Ultimate Heroes Collection Read online

  His heart wasn’t good and she felt responsible. How could she not feel responsible when it was her brother who’d caused all of this? But after her own utter stupidity of the night before the last thing she wanted to do right now was to come face to face with Luc De Santis.

  The old quiver struck as she walked towards the iron gates that she assumed would lead to steps up to the villa. Behind her, she could hear the water taxi already moving away, its engines growling as it churned up the glinting blue water, leaving her feeling as if she had just been marooned on the worst place on earth.

  A man appeared from out of the shadows on the other side of the gate, stopping her in her tracks with his piercing dark eyes that looked her up and down. She had to look a mess because she certainly felt one with her hair hanging loose round her pale face. And she was still wearing the same green top and white capris she’d pulled on so hurriedly this morning when Bianca’s mamma had knocked on her door.

  ‘May I help you, signorina?’ the man questioned in coolly polite Italian.

  Passing her nervous tongue across her lips, ‘I’ve come with a letter for Signor De Santis,’ Lizzy explained. ‘M-my name is Elizabeth Hadley.’

  He nodded his head and produced a cell phone, his dark eyes not leaving her for a second while he spoke quietly to whoever was listening on the other end. Then with another nod he unlocked the gate and opened it. ‘You can go up, signorina,’ he sanctioned.

  With a murmured thanks Lizzy was about to step past him when a sudden thought made her stop. ‘I-I will need a water taxi back to Bellagio,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t think to ask the other one to wait.’

  ‘I will see to it when you are ready to leave,’ he assured her.

  Offering another husky ‘thank you’, Lizzy continued on her way to discover a set of age-worn stone steps cut into the rock face. At the top of the steps she found soft green lawns and carefully tended gardens and a path leading to a stone terrace beyond which stood the villa with its long windows thrown open to the softest of breezes coming off the lake.

  Beautiful, she thought, but that was as far as her observations went. She was too uptight, too anxious—scared witless, if she was going to be honest.

  Another man was waiting for her on the terrace. He offered her a small stately bow and invited her to follow him. It was cool inside the villa, the decoration a mix of warm colours hung with beautiful tapestries and paintings in ornate gold frames. The man led the way to a pair of heavy wood doors, knocked, then opened one of them before stepping to one side in a silent invitation for her to pass through.

  Needing to take in a deep breath before she could make herself go any further, Lizzy walked past the servant into a beautiful room with high stucco ceilings and long narrow windows that flooded the room with soft golden light. The walls were pale, the furniture dark and solid like the richly polished floor beneath her feet. Shelves lined with books filled narrow alcoves; a heavy stone fireplace dominated one wall. As she spun her gaze over sumptuously ancient dark red velvet chairs and elegant sofas she finally settled on the huge heavily carved desk set between two of the windows—and the man who was standing tall and still behind it.

  Tension instantly grabbed hold of her throat and sent her heart sinking to her toes. He already knew about Bianca, Lizzy realised. It was stamped right there on his grimly cold face.

  ‘You have a letter for me, I believe,’ Luc De Santis prompted. No greeting, no attempt whatsoever to make this easier for her.

  But then why should he—? ‘H-how did you know?’ Lizzy dared to ask him.

  His eyes made a brief flick down her front, then away again. ‘She was to be my wife. The position made her vulnerable to a certain kind of low-life out on the make, so of course I had a security team watching her.’

  But they didn’t stop her running away with Matthew? Lizzy would have loved to have asked the question but the way he was standing there in a steel-dark razor-sharp business suit and with his face carved into such cold, hard angles, the question remained just a thick lump in her throat as she made herself walk forward, feeling as if she were stepping on sharp needles all the way.

  Coming to a halt in front of the desk, she set down the letter. Her heart was pounding in her ears as he held her still with his gaze for a taut second or two before he reached out and picked the letter up, then let yet another few seconds stretch before he finally broke the envelope seal.

