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Bronte laughed. “He’s also my boss.”
The words spilled out before she could stop them, a stupid mistake because lying to her sister was such a foreign concept.
“That, my love, is far too much information. I do not need to know what kinky games you play.”
Bronte’s mouth went dry. “You know what I mean. Just – that he was my boss, before –,”
“Before he swept you off your feet in a real-life Cinderella story? How romantic, Bronte.”
“I guess so.”
“I do. And it’s my wedding day in –,” she looked down at her watch. “God, it’s my wedding day in just over an hour. I need to go to bed.”
“Yes, you do.” Bronte squeezed her sister’s hand. “Where’s Edward?”
“I don’t know.” They looked around together, scanning the thinned crowds
for the groom to be.
“Ah. Speaking of your Italian billionaire,” Alice murmured, gesturing across the room.
Edward and Luca were locked in conversation, as though they were old friends, matching smiles, Edward nodding. Perhaps Luca sensed her eyes on him because he turned and the friendly smile dropped, replaced with a look that was sheer, smouldering intensity. Her heart speeded up.
“Alice?” Bronte said, with urgency, as they stood up. Alice faced her, wide-eyed. “About Luca.”
“Yes?”
Her gut twisted at the lie they were telling. She hated this – but she was also grateful she’d made the decision to go along with it. “It’s really not serious. I don’t want anyone to get too attached to him.”
Alice leaned her face closer and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’m attached to you. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Relief and guilt clashed inside Bronte. “I am.” That, at least, was no lie.
7
WALK AWAY.
Leave now.
Don’t do this.
Katie’s face filled his mind. Her fate darkened his soul. Knowledge of what he’d done to her, how he’d broken her, clouded everything Luca was in that moment.
They didn’t look alike. Bronte was brunette with mystical green eyes and a directness in her bearing that Katie had lacked. Katie had been tall, willowish and blonde, with wide-set blue eyes and a laugh that had made him think everything would be okay.
Until she’d stopped laughing one day and he’d known how wrong he’d been.
His fingers tightened around his pen, tapping it three times on the edge of his papers, his eyes straying to the narrow bathroom door for the umpteenth time since they’d returned to the hotel room and Bronte had made a bee-line for the en suite with a mumbled excuse of ‘taking a shower’.
She’d been wise to run away. The tension between them was thick enough to cut with a knife. He felt it and if she hadn’t disappeared into the bathroom he would have acted on it, to hell with the consequences; to hell with the past.
He returned his attention to the papers, forcing himself to focus, to concentrate on the investment assessment, his eyes scanning the asset list for the tenth time in half as many minutes.
A noise – the slightest noise – alerted him to movement. The turning of the taps. The stopping of the water. A moment later, the quiet thud of the shower screen door, heralding its closure. The soft rustle of a towel. He stiffened, conscious that a moment was steaming towards him, a moment he could handle in one of two ways.
Body or brain.
Right or wrong.
