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“This was my choice.” Whether right or wrong, she was glad that it was.
Zayed’s expression didn’t waver. “None of us want you to be hurt, Clio. He could very possibly do it, and then he won’t forgive himself, no?”
Her gut sinking, Clio finally understood their concern, understood the friction she had sensed between Stefan and the three of them the past two days.
Stefan thought they were all protecting her from him.
What he didn’t realize was that Rocco, Christian and Zayed were also looking out for him. They were afraid that by hurting her, he was going to irrevocably lose a part of himself.
A tightness emerged in her chest at the very thought and the sinking realization of how complicated the man she was about to marry was.
It’s the only way I can do this, Clio, he had said to her when she had signed the contract.
Was it the only way he thought of to protect their fragile relationship from what they were putting it through? And she resolved to not lose him, not to let this mutual need for revenge destroy them.
“I won’t let that happen, Zayed.”
Whether he believed her or not, Zayed patted her hand. “You have friends, Clio. Always remember that.”
Wetness filled her eyes, but Clio smiled through it.
Rocco and Olivia, Christian and Alessandra, and Zayed—all of them had hovered over her the past few days like mother hens.
It had felt incredibly good to know she had so many people who cared about her well-being.
With every detail of the most opulent wedding she had ever dreamed of taken care of, with the grand hotel decorated ornately for what the media were calling the “Fairy-Tale Wedding of the Decade,” with people who actually cared about her surrounding her, for a few compelling moments over the past week she could have almost fooled herself into believing it was the wedding she had wanted all her life.
Except for the man in the center of it all who hadn’t even looked her in the eye in a week, who had only spoken to her to discuss another blasted clause in the contract he had made her sign.
He had engaged an army of people to oversee every small detail of the wedding. Clio had barely had time to have second thoughts about how big a step she was taking.
Designers and lawyers, makeup artists and wedding planners—there hadn’t been a single thing that Clio herself had been responsible for. All she had to do was nod, and maybe use her brain cells to make a choice as to whether she wanted lilies or orchids or another exotic flower she couldn’t even remember the name of, whether she wanted chocolate cake or red velvet.
She had blanched when she had discreetly looked up the designer who had been hired to create her wedding gown in a week.
With delicate corded lace on tulle skimming the shoulders and neckline, the fragile gown had a line of buttons sneaking downward between her shoulder blades.
It was the most beautiful dress she had ever seen, and she couldn’t swallow the fact that it had been created with her in mind. Diamond bracelets, befitting Stefan Bianco’s intended, she had been told when she had argued, had been delivered in a velvet box, along with matching diamond earrings and the most elegantly designed diamond tiara.
She had been stunned at her own reflection, at how perfect the dress was for her slim build, how well it accentuated her almost boyish curves.
The diamonds had glittered and winked in the three full-length mirrors the hotel staff had set up.
And that’s when it had hit her.
The money he was spending on the wedding—she had given up adding once she had looked through the hotel’s website.
Which meant the cost of the wedding had to be astronomical.
Feeling as dirty as Jackson had called her, she had knocked on his study door one evening.
To find him at the rowing machine, dressed in shorts and bathed in sweat. It was a sight that was burned into her brain, her skin, her very cells.
The sight of his curling biceps, ropes of sweat-slicked muscles in his chest and back, the sleek contours of his torso, dissolved every brain cell into mush.
God, they had been rowing champions at Columbia, the four of them. And he still looked just as fit as he had been a decade ago, if not better. She had spent several minutes staring at him, heat uncoiling in her lower belly, every inch of her body vibrating with desire.
When she had finally found her voice and expressed her concerns, he had cast her a look that was like a bucket of ice-cold water over her heated senses.
“Don’t worry, bella,” he had said, rising to his feet. His thick hair was curled with sweat. “This doesn’t count against you. After all, our whole agreement rests on the pretense that I want to throw the love of my life the wedding of her dreams, sì?”
Faced with that mocking scorn, Clio had had to fight against the instinct to rush out of there. “I have been going over the seating charts and I didn’t see your parents’ names,” she finally managed.
His expression shut down instantly, as if a light had gone out. “They’re not coming.”
