Kitabı oku: «One Night In…», sayfa 7

He couldn’t know what was coming and she didn’t know how to tell him. One glance at his face across the top of the car and she was almost bowled over by the strict control he was holding over himself.

His eyes were not under control, though. They looked back at her with a possessive glitter that showered her with sexual promise.

She parted her paper-dry lips. ‘Raffaelle—’ she began anxiously.

‘Let’s go inside and find a bed,’ he said huskily.

She quivered and swallowed, then heaved in a tense breath in preparation to speak again. The front door to the house suddenly swung inwards, snatching her attention away from him.

He looked where she was looking, shoes scraping on worn cobbles as he turned then went perfectly still.

A man stood in the open doorway—a tall, well-built, swarthy-looking man wearing brown cords and a fleece coat. He was also a man easily in his fifth decade, with eyes like ice that he pinned on Raffaelle.

‘Jack,’ Rachel murmured, feeling trouble brewing even before she saw Raffaelle tense up when she said Jack’s name.

Damn, why hadn’t she thought about this before she’d teased Raffaelle about her relationship to Jack?

And, oh dear, but Jack did not look pleased at all.

She hurried forward. Raffaelle stood frozen as he watched her walk straight into the other man’s arms. He was trying to decide whether to go over there and punch the bastard for taking advantage of a vulnerable young woman left alone here to cope on her own. Or to reclaim what now belonged to him, then tell him to get the hell out.

In the end it was the other man who took the initiative.

‘Jack …’ Rachel burst into nervous speech as she reached him. ‘This is …’

‘I read the paper this morning, Rachel,’ he cut in, looking across the cobbles with a set of grey eyes that were as cold as Raffaelle’s own eyes.

He put her to one side so he could walk forwards. Rachel could feel the suspicion coming off him in waves. Jack knew her better than most people, so if anyone was going to smell a rat about her surprise engagement then it would be him.

‘I n-need to explain.’ She dashed after him.

‘Mr Villani,’ Jack greeted coolly.

Nerves jumping all over her now, Rachel rushed into speech yet again. ‘Raffaelle, this is Jack Fellows.’ Her anxious blue eyes pleaded with him to understand. ‘He’s my—’

‘Guardian,’ Jack himself put in. ‘Until she is twenty-five, that is.’

‘Well, that is a new name for it,’ Raffaelle drawled.

‘Jack is also my uncle,’ she said heavily. ‘M-my mother’s brother …’

‘And the one who looks out for her interests,’ Jack coldly put in. ‘So, if you are the same Italian who broke Rachel’s heart last year, then you had better come up with a good reason for doing it or Rachel will not receive my blessing for this engagement.’

Oh, dear God. Rachel wished the ground would open up and swallow her. It just had not occurred to her that Jack would make such a mistake!

Now Raffaelle was looking at her as if she was one of the devil’s children and she couldn’t blame him. It had to feel as if each time he turned around he was being forced to answer new charges that someone in her family planted at his feet!

‘Raffaelle is not Alonso,’ she muttered to Jack in a driven undertone.

‘Was that his name?’ Her uncle looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t recall you actually ever mentioning it.’

That was because she hadn’t. She’d just come back here from her trip to Italy looking and behaving like a woman with a broken heart.

Her uncle turned back to Raffaelle. ‘My sincere apologies for the mistake, Mr Villani,’ he said and offered him his hand.

But it was too late for Rachel as far as Raffaelle was concerned. She sensed his anger hiding beneath the surface of his smile as he took Jack’s proffered hand.

Then he switched the charm on. By the time he had finished explaining who he was and what he was, and trawled out the same story about how and where he’d met Rachel, he had her uncle eating out of his hand. It was like watching an action reply of the way he had handled the press the night before. And all Rachel could do was smile benignly once more and be impressed by his performance, while knowing retribution was close at hand.

He coolly assured Jack that he was no fortune hunter out to marry his niece for her share in the family pile. He assured him dryly that no, not all Italian men were so cavalier with the vulnerable female heart.

And of course he was madly in love with Rachel—what man would not be? His arm snaked out to hook her around her shoulders so he could draw her in close to his side.

I’m going to kill you the minute I get you alone, that heavy arm promised. And Rachel believed it—totally.

