LITMIR.BIZ

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Bianca’s letter up again—this time to fold it with slow, neat precision. ‘I mean to replace her with someone else.’

      She was pretty much held in his thrall by now. ‘Just like that?’

      ‘Just like that.’ He nodded and made her gasp as he ripped the letter into small pieces, then calmly dropped them into the waste-paper basket standing by the desk.

      It was such a cold act of dismissal of Bianca and everything she should mean to him that Lizzy began to feel slightly sick.

      ‘You will have to move quickly to put your life in order, of course, but with my assistance I think it can be achieved in time.’

      She dragged her eyes up from the discarded pieces of paper. It took a few seconds for his words to actually sink in—then they did sink in and Lizzy took a jerky step backwards.

      ‘M-my life is fine as it is.’

      ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he acknowledged. ‘But will it be fine by tomorrow when I inform the authorities that your brother has emptied your company bank account?’

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘TH-THAT was not in the least bit funny,’ Lizzy husked out, her heart beginning to thump heavily against her ribs because this conversation had just taken a sinister turn for the bad. ‘I know you’re hurt and angry, and I accept you feel the need to kick someone around in response. But that doesn’t give you the right to lie about my family!’

      ‘Your brother.’ Once again Luc made the distinction. ‘I restrict my accusations to only one member of your family. The rest I will honour with the benefit of the doubt—for now.’

      He was losing her with every cool word he threw at her. ‘You suspect my father of being a crook? Where do you get off believing you can say something like that?’

      ‘I “get off”, as you so nicely describe it, by being a banker,’ he responded. ‘And being a banker I am not prone to let my heart rule my head.’

      ‘You’ve lost me.’ Lizzy stared at him in bewilderment.

      ‘Then let me explain. Bianca is a very wealthy woman.’

      ‘I know that,’ she snapped out.

      ‘A little—shall we call it family ingenuity?—and she could be misled into believing that her childhood sweetheart had hit it rich.’

      ‘I think you need time on your own for some quiet contemplation,’ Lizzy told him curtly, and did what she should have done minutes before and turned on her heel to leave.

      ‘Your—close relationship to her made me curious,’ he continued smoothly as she walked. ‘So I decided it would be wise to have you and your family checked out.’

      ‘Checked out?’ Once again she swung round to stare at him. ‘So where the heck do you get off now thinking you have the right to do that?’

      ‘The right of Bianca’s future husband who was—er—puzzled by your close friendship to her. You’re not her type, Miss Hadley,’ he stated bluntly. ‘Anyone with eyes can see that Bianca comes from a different side of the fence, yet here you are, staying in the best hotel in Milan paid for with her family’s money, wearing clothes she has bought for you so you would not look out of place in the company of her rich friends, and about to play the honoured role at her wedding as her chief bridesmaid.’

      ’ Was about to,’ she hit back, infuriated by the nasty slant he was putting on everything.

      ‘Was,’ he acknowledged with a cool dip of his dark head. ‘So I decided to do some checking, and guess what I found out? Hadley’s is not merely enjoying a temporary cash crisis as I was given to believe, it is about to go under altogether. Your father is in debt up to his neck. Your brother hates the whole engineering scenario and resents the fact that he is expected to stay in the business.’

      Lizzy flushed. ‘Matthew wanted to be an artist.’

      ‘Oh, how romantically right for him,’ her persecutor mocked. ‘With his golden good looks and his ravaged sensibilities he makes the perfect rescue for an impressionable thing like Bianca—whereas you,’ he went on before Lizzy could say anything, ‘you make the perfect level-headed foil to keep Bianca’s starry eyes blinded to what your brother is really about.’

      Lizzy straightened her trembling tense shoulders. ‘Have you quite finished slaughtering my family?’ she demanded, wanting to slap his face.

      ‘Haughty,’ he remarked. ‘I like it.’

      ‘Well, I don’t like you!’ she hit back. ‘Bianca and I have been friends since we were twelve years old—her wealth or my lack of it has never been an issue between us because that’s not what true friendship is about! My family works hard for its living, signor,’ she defended proudly. ‘All of us work hard! My father did not waste his life swanning around the world enjoying the useless life of an overindulged playboy from a filthy rich but totally dysfunctional family from which you, sadly, were the cynical end result! And if my brother is different from the rest of us at least he knows he is loved! Whereas you, signor, with your untold wealth and your inherited arrogance, can’t ever have been loved to be so cold and suspicious of everything and everyone that you have to dig into their lives behind their backs!’

      ‘Dysfunctional?’ His glinting gold eyes narrowed on her. ‘You have a very cynical view of my family history, Miss Hadley. It makes me curious as to where you collected your information and, more interestingly, why you did.’

      Lizzy tensed as if he’d shot her. She’d walked herself right into that prickly trap. ‘I…Bianca,’ she said, hating the hot rush of colour that mounted her cheeks because she knew she’d been guilty of spending hours looking him up on the internet. ‘She described marrying you as joining a dynasty because she had the right name and the right genetic fingerprint,’ she crashed on. ‘It sounded so cold and businesslike to me that I thought she was joking at the time, but now I see that she wasn’t joking at all or you would be standing there too overwhelmed by your broken heart to even think of putting such a cold suggestion to me!’

      ‘Finished?’ he asked when she finally ran down to a breathless choke.

      Shaking all over now, Lizzy pressed her trembling lips together and nodded.

      So did he, and straightened from the desk. ‘Then with the character assassination over we will return to the subject of our wedding,’ he said.

      ‘I am not marrying you!’ Lizzy all but shrieked at him. Was he mad?

      He moved round the desk. ‘You kissed me last night.’

      The reminder forced her into dragging in a sharp intake of breath. She’d hoped he’d forgotten it. She’d prayed all night long that she’d just dreamt up that awful, shocking stolen kiss.

      ‘I was drunk—’

      ‘You appeared to be.’ He was opening a drawer now and taking out a thick folder which he placed on the desk. ‘Of course, you could have been playing with me as diversionary tactics to keep my eyes blinded to what Bianca was up to.’

      She was so stunned by that cynical slant on her stupid behaviour, when she opened her mouth nothing came out of it.

      He smiled—coolly. ‘Everything is open to misinterpretation, Elizabeth. When you—came on to me like some very tipsy sweet, shy virgin, I was—flattered. Now?’ He flipped open the file. ‘How different things can look in the cool light of day and with common sense re-established. Come and take a look…’

      It was not a suggestion. Lizzy felt a tingling prickle spread across the surface of her skin as she forced her shaky legs to move back to the desk. He twisted the file around, then stabbed at it with a long finger to draw her eyes down.

      She found herself staring at a bank statement—a bank statement

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