A warning vibrated in his answer. But instead of heeding it, her mind thought back to them. The rest of the Columbia Four and her included, had all envied Stefan his parents’ unconditional love more than anything.
The Biancos were those picture-perfect Sicilian parents for whom family came first and foremost always. And it had been a shock when they had threatened to cut him off if he didn’t come back home after graduation.
And Stefan hadn’t cared about his inheritance. Only Serena had betrayed him when she realized he wouldn’t have the Bianco fortune behind him.
“Stefan, your parents...they forgave you, didn’t they? For trusting Serena?”
“I have not asked them for it, bella.”
Why? “Wait, you haven’t... I don’t understand.”
His gaze unblinking, he opened the door for her, his withdrawal sending the room into subzero temperatures. “They are not on the guest list because I didn’t invite them, cara. We don’t need to involve any more people in our deception, do we?”
“No,” Clio had replied, reeling from the frost in his words.
What had he meant by that? Had he not seen his parents all these years? How could he bear to keep them at a distance like that?
In that moment, Clio had realized what an utter stranger he was to her.
His distrust of her motives, his insistence that they do it per his rules, the cold front he presented if she asked anything personal—she finally understood he wasn’t just lost to her.
He had buried everything good and decent about him. But before she left his life, before he was through with her, she was determined to remind him what he had been once. And she had to begin with bringing his parents back into his life.
Hers would never forgive her, but Stefan...he could have his parents back.
“Clio?”
Coloring, Clio looked at Zayed. “Thank you so much for reminding me that I have friends, Zayed.” She blew a long breath out, remembering her mother’s unforgiving words, and their blatant refusal to come. Reminded herself that she had friends who would always stick by her. “And for agreeing to give me away.”
“You did me an honor when you asked me.” Still smiling, he cast a quick look ahead. “I can feel Stefan’s gaze drilling holes in my head. Not even my enemy country’s politics make me shudder so,” he said with a mock shiver. “Are you ready for him, Clio?”
Sucking in a deep breath, Clio turned toward her waiting bridegroom.
Dressed in a black evening suit, his thick hair combed back, he stood out so prominently amidst the rest of the men.
He had promised her he would help her. And that he kept his word—even though a wedding, even of the fake kind, clearly filled him with utter fury—she hugged it to herself.
Whatever else he claimed, Stefan Bianco was a man of honor.
“I’m ready, Zayed,” she whispered.
Her hold on the lilies in her hand shaky, she followed Zayed’s lead as the music began.
With both her parents and Stefan’s not in attendance, she had decided to do without a maid of honor, electing to stick to the traditions only by a bit. Somehow it felt as if it fit them—this wedding among friends who were their true family, in the city that had welcomed them with open arms a decade ago.
Everything about the wedding was perfection itself. Even the weather was a beautiful June day, gorgeous with the sun shining.
It wasn’t a real marriage, Clio reminded herself as they reached Stefan and Zayed handed her over. It was all a story they were creating for the media and Jackson.
Her heart zigzagged all over the place as Stefan clasped her fingers tight in his.
But as she met his gaze for the first time in a week and saw the dark, possessive fire flickering to life there, she shivered.
How was she supposed to resist him when the liquid lust in his eyes felt like the only real thing today? How was she supposed to resist him when despite his distrust of her, he made her feel as if she mattered?
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u9cc5936a-86f3-5050-9e9a-447b841e5cdd)
HE HAD A WIFE.
One who was dressed in delicate white lace that displayed her alabaster skin in its glory. The row of buttons going all the way to her lower back was all he could think of.
Her flaming hair, combed back into a tight knot at the back, the long line of her jaw and neck were a temptation for his fingers.
Her dress, while lacy, was elegant, sophisticated, as it hugged her lithe frame and small breasts.
She looked as she always did—demure, stylish, perfectly put together. Only he knew what simmered beneath that calm exterior.
He had a wife and he couldn’t turn his gaze away from her.
The thought was so disconcerting and disturbing that Stefan kept turning the platinum band on his finger round and round, as if he could make it disappear, as if he could change reality by stubbornly refusing to accept it.
He not only had a wife but one he wanted to kiss more than he needed to drag in his next breath.
And the most shocking fact of them all was that his new wife had almost flinched when he had touched her lips with his.
