a stranger unnecessary but would also be a supremely sensible approach. Suddenly the sensation of weighty responsibility and dread on her shoulders and spine evaporated and she straightened, even cracking a brief smile at the heady prospect of finally being in full control of her life again.

‘You’re going back to university on Sunday, young lady,’ Lizzie told her kid sister firmly. ‘You will quit your part-time jobs and concentrate on your studies. I will ensure that you manage.’

‘You can’t marry the guy, Lizzie!’ Chrissie gasped in horror. ‘You simply can’t!’

Lizzie thought fast and breathed in deep before she sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Let me be honest with you. I’ve spent eight years working round the clock on this farm. I’ve had no time for friends and I’ve had very little social life. I have no decent clothes or jewellery and I don’t even know how to put on make-up properly.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you have to give way to Dad and make a sacrifice of yourself.’

‘Has it occurred to you that maybe I want to marry Cesare and have a child? He’s a very handsome man and you know how much I’ve always wanted a baby. I also would like to have enough money not to worry myself sick every time a bill comes through the letter box!’ Lizzie declared, her heart-shaped face taut with vehement composure as she watched Chrissie frown and suddenly look unsure of her ground.

‘I’m deadly serious,’ Lizzie continued with dogged determination. ‘I want to marry Cesare. It’s the best thing for all of us and, believe me, I’m not the sacrificial type.’

‘I never thought...I never dreamt...’ Bemused and uncertain of such an explanation from the big sister she had always loved and admired, Chrissie shook her head, frowning at her sibling. ‘Are you sure, Lizzie? Have you really thought this through?’

No, Lizzie hadn’t thought it all through and was determined not to run the risk of doing so before she had tied the official knot. Whatever happened she was going to marry Cesare Sabatino and miraculously sort out her own and her father’s and Chrissie’s problems. No other action now made sense. So, it would be scary and would entail deception—well, she would get braver and she would learn some new skills. My goodness, hadn’t she just told a barefaced lie to the sister she loved?

She walked into her bedroom and lifted the business card Cesare had left behind. Before she could take fright, she tapped out the number on her mobile phone and then studied the blank message space.

* * *

Will agree to marry you. Talk about the rest when we next meet.

Cesare blinked down at the text and then glanced across the dinner table at Celine, whose sleek blonde perfection had entranced him for longer than most women managed. In his mind’s eye, however, he was no longer seeing the French fashion model, he was seeing a slender platinum blonde with luminous green eyes surrounded by soft brown lashes. Surprise was cutting through his satisfaction, perhaps because he had had the weirdest conviction that Lizzie Whitaker would say no to the temptation of the cash he had offered. He wondered why he had thought that, why he had assumed she would be different from any other woman.

Women liked money and he liked women: it was a fair exchange in which neither of them need feel used or abused. Hadn’t he learned that a long time ago? Athene would be able to return to her childhood home for a visit at the very least. Was Lizzie Whitaker planning to meet the full terms of the will? Raw anticipation of an entirely different kind infiltrated Cesare and he frowned, bewildered by the flood of undisciplined hormones smashing his self-control to pieces. He was thinking about Lizzie Whitaker, only thinking about her and he was as aroused as a teenager contemplating sex for the first time.

‘You seem distracted,’ Celine remarked tentatively.

Cesare studied her without an iota of his usual lust, exasperated by the games his body was playing with his usually very well-disciplined brain. ‘A business deal,’ he proffered truthfully.

Goffredo would be overjoyed at the news of the upcoming wedding while Cesare was simply stunned at the prospect of getting married, whether it was a business arrangement or not. Married! The delicious food on his plate ebbed in appeal. Dense black lashes screened his gaze. It was rare for him to take a night off and somehow Lizzie Whitaker had contrived to kill any notion he had had of relaxing with Celine. What was it about her that unsettled him? After all she was a pretty standard gold-digger, willing to do virtually anything to enrich herself, and how could he criticise her for that reality when he had baited the hook?

