The Wedding Charade (7 page)

‘No, don’t do that,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘You have the bed. I’ll sleep on one of the sofas. There are spare pillows and blankets in the wardrobe.’

She chewed at her lip as she watched him prepare the sofa. He was going to have a terrible night’s sleep on that because, as luxurious as it was, he was just too tall for it.

He was right, of course. She hadn’t thought much past getting him to agree to marry her. She hadn’t thought of what would come next. Her impulsive nature had got her into trouble too many times to count. When would she ever learn?

‘Would you like a nightcap or something?’ Nic asked once the sofa was made up.

Jade shook her head. ‘No, I’ll just go to bed. I’m really tired. I feel like I’ve been travelling all day.’

‘I’ll leave you to prepare for bed in peace,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go downstairs to use the business centre.’

Jade could see his slim laptop on the antique desk over near the window, which could mean only one thing: he wanted to avoid her. She could hardly blame him. ‘Well, goodnight, then,’ she said.

His eyes met hers briefly. ‘Goodnight, Jade.’

She sank to the bed once he had closed the door. Her body felt so tired from her crying jag in the bathroom. She would give anything to just curl up in amongst those soft, smooth sheets and forget the world for eight hours. She looked at her half-unpacked suitcase. She looked at it for a long moment, chewing at her lip as she planned her next course of action.

She sprang off the bed and quickly gathered her things, packing them haphazardly back in the case and snapping it shut.

Nic could have his bed. She would be miles away by the time he got back to his suite. She wasn’t going to spend even one night more than necessary with him.

It was far too dangerous.

Nic came back to the suite after midnight. He had a headache and a neck ache and he was still feeling a brute for the way he had spoken to Jade. She had covered it well but he knew she had gone to the bathroom to compose herself. She had been on the verge of tears. Tears he had provoked.

He couldn’t remember ever seeing her cry, or at least not since her brother’s funeral and even then she had kept it in until the last moment, when Jonathan’s coffin was lowered into the ground. She had been hysterical and had to be sedated once they got back to the Sommerville estate. Nic had tried to offer comfort but, if anything, his presence had seemed to upset her all the more. In the end he had left early and had stayed away from her for over a year. He wasn’t proud of that. He often wondered if her decline back into an eating disorder could have been averted by a little more support from those best known to her.

The suite was in darkness and he reached for the nearest lamp switch, not wanting to disturb her with a bright light suddenly coming on. The muted glow of the lamp illuminated the huge bed but it was empty. He swung his gaze to the made-up sofa but it was empty too. He drew in a sharp hiss of a breath and strode through to the bathroom but there was nothing there except a faint trace of her perfume. He came back out to the suite and raked his fingers through his hair when he saw her suitcase had gone. He checked all over the suite but she hadn’t even had the decency to leave him a note. He swore in three languages and paced the floor, frustrated beyond description.

The scheming little minx had tricked him into agreeing to marry her. There was no way he could pull out of it now and she damn well knew it. The press were running with it. It had already been broadcast online and on the radio. He had already had a call from his brothers saying how pleased they were that he was doing what their grandfather had wanted. Her little staged you-hurt-my-feelings act had been convincing, so convincing
he had fallen for it hook, line and sinker and outboard motor to boot. Damn the little witch!

Jade had been back at her flat twenty-four hours when Nic arrived. She winced when he put his finger on the buzzer, holding it down relentlessly, knowing she would have to answer before one of the neighbours complained about the noise. She opened the outer door for him and waited with a pounding heart for him to make his way to her flat.

His short hard knock on her door sounded like a firearm being discharged.

She opened the door with a breezy smile of greeting. ‘Hi, Nic.’

He strode past her, his mouth set in a rigid line. ‘Have you seen the papers?’ he asked, thrusting a bundle at her.

‘I don’t read the papers,’ Jade said, wondering if he would pick up on the irony in her tone.

‘We are officially engaged,’ he bit out.

She gave him a bright smile. ‘Yes, I know. Isn’t it exciting?’