Then he apologised to Jack that the news of their betrothal had broken in the papers before he’d had a chance to come here and officially request Jack’s blessing.

It was his finest moment, Rachel acknowledged from her subservient place at his side. Jack was old-fashioned, with traditional values. She could see from her uncle’s expression that in Raffaelle he thought he was meeting a man after his own heart.

Jack had to rush off then but he offered them dinner to celebrate.

Smooth as silk, Raffaelle thanked him but regrettably had to decline. Apparently he had to be back in London this evening—to attend an irritating business dinner.

Whether there was a business dinner, Rachel did not know. But, of course, her uncle understood. Busy men and all that.

And Raffaelle’s ultimate coup was to gain Jack’s instant agreement that everything here would be taken care of while Rachel was away, because of course Raffaelle wanted her with him.

‘Just be happy, darling,’ Jack said to her, then he kissed her cheek, shook Raffaelle by the hand and left them, driving away while they stood and watched him—with Raffaelle’s arm still exhibiting its possession across her shoulders in a grip like a vice.

Happy was the last thing she was feeling by the time her uncle’s car disappeared out of sight. The moment he turned them to face the house Rachel tried to break free from him but his grip only tightened as he walked them across the cobbles.

The front door opened directly into the farmhouse-style kitchen, heated by the old Aga against the wall. Coming in here should have felt comfortingly familiar to Rachel but it didn’t. The door closed. The arm dropped from her shoulders. Moving like a skittish kitten, she took a few steps away from him then spun around.

‘I …’

‘If you are about to utter yet another lie to me—’ he cut right across her ‘—then let me advise you to keep silent!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

HER heart gave a thick little thump against her ribcage. It was like looking at a complete stranger again—a tall, dark, coldly angry stranger.

‘I was actually about to apologise for the … misunderstanding with Jack out there.’

‘You set me up.’

‘It w-wasn’t like that,’ she denied. ‘Y-you were fishing for information and I stupidly decided to tease you about my relationship with Jack.’

‘I am not referring to your desire to pull my strings by intimating there was another man in your life,’ he said. ‘Though using your uncle like that is unforgivable enough.’

‘Then what—?’ she demanded.

‘Alonso,’ he supplied. ‘The Italian heartbreaker I have been set up to play substitute for in your desire for payback!’

‘That’s not true!’ Rachel protested.

His angry eyes crashed into her like a pair of ice picks. ‘Not only is it true but you are the most devious witch it has ever been my misfortune to come into contact with!’ he incised. ‘This was never just about saving your half-sister’s marriage! You always had this hidden agenda in which I paid for the sins you believe your other Italian lover committed!’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I’m not that petty! Elise’s problems are serious enough without you adding such a crazy accusation into the mix! And anyway,’ she said stiffly, ‘you are nothing like Alonso. In fact I couldn’t compare the two of you in any way if I tried!’

‘In bed, perhaps?’ he grimly suggested. ‘Did you close your eyes and imagine it was him you were driving out of his head with your thrust-and-grind gyrations and those exquisite little muscle contractions?’

‘No!’ she said hotly. ‘How dare you? That is such a rotten thing to say!’

‘Then who did teach you to make love like that?’ He took a step towards her. ‘How many men, amore, does it take to produce such a well-practised sensualist?’

Blushing hotly, she cried, ‘I’m not listening to this—’

She turned towards the door that led through to the rest of the house. The way he moved so fast to slam a hand against the door to keep it shut had her shivering out a shocked gasp.

‘Answer the question.’ He loomed over her.

Rachel folded her arms. ‘You so love to throw your weight around, don’t you?’

‘Just answer.’

Anger flicked her eyes up to meet his. ‘Why don’t you tell me first—how many women have slipped in and out of your bed to make you such a fabulous lover?’ she hit back. ‘What was that,’ she mocked when he clenched his expression. ‘Do you want to tell me it’s none of my business?’

‘I am thirty-three years old, you are twenty-three.’

‘Meaning the ten year difference justifies the numbers you clearly don’t want to give?’

His shoulders shifted. ‘I do not break hearts.’

Rachel released a thick laugh. ‘You wouldn’t know if you broke hearts! Men like you don’t go into sexual relationships with the care of tender hearts in mind, Signor. They go into them for the sex!’