CHAPTER THREE

‘I DON’T KNOW what the arrangements are likely to be,’ Lizzie told her father while she paced the kitchen, a slim figure clad in jeans and a sweater and workmanlike boots. ‘Look, I’ve got a few things to check outside. I might as well keep busy until Cesare arrives.’

‘What sort of a name is that he has?’ Brian Whitaker scoffed.

Lizzie dealt the older man an impatient glance as she put on her jacket because he had no excuse to be needling her or disparaging Cesare. But everything, she told herself in an urgent little pep talk, was good in her world. Chrissie had returned to university and soon she and her father would no longer need to worry about rent rises and bank debts they couldn’t cover. ‘It’s an Italian name, just like mine and Chrissie’s and Mum’s and it’s completely normal. Let’s not forget that Cesare is about to wave a magic wand over our lives.’

‘Even the Garden of Eden had the serpent,’ her father countered with a curl of his lip and his usual determination to have the last word.

Lizzie drank in the fresh air with relief and walked to the stone wall bounding the yard to check the sheep in the field. Lambing hadn’t started yet but it wouldn’t be long before it did. If she had to leave home before then, Andrew would probably take the ewes, she was reasoning in the detached state of mind she had forged to keep herself calm since she had sent that text to Cesare. There were no successes without losses, no gains without costs and consequences. In the middle of that sobering reflection while she watched the lane for a car arriving, she heard a noise in the sky and she flung her head back in the fading light to look up.

A helicopter was coming in over the valley. As she watched it circled the top of the hill and swooped down low to come closer and then noisily hover. For a split second, Lizzie was frozen to the spot, unable to believe that the helicopter was actually planning to land in a field with stock in it. The craft’s powerful lights splayed over the flock of fast-scattering sheep, which ran in a total panic down the hill. Lizzie ran for the gate, Archie at her heels, and flew over it like a high jumper while shouting instructions to her dog to retrieve the flock.

Heart pounding, she ran down the hill at breakneck speed but was still not fast enough to prevent the sheep from scrambling in a frantic escape over the wall at the foot and streaming across the next field towards the river. Sick with apprehension, she clambered over the wall and ran even faster while watching as Archie herded the frightened ewes away from the water’s edge. The noise from the helicopter unluckily intensified at that point because the pilot was taking off again and the sheep herded close together and then took off terrified again in all directions.

Someone shouted her name and she was relieved to see Andrew Brook racing down the hill to join her. Struggling desperately to catch her breath, while wondering anxiously where Archie had disappeared to, she hurried on towards the riverbank to see if any of the animals had gone into the water. Andrew got there first and she saw him stooping down in the mud over something, whistling for his sheepdog. One of the sheep had got hurt in the commotion, she assumed, hurrying down to join him.

‘I’m so sorry, Lizzie. He’s hurt. He was too little to handle them in a panic like that,’ Andrew told her.

Lizzie looked down in horror at the small prone body lying in the mud: it was Archie and he was whimpering. She knelt in the mud. ‘Oh, no...’

‘I think it’s only his leg that’s broken but there could be internal injuries. He was trodden on,’ Andrew, a stocky dark-haired man in his late twenties, reminded her.

‘That crazy helicopter pilot! Are people insane?’ Lizzie gasped, stricken, while Andrew, always resourceful, broke a small branch off a nearby tree, cut it to size with the knife in his pocket and splinted it to Archie’s leg, wrapping it in place with twine.

‘Nobody should land in a field with animals in it,’ Andrew agreed. As Lizzie comforted her pet with a trembling hand he unfurled his mobile phone. ‘We’d better get him to the vet. I’ll ring ahead to warn Danny.’

