Tempted By The Bridesmaid. Annie O'Neil
took hold of her elbow and steered her farther away from the small group, doing his best to ignore how soft her skin felt under the work-hardened pads of his fingertips. Quite a change from the soft-as-a-surgeon’s hands he’d been so proud of. Funny what a bit of unexpected tragedy could do to a man.
“Perhaps we should leave the bride and groom to chat with the cardinal.” A shard of discord lodged in his spine as he heard himself speak. It had been in the icy tone he’d only ever heard come out of his mouth once before. The day his father had confessed he’d gambled away the last of the family’s savings.
“I’m Francesca, by the way,” she said, as if adding a personal touch would blunt the edges of this unbelievable scenario. Or perhaps she was grasping at straws, just as he was. “I think I saw you at the cocktail party last night.”
“I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but...”
She waved away his platitudes. They both knew they were beyond social niceties.
“Francesca...” He drew her name out on the premise of buying time. He caught himself tasting it upon his tongue as one might bite into a lemon on a dare, surprised to find it sweet when he had been expecting the bitterness of pith, the sourness of an unripe fruit.
Focus, man.
Luca clenched his jaw so tightly he saw Francesca’s eyes flick to the telltale twitch in his cheek. The one with the scar.
Let her stare.
He swallowed down the hit of bile that came with the thought. He knew better than most that nothing good came from a life built on illusion.
“I don’t think I need to remind you what our roles are here. I promised to be best man at this wedding. To vouch for the man about to marry our mutual friend.”
He moved closer toward her and caught a gentle waft of something. Honeysuckle with a hint of grass? His eyes met hers and for a moment...one solitary moment...they were connected. Magnetically. Sensually.
Luca stepped back and gave his jaw a rough scrub, far too aware that Francesca had felt it, too.
“There is no one in the world I would defend more than Bea.” Francesca’s words shattered the moment, forcing him to confront reality. “And, believe me, of all the people standing here I know how awful this is.”
Something in her eyes told him she wasn’t lying. Something in his heart told him he already knew the truth.
“I’d want to know,” she insisted. “Wouldn’t you?”
Luca looked away from the clear blue appeal in her eyes, redirecting the daggers he was shooting toward her to the elaborately painted ceiling of the marble-and-flagstone passageway. The hundreds of years it had taken to build the basilica evaporated to nothing in comparison to the milliseconds it had taken to grind this wedding to a halt.
A wedding. A marriage. It was meant to last a lifetime.
“Of course I’d want to know,” he bit out. “But your claims are too far-fetched. The place where you’re saying you saw them is not even private.”
“I know! It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
Francesca’s eyes widened and the tears resting on her eyelids cascaded onto her cheeks before zipping down to her chin and plopping unceremoniously into the hollow of her throat. Luca only just stopped himself from lifting both his hands to her collarbone and swiping them away with his thumbs. First one, then the other... Perhaps tracing the path of one of those tears slipping straight between the soft swell and lift of—
Focus!
“Which one was it? Which woman?”
Francesca’s blue eyes, darkened with emotion, flicked up and to the right. “She had dark hair. Black.”
The information began to register in slow motion. Not Suzette...a flame-bright redhead. And the others were barely into their teens.
Elimination left him with only one option.
A fleeting conversation with his girlfriend came back to him. One in which he’d said he was going to be too busy with the clinic to come to the wedding. Marina had been fine with it. Had agreed, in fact. So much work at the clinic, she’d said. And then it all fell into place. The little white lies. The deceptions. The ever-increasing radio silences he hadn’t really noticed in advance of the clinic’s opening day.
A coldness took hold of his entire chest. An internal ice storm wrought its damage as the news fully penetrated.
“My girlfriend was not having sex with Marco.”
* * *
Francesca’s eyes pinged wide, a hit of shock shuddering down her spine before she managed to respond.
“Your girlfriend? That’s... Wow.” She shook her head in disbelief. “For the record, she is an idiot. If you were my boyfriend, lock and key might be more—”
Luca held up a hand. He didn’t want to hear it.
It was difficult to know whether to be self-righteous or furious. In Rome, his relationships had hardly warranted the title. Since moving back to Mont di Mare...
The home truths hit hard and fast. Sure, Marina had been complaining that she wasn’t the center of his universe lately, but any fool—anyone with a heart beating in their chest—could have seen that his priorities were not wooing and winning right now.
He owed every spare ounce of his energy to his niece. The one person who’d suffered the most in that horrific car accident. His beautiful, headstrong niece, confined to a wheelchair evermore.
He looked across at Marco. The sting of betrayal hit hard and fast.
He and Marina had never been written in the stars—but Beatrice? A true princess if ever there was one. She was shaking her head. Holding up a hand so that Marco would stop his heated entreaty. From where Luca was standing it didn’t look as if the wedding would go ahead.
He swore under his breath. He had trusted Marco to treat Bea well—cautioned him about his rakish past and then congratulated him with every fiber of his being when at long last he’d announced his engagement to Princess Beatrice Vittoria di Jesolo.
The three of them had shared the same upbringing. Privileged. Exclusive. Full of expectation—no, more than that, full of obligation that they would follow in their ancestors’ footsteps. Marry well. Breed more titled babies.
Luca might have considered the same future for himself before the accident. But that had all changed now. Little wonder Marina had strayed. He’d kept her at arm’s length. Farther away. It was surprising she had stayed any time at all.
“Why don’t you go and get her? Ask her yourself?” Francesca wasn’t even bothering to swipe at the tears streaking her mascara across her cheeks.
“You’re absolutely positive?”
Even as the hollow-sounding words left his mouth he knew they were true. There weren’t that many women wandering around the basilica in swirls of weightless ocean-blue fabric. And there was only one bridesmaid with raven hair. The same immaculate silky hair he’d been forbidden from touching that morning when Marina had popped into the hotel suite to grab the diamante clutch bag she’d left while she was at the hairdresser’s. Not so immaculate when she’d appeared at the altar, looking rosy cheeked and more alive than he’d seen her in months, if he was being honest.
“I—I can go get her for you, if you like,” Francesca offered after hiccuping a few more tears away.
He had to hand it to her. The poor woman was crying her eyes out, but she knew how to stand her ground.
“Why don’t I go find her?” Her fingers started doing a little nervous dance in the direction of the church, where everyone was still waiting.
“No offense, but you are the last person I would ever