The Italian Billionaire's Disgraced Fiancée (18 page)

Enzo bent forward. ‘Are you saying the reason I didn’t inherit the house was, because I was adopted?’

‘You didn’t know?’  Bradshaw looked surprised. ‘When the will was read out, you seemed upset. But as you never asked, I naturally assumed…’

Stepping outside into the fresh summer breeze, Enzo took a deep breath.

But as you never asked…

Dio
!
Obviously he had done the same mistake before, not just with Izzy. All these years he had believed that his parents had preferred his brother to him, because Luca was of their own blood, when he couldn’t have been further from the truth.

He swiftly walked the short distance to the mansion and opened the gate. Everything was still as he remembered.
The gravel path leading to the house. The manicured lawn. The pillared portal.

Home.
He was finally home again. His greatest wish.

The house smelled nice, he realised as soon as he opened the front door.
Of bees wax polish, and summer and something else. Something lemony, like Izzy.

The sound of his heels echoed through the hall as he crossed the parquet floor. Through the open doors he could see the antique sideboard between the two sets of French windows in the drawing room. Someone had put a vase of roses on top. They were beautiful, white with a golden centre, and somehow they as well reminded him of Izzy. He went closer and carefully touched the petals. They felt soft, almost like silk, and he briefly closed his eyes as the memory of Izzy’s silky skin hit him.

He felt lonely in the big house, he suddenly realised. What the mansion needed was a family. Happiness. The patter of tiny feet. Not a lone man who had lost the love of his life to his brother. Who had been so inexcusably arrogant that he had driven her away. He had no idea how to ever put this right.

Wearily he left the house and instinctively headed in the direction of the graveyard. His parents deserved an apology from him. It was the least he could offer, and while he stood at their grave in silence, he sincerely hoped that they would forgive him.

As he turned to leave his parents’ final resting place, a vase of roses caught his eye. White with a golden centre, the same ones he had seen in the mansion. Slowly he went closer until he came to a halt in front of a simple marble gravestone. Enzo froze, when he read the inscription.

Dio
!
Izzy’s father was buried here. He had died two years ago, on her birthday. Enzo’s mouth went dry.

‘I swear, I spent the night at the hospital,
’ he heard Izzy say again in his mind.
‘Please let me explain…’

And then his cousin telling him
‘No luck, just some guy with the name of Jones who died last night in one of the Suffolk hospitals…’

Shattered, he drew both hands through his hair. He had gotten it so wrong, so terribly, utterly wrong. Izzy had told the truth, but his arrogance had not permitted him to trust her. And now it was too late. She was married to Luca.

Another scene flashed through his mind, the night when Izzy had returned to the hotel and made love to him.

‘I will never marry Luca,’
she had whispered into his ear.
‘I have never loved or looked at anyone but you.’

Deep in thought Enzo stared at the roses that so reminded him of her.

‘I will never marry Luca…
’

Izzy hadn’t lied to him, he realised. She loved him, and God help him, he had done it again. He had seen a photo of her, a wedding picture, and had held it against her. She wasn’t married, she couldn’t be. He had to find her and talk to her.
Now.

She was here in Suffolk, he suddenly knew. She was the one who had put the roses on the grave and also into his drawing room. Her lemony scent had still fragranced the air when he had arrived at the mansion.

Enzo turned and ran out of the cemetery and all the way to her father’s house. The gallery next door had changed ownership and was now called
Polly’s Tea Room
, he noticed from the corner of his eye. He was utterly relieved to see Izzy’s car being parked in the driveway. Thank God, she was still here, she hadn’t left! Breathing heavily after the run, Enzo knocked at the front door. No reply. He tried again and again, but there was still no answer.

Anxiously he looked around. Where on earth could she be?

***

Slowly Izzy walked back along the shore line, her feet in the water, and soft white sand under her soles. She felt at home here and would have loved to stay a bit longer, but with Enzo as the mansion’s new owner, this was too risky. He must turn up any day now to take possession of the house, and she was not ready yet to face his wrath. Her pain was too fresh, her heart too badly injured to deal with his cruel words. Maybe in a couple of months…

She stilled when she saw a tall, familiar figure walk towards her, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze. Her heartbeat accelerated. It couldn’t be him, could it?

He had started to run now, and with every step his identity became clearer.

‘Enzo,’ she whispered and turned around to flee. But he was already there and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to face him.

He looked shattered, she realised.
Utterly worn down and distraught. A lost boy.

‘Izzy, please don’t go,’ he pleaded and pulled her close. ‘I’m so sorry.
So very sorry.’

She didn’t understand. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘
Dio
, where do I start?’ He forked his hand through his hair. ‘For not listening. For not trusting you. For never believing a single word you said. Oh Izzy, can you ever forgive me?’

She just stared at him in amazement, unable to reply.

