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Kicking off her shoes, Darcy curled her legs wearily be¬neath her. Such a concession was of little comfort to her now. She was wrung out.
'But this is our wedding night,' Luca reminded her, as if that was some kind of excuse.
Darcy didn't even have enough energy left to expel a grizzly laugh at that announcement. She sagged into the luxurious comfort of the seat and rested her head back to survey him with shadowed green eyes.
The sight of Zia asleep and the sound of silence appeared to have revived Luca. His dark eyes glittered with restive energy. He looked neither tired nor under strain, but he was no longer quite so immaculate, she noted, desperate to find comfort in that minor show of human fallibility. He now had a definable five o'clock shadow on his hard jawline. He had also loosened his tie and undone the top button of his shirt to reveal the strong brown column of his throat. And, if anything, he looked even more devastatingly at¬tractive than he had looked at the altar, she acknowledged, and instantly despised herself for noticing.
With great effort, Darcy mustered her thoughts and breathed in deep. 'I have the right to know why you're doing this to me, Luca,' she told him yet again.
'But what have I done?' An ebony brow elevated. 'I agreed to marry you and have I not done so?'
Darcy groaned in unconcealed despair. 'Luca...please! I hate games. If I'd had the time and the peace at the Folly...if I hadn't been in so much shock at your threats...I wouldn't have allowed you to browbeat and panic me into this trip at such short notice.'
'I planned it that way,' Luca admitted, with the kind of immovable calm that made her want to tear him to pieces.
As her temper flared, colour burnished her cheeks and her eyes sparked with the fire of her frustration. 'You still have to tell me why you're doing this to me!' Darcy re¬minded him with fierce emphasis. 'And if you don't, I will—'
'Yes...what will you do?' Luca interposed deflatingly. 'Fly back to the UK alone and accept the loss of that house on which you place such value?’
It was the same threat which had intimidated Darcy into acquiescence that afternoon. But she was now beyond being silenced. 'You insinuated that I had done something dis¬honest that night in Venice...and that is an outrageous un¬truth.'
'Theft is a crime. It is never acceptable. But when theft is linked to deliberate deception, it is doubly abhorrent and offensive.' Luca delivered that condemnation with unblem¬ished gravity.
Darcy's temples were beginning to pound with tension again. Her strained eyes locked to his cold, dark gaze. 'Let me get this s-straight,' she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. ' You are actually accusing me of having stolen something from you that night?'
'My overnight guests don't as a rule use a small rear window as an exit,' Luca responded very drily. 'I was downstairs within minutes of the alarm going off!'
Darcy's face flamed with chagrin at the reminder of the manner in which she had been forced to leave his apart¬ment. She had crept out of his bed while he was still asleep. When that horrible shrieking alarm had sounded as she'd climbed out of the window, she had panicked. Dying a thousand deaths in her embarrassment, she had raced down the narrow alley beyond at supersonic speed.
'For heaven's sake, I just wanted to leave quietly... but I couldn't get your blasted front door open!'
'Not without the security code,' Luca conceded. 'It would only have opened without the code if there had been a fire or if I had shut down the system. I was surprised that a thief ingenious enough to beat every other security device in that apartment and break into my safe should make such a very clumsy departure.'
'Break into your safe,' Darcy repeated, wide-eyed, weak¬ened further by the revelation that this insane man she had married believed she was not only guilty of having stolen from him but also equal to the challenge of cracking open a safe.
'As a morning-after-the-night-before experience, it was unparalleled,' Luca informed her sardonically.
'I've never stolen anything in my life...I wouldn't!' It was a strangled plea of innocence, powered by strong dis¬taste. 'As for breaking into a safe, I wouldn't even know where to begin!' Darcy emphasised, eyes dark with disbe¬lief that he could credit otherwise.
Luca searched her shaken face with shrewd intensity and slowly moved his arrogant dark head in reluctant admira¬tion. 'You're even more convincing than I expected you to be.'
In an abrupt movement, Darcy uncoiled her legs and sprang upright to stare down at him. 'You've got to believe me...for heaven's sake...if someone broke into that apart¬ment and stole from you as that day was dawning, it cer¬tainly wasn't me!'
'No, I made the very great misjudgement of taking the thief home with me so that she could do an easier inside job,' Luca commented with icy exactitude, his strong jaw clenching. 'And in a sense you're right; it wasn't you. You wore a disguise—'
