A Very Exclusive Engagement(44)

Francesca nodded and watched her friend walk to her car. It all seemed so surreal. She would be married in three days. Married. To a man she’d known less than a month. To a man she’d grown to love, but who she knew didn’t feel the same way about her.

A deep ache of unease settled in her stomach. She’d first felt the sensation when the shock wore off and she realized they were getting married on a Friday. That was considered to be very bad luck. Italians never married on a Friday. Unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t available any other day.

Francesca hadn’t seen a single good omen since that ladybug landed on Liam’s shoulder. Marrying Liam was looking more and more like a bad idea. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

*

Liam clutched a thick envelope of paperwork and a sack of Thai takeout as he went up the stairs to Francesca’s town house. He’d met with his lawyer today to go over some details for the marriage. Now he planned to help Francesca with some packing.

“Hello,” he yelled as he came through the door.

“I’m upstairs,” Francesca answered.

He shut the door behind him and surveyed the neat stacks of labeled and sealed boxes in the foyer. “I have dinner.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Francesca came down the stairs a few minutes later. Her hair was in a ponytail. She was wearing a nicely fitted tank top and capris with sneakers. It was a very casual look for her and he liked it. He especially liked the flush that her hard work brought to her cheeks and the faint glisten of sweat across her chest. It reminded him of the day they met.

God, that felt like ages ago. Could it really have been only a few weeks? Now here he was, helping her pack and clutching a draft of their prenuptial agreement in his hands.

“I see you’ve been hard at work today.”

She nodded and self-consciously ran her hands over her hair to smooth it. “I probably look horrible.”

“Impossible,” he said, leaning in to give her a quick kiss. “I picked up some Thai food on the way from the lawyer’s office.”

“Lawyer’s office?” Francesca started for the kitchen and he followed behind her.

“Yes. I got a draft of the prenup ready for you to look over.”

Francesca stopped dead in her tracks, plates from the cabinet in each hand. Her skin paled beneath her olive complexion. There was a sudden and unexpected hurt in her eyes, as though he’d slapped her without warning. She set down the plates and quickly turned to the refrigerator.

“Are you okay?” Liam frowned. Certainly she knew that with the size of both their estates they needed to put in some protective measures now that they were making their relationship legally binding.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she opened the refrigerator door and searched for something. “What do you want to drink?”

“I don’t care,” he said. Liam put the food and paperwork on the counter and walked over to her. “You’re upset about this. Why?”

“I’m not,” she insisted with a dismissive shake of her head, but he could tell she was lying. “It just surprised me. We hadn’t talked about it. But, of course, it makes sense. This is a business arrangement, not a love match.”

The sharpness in her tone when she said “love match” sent up a red flag in Liam’s mind. He wished he could have seen her expression when she said it, but she was digging through the refrigerator. Then again, maybe he didn’t want to see it. He might find more than he planned for.

He’d chosen Francesca for this partly because he thought she could detach emotionally from things. After she walked away from the elevator, he thought she could handle this like a champ. Maybe he was wrong. They’d spent a lot of time together recently. They’d had dinner, talked for hours, made love…. It had felt very much like a real relationship. Perhaps she was having real feelings.

Francesca thrust a soda can at him and he took it from her. She spun on her heel and started digging in the takeout bag. “So what are the high points?” she asked, popping open a carton of noodles.

She would barely look at him. She was avoiding something. Maybe the truth of the situation was in her eyes, so she was shielding him from it. If she was feeling something for him, she didn’t want him to know about it. So he decided not to press her on the subject right now and opted just to answer her question. “Everything that is yours stays yours. Everything that is mine stays mine.”