He glowered at her darkly. ‘And, since we are officially engaged,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘you will at all times act like a fiancée should act. That means you will not leave my hotel or apartment or villa or wherever we might be staying without telling me where you are going. Do you hear me? ‘

Jade raised her chin. ‘I left because I didn’t want you to have a bad night’s sleep. You wouldn’t have slept a wink on that sofa.’

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Don’t go pretending you did anything charitable back there in Venice. You

got what you wanted and left. You didn’t even leave a note. What sort of disgraceful show of manners is that? I was worried sick about you.’

Jade tossed her head. ‘I bet you weren’t. I bet you were furious I slipped out without you knowing.’

‘You’re damn right I was,’ he said. ‘I had the press on my tail all the way back to London. I had to think of some sort of reasonable excuse for why you weren’t still with me.’

‘How terribly taxing for you,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.

This time she actually heard him grinding his teeth. ‘You really are the most uncontrollable brat I have ever met.’

‘And you are the most undesirable fiancé a girl could ever want,’ she threw back.

His hazel eyes flashed with green and brown flecks of hatred. ‘I have organised a lawyer to come around this evening to go through the legal documents with you,’ he said. ‘I expect and demand your full cooperation in reading and signing them.’

Jade controlled her instinctive panic with an effort. ‘I will do what is necessary to secure my inheritance but I will do nothing extra.’

‘You will do as you are damn well told,’ he said heatedly. ‘I have decided to bring the wedding forward. I don’t trust you to be out of my sight for the rest of this month. You will move to my villa in Rome as soon as it can be arranged. We will be married early next week. I have already informed my family of the change of plan.’

This time it was impossible for Jade to hide her panic.

‘I …I don’t want to do that …I have things to do here in London. I don’t want to leave before I’m ready.’

‘We do have hairdressers and nail technicians in Italy, you know,’ he said with a sarcastic bite. ‘We even have fashion designers.’

She sent him a fulminating glare. ‘You can’t have everything your own way, Nic. I know you have for most of your life, but I am not going to be pushed around by you.’

‘I am sending a removal company for your things in the morning,’ he said. ‘The lawyer will be here in less than an hour. I have also organised a wedding planner to meet with you this evening. She will see to all details to do with the ceremony. We will travel together to Rome late tomorrow afternoon. I will send my driver to collect you. If you do not cooperate I will call the press and tell them the wedding is off.’

‘You won’t do that,’ Jade said with not as much confidence as it sounded.

He held her gaze with steely intensity. ‘Don’t bet on it, Jade,’ he said. ‘I will do what I damn well please and you will obey without question.’

Jade picked up a cushion from the sofa and threw it at him. It missed by a mile and bounced off the wall without even making a sound as it fell impotently to the floor. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘I really,
really
hate you.’

He smiled coolly as he opened the door. ‘I hate you too; you have no idea how much.’

She winced as he closed the door on his exit. And for the second time in twenty-four hours she felt tears prickle and burn at her eyes.

L
ESS
than an hour later a lawyer arrived with papers in hand, just as Nic had informed her. Jade went through all the motions: politely offering coffee or tea, providing a seat at the dining table so the papers could be spread out easily, all the while hoping her façade of understanding everything would not be shown up for what it was: total ignorance.

‘And if you will just sign here and here,’ the lawyer said, pointing out the sections that were highlighted.

Jade scribbled her signature while inside cringing at how unsophisticated and childish it looked next to Nic’s where he had signed earlier. She studied the bold strokes of his name; the confidence and assurance she always associated with him were there in every twist and turn of his pen.

Not long after the lawyer left a woman arrived, announcing herself as the wedding planner. Jade allowed herself to be swept up in the momentum of confirming all the appointments: the fitting of a dress at a designer studio once she got to Rome, a visit to the jewellers’ where she would be fitted with an astonishingly expensive engagement and wedding ring ensemble that had already been chosen on her behalf, as well as a visit to
a high street florist where the flowers for the church and the wedding bouquet would be chosen, ready to be flown to the church in Bellagio by private jet.

It was all done with the efficiency of clockwork but inside Jade was secretly worrying about the year ahead. She could look and dress the part of the happy bride but she was not the bride of Nic’s choice.

They were both marrying under sufferance; it was a chore—it was a time line they both had to endure to get what they wanted.