‘In your experience.’

She tried to push past him, but the muscles in his arm bunched to form an iron bar she could not pass. ‘Yes,’ she hissed out.

‘Gained mostly from this Alonso guy who took only what he wanted from you and trampled on the rest?’

‘Yes!’ she said again. ‘Happy now?’ she demanded. ‘Have you got the required information nicely fixed in your head? I’ve had two lovers. Both Italian. Both with their brains lodged in their pants!’

For some reason she hit out at him, though she didn’t understand why she had. The feeble blow barely glanced off his rock-solid bicep. And she was beginning to tremble now and didn’t like it—beginning to bubble and fizz with anger and resentment and the most horrible feeling of all—humiliation at the way Alonso had treated her!

So maybe Raffaelle was right: when she’d agreed to hit on him to save Elise’s marriage some subconscious part of her had wanted to pay back Alonso.

‘So I am playing the fall guy.’

He was reading her thoughts. She swallowed tensely.

He turned to push his shoulders and head back against the door. ‘Dio, I cannot believe I fell into this trap.’

Rachel struggled to believe that she had fallen into it all too. ‘I vowed I would never go near another Italian.’

‘Grazie,’ he clipped. ‘I wish you had kept to your vow.’

Rachel turned away and walked over to the Aga and put the kettle on to boil. Why she did it she hadn’t a single clue because she knew she could not swallow even a sip of anything right now.

But at least the move put distance between them. Silence hummed behind her while she removed her coat and laid it over the back of a kitchen chair. Outside a weak sun was trying its best to filter into the room through the window on to scrubbed pine surfaces that had been here for as long as she could remember, yet she still felt as if she were standing in an alien place.

‘Where did you meet him?’

The brusque question startled her into glancing at him. ‘Who—?’ she bit out.

His shoulders almost filled the doorway, his dark head almost level with the top of the frame. His face was still angry, the clenched jawline, the flat mouth, the glinting hard eyes, yet its harsher beauty still riveted her to the spot and claimed her breath and sent the hot stings of attraction streaking through her veins.

‘My heartbreaking rival,’ he provided and moved at last, shifting away from the door to pull out a chair at the table and sit down.

‘In Italy.’ Rachel moved to the sink and began toying with the mugs left there to drain. ‘I was working on a farm just outside Naples—w-work experience,’ she explained. ‘He lived there. We met. Within a week I was moving into his apartment …’ Wildly besotted with him and madly in love. ‘He told me he loved me and, like a fool, I believed him. When it came time for me to come back to England, he said thanks for the great time and that was it.’ She picked out two mugs at random. ‘Do you want tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee—when was this?’

‘Last summer.’ Shifting back to the Aga, she put the mugs down and picked up the coffee jar, then suddenly put it down again.

It had been only last summer when Alonso had taught her a lesson about Italian men she’d vowed never to forget. Yet here she was, involved with another and threatening to make the same mistakes all over again.

‘I need to—do a few things before I can leave here. Can you make your own coffee—?’

She had disappeared through a door before Raffaelle could say anything—running scared again, he recognised as he sat there listening to her footsteps running up a set of stairs.

Then, on an angry growl, he got up and went to stand by the window. One part of him was telling him to go after her and insist she finish telling him the whole miserable story about her Italian lover—her other Italian lover, he grimly amended. Another part of him was wondering why he was not just climbing into his car, which he could see standing outside on the cobbles, and driving away from this … fiasco before the whole thing leapt up again and bit him even harder!

Because it had bitten him already, a voice in his head told him. She could already be carrying his child.

‘Dio,’ he breathed. He could not remember another time in his life when he had been so thoroughly stung by a woman.

And he did not need all of this hassle. He had many much more important things he could be doing with his time than standing here wondering what she was doing upstairs where he could hear her moving about just above his head.

Leo Savakis was not really his problem—none of this was his damn problem—except for the as-yet-unconfirmed child. He did not need to hang around until they discovered the result of their mindless love-in. A telephone call in a month would make more sense than hanging around her like this.

Yet some deep inner core at work inside him was stopping him from getting the hell out of here.

Lust, he wanted to call it. A hot sexual attraction for a devious female with cute curly blonde hair and the heart-shaped face of an innocent but who made love like the most seasoned siren alive.

