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He could not say that he cared for the way she said that last word.
“The priest asked you to state your vows and you did.” Lionel let his mouth curve in what was likely not much of a smile, given the way she looked at him. “I am afraid it is done now. We are married whether either one of us likes it or not.”
“None of this makes sense.” She shook her head, looking out the car window and then back at him. “You’re not even Italian.”
This was the most reasonable thing she’d said so far. Or at least the most familiar thing. “You seem very certain. Almost as if you know who I am. I am flattered.”
“You’re a famously rich man,” Geraldine said flatly, which was not the way people normally referred to his consequence or position. “I’m sure people recognize you all the time.”
“I will tell you now that I do not much care if they do or do not,” Lionel told her, honestly. “So if that was the reason you came to the chapel today, I suspect you will find the next few years of your life a great trial.”
She only glared at him. “But what I don’t understand is why you, a Spanish billionaire, were marrying an Englishwoman here, in Italy.”
“Perhaps, in addition to never having been kissed, you are also unfamiliar with the concept of a destination wedding,” Lionel suggested. When her eyes flashed anew, he had the wholly uncharacteristic urge to laugh. When he prided himself on his stern and sober steadiness, in all things.
He had no idea what it was about this woman, who was unlike any other woman he had ever been linked to in any way, that made him feel so unlike himself.
If he could have, he would have let her out of the car and never thought of her again. But that was not possible now.
“You are quite right,” Geraldine said, her voice so sardonic that it should have left marks. There was a part of him that wanted to check. “I have never heard of such a thing as a destination wedding. And obviously, because I wear glasses, I am untouched. Entirely. Your perception is truly astounding.”
But he could tell that she was lying about theuntouchedpart. It was the way she lapsed off into the ether every time he touched her. It was the way she flushed so charmingly, then seemed to go off into some kind of a daze.
And it was the fact that she had brought it up again.
As if the notion that he had thought such a thing of her stung her, and why should it if it was untrue? If someone suggested to Lionel thathewas untouched, he thought he really would laugh.
And so Lionel did not choose to tell her what he could so easily discern. Just as he did not tell her that this wedding had taken place here in Italy because it was the sort of place his grandmother might believe he would choose to get married without it being close enough to the family estates in Andalusia that she might feel moved to attend. So when he presented her with the bride—the very bride she had been demanding for years now—he could explain precisely why she had not been invited to attend at all.
I was thinking only of your comfort, Abuelita, he would assure her.
His grandmother would not believe him, of course, but that was another day’s problem.
He pushed those things away and settled back in his seat. His phone was in his pocket and he checked it, reading the message his man had sent him.
Bride number one boarded a helicopter with her abductor. Under her own steam and with no apparent distress. There did not appear to be any force applied.
Lionel tucked the phone away again. If Hope Cartwright had found herself a better option, who was he to complain? No contracts had been signed. Hope and he had come to an agreement, but all signatures had been saved for after the ceremony, when the both of them had taken the final step.
He had fully expected that Hope Cartwright would make him a perfectly fine wife.
But he could admit, sitting in the car while Geraldine Casey gazed at him with her green eyes nothing short of baleful, that he had never found the Cartwright heiress’s company even remotely so interesting.
He was not at all sure what that might say about him.
“Where you taking me?” Geraldine asked, and now that he had returned his phone to his pocket, and was no longer standing in a wedding ceremony without a bride, he took his time studying her. He had no idea why a woman would drape herself in the sort of garment she wore, but it did nothing to hide the shockingly elegant line of her neck or the hollow there, where he could see her pulse fluttering.
As if he interested her too, loathe as she seemed to be to admit it.
Though he acknowledged there was a possible other reason. “I do not wish to do you any harm, if that is what you mean.”
“You married a perfect stranger who you happened to find in the back of a wedding chapel,” Geraldine pointed out and this time, she sounded somewhat less calm. “And not just any stranger.Idon’t like you.”
“Impossible,” he said, much the way she’d said it before. “All women like me. Or, I should say, I have never met one who does not.”
Geraldine sat very straight beside him. She turned her body in the bucket seat so that she could look at him fully, and took her time pushing her glasses up the length of her nose. Making certain to broadcast her disapproval all the while.
“I know you to be the worst kind of man,” she said, very distinctly, and kept her gaze trained on him while she said it. “A monster in every respect.”