Jade tried not to think of the romantic fantasies she had conjured up in the past. That was a long time ago and this was here and now. This was a cold, hard business deal, a transaction with financial rewards to be gained. It was not about love or mutual goals. It was about Nic Sabbatini inheriting what was rightfully his. She was the pathway for him to do that and he was hers. She was nothing to him but a means to an end and she would be a silly fool to think otherwise.

A courier arrived early the next morning and delivered a high-tech mobile phone to her apartment. He assured her it was already charged and ready to use. Jade signed for it and, after a long period of hesitation, she unpacked it from its packaging, not for the first time feeling all alone in the world, with no one to understand how desperately vulnerable she felt. She put it away in her handbag and got on with the rest of her packing in preparation for the move to Rome. The removal men arrived and took everything out of her flat. She hovered about as her paintings were being loaded, worried they would be damaged, but the men seemed to know what they were doing and covered everything in bubble wrap.

Nic called just before lunch to say he had to fly out of London for the rest of the week to sort out a property deal in Rio de Janeiro and she would have to go to Rome without him. ‘I’m sorry about the short notice,’ he said. ‘But no doubt you’ll have plenty to do preparing for the wedding.’

‘I’m surprised you aren’t insisting I accompany you,’ Jade said somewhat waspishly, ‘or is it because you have some unfinished business to do in the bedroom rather than the boardroom?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t read the gossip in the papers?’ he said.

Jade ground her teeth, imagining him with the long-legged, exotic Brazilian model, having a last fling before their marriage. The trouble was, it would very probably not be his last. A man like Nic would not stay true to fake marriage vows; he would have trouble staying true to real ones.

‘And I also thought you said I could do what I liked as long as I was discreet about it,’ Nic added when she didn’t respond.

Jade unlocked her tight jaw. ‘Do what you like. I can’t stop you. According to the lawyer you sent around, you’ve got your back well and truly covered.’

‘Ah, so the prenuptial is a sticking point, is it?’ Nic said.

‘Do you really think I want half of everything you own?’ Jade said. ‘I just want what Salvatore wanted me to have.’

‘Divorces can get pretty ugly, Jade,’ he said. ‘I am not prepared to risk all that my grandfather and father
and two older brothers worked so hard for when we part company in a year’s time. Don’t take it personally. It’s just sound business sense to protect one’s assets.’

Jade knew what he said was true, and to some degree it was her own fault for encouraging his opinion of her as an empty-headed, gold-digging socialite.

‘Did you get the mobile?’ he asked after a tense pause. ‘I tried calling you on it earlier but the message service said it was switched off. I made sure it was charged before it was delivered. Have you turned it off or something?’

Jade swallowed and looked in the direction of her handbag. ‘Um …I haven’t had time to answer it with all the packing I’ve been doing.’

‘I have people organised to do that for you,’ he said. ‘Why are you doing it yourself?’

‘I don’t like strangers touching my things,’ she said, turning her back on the accusing presence of her handbag.

There was another little silence.

‘I probably won’t see you until the day of the wedding,’ he said. ‘My business is taking longer than I expected. I have organised a private jet to take you to Rome. My driver will pick you up and take you to the airport. You will be driven to my villa and my housekeeper, Guilia, will help you settle in. The wedding planner will see to everything and will be in contact with you over the last-minute things. Your flat will be packed up and the keys handed back to your father. He has someone who wants to rent it as of next week.’

‘Is he coming to the wedding?’ Jade asked.

‘Yes, he said he was looking forward to giving you away.’

Yes, well, it wouldn’t be the first time,
Jade thought bitterly.

Jade arrived, just as Nic had arranged, at his villa in Rome. It had been a relief to have someone see to all the travelling arrangements for once. She normally had to engage the services of a travel agent, which was always stressful as she had to memorise everything as the documents they handed to her in a file were useless. She envied everyone who could book things online. They didn’t have to commit everything to memory and then worry incessantly in case they forgot a date or a time or an address. Visiting new places was an absolute nightmare for her. She had got lost so many times and felt so foolish when asking for directions, only to find she was just a street or a block away.