He had taught her how to be that person—that other Italian lover had tutored her on how to give the best of pleasures to a man, had then dumped her as if that was all she had been good for—a student of his sexual expertise and a boost for his ego.

And then there was that thing with real teeth which was biting at him. He was used to being desired for himself. He was used to being the favoured one women revolved around, waiting with bated breath to find out which one of them he would choose.

Arrogant thinking? Conceited of him to know that he only had to crook a finger to have them crawling with gratitude around his shoes?

Yes. He freely admitted it. His clenched chin went up.

With Rachel Carmichael he was learning very quickly what it felt like to come in as second best in the heart and mind of a woman.

He did not like it. It gnawed at his pride and his sexual ego. And if he needed to find an excuse for why he was still standing here instead of driving away, then there it was.

There was no way that he was going to accept second best to any other man. By the time this thing between them was over, his Italian rival was destined to be nothing but a vague shadow in her distant memory.

She’d gone quiet.

Raffaelle looked up at the ceiling. What was she doing up there—lying on her bed pining for the heartbreaker?

Rachel was sitting on her bed with her cellphone lying in her palm displaying a text message from Elise.

Thank you for doing this for me. I will love you always. Leo is over the moon about the baby. He’s taking us to Florida on a long overdue holiday. I could not be happier. He sends you his congratulations! Tell R thanks for his understanding. Have a great time playing the rich man’s future bride!

What a wonderful game, Rachel thought bitterly. What a great way to waste several weeks of her life.

If she still had a rich future husband to play the game with, that was. He could have come to his senses and made his escape while she was up here moping—driven away in a cloud of dust and offended pride!

Getting up, she walked over to the window that overlooked the courtyard. The silver Ferrari still sat there glinting in the shallow sunlight. Relief was the first emotion she experienced—for Elise’s sake, not her own, she quickly told herself.

Then the bedroom door suddenly opened and she turned to see him standing there, filling the gap like he had filled the other door downstairs and her senses responded, reaching down like taunting fingers to touch all too excitable pleasure points and she knew she was relieved he was still here for no one else’s sake but her own.

‘Ciao,’ he murmured huskily.

‘Ciao,’ she responded warily, searching his face for a sign that another battle was about to begin and feeling the taunting brush of those fingers again when she saw that anger had been replaced by lazy sensual warmth.

‘Need any help?’ he asked lightly.

‘Doing what?’ Rachel frowned.

‘Packing.’ Walking forward, his gaze flicked curiously around a room made up of countrified furniture complete with chintzy soft furnishings. ‘I see no sign of it happening yet,’ he observed. ‘But then—’ his eyes came back to hers ‘—maybe you have other ideas for how we can spend the rest of the afternoon—?’

It was like being tossed back into the pit of writhing snakes again.

Switch off the anger and let desire rush back in, she reasoned. ‘I d-don’t think—’

‘Good idea—let’s both not think.’ He moved in closer. ‘That small flowery bed looks the perfect place to spend a few hours thinking of nothing at all but this …’

But this—but this … His arms came around her and his mouth took over hers. No one needed to think about doing this, although—

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Y-you should …’

‘Be turned off you because you keep showing me different faces?’

His fingertips combed through the curls on her head as if to remind her of one of those changes she had made once already today and—damn her, but Rachel felt herself almost purring into his touch like a cat stroked by its beloved master.

He saw it and, on a soft laugh, caught her full, softly rounded, inviting mouth. It was one of those bewitching, tasty, compulsive kisses that clung, tongue tip to tongue tip. She swayed closer and his hands caught her waist to feel the slender arching of her spine for a few seconds before he gently but firmly drew her back.

‘You get to me, Rachel, you really get to me. Though God knows why you do, because I certainly don’t.’

‘Not your usual type?’ She could not resist the dig because while he frowned at her she was tingling in places that should not do that—the nerve-endings along the length of her inner thighs and between her legs.

He shook his head. ‘Not my usual anything,’ he muttered. ‘You answer back, you disrespect, you lie and you cheat without batting an eye.’

‘I don’t cheat—!’ she protested.

‘Then what do you call the woman I first met last night with the long straight hair and the couture dress?’

