Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
E rin’s shaking hands covered her mouth.
Whatever she’s after, she’s not going to get it.
I have absolutely no damn intention of marrying her.
She’ll be humiliated and left with nothing.
Oh god.
He knew. No. He’d known . He’d known that she wanted to marry him from the beginning.
That it had all been part of a horrible scheme.
Her legs began to shake and she pressed back against the wall that had shielded her from Enzo’s view.
She took in a deep gulp of breath, not feeling like it was enough.
Tears filled her eyes. Her mind swam with them, hurt, fear, horror, nausea.
What he must have thought...what he must have felt.
Guilt pinched and bit into her stomach, her heart twisting far more painfully than that.
He clearly didn’t know about Gio’s involvement. Or that she’d emailed to tell him that she wasn’t going to go through with it. That she’d cancelled the deal the moment that things had become real for her. The moment she’d realised that he wasn’t who she’d thought he was.
But it had never been real for him.
And when she reaches the top of the aisle...
That part felt especially painful because he knew what that kind of humiliation would do to her.
A sob rose in her chest and she tried to stifle it.
The ringing started in her ears and wouldn’t stop.
It had all been lies. He’d been playing her this whole time.
The helicopter? Had he really forgotten that she’d said she didn’t like heights?
And the shopping trip? Had that been a test?
Test after test, setting her up just to fail.
The dress that he’d suggested she wear to the party. The way he’d comforted her after.
Oh god...the intimacy she’d shared with him.
Their interactions rushed through her mind like the trailer of some awful movie.
And just like that, what had been special and precious, and incredible to her became sordid, and horrible. How far would he have let her go? Would he have slept with her if she hadn’t found a way not to? Oh god, she could hate him for doing that.
Hurt and anger twisted her train of thought into turns that it would not have made before. And deep from within, far older than her time with Enzo, came another visceral pain. If he could do that and it be a lie, then he could never have cared about her at all.
And she’d cared enough to sacrifice the one thing—the one thing— that she’d been working to get back for years . She’d let everything go. Because of him, because of what she’d felt for him.
She was just like her mother. Lost and left with absolutely nothing because of a man.
The horror of it left her stunned, a ringing in her ears drowning out the music and the people in the club.
‘There you are,’ Cynthia announced as if the last thing she’d wanted to do was actually find Erin. ‘He’s looking for you. Worried you’d wandered off,’ the other woman said, already looking around the club to find someone else more important to talk to.
‘Okay,’ Erin said, nodding and wiping her cheeks, thankful that Cynthia was so uninterested as to notice her distressed state.
What should she do? Her passport and things were still on the yacht, so even if she wanted to leave, she still had to go back there.
She could call Sam. She knew that her friend would help with whatever she needed—a private jet if she needed it, probably.
But Erin was the one who had got into this mess.
And she needed to get herself out of it.
She needed her things first, and then needed to leave. And what, just disappear into the night? As if none of this had ever happened? So she could become just some funny story that he could tell his friends and laugh about?
Yes, she had done a terrible thing, deliberately setting out to marry him for her own needs. But he hadn’t needed to play along. He could have walked away.
But he hadn’t. He’d wanted to use her too. He’d wanted to humiliate her and turn her into some cautionary tale. Anger shot through her, filling her, pushing at her skin, desperate to get out, to burn and scorch in the way she felt burned and scorched.
She didn’t want him to get away with it, she didn’t want him to walk away unscathed.
She didn’t want him to walk away as if she didn’t matter and he didn’t care, she thought as her heart broke.
She smoothed her hair away from her face and stood up away from the wall, turning the corner, and came face-to-face with him, her smile freezing in place.
She took him in, the question in his gaze, that raised brow of his, the hard lines of his cheek and jaw, the midnight black of his hair, the rich depths of his gaze—a gaze she now knew hid secrets and lies as easily as breathing.
‘There you are, cara , I’ve been looking for you.’
Enzo frowned as he saw something flash in Erin’s gaze, but it was gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure what it was.
He was already out of sorts following his conversation with Marcus, and honestly for the first time in his life, he was ready to be nearly the first person to leave the party, not the last.
