Olivia shook her head. “I would stake my life on it.” When she could see he wasn’t convinced she said, “Tell you what. After they’re back from their honeymoon, you can ask Max. He’ll tell you the truth.”
Cesar grinned. “What if you’re wrong?”
“I won’t be.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s assume you are,” he teased. “We’ll make this a bet. If I win—”
“You won’t!” she declared in a note of finality.
He was such a tease, it surprised her when he grasped her upper arms. “The German team thinks they’re going to win the Italian Grand Prix tomorrow, but by the end of the race I will be the one standing at the podium.
“After a race I always spend a week at the family villa in Positano on the Amalfi Coast where I can be alone. This time I’m taking you there with me to celebrate my victory, so be warned.”
No, Cesar, I won’t be going anywhere with you.
The man had an ego that wouldn’t quit. Any other woman would probably jump at the chance to go off alone with him, but Olivia wasn’t one of them.
“You would have to be my husband first.”
He flashed her a disarming smile. “Then I guess we’ll have to pick out a ring while we’re in Positano.”
“You’re full of it, Cesar, but I like you anyway. I’ll be rooting for you tomorrow.” She raised up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, then eased out of his arms. “Good night and good luck,” she said before escaping to her room for the night.
Though he represented the epitome of most women’s desires, he wasn’t the man who’d dominated Olivia’s every thought after she and her sisters had flown home to New York to get ready for Greer’s wedding.
There was only one man’s kiss she wanted. She’d worked herself up into a breathless state just waiting to see Luc again at the wedding, but he’d shot her down within the first moments of their meeting.
You may come off the innocent and have Cesar fooled, Olivia, but I see right through you. You’re nothing more than what you Americans call a “groupie.”
Really…well if I’m a groupie, then that makes you the jealous older brother with what we Americans call a “game” leg. It must be galling to know you wouldn’t be able to climb into Cesar’s race car, let alone drive it!
Her body still bristled from the ugly words they’d thrown at each other. He’d actually had the audacity to call her a groupie!
How dare he liken her to a sycophant, one of a cast of a thousand hopefuls…those grasping, opportunistic women who hung around the track and flung themselves at idols like Cesar who was single, famous and wealthy.
Luc had made her so furious, she’d been glad to take Cesar up on his invitation to watch him race in the Italian Grand Prix. However it had given off the wrong signal to Cesar who now assumed she was his for the taking.
Everything was Luc’s fault. Just thinking about their fiery confrontation outside the chapel caused Olivia’s heart to thud painfully.
If he hadn’t thrown that final insult at her, she wouldn’t have done anything so impulsive.
Unlike his brother, Luc didn’t need or crave the limelight, a fact that made him much more appealing to her. Though she found his aloofness disturbing, she was also fascinated that he didn’t seem to need anyone. He was a man who lit his own fires and moved in an orbit all his own.
According to Cesar, Luc’s energy was tied up in his work as a robotics engineer. She found herself wanting to know everything about him, but Cesar had been strangely silent when it came to details about Luc’s life, whether professional or personal.
The most she’d learned was that seven months earlier he’d almost lost his leg in the same tragic ski tram accident that had killed his cousin Nic’s fiancée.
Olivia already knew from Greer that Luc had never been married.
It certainly wouldn’t have been for lack of opportunity. His serious gray eyes beneath black hair and brows were startlingly beautiful and unexpected when contrasted with the olive complexion of his hard-boned features.
She’d only seen him smile once and thought there couldn’t be another man as gorgeous, not even Cesar. But after their bitter quarrel, Olivia had given up hope of ever witnessing that rare sight again.
She imagined the pain from his injured leg had something to do with his saturnine disposition. However Olivia suspected his morose moods were the result of problems that went deeper than the physical.
Some woman must have gotten to him… Whoever it was, she’d done a good job of ruining him for anyone else.
The Falcon men were tall, dark and dashing in that irresistible Mediterranean way. If it were Luc’s goal, he could be surrounded by stunning beauties all the time. But he obviously had other things on his mind and was too intelligent and self-confident to need constant attention from the opposite sex.
He definitely didn’t want Olivia’s. She’d never been so hurt, and was still suffering from the wounds. Yet the more she pondered it, the more she refused to accept his biting remarks as final. That jaded, aloof, thirty-three-year-old brother of Cesar’s had misjudged her, and she was going to prove it!
Pounding her pillow, she lay her head back down willing sleep to come, afraid it wouldn’t.
“You’re not going to see your brother race in the morning?”
Non, Dieu merci.
“I’m afraid not, maman. The doctor plans to drain my knee day after tomorrow, so I’m taking it easy until then.” Luc was glad to have a legitimate excuse to give his mother. She would pass it on to his father and Cesar.
“Then take care, mon fils. I’ll be by in a few days to see how you are doing.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll come to see you.”
If the doctor’s prognosis was correct, Luc’s leg was in the last stage of healing. After seven ghastly months of pure physical hell, the end was in sight. He only wished he could say the same about his mental torment, but no medical procedure could fix that.
“Talk to you soon, maman.” He hung up and sat back in the swivel chair of his private study, staring blindly at the monitor screen.
Normally the math required to do his latest project kept his darkest thoughts at bay, but not tonight. An image of Olivia Duchess in his brother’s bed made the bile rise in his throat.
He reached for his cell phone and punched one of the digits. After three rings his cousin picked up.
“Luc? I was wondering if it might be you.”
“Who else bothers you at this time of night? Were you in bed?”
“No. I’m in my library working on this blasted manuscript.”
“I was just going to ask how it was progressing. Now I won’t.”
Nic had been going through his own personal hell since Nina’s death. On top of his grief that the accident had happened, he was suffering guilt. All because he’d broken his engagement to her an hour before she’d taken that last tram ride up the mountain without him.
Luc would never know if Nic had discovered she’d been unfaithful to his cousin, and that’s why he’d called the wedding off. As close as Luc and Nic were, his cousin had never once hinted that Nina had been seeing another man.
But Luc knew she had.
By chance he’d decided to take one more ski run late that day. When he’d gone outside the lodge to get his skis, he’d witnessed a sight that had torn him apart.
Over in the trees