wretched magazines had ripped her apart, not least because she knew that
she should have received that same information from him. And the very
fact that Rio had not told her only made her feel that her every worst
fear was justified.
Rio surveyed her with level dark golden eyes. 'There is no point
throwing a three-act tragedy, cara. It won't change anything.'
Totally disconcerted by that statement, Holly stared at him. 'What are
you talking about?'
Unimpressed, Rio slanted a dark brow. 'You've been hi a hellish sulk
ever since it dawned on you that I'm leaving you to your own devices for
the next week,' he informed her drily. 'But you'll have to get used to
the idea of getting by without me when I'm away on business.'
'Will I?' Something close to a hysterical giggle feathered in Holly's
tight throat as she realised how he had interpreted her silence and how
he had put his own rather demeaning spin on what lay behind her behaviour.
'It'll be a challenge for you at first because you haven't made friends
yet. But by this time next year you won't be dependent on me for
company,' Rio asserted with confidence, strolling closer and reaching
for her hands. 'You'll learn to lead your own life while I'm abroad. My
mother will support you. She knows a lot of people and you can get
involved in the charities we support through the foundation or, indeed,
in whatever else interests you.'
Her hands jerked in the warm hold of his. Her husband knew how besotted
she was with him and he thought that her poor little heart was just
breaking at the prospect of surviving an entire seven days without him.
And the way he was talking about a future in which they led separate
lives chilled her to the marrow.
130
As Holly yanked her fingers free of his hectic colour fired over her
cheekbones. 'Is that what Christabel would have done?'
Rio's sculpted mouth tightened, eyes hardening at what he clearly
translated as an ungenerous and potentially catty response. 'What she
might have done hardly concerns us.'
'Are you going to tell me why I had to read a flippin' magazine just to
find out that your ex-girlfriend is the world-famous model Chrissie
Kent?' Holly demanded half an octave higher.
Rio went very still, golden eyes gleaming from below luxuriant black
lashes. 'I don't quite understand the relevance of Christabel's public
profile.'
'Like heck you don't!' Holly snapped, her temper provoked by that cool,
snubbing response. 'You knew I had no idea. Couldn't you at least have
told me that much about her?'
Rio expelled his breath in an impatient hiss. 'I knew you'd be
intimidated. I knew you would beat yourself up making stupid
comparisons. So, no, I wasn't in a hurry to ram that fact down your throat.'
At that disconcertingly honest response, Holly lost every scrap of her
feverish colour. She felt as if she was standing there naked and as
see-through as clear glass. She felt humiliated that he should
understand her that well and face her with her own insecurity. 'Yes, it
would be a very stupid comparison to even try to attempt...wouldn't it?'
'Santo cielo...that's not what I meant!' Now anger brightened Rio's
gaze, tautened his lean, strong face. 'I just felt that you'd be better
equipped to deal with all that after we'd been married for a while.'
Holly's hands coiled into hurting fists. 'Oh, you know me so well, do
you? You think you can predict how I'm likely to react to everything?'
'It seems that on that particular score I was accurate.'
Holly refused to be squashed. 'But then your ex-girlfriend's public
profile, as you called it, was only the tip of the iceberg, wasn't it?
Like when were you planning to tell me just how little time passed
between you breaking up with her and getting involved with me?'
Perceptibly, Rio's big, powerful frame tensed.
'I want a date,' Holly told him feverishly. 'I want to know how much of
a time lag there was.'
'Believe me, bella mia...you don't,' Rio countered flatly.
'It was barely even a couple of weeks...I'm right, aren't I?' Holly
persisted, determined to get the truth out of him. 'Going by the date on
that magazine article, it couldn't have been much longer than a couple
of weeks since you'd broken up. Why else was Ezio warning me that you
weren't yourself when I first met you?'
His darkly handsome features froze. 'Thank you, Ezio. Tell me, do you
make a habit of discussing me with my employees?'
'Oh, I'll be sure to make a habit of it from here on in. It seems to me
I've got more chance of getting an honest answer from other people than
from you!' Holly condemned, refusing to be embarrassed by his freezing
disapproval and defending herself. 'I still remember what you said when
you asked me to marry you. You said you had been engaged "until
relatively recently". Which hardly suggests a gap of less than a month-'
'Leave it,' Rio cut in with ruthless bite. 'I'm going for that shower
before this ridiculous argument escalates any
more-'
In incredulous, seething frustration, Holly watched him resume stripping
off his clothes. Clad only in his Calvin Kleins, he headed for the bathroom.
