Kitabı oku: «One Night In…», sayfa 8

‘At least you get to go to work.’

‘It is what I do during the day.’

‘Well, lucky you.’ Rachel handed him back the newspaper, then she curled on her side and tugged the duvet up to her ears. ‘I might as well stay right here then, since it’s the only place I am useful.’

He laughed. ‘Hold that delightful thought until I return.’

Then he was gone. The door closed. He strode down the hallway and out of the apartment, then into the lift. It took him down to the basement where Dino and his limo awaited him. The moment he settled in the rear seat and opened his laptop his business cellphone began ringing and real life settled in. As he concluded his fourth complicated call of the journey, Dino was pulling the car to a stop outside the Villani building. He climbed out and strode in through the doors into familiar surroundings where that other excitement which came a very close second to sex waited to take him over.

Then it came.

‘Congratulations, Mr Villani!’

‘Congratulations, sir!’

Congratulations resounded from every corner. The curious smiles that accompanied them were due almost entirely to the photograph printed in this morning’s paper, he judged.

His smile was mocking but fixed. And even that was wearing thin by the time he hit the top floor of the building.

‘Congratulations, Raffaelle,’ his secretary greeted him and dumped a whole load of telephone message slips down on his desk.

‘What are those?’ he asked dubiously.

‘Congratulations and invitations, of course.’ She grinned. ‘I would hazard a guess that these are only the beginning. It looks as if you and Miss Carmichael will be dining out every night for months!’

He gave her them back. ‘You deal with them.’

‘Me?’

‘Filter out the rubbish and sort the rest into some kind of order,’ he instructed. ‘Then I will look at them.’

‘But wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Miss Carmichael did it?’

Recalling the woman he had just walked away from brought a gleam to his eyes. ‘No. She has better things to do,’ he murmured dryly.

Like playing his personal little sex nymph.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SEX NYMPH WAS UP, showered and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt by the time Raffaelle entered his office building to a barrage of congratulations.

The sex nymph could not be more prim and polite when his housekeeper introduced herself as Rosa, the chauffeur’s wife; apparently both of them travelled everywhere that Raffaelle went.

And the sex nymph had no intention of being anywhere near the bedroom by the time he got back home again.

She had come up with a much more practical way to spend her time.

Over a light breakfast prepared by Rosa, Rachel planned her day with the concentration of a tourist determined to miss nothing out. Only her tour would not consist of historical sites in the city; she was going to trawl the restaurants and food wholesalers specialising in organic produce.

Her nice new security guard arrived conveniently as she was about to leave. His name was Tony and he had the use of a car, which meant far less footwork.

Still, by the time she had been delivered safely back to the apartment long hours later, she was almost dead on her feet.

Raffaelle was crossing the hall towards his study from the living room as she stepped in through the door. Pinstriped jacket gone, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie knot hanging low at his throat and glass slotted between his fingers, he looked deliciously like the successful man just in from work and ready to wind down from his busy day.

Rachel paused, completely held by his sexual pull.

He paused too and looked at her, silky curls ruffled, face still chilled by the cold breeze blowing outside, woollen coat unbuttoned to reveal a white T-shirt with a neckline that scooped low at the front. He took his time taking in every detail with the slow—slow thoroughness of a seasoned connoisseur of beautiful women.

Knowing that she lacked the connoisseur’s high standards right now sent Rachel’s chin shooting up, blue eyes challenging him to say something derogatory.

‘Did you enjoy your day, mi amore?’ was the sarcastic comment that fell from his lips.

Defences heightened, she reluctantly supposed she should explain where she’d been. ‘I went …’

‘I know where you have been,’ he cut in. ‘Tony works for me, not for you.’

‘Then, yes—’ they could both play with polite sarcasm, she decided ‘—I had a very enjoyable day, thank you. And you?’

‘I had an … interesting day,’ he replied, watching her every step as she made herself walk forward. ‘I spent it giving polite replies to polite invitations for us to dine with polite people who cannot wait to get a better look at my future wife.’

Recalling the revealing photograph in this morning’s paper sent a rush of heat into her cool cheeks.

