Page 45 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
CHAPTER TWELVE
INTHEEND, Lauren was forced to call the Yorkshire Police to encourage the paparazzi to move off the property, down to the bottom of the long drive that led to Combe Manor from the village proper and away from the front of the house itself.
But the damage was done. The will had been leaked, as Lauren had known it would be eventually, and Dominik had been identified. That he had quietly married his half brother’s longtime personal assistant had made the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
She quickly discovered that she was nothing but a shameless gold digger. There was arch speculation that Matteo had dispatched her to corral Dominik, marry him under false pretenses and then...work him to Matteo’s advantage somehow.
It was both close to the truth and nothing like the truth at all, but any impulse she might have had to laugh at it dissipated in the face of Dominik’s response.
Which was to disappear.
First, he disappeared without actually going anywhere. It was like looking into a void. One moment she’d been having a conversation—admittedly, not the most pleasant conversation—with him. The next, it was as if the Dominik she’d come to know was gone and a stranger had taken his place.
A dark, brooding stranger, who looked at her with icy disinterest. And as far as she could tell, viewed the paparazzi outside the same. He didn’t call her little red again, and she would have said she didn’t even like the nickname.
But she liked it even less when he stopped using it.
Her mobile rang and rang, but she ignored the calls. From unknown numbers she assumed meant more reporters. From Pia, who had likely discovered that she had another brother from the news, which made Lauren feel guilty for not insisting Matteo tell her earlier. And from the various members of the Combe Industries Board of Directors, which she was more than happy to send straight to voice mail.
“It’s Mr. Combe,” she said when it rang another time. “At last.”
“You must take that, of course,” Dominik said, standing at the windows again, glaring off into the distance. “Heaven forfend you do not leap to attention the moment your master summons you.”
And Lauren couldn’t say she liked the way he said that. But she didn’t know what to do about it, either.
“We always knew this day would come,” she told him, briskly, when she’d finished having a quick damage control conversation with Matteo. “It’s actually surprising that didn’t happen sooner.”
“We have been gilding this lily for weeks now,” Dominik replied, his voice that dark growl that made everything in her shiver—and not entirely from delight. “We have played every possible Pygmalion game there is. There is nothing more to be accomplished here.”
“Where would you like to go instead?” She had opened up the cabinet and turned on the television earlier, so they could watch the breathless news reports and the endless scroll of accusation and speculation at the bottom of the screen. Now she turned the volume up again so she could hear what they were saying. About her. “I suppose we should plan some kind of function to introduce you to—”
“No.”
“No? No, you don’t want to be introduced to society? Or no, you don’t want—”
“You fulfilled your role perfectly, Lauren.” But the way he said it was no compliment. It was... dangerous. “Your Mr. Combe will be so proud, I am sure. You have acted as my jailer. My babysitter. And you have kept me out of public view for very nearly two months, which must be longer than any of you thought possible. You have my congratulations. I very nearly forgot your purpose in this.”
His voice didn’t change when he said that. And he didn’t actually reach out and strike her.
But it felt as if he did.
“I thought this would happen sooner, as a matter of fact,” Lauren managed to say, her heart beating much too wildly in her chest. Her head spinning a little from the hit that hadn’t happened. “And my brief was to give you a little polish and a whole lot of history, Dominik. That’s all. I found a hermit in a hut. All Mr. Combe asked me to do was make you a San Giacomo.”
“And now I am as useless as any one of them. You’ve done your job well. You are clearly worth every penny he pays you.”
It was harder to keep her cool than it should have been. Because she knew too much now. He was acting like a stranger, but her body still wanted him the way it always did. He had woken her this morning by surging deep inside her, catapulting her from dreams tinged with the things he did to her straight into the delirious reality.
She didn’t know how to handle this. The distance between them. The fury in his dark gaze. The harsh undercurrent to everything he said, and the way he looked at her as if she had been the enemy all along.
She should have known that the price of tasting happiness—of imagining she could—meant that the lack of it would hurt her.
More than hurt her. Looking at him and seeing a stranger made her feel a whole lot closer to broken.
She should have known better than to let herself feel.
“I know this feels like a personal attack,” she said, carefully, though she rather thought she’d been the one personally attacked. “But this is about how the San Giacomo and Combe families are perceived. And more, how Matteo and his sister have been portrayed in the press in the wake of their father’s death. No one wanted you to be caught up in that.”
“And yet here I am.”