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laughing! She talks like a hayseed-'
'I could practically see Rio wincing. He is so refined. And she
obviously doesn't have a single presentable relative because I know
everyone here.'
'Poor Christabel,' the first woman said with mocking sympathy. 'Just
imagine the agony of being that beautiful and being replaced by a
creature with red hair like an electrified ragdoll! What did you think
of her wedding dress?'
If you're that skinny, you should hide it, not flaunt it!'
'It was so cheap-and-nasty-looking too. Bargain basement. You could tell
he hadn't paid for it.'
Her back pinned to the wall, her tummy churning at those comments, and
trembling, Holly waited until the women
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had moved out of sight before setting off without even knowing where she
was going. She just wanted to hide somewhere. Rio was getting love
messages on his phone and everybody was laughing at her. In an archway,
she stumbled as her gown caught on her heel and she had to pause to free
the hem. When she looked up she realised that she was in a bar and that
people were looking at her. Espying a cloakroom at the far end, she
began to walk fast towards it, head held as high as she could manage.
'I'm telling you...' a loud, very upper-class male voice proclaimed full
of amusement just as she moved past the bar. 'I'll lay you a grand that
I'm right. Rio's bride is preggers. He's been playing away behind
Christabel's back and then bang...his perfect life just went up in smoke!'
Holly stopped dead behind the tall blond man in full flood. 'If that's
what you think, why did you come to our wedding? Guests are supposed to
want to wish the bridal couple well...fat chance!' Holly snapped with
stinging disgust, her charged voice falling into a deathly silence that
she was quite beyond noticing. 'The likes of you are too nasty to wish
anybody well!'
The young blond man swung round. Warm colour flooding his fair, open
face, he stared down at her with appalled blue eyes. 'Oh, no...I am so
sorry!'
Holly only dimly recalled him from the long procession of guests she had
been forced to greet. But, without another word, she headed on into the
cloakroom. She wondered dismally if she could brick herself up in one of
the cubicles and stay there for ever undiscovered. She studied her
'electrified ragdoll' hair and her 'cheap' dress, which she had believed
was so lovely, and tears started streaming down her face. On her terms
the gown had been quite expensive enough for something that would only
be worn once, but
probably by rich people's standards it had been bargain basement.
Yet all she could really think about at that moment was the woman
sending 'I love you' text messages to Rio on his phone. A woman called
Christabel, the same name that the beauty-salon owner, Sly, had
mentioned that day she trimmed Holly's hair. Christabel, who was so
obviously Rio's former fiancée. Beautiful Christabel, whom Rio had
evidently dumped and yet nobody seemed to have the slightest idea why.
Unless it was because he had got Holly pregnant behind Christabel's back.
But only time would take care of that kind of spite and, knowing her own
luck in the fertility stakes, time might yet convince people that their
suspicions had been entirely correct. Furthermore, Rio had married her
but he didn't love her and she had better get used to that reality. How
could she demand the same boundaries as any other new bride? It was not
a normal marriage. Mopping her damp face dry, powdering her shiny nose
and repairing her lipstick, Holly headed back into the fray.
As she recrossed the bar, looking to neither left nor right, the young
blond man fell into step beside her. 'Go away,' she spat out of the
corner of her mouth.
'I don't think you even know who I am. I'm Jeremy, from the English side
of the Lombardi clan-'
'Didn't know there was an English side-'
'But Rio's mother, Alice, is English...she's also my mother's sister,'
Jeremy remarked, his surprise at her ignorance unconcealed.
Holly walked away from him. Unable to face returning to the function
room until she had got a better grip on her overtaxed emotions, she
picked one of the sofas in the seating area just off the main foyer. Her
unwanted companion
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infuriated her by throwing himself down beside her and reaching for her
hand.
'Look, I'm willing to grovel. What I said was utterly indefensible but I
was sounding off for a laugh,' Jeremy asserted earnestly. 'I would
sooner have cut off my right arm than hurt you like that-'
'It's not too late. Go ahead,' Holly told him.
Amused respect flared in Jeremy's eyes. 'All right, so I was laying on
the syrup a bit thick.'
Without the smallest warning, Rio strode into the alcove. His sudden
appearance made Holly jerk in dismay, and Jeremy hurriedly removed his
hand from hers. His devastatingly handsome features set like steel, Rio
flashed scorching golden eyes over the two of them and then settled his
hard gaze on Holly with intimidating force. 'Where have you been all
this time? Sitting out here flirting with my layabout cousin?'
Jeremy shot upright, visibly disconcerted by the speed with which that
accusation had emerged from the bridegroom. 'I was trying to make a
grovelling apology to Holly-'
'What were you apologising for?' Rio demanded of the
younger man.
'Oh, leave it, for goodness' sake!' Attempting to reclaim some dignity,
Holly got up. 'I still have to ring Timothy.'
Jeremy had already started to speak to Rio in a low-pitched flood of
Italian. It was just as though she wasn't there, and she had had enough
of that throughout that endless meal. She had married an Italian, she
reminded herself ruefully. Had she really thought that his family would
talk in English just for her benefit? What was she...stupid or something?
She located the public phones and called the town house. However,
Timothy was having a nap. Sarah offered to wake him but Holly told her
not to be daft and just to leave him sleeping. Even so, denied even the
small comfort of talking to her baby, Holly felt tears sting her eyes
afresh. She had never felt so alone in her life.
'Holly...Jeremy told me what happened.'
It was Rio's dark, rich drawl, his hand comi
ng to rest on her taut
shoulder, and Holly gulped, fighting for composure before she could turn
round. 'It doesn't matter-'
'It does matter-'
Holly spun round. 'Just before that, I heard another couple of your
charming guests talking about my cheap dress, my hilarious accent and my
electrified ragdoll hair-'
'Who the hell-?' Rio growled after a shaken pause at that outburst of
confidence.
'They're all the same...horrible!' Holly was feeling so alienated from
him that she was in no mood to accept sympathy. 'You know, my friends,
had they been invited, might have drunk too much and laughed a lot
louder, but they wouldn't have attended only to pull the bride or the
groom to shreds. Where I come from, weddings are happy occasions. I've
had more fun at a wake than I've had today!'
'Really?' Rio breathed glacially.
Finally, Holly thrust his phone back at him. 'I don't know how to get
rid of that stupid message going round and round,' she framed jaggedly.
'But either you're making a mug of me or you're being too refined to
tell her where to get off!'
His dense black lashes screened his gaze as he studied his phone. With a
fingertip he jabbed a button and the screen went blank. Even the ease