‘Of course you did the wise thing and politely declined those polite invitations?’

‘No, I accepted—most of them.’

Rachel pulled to a standstill. ‘I hope you’re just teasing.’

He took a sip of his drink, every inch of him vibrating with a kind of sardonic challenge that gave her his answer before he shook his dark head.

‘The show must go on.’

‘But I don’t want to meet your friends!’ she protested.

‘Scared they might see through us?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Can’t we just want to—be alone together— as real engaged couples prefer to be?’

‘You’re mistaking a new betrothal with a new marriage,’ he countered. ‘Honeymooners want to—be alone together. Newly betrothed couples want to get out there and—show off.’

‘But I don’t want to show off!’

A satin black eyebrow arched in enquiry. ‘You don’t think I am good enough to show off?’

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she snapped. What woman in her right mind would say he wasn’t fit to show off? ‘I just don’t think we are fit to be seen as an intimate couple within a group of your friends!’ Stuffing her hands into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders in self-defence, she went on, ‘I presumed we would do—safer things like go out to quiet restaurants or something.’

‘A restaurant it is.’ He smiled. ‘Eight o’clock. We will be meeting my stepsister and several other close friends of mine.’

Rachel’s stomach started rolling sickly. ‘Tonight?’ she squeezed out painfully.

‘Si,’ he confirmed.

‘W-why couldn’t you be friendless?’ she tossed out helplessly.

He just grinned. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, cara, but I am certainly not friendless.’

‘But your stepsister of all people. She knows we are fakes!’

His mood changed in a flicker. ‘Stop playing the scared innocent, Rachel, when we both know you are far from it,’ he clipped out. ‘This is what you signed up for to save your sister’s marriage. And lovers who fall on one other as often as we do are certainly not faking it!’

She pushed her hands through her hair. ‘You know what I meant.’

‘And you know what I mean when I say—get your act together,’ he instructed, ‘because we are going out in public tonight and I want the besotted lover by my side, not the farmer with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide!’

Rachel stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to imply?’

He threw out an impatient hand. ‘You compare yourself badly to your more glamorous sister,’ he provided. ‘You compare me with your ex-lover and hate the fact that I am Italian like him.’

‘I do not!’ she denied.

‘Was he good-looking?’ he demanded.

‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Her eyes went wide in bewilderment.

‘Was he—?’ he persisted.

‘Yes!’

‘How old?’

‘My age—’

‘And what kind of car did he drive?’

She sucked in an angry breath. ‘A red Ferrari,’ she answered. ‘But that wasn’t—’

‘Great,’ he gritted. ‘Mine is silver. Is that a bad mark against me or one against him for being too flashy?’

‘You’re crazy,’ she breathed.

Maybe he was. At this precise moment Raffaelle did not know why he was so fired up about a man he probably would not give a second thought to in other circumstances.

‘Just go and get ready.’ He turned his back on her and strode into his study, wanting to toss his drink to the back of his angry throat but refusing to allow himself the gut soothing pleasure while she was standing there staring at him. ‘And I don’t like flashy, so don’t come out dressed in red!’ he could not stop himself from adding.

Then he shut the door—slammed the damn door!

Rachel shook all the way into the bedroom. She shook as she removed her coat and laid it aside. She had absolutely no idea what all of that had been about and she didn’t think that she wanted to know.

Did he hate her—was that it? she immediately questioned. Did he resent her being here so badly that he needed to take chunks out of her to get his own back on her for putting him in this situation in the first place?

Was he locked in his silly study praying that she wasn’t pregnant with his child?

And he did not want to see the farmer dressed in flashy red when she came out. Her lips gave a quiver. He preferred to see the sleek Elise look-alike because at least he could relate to her and pretend she was his type!

Rachel stripped off her clothes and walked into the bathroom, not sure if she wanted to throw things or cry her eyes out.

The tears almost won the moment she stepped beneath the shower spray and she would have let them if he had not chosen that moment to push open the bathroom door and stride fully naked into the shower.

‘No, don’t stiffen up,’ he said as she did exactly that. ‘I am here to make you feel better, not worse.’