  After that there was nothing, just a long, long numbing silence while he stood behind his desk reading the words Bianca had used to jilt him with, and Lizzy stood with her eyes fixed helplessly on his lean dark face, aware that the power of his innate pride had to be the only thing stopping him from diminishing to a used and broken man.

  ‘I’m—sorry,’ she mumbled, knowing it was a wincingly inadequate thing to say but—what else was there for her to say?

  He gave a curt nod of his head, eyes like gold crystal set between heavy black eyelashes still fixed on the single sheet of paper even as he slowly set it down on the desk.

  ‘You were offered no forewarning of this?’

  Lizzy felt her nails bite into the tender skin of her palms as she closed them into tense, anxious fists. ‘Nothing,’ she answered.

  ‘Her family?’

  She gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘Y-you were there last night—she looked radiant. She—’

  ‘My future bride basking in the glory of her good fortune,’ he drawled in a cold, mocking lilt.

  Pressing her lips together, Lizzy lowered her gaze and said nothing. It was so obvious now that Bianca had been putting on a fabulous act aimed to fool all of them last night. Now it all felt so horrible, the extravagantly romantic glitter and gloss just a huge cruel con. She’d floated around like a princess in her gold silk. She’d clung to this man, smiled at him so starry-eyed and in love. And everyone had smiled as they’d watched her, everyone had remarked on what a fabulous couple they made. Even Luc with his rather sardonic way of looking at everything had smiled for his beautiful betrothed. In some dark corner of her being, Lizzy had been dreadfully envious because not many women got to live their childhood dream of falling in love with and marrying her prince.

  Not that Luc De Santis was a prince, because he wasn’t. He was just formed from the same mould handsome princes came out of, with his tall dark good looks and his perfectly constructed body and the added kudos of inherited vast wealth that had come to him down through centuries of careful De Santis bridal selection.

  Dynasties, Bianca had called it. ‘I’m marrying into a dynasty because I have the right name and the right genetic fingerprint.’

  It had been such a cynical thing to say that Lizzy had been shocked. ‘But you love him, don’t you?’

  ‘Are you joking, cara?’ she’d laughed. ‘You’ve seen him. What girl in her right mind wouldn’t fall in love with Luc? Even you if you were given the chance.’

  Lizzy’s slender shoulders twitched in guilty response to the sound of that airy challenge ringing inside her head, because she knew she had already developed a kind of fascination for this man and it nagged her conscience to death—especially after last night. But she also frowned because it was only now as she stood here having to face the fallout from her best friend’s stunning deception that it was occurring to her just how cleverly Bianca had skirted around the question of her loving this man.

  She watched as Luc picked up the letter again, long brown fingers lifting up the single sheet of snowy white of paper to re-read yet again what Bianca had written to him. His face remained cold—completely expressionless—yet Lizzy discovered that she couldn’t breathe. It had something to do with the way his lips were being held in such a steady flat line and the way his nostrils flared as he drew in a breath.

  He was angry, she realised, and she didn’t blame him. Whether his heart was devastated was difficult to tell. The few occasions she’d been in his company—even last night—he’d always struck her as someone who did not feel much of an
ything.

  Cold, hard, unemotional, arrogant, she found herself listing as she stood here waiting for him to speak. She supposed she could tag on other words like tall, dark and disgustingly gorgeous but all those words did was to describe his potently masculine outer shell. It was the first description that really said it all about the inner man.

  The long silence dragged until it picked at her nerve-ends. In one part of her consciousness Lizzy knew she should be getting out of here now that she’d delivered the letter, but she was oddly reluctant to leave him alone.

  She still felt responsible—though her common sense told her she wasn’t. She felt—pity for him, though she knew he would probably be utterly contemptuous of her for daring to feel it.