'I could ask Ezio,' Holly threatened between gritted
132
teeth, although she knew that now that they were married she would never
ever go behind Rio's back like that, or indeed place the older man in
such an awkward position.
'I parted from Christabel an hour before you walked out in front of my
limo.'
Holly blinked. Those words hit her as though they were in a foreign
language she could not fathom, for in a self-protective act her brain
seemed to throw up barriers to her understanding. And then, without
warning, she grasped what he had said and there was no hiding from it,
no avoiding the reality that what he had just admitted was a hundred
times more devastating than she had expected.
Rio swung round, scanned her pale, shattered face and swore in roughened
Italian, but as he moved back towards her she backed away.
Holly parted dry lips. 'An...hour?'
Strong jawline clenching, he studied her with grim golden eyes. 'I don't
see that the precise amount of time is material in this particular case...'
An uneven laugh was dragged from Holly as she collapsed down on the side
of the bed, fearful her knees were about to give way under her. An hour.
Only an hour had passed between him leaving Christabel and first meeting
her, and forty-eight hours later he had hauled her off to bed. And he
expected her to accept that there was nothing relevant in that
super-shrunken timeline?
'You couldn't possibly have known what you were doing,' she said sickly.
No way did she need huge experience of men to make that statement. An
hour. It was laughable, terrifying, outrageous. And only two days later
Rio had proven that reality to her beyond all possible doubt by doing
something that she knew in her heart had been quite out of character for
him: taking her to bed.
&nb
sp; He wasn't the sort of bloke who went in for one-night stands. He wasn't
the sort of bloke who got a kick out of going to bed with some woman he
hardly knew just for the sheer hell of it. There were men like that but
Rio wasn't one of them. Rio had a real good-taste threshold. Rio had a
conscience. Rio was not an oversexed teenager with out-of-control hormones.
But Rio had one quirk which had betrayed both her and him: it would take
torture to make him talk about his own feelings. He would probably
sooner slow-roast over a hot fire than admit that he had been upset and
off-balance after breaking off his engagement. In fact, that was an
understatement, she recognised, and hadn't she seen the evidence of how
he was feeling for herself? His emotions had been seething, but more
than anything she had sensed anger...anger and bitterness. Anger against
himself, anger presumably against Christabel, bitterness that their
relationship hadn't worked out?
'I always know what I'm doing,' Rio made that claim as though it was
etched in stone on his soul, a credo through which he lived his entire life.
But Holly wasn't convinced. She had often thought that she knew what she
was doing and then later looked back and marvelled at how persuasive
other promptings could be in overruling all caution and common sense.
'What did you do? Decide to turn round and marry the very first woman
you met?' Holly demanded shakily, striving for an ironic note with that
question, for she was not serious in asking it.
'Believe it or not, that thought did cross my mind,' Rio ground out
fiercely.
Holly just stopped breathing altogether and gazed back at him in horror.
134
'Only to be just as quickly set aside because I am not a lunatic!' Rio
continued with raw force.
'But that's just what you did. You married the first woman you met. Dear
heaven...I could've been anybody!' Holly gasped.
'Don't be ridiculous. Do you think I would marry just anybody?' Rio
roared back at her, visibly outraged by that suggestion.
Holly lowered her head and studied her tightly linked hands. She was
more or less just anybody on her own terms. She was young, female and
reasonably presentable but that was that. She was trembling. 'Maybe you
would if you were angry enough. Tell me, did Christabel dump you?'
'Per amor di Dio... I could snap my fingers and get her back right now
if I wanted her!' Rio slammed back at her.
The silence sparked like hay threatening to whoosh into flame.
'I didn't say that...' Rio groaned out loud. 'OK...I said it but I
shouldn't have,'
So now she knew who had done the dumping. But now she also knew
something she would have been happier not to know: that Christabel
wanted Rio back and that he was well aware of the fact. That news was
like a cold wind chilling her sensitive skin.
'Just tell me why you broke up with her,' Holly prompted dry-mouthed,
her tummy churning at the terrible tension in the room.
'We wanted different things,' Rio said flatly.
'What kind of different things?'
'I think that's my business and hers.'