He drew her back against him, angling both of them so the shower sprayed down her front, then dropped his lips to her ear. ‘I came to apologise for being bad-tempered out there.’

‘You mean it’s just hit you that you have to trail me in front of your friends having ripped my head off,’ Rachel said.

‘I had a bad day.’

He was tasting her earlobe now. Rachel jerked it away.

‘Accepting invitations you had no desire to accept.’

‘While thinking of you and that bed I had walked away from.’ He chased the earlobe again. ‘So I was bad tempered all day and came home more than ready to find you waiting for me. But you were not here; you were out enjoying yourself.’

‘Playing the farmer to my heart’s content.’

‘I like the farmer,’ he murmured lustily. ‘She is toned and sleek and very sexy. I am also jealous of the ex-lover …’

That shocking confession finally stopped her from trying to pull away from him.

‘Impressed by that?’ he mocked.

‘Yes,’ she answered honestly.

‘I thought you might be.’ His mouth bit gently into the sensitive crook between her shoulder and neck.

Rachel’s breathing feathered and she closed her eyes, giving herself up to this when she knew that she shouldn’t. Wanting him to want her for herself and not just because she was here for the taking.

He found the soap and used it to paint every inch of her he could reach. Soon she was lost in a scented steam-filled world that shut out everything else.

Afterwards she felt lazy and languid and much too aware of him as her irresistible lover as the two of them moved around between the bathroom, bedroom and dressing room, preparing to go out.

Which had been the object of the exercise in the shower, she reminded herself. Several times he stopped her passing him by just fusing his mouth to hers in a slow clinging kiss and the lazily hooded way in which he watched her shyly lower her eyes and move away quickly only heightened an intimacy that was threatening to take her over completely if she didn’t watch out.

She was relieved when he finally left her alone so she could finish getting ready without having him around as such a breathtaking distraction. By the time she joined him in the living room Rachel truly believed she had managed to get herself together—until he looked up from the broadsheet newspaper he was reading while lounging on a sofa and the whole whirlwind of awareness whipped into action again.

She’d chosen to wear a sleek short V-neck dress in dramatic matt black. Elise had donated the dress, claiming that it did not suit her because she didn’t have the curves to fill it out.

Well, Rachel had the curves and, the way that Raffaelle was looking at her, he had not missed a single one. Her hair was loose, its curls carefully ironed out so the style was smooth and sleek. As he rose to his feet her blue eyes followed him, defiant yet anxious—just in case she did not look as good as she hoped she did.

But the look reassured her as he came towards her wearing the kind of black lounge suit that yelled couture homme. When an Italian male dressed he never ever dressed badly, was Rachel’s single dry-mouthed heart pummelling observation.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured as he reached her, sending pleasurable shivers chasing up her spine as he bent to brush a caress on her cheek. ‘But I prefer the curls.’

‘Different woman,’ she answered with a small shrug.

His eyes narrowed, all the sensuality hardened out of his mouth. He said nothing for several long seconds and Rachel knew she had just managed to remind him of the real reason why they were together.

Maybe that was a good thing, she decided, as he helped her into the little black satin evening jacket she had brought into the room with her, still without saying anything else. They left the apartment and travelled in the lift down to where Dino waited by the car with the rear passenger door open. She slid in. The door clicked shut. Raffaelle rounded the bonnet and slid in from the other side. His long body folded with crease-free elegance into the seat beside her.

Lean, sleek, supremely sophisticated, she recognised. Crossing one silk-covered knee over the other, she fixed her attention on the partition which separated them from Dino.

Tension fizzed in the silence. Rachel found herself clinging to her little black beaded purse. The car swished along London’s busy streets, recently drenched by a heavy downpour of rain. Everything outside the car seemed to glitter and sparkle in the darkness, everything inside the car was shadowed and oddly flat.

Raffaelle wished he knew what he was feeling right now, but he didn’t. It was crazy to have been so taken aback by her reminder of what this was all about when they’d done little else but argue about it since they’d first met.

But he had been taken aback by it, stunned by the gut-twisting reminder that none of this was real—that she wasn’t real.