‘Please say something,’ he begged, desperation in his eyes. ‘I was so stupid, such an utter fool. Only when you asked me to listen to my heart, I finally understood what I should have realised long ago. That I love you more than anything and that I trust you with my life.’ Slowly he bent down on his knee. ‘Nothing,
nothing
, can shatter my love for you. You are the only one for me. So please Izzy, would you do me the great honour to become my wife? I promise to trust you and to love and cherish you for the rest of my life.’

Shaking, Izzy lowered herself into the sand beside him. Carefully she lifted her hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes. They looked so hopeful, so earnest. ‘Two years ago you promised exactly the same, Enzo,’ she whispered. ‘How can I be sure you mean it this time?’

‘You told me you loved me, and that love is nothing without trust,’ he replied, gripping her hand. ‘Please trust me here,
cara
, and believe my word. Just as I believe yours. When Luca sent this wedding photo I fell for it initially, but then I remembered what you had said. That you loved me, only me, and that you’d
never
marry Luca.’ Lovingly he guided her hand to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Suddenly I just knew that you had not lied to me.’

He trusted her.
A wave of warmth and love washed over Izzy. He finally trusted her.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘My answer is yes. I’d love to become your wife.’

With a sigh of relief Enzo took her into his arms. He pulled her into the warm sand and kissed her with all the love he had to give. ‘I love you, Izzy. More than anything.’

‘I love you, too.
So much.’ Snuggled into his arms, she smiled at him. ‘And now I’d like to explain some things you should know about me – and what really happened two years ago.’

‘I should have let you explain long ago,’ Enzo said, a guilty look on his face. ‘All this wouldn’t have happened, if I hadn’t been so arrogant. If I had listened to what you had to say.’

She brushed his mouth with her lips. ‘My parents made the same mistake,’ she started. ‘Clarissa Doria, my mother, was a very rich woman with a chain of hotels in Italy and France, and when she fell in love with my father, her family was against a wedding. They had already chosen a suitable husband for her and tried to convince her that, being a poor artist, my father was just after her money.’

‘And she believed them?’

‘Not at first,’ Izzy explained. ‘But when he asked her for a large sum of money, he broke her heart. My mother was so shocked that she ran back to her family without even talking to him. Had they communicated, she might have found out that he wanted the money to pay for the operation of a critically ill relative.’

Enzo looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, she
might
have found out?’

She sighed. ‘My father didn’t try to communicate with her either. He was convinced that, if she really loved him, she would just
know
that he was not interested in her money.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Clarissa had given up on true love and got engaged to the man her family had already chosen for her.’

‘Hetherington,’ Enzo guessed.

Izzy nodded. ‘Shortly after the engagement, she found out that she was already pregnant with twins, but Hetherington married her anyway. Presumably because he was after her hotels.’

‘
Twins
, of course!’ Enzo smote his forehead. ‘Now I understand so many things. These photos in the press...’

‘…where not of me, but of my identical twin Isabella.
Samuel Carson is her godfather, by the way. He happened to be there that night to rescue her after her drink got spiked. But it ended up all twisted in the papers, so that she looked like his lover.’

‘When we got engaged two years ago, you told me your mother had died when she gave birth to you.’ Enzo looked at her questioningly. ‘But Nick is your younger brother, so she must have still been alive for some time. Did you not know?’

Izzy shook her head. Tears gliding down her cheek, she told him how her parents had tossed a coin about their two little girls, and how she had ended up with her father and Bella with her mother.  How she had never known that she had two siblings until that day two years ago.

‘Don’t cry,
cara,’ Enzo comforted her and tenderly kissed the tears off her face. She could see it in his eyes how shocked he was about her revelations. ‘This won’t happen to us, I promise. I will always be there for you and listen. I swear.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I trust you with my life.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said, pushing himself up on one forearm. ‘Your twin Isabella was the one working as Luca’s PA, do I guess that right?’

She nodded. ‘Bella had fallen in love with him from afar, but she didn’t want Luca to know her true identity. She feared that he might pretend to love her to get hold of her hotels, just like Hetherington had pretended to our mother.’

‘Are you sure he just pretended?’

‘Of course I can’t be sure,’ Izzy said. ‘I never even met him, but the way he treated Bella… As soon as my mother had died, he gave her into the sole care of a nanny. When she was six, he sent her off to boarding school. She wasn’t even allowed to spend her holidays with Nick and him. That’s why everybody assumes that Nick is an only child.’

Enzo shuddered. ‘You’re right. This man doesn’t sound as if he was capable of love.’

‘When Luca mistook Nick for Bella’s lover and left London, she was desperate to chase after him,’ Izzy continued. ‘That’s when I stepped in to take her place.’

Enzo sighed. ‘That was quite a performance and false as hell, but I won’t complain. I got my woman at the end.’ He bent down to plant a tender kiss on her lips. ‘
Dio
, Izzy, if you had not told me to trust my heart…’

She smiled. ‘But I did and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life. Just to make sure you’ll never forget.’

‘I won’t,’ he said, endless love shining in his eyes. ‘Trust me.’

THE END

THE ITALIAN BILLIONAIRE’S DISGRACED FIANCE
E

© 2014 Betsy Swann

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