A cheat. He was right.

‘Well, this is the real me,’ she said as she took a step back from him. ‘The one with curls and jeans and—if you give me the chance—the one constantly fighting with dirt beneath her chipped fingernails …’ She looked down at her nails, frowning now because they looked so different from what she was used to seeing: clean, well manicured and—pink. ‘I am not made to be a femme fatale, Raffaelle. I wasn’t even that good at it last night, only you didn’t notice it because you were seeing what you’d been conditioned to expect to see at a function like that.’

‘You were damn good at what came afterwards,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ll take a rain-check on the femme fatale bit if I can have more of that.’

Her chin went up, blue eyes coolly challenging. ‘And the cheating face I’m supposed to show to the real world? Does it pop on and off according to what you require from me?’

To her surprise he let loose one of those lazy sexy smiles that melted the hardness out of his face. ‘I think I like the idea of that. I will keep the sensual curly-haired Circe all to myself while the rest of the world gets the femme fatale.’

‘Complete with fake ring to go with the fake relationship.’ Rachel heaved out a sigh. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this at all.’

‘Too late for regrets, cara. We have been over this already. We are both into this up to our necks.’

‘Not the sex part.’

‘Yes, the sex part!’ he contended. ‘It is here. We have it. And since it is the area where you really do get to me, we keep it.’

‘If I say no?’

His laugh was derisive. ‘You would have to want to say no and you don’t.’ He lowered his head to toy with her lips again. Electrifying, seducing. ‘Do you—?’ he challenged her for an honest answer.

Since her lips were clinging and her hands had already found their way beneath his T-shirt to the satin tight warmth of his skin she could not very well give any other answer than a weak shake of her head.

‘Then say it so I can hear it.’

‘I want you,’ she whispered, swaying closer to him again, wanting, needing, body contact.

His hands on her waist held her back. ‘Say my name,’ he insisted.

Say his name … Alonso was suddenly looming up between them again. She tugged in a tense breath.

‘I did not think of any other man but you last night, Raffaelle.’ She felt she owed it to him to tell him that.

His murmur of satisfaction brought his mouth back to hers again with a full-on hot, deep, sensual attack. At last he was letting her have what she craved the most—skin-to-skin contact with him. Her fingernails curled into satin-tight flesh, then followed the muscular line of his ribcage across his chest, then around to his back so she could punish him at the same time as she arched even closer.

He shuddered, deserting her mouth. ‘You ruthless witch,’ he muttered as he took a moment to grip the edge of his T-shirt and rake it right off. Hers followed suit before he would allow her any more of his mouth.

Like that they strained against each other, exploring with their hands, tongues and lips. He was perfect. No man should possess a body like his. Rachel tasted his skin, her hands moving possessively over his hair roughened contours while he stood there and let her enjoy him, encouraging her with kisses and slow strokes of his hands.

Neither of them noticed that they were still standing in front of the window. Rachel with her back to it, Raffaelle with the sheen of the sinking sun painting his skin rich gold with a hot coral glow. He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back to receive the full onslaught of his kiss.

Lights flashed, explosions took place. In the dizzying urgency of two lovers who needed to move this thing on to its next passionate stage, they missed that those explosive flashes came from outside the window.

The camera-toting paparazzo, who’d picked up their trail where others hadn’t, slunk off down the driveway back to his car parked in the lane. He was smiling, pleased with himself, while the two captured lovers continued what they were doing, Rachel reaching up her arms to wind them round Raffaelle’s neck as he lifted her up so her legs could cling to his hips. The bed was two steps away and he toppled her on to it, then bent to rid of her tight-fitting jeans.

He stood back. ‘Tell me what you want,’ he demanded as he began to strip.

‘You,’ she whispered.

‘And who am I?’

‘Raffaelle,’ she sighed out—then sighed again as the full burgeoning thrust of him was arrogantly displayed.

He made her repeat his name throughout the long hours that followed. By the time they drove away from her home the intimacy between them had evolved into something beyond sex.

They arrived back at his apartment mid-evening. Raffaelle cooked them a meal while Rachel unpacked her clothes, grimacing at the array of sleek designer hand-me-downs Elise was forever giving to her, which most women would kill to own, but which she had rarely ever had an occasion to wear. Now they took up all of her hanging space in Raffaelle’s dressing room as if they reflected the person she was now.