Not tonight anyway.

She was the sleek look-alike sister of Elise Castle-Savakis, pretending to be a version of Rachel Carmichael that just did not exist. Even the dress was Elise’s, classy and stylish and very sexy on Rachel, but he would be prepared to bet it was not of her own taste or choice.

He preferred the other Rachel with the curls and the spark of defiance in her blue eyes.

‘Having second thoughts about risking me in there amongst your friends?’ she asked suddenly.

Raffaelle blinked, realising that they’d come to a stop outside the restaurant. By the atmosphere inside the car, they’d been here like this for several seconds.

The restaurant was one of the best Italian restaurants in London. It was a place where the rich set ate. It was his kind of place and his kind of life, but neither were hers.

He turned his head to look at her. Barely an hour ago, she had been coming all around him in a breathtaking pulse of intimacy that still circulated in his blood. He looked at her silk-straight hair and her beautiful pearly-white complexion, the heavily accentuated black-lashed blue eyes and the sexy pink-coated mouth.

He could taste them. He could feel those soft pink-coated lips warm against his own whether she was this Rachel or the other Rachel. And if he was sitting here like this, wanting to know where the two Rachels became one, then he’d found it in that mouth and what happened to her when he claimed it.

‘I won’t embarrass you, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ she stated, fizzing inside with resentment at the analytical way he was looking her over as if he was actually having to give some deep thought to the sarcastic question she had tossed out.

‘You sound very sure about that, little farmer girl,’ he said huskily.

‘Well, I’m not,’ she admitted honestly. ‘I suppose I should have said I will try not to embarrass you.’

Easing his wide shoulders into the corner of the seat, his eyes glittered over her tense face. ‘Do you really believe I will care if you do decide to embarrass me?’ he asked curiously.

Rachel offered a shrug. ‘I don’t know you well enough to judge.’

‘No, you don’t …’

She didn’t like the way he had said that, or the way he was looking at her now. Her tension was zinging along just about every nerve ending she had in her body and she wished he would just—

‘Are we going to go in there or not?’ she flicked out.

‘In a minute,’ he said smoothly, ‘This conversation is just getting interesting …’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Because it has nothing to do with whether you are going to embarrass me,’ he said ignoring her interruption. ‘It is to do with you being scared that I might embarrass you.’

Rachel stared at him. ‘Why should you want to do that?’

‘My thought exactly,’ he said softly. ‘Yet you are scared that I am going to take you in there, then just leave you to sink or swim.’

Her pink upper lip gave a vulnerable quiver. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of being served up along with the main course,’ she confessed.

He laughed. It was bad of him. But it was a very low, sexily-amused laugh and Rachel laughed too—one of those tense little sounds that jump up unexpectedly from the throat.

The atmosphere changed in that single moment, spinning the tension into a fine thread that eddied across the gap between them then morphed into something else. He moved so fast that she didn’t see him coming, and then it was too late when he had taken arrogant possession of her mouth.

‘You’ve stolen all my lipstick,’ she protested when the kiss came to an end.

‘I know.’ He sat back a little, watching her as she fumbled in her bag for a tissue and her lipstick case. ‘Keep on reapplying it, cara,’ he advised as she reapplied a coating of pink with a decidedly unsteady hand. ‘Because I find I like doing it. In fact I do believe I am becoming addicted to the taste.’

She handed him the tissue. ‘It looks better on me than it does on you.’

And he grinned, wiping pink from his lips while his eyes tangled with hers. It was no use pretending that they weren’t doing something else here, because they were.

Then suddenly he was being serious. ‘Listen to me,’ he urged. ‘I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself tonight, okay? I don’t care if you want to spend the evening going on about the pros of organic produce. I don’t care if you decide to ruffle your hair into curls or you march off to the kitchens to tout the chef for his business—’

‘I’m not quite that uncouth!’ she cried.

‘You are missing the point,’ he chided. ‘The point being that I don’t give a damn if you are just yourself and act like yourself. The only thing I do care about is that you stick to the main story as to how we met and keep in mind that, when we leave here, we go home to my apartment together as a couple, then to bed and to—this.’

