Chapter 32

'You can't want me when I don't want you!' she gasped.

'I've already disproved that fallacy,' he said drily. 'And, when we reach our destination in England tomorrow, I have no doubt that you will be in a more receptive frame of mind.'

All Catherine caught was that one magical word. 'England?' she repeated. 'You're taking me back to England after the wedding?'

'A change of scene is usual.'

Evidently he believed that, once that ring was on her finger, it would have the same effect as a chain holding a skeleton to a dungeon wall. But, once she was back in England, he couldn't hold her. While she was here, he had her passport and she wouldn't have liked to bet on her chances of escape from a walled estate patrolled by security staff, aided in their task by an impressive range of electronic devices.

If she didn't go through with the wedding, Drew would suffer. She shuddered with inner fury at that unavoidable conclusion. The seductive fantasy of leaving Luc without a bride on his much-publicised wedding-day faded. She should have known better than to think it could be that easy. All the same, the prospect of being back in England tomorrow was immensely soothing. He could hardly force her to stay with him.

'Catherine,' Luc drawled. 'Don't even think it.'

'I have nothing to say to you,' she muttered tightly. 'I've already said it all.'

'We have to talk.' A knock sounded on the door. He ignored it. 'I won't allow you to spoil the wedding.'

A gagged and bound bride might raise an eyebrow or two, she reflected fiercely as the knock on the door was repeated.

'Avanti!' Luc called in exasperation.

Bernardo appeared, a secretary just visible behind him. 'Signorina Peruzzi.' He gestured with the cordless phone apologetically. 'She says it is a matter of great urgency that she speak with you, signor.'

'I will not take a call from her,' Luc dismissed. 'Leave us, Bernardo.'

The door shut again.

'He speaks English,' Catherine realised. 'Only you must've told him not to around me.'

'The staff are under the illusion that the request was made because you are keen to improve your Italian.'

She covered her face with shaking hands, what composure she had retained threatening all of a sudden to crumble. 'I loathe you!'

'You are angry with me,' he contradicted steadily. 'And I suppose you have some reason for that.'

'You suppose?' Wild-eyed, she surveyed him over the top of her white-boned fingers. Reaction was setting in.

'You belong with me, Catherine. Use the brain God gave you at birth.' The advice was abrasive. 'You have been happy, happier than I have ever known you to be, here.'

'I was living in the past!'

'But why did you choose to return to that particular part of the past?' His sensual mouth twisted. 'Ask yourself that.'

'I didn't choose anything!' she protested. 'And what I ended up with isn't real!'

'It can be as real as you want it to be.'

The sense of betrayal was increasing in her. He had betrayed her. But, worst of all, she had betrayed herself. She had betrayed everything she believed in, everything that she was, everything that she had become after leaving him. In one week she had smashed four years of self-respect. In one week she had destroyed every barrier that might have protected her.

'Can you turn water into wine as well?' she demanded wildly, choking on her own humiliation. 'You must have been laughing yourself sick all week at just how easy it was to make a fool of me!'

A muscle pulled tight at his hard jawline. 'That is not how it has been between us.'

'That's how it's always been between us!' she attacked shakily. 'You plot and you plan and you manipulate and you make things happen just as you want them to happen.'

'I didn't plan for you to lose your memory.'