He, Stefan Bianco, the man who had dated some of the most beautiful, accomplished women in the world, badly wanted to touch and kiss and seduce his wife, the one woman he should never touch or want in any way.
It was how he had felt when he had first eyed Clio across the campus lawn a decade ago—full of raging hormones, and an almost laughable naïveté about the world.
He still wanted her just as badly except now that naïveté was dead and in its place was a voice that kept whispering that he could have Clio if he wanted this time.
Like the rest of the women in the world, Clio Norwood had a price, too. And he had already paid the price.
It was such a disgusting line of thought that nausea filled his throat. And yet he couldn’t erase it.
Was this what he had become? Was there nothing honorable left in him?
For the first time in years, Stefan looked inward and cringed, wondered what else he had lost in the name of Serena.
“You’ll break the champagne flute if you don’t stop glaring at Zayed and Clio, fratello,” Rocco whispered from behind him.
He couldn’t blame his oldest friend for the continual jeering because what Stefan wanted to do was throw the champagne flute on the dance floor so that Clio would stop smiling at Zayed and look back at him.
“She’s always been a beautiful dancer, hasn’t she?” Christian chimed in, and now the vein in Stefan’s temple felt as if it would burst open.
He knew very well what his three friends were up to. He also knew very well that Rocco had eyes for no one but Olivia, and Christian for his pregnant wife, the beautiful Alessandra.
In the rational part of his mind, the increasingly small one, he was also aware that as much as Zayed seemed to be whispering little jokes in Clio’s ear and had been flirting with her outrageously for most of the evening, he had never had any interest in Clio.
Even if he hadn’t guessed that the fairy tale that Clio and he were projecting to the whole world was just that—a tale of epic proportions.
But knowing it and telling his body and his libido to behave accordingly was another thing.
Because the moment he had slid the gold band onto her trembling finger, the moment he had touched her lips with his own, the moment he saw the despondency in her eyes as she slid the ring onto his finger, Stefan had felt the most possessive, an almost Neanderthal, urge to drag Clio away from the celebration that followed and ravish her.
He wanted to drive the thought of another man from her mind, he wanted to kiss away the hurt from her mouth, he wanted to shred her control as she was so effortlessly shredding his.
He wanted her to smile at him as she did at the whole world, even though he had done everything to wipe it from her face.
He wanted to sink into her wet heat again and again, until the small fancy, which was now growing into a full-blown obsession, was gone from his blood.
He could seduce her, too. He had no doubt about it. Whatever poison that asshole Jackson had spewed into her mind, whatever she believed about her own nature—because there had been plenty of occasions over the past week to figure it out—there was an explosive energy every time they occupied the same space.
Something his all-too-clever and observant friends had remarked over the past week. But if there was one thing Stefan didn’t want, it was to see that betrayal in Clio’s eyes the next morning. She would never sleep with him and then walk away unscathed. And as fragile as she was right now, he didn’t want to be another bad decision she regretted.
He wanted her to be consumed by him as he was by her. Which seemed a far-out fantasy right then.
If he could forget the contract they had signed, he could have almost believed her to be the old Clio, having the time of her life, supremely happy with her life and the world.
Except when she looked at him. Then, the smile fell off her face as if she had eaten something that lived under those gold-lined slippers she was wearing.
Except when it had been their dance. She had been stiff like a board, her features frozen into a mask of icy politeness, so tightly withdrawn that he could break her with a hard grip.
She had hardly touched her dinner but her face had lit up when it had been time for the red-velvet cake they had cut together.
Every time she had lifted the gleaming spoon and licked away the dessert, Stefan smothered a groan himself.
“Come have a drink with us,” said Rocco, interrupting Stefan’s thoughts as they veered into dangerous territory about how snugly Zayed was holding Clio and how neatly she fit against his tall, wide frame. Tendrils of hair were beginning to come away from her elaborate hairstyle and kiss that delicate jawline.
He heard another laugh fall from those beautiful lips, saw her tilt her head and whisper something and he’d had enough.
He was on the dance floor and cutting in on Zayed and Clio before he knew what he was doing. As though guessing that he was as rational as a charging bull, his friend instantly relinquished Clio, a cunning smile in his eyes.