‘I’ve been here the whole time,’ she said with an elegant shrug, her smile a little forced.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Oh, Enzo. Everything is just marvellous,’ she said, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm, and leading him back towards the dance floor. ‘We’re here with your friends, in a gorgeous part of the world, in a fabulous club, having a wonderful time, no?’
Well, no. He wasn’t having a wonderful time.
He was something horrifyingly close to miserable, but as he had refused to let himself be miserable since about the age of ten, when his parents had made him pose for cameras on the steps of the courthouse of their second marriage, he smiled and let her lead him back to the dance floor.
Erin seemed to have found a wave of energy he’d not witnessed before now, and even Cynthia had begun to soften towards the happy, effervescent Erin Carter that had them all enthralled.
And he didn’t like that either. An only child, one might have accused him of not learning to share his toys, but Erin wasn’t a toy and he wasn’t a child.
She just didn’t seem to be... herself. The Erin that he had come to know in the last few weeks.
Even though the irony was that whatever Erin was embodying right at that moment was precisely the kind of woman that had attracted him before, he didn’t like it, didn’t quite like what he was seeing. It made him feel unsettled.
That feeling lasted long into the early hours of the morning as the club wound down, many of the revellers flushed in the face from alcohol or happiness as they all slipped away to their respective beds for the night.
Erin took off her shoes and walked barefoot, her arm still hooked into his as they made their way back to the marina.
‘Did you have fun tonight, amore mio ?’ he asked, genuinely curious. It would seem that she had, but... but ... He had this nagging feeling that he couldn’t shake that something wasn’t quite right.
She turned to him and tugged his arm closer to her side. ‘Yes, soooo much fun.’
‘Are you drunk, cara ?’
She laughed. ‘No, why? I haven’t had a drink in hours.’
He nodded, eyes narrowing on her before she laughed again and tugged on his arm. Maybe he was projecting. Maybe he was letting his mood impact his thoughts.
They reached the marina, the wood jetty bobbing slightly beneath their feet as they boarded the yacht. Strangely it was Erin who led the way to the upper deck, clearly not ready to go to bed. He forced his eyes away from the seductive sway of her walk as she went over to the wet bar.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘No, grazie .’
Erin shrugged, the careless gesture so foreign on her body, he clenched his jaw. Something was wrong.
She poured herself a glass of wine and held it in loose fingers as she turned a considering gaze on him, her head cocked to one side, the smile off somehow.
‘I think I’m ready,’ she said, taking a mouthful of her drink.
‘Ready?’
‘Yes. Ready to have sex with you.’
The cough of shock lodged in his throat, before it escaped in a punch of breath from his lungs.
‘ What ?’
She put the drink on the bar and closed the distance between them, looping her arms around his neck and pressing against his chest and torso.
Brain short-circuited by the sudden and shocking feel of her, his hands automatically went to her hips, anchoring her to him or away from him, he wasn’t quite sure.
‘Let’s have sex.’
Madonna mia , why did she keep saying that? And saying it like that?
This was as far from the Erin of earlier that afternoon as she could have possibly got.
‘Erin—’
She pressed a kiss to his lips, teasing his mouth open with the seduction of her tongue.
His body reacted on instinct rather than desire, making a mockery of what Erin wanted.
The kiss waged a war between desire and disinclination, Erin only breaking the kiss when he refused to let it spin out of control.
The moue of dissatisfaction on her lips was almost cruel.
‘What’s wrong? Didn’t I do it right?’
Something fisted his gut and the warning he’d ignored until that very moment screamed so loud in his ears, he flinched.
‘What is this, Erin? What’s going on?’
He looked at her, staring intently into her glittering eyes. Was it alcohol that made them shine so bright? No, he realised with a shock. It was tears .
‘ Dio , Erin, what the hell is going on?’
‘Surely I’m only giving you what you want, Enzo,’ she said as if she were offering him pocket money.
‘I don’t...
‘What? Don’t you want me?’ she asked, her voice quivering.
‘Of course I want you. But not like this,’ he stressed.
‘Really? How would you want me, then? Broken ?’
‘Broken?’ he asked, revolted by the thought. ‘What the—’
‘ Humiliated ?’ she asked. ‘Left with nothing ?’
His words echoed on her lips sent a shiver of sheer horror down his spine.
‘At the top of the aisle. In front of the media and your friends.’