“Then I’m no better than...”
“Who?”
Her china cup clattered against the saucer. Snapping her mouth closed, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I failed.” She looked away. “It’s getting to be a habit.”
The last thing Sharif wanted was to endure another wedding, especially one in some dreary Italian registry office. But looking at the misery on her beautiful, plump-cheeked face, he rose from the table. Tossing down his napkin, he went to her. “My car is parked in the barn. My driver is here...”
Irene looked up with an intake of breath. “You’d take me?”
“I’m willing to take you anywhere. Anytime.” He lifted an eyebrow wickedly. “I thought that was clear.”
She blushed but said stubbornly, “Their wedding...”
“Personally, I think attending one wedding is enough. I have no particular need to see it all replayed out, this time in a civil office. But if it truly matters so much to you...”
“It does!”
“Then I will take you. When you’re ready.” He hid a private smile.
Chugging down the rest of her sweet creamy coffee, she stood up. “I’m ready now.” Warmth and gratitude shone in her brown eyes as she clapped her hands happily, like a child. “I take back every awful thing I said about you!”
Impulsively, she threw her arms around him. He felt her against him, right through the fabric of his suit, to his skin, all the way to blood and bone. His body stirred.
Stiffening, Irene pulled back, her eyes wide. He looked down at her.
“Feel free to kiss me,” he said lazily, “if you feel you truly must.”
Her expression sharpened, and she pushed away. “On second thought, everything I said about you still stands.” She looked with self-consciousness to the right and left at the bodyguards. “When can we leave?”
“Now.” Lifting his hand in the smallest signal, he caused the four unsmiling bodyguards to fall in behind them, and they left the villa.
“This feels ridiculous,” Irene whispered, holding his arm as she walked close to him. “Don’t you feel like...like a prisoner getting escorted to your cell?”
At her words, the trapped feeling rose inside him, the one he’d been trying so hard to avoid, for a reason that had nothing to do with the bodyguards. The thing that had trapped him for twenty years, that was soon to lock him down forever, the thing he’d come to this wedding to try to come to terms with.
“I’m accustomed to it,” he said tightly.
She shook her head. “I understand that as a powerful man you need bodyguards, but it just seems like it would be impossible to have any private life, any life at all really, when you have such a thick wall between you and the rest of the...”
Her voice trailed off. Sharif smiled at the dumbfounded look on her face as she stared at his black stretch Rolls-Royce, complete with diplomatic flags, inside the large, modern barn. A uniformed driver leaped to attention, opening the door for them. Sharif indicated for her to go first, something that made his bodyguards look at each other behind their aviator sunglasses. Well, let them wonder about the breach in protocol. Sharif didn’t care. He climbed in beside her.
Irene’s mouth was wide as she looked around the backseat of the limousine in awe. Seeing him, she kept scooting, pressing herself against the far wall.
“Are you so afraid to be near me?”
“Um.” She stopped, looking uncertain. “I was making room.”
“Room?”
“For all the bodyguards.”
His lips curved. “One of them will sit up with the driver. The rest will follow separately.”
“Oh.” She paused. “But there’s plenty of space. This car is ridiculous.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“I didn’t say that.” She stretched out her legs in illustration. “You could fit a football team in here. This space is big enough to be used as a house for a family of—five...”
Her voice trailed off as she caught him looking at her bare legs, and realized that her hemline had pulled halfway up her thigh. Exhaling, she quickly sat up straight, yanking down the hem like a prim Victorian lady. He hid his amusement because he knew by the end of the night he would have stroked and kissed every inch she was trying to hide from him now. And she would have stroked and kissed every inch of him. Her defenses would fall and she would succumb to her own desire. The passion he sensed beneath her facade, once unleashed, would burn them both to ash. Let her try to hide from him now all she wanted. It would just make conquest all the sweeter.
“What are you smiling about?” she said suspiciously.
“Nothing,” he said, still smiling. As the limo moved down the ribbon of road, he turned his head to look at the beautiful Italian countryside. Brilliant golden sunlight brushed his face, dappled with the shadows of clouds passing across the blue sky. He was aware of every movement Irene made in the seat beside him, and relished the hot anticipation building inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted any woman so much.
In a few minutes, the limo and following SUV pulled up in front of an officious-looking Italian building clinging to the edge of a cliff, tightly between the lake and the main road through town. Without even waiting for the driver to open her door, Irene opened it herself and jumped out. Standing on the sidewalk, she blinked up at the building, then glanced back doubtfully.
“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked Sharif.
“It is the address.”
Hesitantly, she followed him into the building. The bodyguards hung back in the hall as Sharif and Irene found the small, gray, official-looking room where the ceremony for Falconeri and his housekeeper bride had just begun. Quietly, they took the last seats in the back, behind the rest of the guests, and watched the couple marry in the civil ceremony.
Even Sharif had to admit the bride looked radiant, in a simple cream-colored silk suit and netted hat, holding her cooing baby son in her lap. The groom looked even more joyful, if that were possible. The Falconeris were the only bright light in a rather gray room.
“They look so happy,” Irene whispered.
“It’s beautiful,” he agreed sardonically.
She flashed him a glance. “It’s different from the ceremony last night, that’s all.”
He gave a low laugh. “Last night was about romance. This is about marriage. The legal, binding contract.” A hollow feeling rose in his gut. “Trapping them. To each other. Forever.”
Irene’s eyes lifted in surprise. Then she scowled. Leaning over, she whispered in his ear, “Look, your royalness, I get how you’re deeply uninterested in any sort of emotion that doesn’t end up in a one-night stand, but seeing as Cesare is your friend—”
“My business acquaintance,” he corrected.
“Well, Emma is my friend, and this is her wedding. If you have any rude thoughts about marriage in general or theirs in particular, keep them to yourself.”
“I was just agreeing with you,” he protested.
She stared at him, then sighed. “Fine,” she said, looking disgruntled. “This setting isn’t completely romantic.”
Sharif looked at her.
“Unlike you, Miss Taylor,” he said softly. “You, I think, are the last truly romantic woman of a cold modern age.” He tilted his head. “You really believe, don’t you? You believe in the fantasy.”