  Strange man, she thought, not for the first time, as she stood on the other side of the desk unable to take her eyes off his face. For all of his wealth and his power and high standing in Italian society she had never seen him as anything other than a man who stood alone. Even when he’d been with Bianca she’d sensed a reserve in him she had never been able to adequately explain.

  ‘I … I suppose you’re wondering where your engagement ring is,’ she blurted out, needing to say something to fill in the unbearably tense empty space, and the ring had come up in discussion when Bianca’s mother had said the same thing.

  ‘No,’ he denied without any inflection whatsoever. ‘I would imagine that running off with a poor man has already sealed the ring’s fate.’

  Lizzy winced, cheeks heating at this cool reminder of the other issue in all of this she was having to deal with—the fact that the man Bianca had run off with also happened to be her very own brother.

  ‘Matt isn’t poor.’ She felt compelled to defend Matthew’s middle class earnings. It was, after all, the only thing about him she felt she could defend right now.

  ‘In your estimation or mine?’

  Oh, that was so very arrogant of him. Lizzy felt anger begin to rise even though she knew she didn’t have the right to let it. ‘Look—’ with a tense twist she turned to the door ‘—I think I had better leave you to—’

  ‘Running away like the other two?’ he mocked her.

  ‘No,’ she denied that. ‘I just think it’s better that I go before I lose my temper.’

  ‘So you have one?’

  ‘Yes.’ She swung back round only to find that he had come around the desk so quickly and silently she hadn’t heard him move. Now he was leaning against it with his arms folded across his chest, Bianca’s letter lying discarded on the desk behind him.

  Surprise brought a soft gasp whispering from her throat. And a new kind of tension flared in the pit of her stomach at the way he was studying the little green top and white capris she’d pulled on so hurriedly this morning, and the wildly unruly state of her hair.

  Last night she’d made a fool of herself with him. This morning she’d been awoken by hysterics and accusations from Bianca’s parents that still rang in her head. Now this—this deeply unsettling man she’d been sent to face because Bianca’s parents couldn’t bring themselves to do it—and he was looking her over as if he couldn’t believe she would dare to walk out of her room looking as she did.

  Well, you try applying make-up when your fingers won’t stop shaking, she told him silently as she suffered his cool appraisal that was so spiked by the glint of contempt. You try wondering what clothes to wear for an audience with a jilted man when your nerves were shot to death at the very prospect.

  ‘During the week you have been here in my country I’ve watched you play the straight man to Bianca’s high-strung and volatile temperament,’ he said so suddenly it made Lizzy blink. ‘I’ve watched you soothe her, calm her and even humour her. But I do not recall seeing you threaten to lose your temper with her even when she took it upon herself to mock or embarrass you, so why do you feel the need to lose your temper with me?’

  ‘Y-you attacked my family.’

  ‘I attacked your brother,’ he amended. ‘You don’t believe I have the right?’

  Of course he had the right. This time yesterday he had been one half of a glittering couple, his marriage to Bianca only a short week away. It was supposed to be the wedding of the year here in Italy, now it was about to become juicy fodder for every media outlet and it was her very own brother who’d turned it into that.

  Lizzy moved jerkily, offering a small conciliatory flip of one hand despite feeling as though she were being whipped by his smooth cutting tone. ‘I give you the right to despise my brother,’ she acknowledged. ‘I will even give you the right to be angry with me because I’m the sister of the man who ran off with your bride. But I will not—’ and her chin came up, eyes sparking with challenge ‘—stand here and let you deride the fact that we are not rich like you.’

  ‘I did that?’

  Lizzy pressed her lips together and nodded. He wasn’t the only one around her who’d had his pride battered today. She’d had to put up with some pretty mean observations from Bianca’s parents about her brother that had been difficult to swallow down.

  ‘Then I apologise.’

  Lizzy didn’t believe him. Facing up to him like this, she didn’t see or hear so much as a hint of apology in his tone. But, ‘Thank you,’ she responded politely anyway. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to—’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  Once again she was about to turn away when he stopped her. ‘By water taxi across the lake from Bellagio,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Then it seems to me that you’re stuck here until I arrange your return across the lake.’

