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‘No, thank God. No, this is someone far more surprising.’
‘Really?’ The mind boggled. ‘Look, hold it a sec. Have to get in my car. I’m on my way to work.’ Alex jumped in behind the wheel and swiftly connected his phone to Bluetooth. ‘Right. All systems go,’ he said as he backed out of his spot.
‘Do you ever do anything except work?’ Jeremy said drily.
‘Sure I do. I eat out, work out and have lots of great sex. A bit like you, dear friend.’
‘Are you still dating that Lisa chick, the girl you told me about with the grating giggle? Or did you break up with her as you said you were going to as soon as you got back to Sydney?’
‘Yeah, she’s gone,’ Alex said with a scowl on his face. Lisa was still a sore point with him. He’d been going to tell her tactfully this last weekend that it was over between them when she’d actually had the hide to break up with him first, informing him that she’d taken a job on a cruise ship that was setting sail for Asia that very week.
He should have been relieved. Instead, he’d felt decidedly disgruntled. ‘I don’t want to talk about Lisa,’ Alex ground out. ‘I want to know which surprising person is getting married.’
‘Trust me when I say that you’re going to be more than surprised. It’s Sergio. He’s the one getting married.’
Though slightly taken aback, Alex was not exactly shocked. ‘What’s so surprising about that? He said he was going to find himself a wife when he got back to Italy. It is a bit quick, though.’
Jeremy laughed. ‘You don’t know the half of it. The wedding’s set for just over two weeks’ time.’
‘Good grief! Why all the hurry? The bride-to-be can’t possibly be pregnant. He’s only been back in Italy a little over a fortnight.’
‘As far as I know, Bella’s not pregnant.’
Alex’s foot slammed on the brake, bringing an angry hoot of the horn from the car behind him. He was on the car park exit ramp at the time. Gathering himself, he drove on, trying to stay calm and not cause an accident.
‘You shouldn’t tell me something like that when I’m driving,’ he said a lot more calmly than he was feeling. For Bella was the Bella, the darling of Broadway and Sergio’s one-time stepsister. Sergio had confessed to his friends a couple of years back that he’d always had the hots for her. Naturally, they’d both urged him to move on and forget her.
Clearly, he hadn’t taken their advice.
‘Trust me, I’m just as shocked as you are,’ Jeremy said in droll tones. ‘Even worse, I’ve had to witness Sergio’s crazed obsession first-hand.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I knew Sergio was staying at his villa on Lake Como, so I decided to fly over yesterday and surprise him for his birthday.’
‘Oh, God, his birthday. I forgot, as usual.’
‘You always forget birthdays. Anyway, back to my story. Naturally, I thought Sergio would be alone. He’d said he wanted a holiday before tackling the family business. Apparently, I’d got that wrong. Because when I arrived, he was in Milan, with Bella installed at the villa. She claimed she was suffering from burnout and had tried to rent the villa from Sergio, but he’d invited her to stay as his guest instead.’
Alex’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw. ‘So the upshot is she wangled her way back into Sergio’s life and then seduced him.’
‘That’s not how Sergio tells it. He says he seduced her.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Sergio.’
‘I agree, but apparently he did. And then the poor bastard fell in love with her.’
‘Yes, but did she fall in love with him back, or is this a case of like mother like daughter?’ Bella’s mother was a cold-blooded, ambitious woman who’d married Sergio’s widowed father to finance her daughter’s singing and dancing career, then divorced him once Bella’s career had taken off. ‘Does Bella know he’s a billionaire now?’
‘Don’t know. It’s been a madhouse here.’
Alex rolled his eyes. ‘You must have got some impression of Bella’s sincerity. Or lack of it.’
‘Well, as unlikely as this will sound coming from an old cynic like me, I think she might be genuinely in love with Sergio.’
‘Don’t forget she’s an actress,’ Alex pointed out sharply.
‘Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, the wedding’s set for the thirty-first of July. I have no doubt that Sergio will be in contact with you shortly. He wants us both to be his best men. I told him we’d be honoured. So when he asks you, try to act thrilled, because there’s no way he’s going to change his mind about this. The man’s crazy about her. All we can do is be there for him to pick up the pieces if and when everything goes belly-up.’