Holly paled as if he had slapped her. Then she got up and began to walk
towards the door but Rio was ahead of her. He leant back against the
door and trained smouldering
golden eyes on her, his angry frustration unconcealed. 'This
is crazy-'
'Get out of my way,' Holly demanded.
Instead, Rio closed strong brown arms round her and jerked her up
against him. 'No,' he said, soft and succinct. 'I won't let you make
Christabel a bone of contention between us.'
'You're the one doing that...' Holly condemned chokily, tears of stress
and agonised confusion clogging up her vocal cords.
Long fingers swept up to frame her cheekbones. Her bright blue eyes
evaded his. She was rigid, refusing to give an inch, but then he took
her by surprise. He lowered his dark head and drove her lips hungrily
apart with his own, his tongue delving deep into the moist interior.
Angry, unhappy, confused, she fought her own response for the first time.
She shivered against him, insanely conscious of every hot, taut angle of
his lean, muscular body, and she thrust her hand against his shoulder to
push him away. But her enervated state of mind made her all too
vulnerable and the sudden excitement burning like a betraying flame
inside her was her undoing. Just as quickly, she was kissing him back
with the same breathless fervour.
lifted her skirt and brought up her knees to deprive her of her briefs
and tights. And all the time he was taking her mouth time after time
with the same drugging, demanding heat and her heart was racing like an
express train, every fibre of her being madly aware of him and on fire.
By the time he slid between her parted thighs and entered her she was
more out of control than she had ever been, overwhelmed by a wild,
desperate craving which left room
136
for nothing else. The excitement of release threw her to the heights and
then dropped her down again lower than ever before.
'Now you can join me for a shower,' Rio murmured huskily, gazing down at
her with a scorching satisfaction as he leant down to kiss her.
Sick at her own weakness, but outraged by his manipulation, Holly took
him by surprise by twisting her head away and jack-knifing out from
beneath him to roll off the bed. Clawing down her skirt, her face
feverishly flushed and her eyes glittering like blue sapphires, Holly
shot him a look of furious mortification.
'Do you think that's likely to solve anything?' she snapped in a voice
that shook with the force of her disturbed emotions. A wolfish and
irreverent smile slashed Rio's darkly handsome features. 'There's
nothing to solve, bella mia.'
The anger went out of her then, leaving her feeling hollow and
miserable. The craven part of her wished she had not forced him to tell
her even part of the truth. One hour, she kept on thinking, one hour
between leaving Christabel and meeting her. Of course he had been on the
rebound. How could their marriage have a hope of surviving? He would
eventually wake up and feel trapped with her and Timothy, marvel at his
own impulsiveness, his own failure to take a long-term view. Why would
he stay with her when he didn't love her? Why would he settle for her
when he could have Christabel Kent or her equivalent as a wife? Off with
the old, on with the new...but life wasn't that simple. Sooner or later,
Rio would regret marrying her.
As the door thudded shut on the bathroom Holly sagged. He wouldn't
discuss Christabel. Why not? Loyalty? Or lingering feelings? And did he
even care how she felt, knowing that Christabel would still take him
back? A relationship that had lasted almost two years when she herself had
only been with him for a month wouldn't be easily forgotten. Was she
making herself unhappy over nothing? What, after all, had changed? Just
twelve hours ago, she had been
so happy.
Timothy was having a nap when she went into the nursery. She was
chatting to Sarah when Ezio phoned to tell her that she had a visitor
waiting downstairs. A Mr Danby. Holly paled. Jeff? Jeff had come to see
her? How on earth had he known where she was and what could he possibly
want?
Jeff was in the drawing room. Slim and dark, he was more smartly dressed
than she had ever seen him, but he had grown a goatee beard and a tiny
clipped moustache that struck her as affected. And somehow he seemed
much smaller than she recalled him being.
'Well, don't you look good?' Jeff remarked, studying the fashionable
skirt and cashmere twin-set that fitted her slim figure like a glove.
'But then, why not? I suppose you have a whole string of credit cards now-'
'How did you find out where I was living?' Holly interrupted, hating the
familiar way he had eyed her up and carefully keeping her distance.
'After seeing your wedding photos splashed all over the newspapers, I
didn't need to hire a detective. You've fairly landed on your feet here,
haven't you?' He glanced round the beautifully furnished drawing room
and his full mouth twisted in acknowledgement of the staggering change
in her circumstances. 'Well, more power to you. It's great that you've