Andrew’s dog had retrieved the sheep and on the walk back uphill they were returned to the field from which they had fled. Lizzie was in shock and wildly dishevelled by the breakneck pace of her downhill marathon, sweat breaking on her brow, tears trickling down her cheeks as she held Archie’s small, shivering body as gently as she could to her chest. Back in the yard, Lizzie went straight to the Land Rover and settled Archie on the front passenger seat.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Andrew announced. ‘I know how you feel about that daft dog.’

‘Thanks but I can manage,’ Lizzie assured him with a warm smile that acknowledged how comfortable she could still feel with her former boyfriend.

‘That’s the ex-fiancé—Andrew Brook, our neighbour,’ Brian Whitaker informed Cesare, who was stationed beside him outside the back door of the cottage. ‘They grew up together. I always thought they’d make a match of it but then he met Esther and married her instead.’

Cesare told himself that he had no desire for that information. He was already irritated that Lizzie hadn’t been waiting to greet him—didn’t she appreciate what a busy man he was? Now watching her smile beguilingly up at her ex-boyfriend, who was an attractive, stalwart six-footer, he was even less impressed. When she looked at the other man like that and squeezed his arm with easy intimacy it made him wonder why they had broken up and that dart of inappropriate curiosity set his even white teeth on edge, sending another wave of annoyance crashing through him.

‘Lizzie!’ her father called as Andrew strode back home across the couple of fields that separated their properties.

Lizzie turned her head and focused in bewilderment on the tall, darkly handsome male poised by her father’s side. Her heartbeat suddenly thudded like a crack of doom in her ears and her throat tightened. Sheathed in an immaculate grey pinstripe business suit worn with a white shirt and scarlet tie, Cesare looked very much at odds with his surroundings but he still contrived to take her breath away and leave her mind briefly as blank as white paper. ‘Good grief, when did you arrive? I didn’t see a car.’

‘I came in a helicopter...’

Lizzie, the Land Rover keys clenched tightly in one hand, froze. She blinked in fleeting bewilderment and then headed towards Cesare in a sudden movement, rage boiling up through the cracks of anxiety and concern for her dog and her flock. ‘You’re the bloody idiot who let a helicopter land in a field full of stock?’ she raked at him incredulously.

In all his life, nobody had ever addressed Cesare with such insolence. A faint frown line etched between his ebony brows, he stared at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. Indeed he was much more concerned with the reality that, in spite of her awareness of his visit, his bride-to-be still looked as though she had strayed in from a hostel for the homeless. A streak of dirt marred one cheekbone and her clothes were caked in mud and displaying damp patches. But when he glanced higher and saw the luminous colour in her cheeks that accentuated her hazel-green eyes and the contrast of that tumbling mane of admittedly messy white-blonde hair, he registered in some astonishment that even had she been wearing a bin liner it would not have dampened her physical appeal on his terms. His usual high standards, it seemed, were slipping.

‘What’s the problem?’ Cesare enquired with perfect cool, reasoning that some sort of cultural misunderstanding could have provoked her sudden aggressive outburst.

‘The problem is...’

‘Don’t shout at me,’ Cesare sliced in softly. ‘I am not hard of hearing.’

‘Your pilot landed that helicopter in a field full of sheep...and he should be shot for it!’ Lizzie framed rawly. ‘They were so terrified they fled. All of them are pregnant, only days off lambing. If any of them miscarry after that crazed stampede, I’ll be holding you responsible!’

For a fraction of a second, Cesare recalled the pilot striving to persuade him to land a couple of fields away but the prospect of a time-wasting muddy trek to the cottage had exasperated him and he had insisted on being set down as close as possible to his destination. ‘The mistake was mine, not the pilot’s. I chose the landing spot,’ Cesare admitted, startling her with that confession. ‘I know nothing about farming or the care of animals. Naturally I will compensate you and your father for any loss of income that results.’

‘Well, the man can’t say fairer than that,’ Brian Whitaker cut in, sending his furious daughter a warning glance. ‘Let that be the end of it.’