But the intense feeling off loss I was feeling was knocking me on my ass. I felt like I had briefly had something precious. And now it was gone.
I walked over to my desk. My curiosity was piqued. I wanted to know more about her. That brief look of vulnerability in her eyes was stuck in my head.
She was almost… something. She had seemed afraid of me. Once she knew who I was. I couldn't make sense of that.
So I turned to the internet.
With only the first four letters of her name search results came flooding in. She was on magazine covers, Town and Country, Italian Elle, newspapers, society blogs, and more.
She was everywhere.
Her photos were incredible. Luxurious. Glamorous. Dangerously sexy.
I'd somehow managed to bed one of the most hottest, most sophisicated women alive. I might be wealthy and educated but I was a country boy at heart. I had nothing on a sophisticated woman like her.
I refilled my glass and stared at her. Dressed in gowns. Designer clothing. A black and gold bikini lounging on a yatch. I drank and looked, wondering how the hell I was going to get her into bed again when she was so fired up.
After an hour I stopped looking at her pictures, though it wasn't easy to turn away.
I started reading.
There was a lot to read. An epic scandal that was almost gleefully reported. Everyone had covered the scandal, even the American gossip rags. And it was an epic scandal.
My stomach clenched in sympathy as I read about the very public dissolution of her engagement to a French nobleman. Philipe Casmarte. He was handsome, urbane, and wealthy beyond imagining.
He was also apparently a pussy hound of the highest caliber.
He'd cheated on her on the night before her wedding, only to be publicly outed the next morning. Photos of him leaving another woman's home, looking like he'd spent the night doing exactly what he'd been doing... and apparently the other woman was a close friend of Francesca's.
Best friends, in fact.
Then came the photos that would haunt me forever. Francesca looking like an princess as she left the church unmarried, her head held high. No, she looked like an avenging angel in her wedding gown. It was an enormous white dress covered in sparkling crystals that hugged her tiny waist and belled out around her, like a pair of folded wings. A stone faced, furious angel.
I noticed that there were no tears. Not even a trace of a red eye. Not even one photo of her in the weeks to come as the paparazzi had followed her everywhere. But she never smiled either.
The story was lurid, awful, humiliating.
It was fantastic.
Francesca wasn't a sophisticated man eater as I thought initially. She had just gone through a bad breakup. She'd chosen me as her rebound.
I grinned for the first time since our argument.
She's chosen me.
And now all I had to make sure she didn’t regret it.
Chapter Ten
Francesca
Men! The most useless creations alive! Always competing with each other. Always on to the next shiny new object. Always controlled by the dangling flesh between their legs.
They were all the same and I hated them all!
I leaned forward over Athena. The terrain was unfamiliar so I could not go all out as much as I wanted to. I wanted to feel the wind in my hair. I wanted to outrun the demons battling inside me.
I gave her lead, knowing her instincts would guide us safely over the rolling grassy hills of the Delancey estate.
It was groomed land, made for riding. It was unlikely we would find a hole or a rock for her to stumble on.
Still, I would take no chances with the sweet and beautiful horse beneath me. She had a fierce heart for a mare and was every bit as exciting to ride as a stallion. Not only that, but she was my friend.
My only friend.
The only living creature on Earth that I could truly trust.
I'd learned that the hard way, after my best friend had made love to my fiancé on the night before my wedding. Not just that night, either. He'd been seen leaving her mansion in Rome. Veronica had always been a bit competitive with me, but I'd thought she cared for me. That we were friends. We had known each other since childhood.
I'd been wrong.
It wasn't just her either, as I quickly discovered. Nearly all my friends had known and participated in the deception. Even my own father had known about the affair. He had still tried to force me to go through with the ceremony. He'd told me that it was a woman's duty to forgive a man for his baser instincts. It was my duty to marry and produce an heir.
Ha! I would never marry that pathetic excuse for a man or any other! Never again would I allow a man to make my decisions for me.