Page 31 of His Fantasy Bride (Things To Do Before You Die)

“Hah. Hah.”

“But really, Gabby. How were you ever okay with this?”

She had no clue and could only put it down to a momentary mind-fuck. “Luca made it sound sort of exciting and important and… Okay, no, not really. But I didn’t have a lot of options. The mob was after me for Bertie’s debts, I had nowhere to live, and my mom needed the money desperately.”

“I can’t believe Luca blackmailed you like that. I’m going to beat him to a pulp.”

“He didn’t really put pressure on me.” Well, not a great deal—it was more like laying on the whole do-this-for-the-family-that-took-you-in sort of thing. “And I was out of work until my arm healed, and I am an actress and a dancer, after all. It was just one more job.” Right until the moment she set eyes on Vito.

“So, tell all. What happened? Did you meet him—well, obviously you did. Come on, Gabby, I’m dying here.”

“I went to Sicily. He has a villa there, and I made sure I was on the private beach where I had no right to be, and he came and introduced himself, and I was nice, and so was he.”

“What?”

“He was nice.Really nice. Though maybe nice isn’t the right word. You saw him tonight. He’s stunning. But Luca was wrong. His grandfather might have been a bad person, but Vito is an honorable man.”

Theresa was eying her up, lips pursed. “Tell me you did not sleep with this man, Gabrielle Harper. That would be bordering on…prostitution.”

“No, I didn’t sleep with him. I was a ‘good girl’ remember. Besides, it wouldn’t have felt right. As soon as I met him I started to feel this really inconvenient guilt. And the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him and the guiltier I felt.”

“So why didn’t you just leave?”

“I don’t know. I meant to, so many times. I packed my bags and…” She tugged on her hair then screwed up her face. “I liked him. I liked spending time with him, but I was also acting a part, and the longer I acted, the more natural it became and…agh! I can’t really explain it. It was like I was someone else. I was Gabrielle. Not madcap Gabby. And helikedme.”

“Lots of people like you. So go on—what finally brought you to your senses?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“What? You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“So, he asked you to marry him, and you finally realized you had to get out, and you came home.”

“Er…not quite.”

“How not quite?”

“I said yes.”

“You said yes?” The words came out as a screech.

“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time?”

“Are you insane?”

Probably. “It was so romantic. He asked me on the beach where we met, and he got down on one knee and gave me such a beautiful ring.” It had broken her heart to leave that ring behind. She’d never considered herself mercenary, but she’d loved that ring.

Theresa shook her head. “I feel like I’ve wandered into this parallel universe. Where my friend Gabby has turned into this…” She trailed off and shrugged. “Actually I have no words for it. So what happened next?”

“Vito got a special license, and it was all moving so fast that I was just carried along. Then the night before the wedding, he told me that I was his ideal woman and he loved me, and it all came crashing down. I wasn’t his ideal anything. I was a fraud, and if he knew the real me, he wouldn’t have looked twice. He would never loveme.”

“And, of course, there’s always the fact that if he ever found out that Luca had sent you…”

Gabby put her hands over her ears to shut the words out. Then she took a deep breath and finished her story. “So I ran. I left him this stupid note and took off, came back here, and I’ve been sleeping on your couch—and avoiding Luca—ever since. And by the way—I never told him anything about Vito’s business, so he presumably isn’t very happy with me. But Mom’s sold her house now, and as soon as I get the money I’m going to go pay Luca back, and then this whole mess will be over.”

“Sounds like a plan. But there’s something I don’t understand. This all happened six months ago. So what is he doing here now? Have you been seeing him all along?”

---