  ‘Y-your man on the jetty said he would see to—’

  ‘It’s a case of priorities, Miss Hadley,’ he cut in. ‘My instructions take precedence around here, you see.’

  He was pulling rank, Lizzy recognised, lips parting to say something then snapping shut again when it suddenly struck her that he was burning for a fight.

  Did she take him on? The question lit up her brain while her common sense told her to just get the heck out of here because she wasn’t up to his weight. He lived in this fabulous villa on the banks of Lake Como, he owned a beautiful apartment in Milan, which was why she’d been so surprised to find he’d taken a suite at the hotel last night, and at least three more fabulous homes Bianca had mentioned set in different parts of the world. He lived the high-powered jet setting lifestyle of the world’s business heavyweights. He even flew the world in comfort in his very own executive jet.

  And just out there tied to his private jetty floated his sleek glinting white private power boat that could spin her back across the lake in ten minutes—but he was refusing to give the order because he felt the need to kick someone around a bit and she happened to be conveniently there.

  Lizzy looked away from him then back again, not at all sure what to do next. ‘You do know you’re being petty,’ she sighed out finally.

  ‘Green,’ he murmured.

  ‘Green—what?’ she flicked out, completely thrown by the comment.

  ‘Your eyes when you’re angry,’ he provided. ‘Most of the time they are a soft placid grey.’

  ‘They can spit pretty sharp daggers too when I’m cornered,’ she reacted.

  ‘Let me test that,’ he offered. ‘You have known all along what they were planning.’

  It was not a question. ‘No,’ Lizzy insisted. ‘I told you I did not know.’

  But even as she said it her insides were creasing guiltily because perhaps she had seen it coming only it had been so much simpler to just block it out.

  ‘I did not have you down as a liar, Elizabeth,’ he said coolly.

  ‘I’m not lying!’ Frowning—annoyed with herself as well as with him and this horrible position she’d been put in, ‘I did not see it coming,’ she insisted a second time, ‘but I admit I feel some responsibility because I think I should have done.’

  ‘Because you knew they were lovers?’

  Did he have to put it as calmly as that? Shi
fting her tense stance, ‘Yes,’ she answered, deciding to be blunt with him since he didn’t seem to possess a single sensitive nerve in his body. ‘For a while, several years ago.’

  ‘Childhood sweethearts.’ His hard mouth flicked out the semblance of a smile.

  A bit more than that, she thought as she pinned her lips together and made no comment at all. Then, because she couldn’t take the probing glint in his eyes, she let out a sigh. ‘You were right about the wealth difference meaning something. He’s never going to be good enough for her you know.’

  ‘Whereas I hit all the right criteria for a Moreno?’

  Lizzy offered a shrug this time—what else could she do? He did hit all the right criteria. He was everything the Morenos expected their beautiful daughter to marry. Matthew wasn’t. Matthew came right out of middle class England. He’d enjoyed the necessary public-school education to give him a great kick-start in life but that was about it. Until this recent financial crisis her family had survived comfortably on its small business income—no more, no less. Matthew was expected to take over the business from their father one day and to marry some nice middle class Englishwoman who would not demand more from him than he was able to provide.

  Bianca on the other hand was always going to expect more. She was always going to have what she wanted in life even if it meant providing it herself. Matthew wouldn’t be able to cope with that. His ego would take such a hard knocking he’d never be happy, whereas this man had so much money of his own he wouldn’t give a toss as to how his beautiful wife spent her own money, and his ego would stay firmly intact.

  ‘She will come back,’ she promised. ‘She just needs time to—sort her head out.’

  ‘Not her heart?’ The dry distinction made Lizzy wince.

  ‘I’m sure she loves you,’ she persisted. ‘She’s just not ready to commit to marriage. If you just give her time, then I—’