Another kiss was on its way to her. ‘Don’t you dare,’ Rachel drew her head back.

But he did dare—quickly, briefly, not enough to steal her lipstick a second time but more than enough to distract her from what he was about to do next.

She felt her left hand being taken. By the time she had the sense to glance down, the fake sapphire ring had been removed and he was already replacing it with one that looked exactly the same.

‘W-what have you done that for?’ she demanded.

‘The fake might have been a good fake, cara, but it did not stand a chance of fooling the experts we are about to meet.’

‘It fooled you when you saw it.’ She was staring at the exact copy now adorning her finger.

‘I was too angry to notice it then.’

‘It’s so—gaudy.’ She sighed, staring at the ring as it shimmered and sparkled much more than its predecessor.

‘Not to your taste?’

‘Not to anyone’s taste,’ she said ruefully. ‘It was only meant to grab Leo’s attention … How did you get hold of this one so quickly?’

‘I am the kind of man who gets what he wants when he wants it,’ he answered with careless conceit.

He went to put the fake ring into his pocket.

‘No—’ As quick as a flash Rachel plucked it from his hand and pushed it into her beaded purse. ‘I’ll wear the real one when we are out together, but only then,’ she informed him stubbornly. ‘Otherwise I’ll wear the fake one.’

‘If you’re afraid of losing it, it is insured—’

But Rachel gave a shake of her head. This had nothing to do with losing the real ring, but more to do with the fear that if she didn’t hang on to the fake she would lose touch with reality.

‘I will only wear it when we are out,’ she repeated.

‘And in our bed?’ he demanded shortly.

Rachel thought about that for a second or two. ‘I won’t wear either ring,’ she decided.

‘Meaning our sexual relationship has nothing to do with the rest of this?’

Unless he was able to fake what was happening there as well. Then she nodded, because the sex was the only truly honest part of this.

He said nothing but just sighed and went to open the car door—then suddenly changed his mind. He turned on her, caught her chin in his fingers, then dipped his head for a third, definite, lipstick-stealing, full-blooded, possessive lover’s kiss.

‘The sexual part of this relationship does not stay behind in the bedroom, Rachel,’ he stated harshly. ‘Remember that, while you fix your lipstick again …’

He climbed out of the car then, leaving her sitting there trembling and shaken by the anger which had erupted from him.

What was the matter with him? Why should he care which ring she wore, so long as she didn’t make him look the cheap fake?

Her lips felt tender and bruised this time as she reapplied the lipstick. He’d walked around the car and was now standing with her door open, waiting for her to join him on the pavement.

It was chilly outside and her satin jacket had not been made to keep the cold out. She shivered. He stepped closer, fitting her beneath his shoulder and curling his hand into her waist.

Gosh, don’t we look the picture of romance? she thought dryly as he walked her towards the restaurant.

‘Smile,’ he instructed as he pushed the door open.

Rachel looked up to find that he was looking down at her. One of those frozen in time moments suddenly grabbed them, locking them inside their own private space.

‘Heavens, Raffaelle,’ another voice intruded. ‘You were out there so long we were about to lay bets as to whether or not you were going to just take her back home again.’

‘As you see, Daniella,’ he came back smoothly, ‘Rachel’s manners are so much better than mine …’

He held Rachel’s eyes as he said it. He watched her cheeks warm to a blush when she realised what Daniella had meant. Then he took hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips. The engagement ring sparkled as he kissed it. Her soft pink pulsing mouth gave a telling little quiver that shot an injection of heat down to his groin.

Someone else spoke—he did not know who. When he turned, he could barely make sense of the blur of faces all smiling at them.

What the hell was the matter with him? Was he sickening for something to have double-vision like this? It would be the first germ to catch him out since his childhood, he mused grimly, frowning as he looked back at Rachel.

Her face was in perfect focus. He did not like what that discovery was trying to say to him. With a taut shift of his shoulders, he pulled himself together and turned to face his dinner guests again, then switched on his lazy smile.

‘Buona sera, he greeted. ‘My apologies for keeping you waiting when I know you are dying to meet my beautiful Rachel…’