But she wasn’t, was she?

They ate in the living room, lounging on a rug with their backs resting against one of the sofas and the television switched on. Rachel ate while she tried to concentrate on what was happening on the TV screen when really she was already hyped up about what was to follow.

Crazy, she told herself. You know none of this is real. You must be mad to let him get to you this badly.

Then he reached out to pick up her wineglass from the low table in front of them and handed it to her and their eyes clashed. What was good or bad for her became lost in what happened next. He moved in to kiss her; she fell into the kiss. The glass went back to the table and they made love on the rug between bowls of half-eaten pasta with the television talking away to a lost audience. Afterwards he carried her, satiated and too weak to argue, to bed.

‘The pots and things …’ she mumbled sleepily.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I will see to them,’ and he left her there.

By the time Raffaelle came back into the bedroom she was asleep. When he slipped beneath the duvet he did not disturb her—he did not think he had the energy to cope with what was bound to ensue if he did.

He closed his eyes, wanting sleep to shut out the next few hours before he had to make any decisions about how they were going to tackle the rest of this. The great sex was one thing, but the realities of life still waited out there for him to deal with.

Lies built on more lies. Smothering the urge to sigh, he shifted his shoulders against the pillows. She moved beside him, turning in her sleep to curl in close to him, her soft breath warm on his neck and a cool hand settling lightly on his chest.

He looked down at it resting there, with its pale slender fingers and pearly-pink varnished nails, and his skin burned in response to what he knew it could make him feel.

Lies or not, she was in his blood now. A fantasy siren most men would kill to possess. He closed his eyes again and tried to hunt down that illusive thing called sleep. His last conscious thought was the grimly satisfying knowledge that she was almost worth the temporary loss of his freedom and the trail of subterfuge he was about to embark upon.

Unless Mother Nature decided to get in on the act.

He fell asleep on that thought.

The next day brought fresh problems to deal with. He had been drinking coffee in the kitchen and trying to put his head in order while Rachel still lay lost in sleep in his bed, when his housekeeper arrived and laid a tabloid down in front of him.

‘I thought you might want to see this,’ she murmured embarrassedly.

But one glance at the photograph was enough to send him into the bedroom. ‘Rachel, wake up.’

He shook her gently, then watched as she did her trick of emerging from the duvet in that way which grabbed at his senses.

‘We need to talk,’ he said grimly, then dropped the paper on to her lap.

Silence hung for the next thirty seconds while he stood there waiting and she looked down at the newspaper. There was something disturbingly erotic about the way the photograph had caught them and he knew by the way she suddenly dropped her face into her hands that this was one intrusion too far.

A nerve at the corner of his hard mouth gave a twitch. ‘I suppose that being caught on camera like this will kill the suspicions of any mocking doubters and prove that we are indeed what we appear to be. But from now on both of us must be aware of what we do and what we say even when we believe we have complete privacy.’

‘Life in the fast lane,’ she named it bitterly.

‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘I am used to it—though not to the degree that I feel the need to hide behind closed curtains,’ he put in cynically. ‘I would have expected that, having a half-sister like Elise and an insight into your half-brother’s way of earning his living, you would know all the pitfalls of life in the fast lane.’

At last Rachel lifted her head to look at him. ‘Are you implying that I set this up too?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ he denied. ‘I am simply advising you to draw on your knowledge gained from both of your siblings and think carefully before you move or speak.’

‘It sounded more like a command to me.’

‘Call it what you want,’ he said. ‘But accept that you will not go out without someone with you,’ he instructed. ‘I will assign one of my own security people to escort you.’

It was only as he said it that Rachel realised she was stuck here in London, in his apartment with nothing to do. Elise was away. Even Mark was away. She didn’t know anyone else in the city! While it was very obvious by the way he was dressed that he was not going to hang around here if at all possible and keep her company.

‘So I’m to be a prisoner now as well as your …’ She severed the rest but they both knew what she had been about to say.

‘It cuts both ways, cara,’ Raffaelle said unsympathetically. ‘I had a life and relative freedom with which to live it until you threw yourself at me. Now I have you, a bed and no life to call my own.’