The Italian Demands His Heirs

A night in the Italian’s bed...

Now she’s pregnant with his babies!

To counter a media scandal, billionaire Raffaele di Mancini must marry fiery Vivi Mardas. But when she rejects his convenient proposal, he’s stunned. How can she deny their searing chemistry? Determined to convince Vivi to be his temporary bride, Raffaele’s not above using one night of seduction! But when Vivi discovers she’s carrying his twins, Raffaele demands she meet him down the aisle—for real!

Lose yourself in this passionate marriage of convenience!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Also by Lynne Graham

His Queen by Desert Decree

The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

Billionaires at the Altar miniseries

The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

The Italian Demands His Heirs

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Italian Demands His Heirs

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08758-2

THE ITALIAN DEMANDS HIS HEIRS

© 2019 Lynne Graham

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

STAMBOULAS FOTAKIS WAS in a grim mood as he surveyed the dossier sited squarely in front of him on his desk. To the side of it sat the much thinner file containing an investigative report on his quarry, Raffaele di Mancini.

Raffaele di Mancini, his granddaughter Vivi’s bête noire, the man who had wronged her without reason.

Another good-looking bastard, he thought irritably, flipping the folder open to scan his victim’s perfectly chiselled profile, which would have done justice to any male supermodel. Obviously, his three granddaughters liked handsome men. Well, he had settled his eldest granddaughter Winnie’s problems, even if that hadn’t quite turned out as he had planned when she had elected to stay married to the father of her son.

Vivi, however...bright, hot-tempered Vivi...would be a much tougher nut to crack than the more biddable Winnie. He had had a huge argument with Vivi at his seventy-fifth birthday party, something of a novelty for a man who generally only met with fear and flattery. Being very rich and very influential, Stam was more accustomed to those who did exactly as he told them to do. But not Vivi, he reminisced fondly, Vivi who had no fear of him and spoke her mind without hesitation and, surprisingly, he respected her the more for her inner strength and conviction.

Fortunately for him, however, Vivi utterly loathed Raffaele di Mancini for the way he had wrecked her life. Two years earlier he had ruined her reputation to ensure that his flighty little sister came out of the same scandal whiter than white. Vivi had been accused, not only of being a prostitute, but also of having lured Arianna into stripping off for the camera and signing up as an escort with a sleazy business masquerading as a legitimate modelling agency. No, there was little chance of Vivi falling in love with Mancini, Stam conceded with an amused smile. But of the three potential husbands he had originally lined up to rescue his granddaughters’ reputations, Raffaele di Mancini was undeniably the most dangerous as well as being the biggest mystery.

Raffaele, billionaire banker and noted philanthropist, was the descendant of an extravagantly long and blue-blooded family line that could trace its beginnings back to the tenth century. By repute, he was a genius in the financial field and he led a remarkably discreet and conservative life, never ever seeking publicity. That made it all the harder for Stam to understand why Mancini had broken the discretion of a lifetime and labelled poor Vivi an escort on the back of the slenderest evidence. Had he somehow imagined it would shield his kid sister, Arianna, from being associated with the sleazy operation both young women had innocently become embroiled with?

But what did that matter now when the damage had been done? Stam ruminated. His problem was that Mancini was too clever by far to be entrapped by the usual ploys and too rich and virtuous to be bribed. That had meant that Stam was forced to stoop to a means of persuasion that he disliked intensely, particularly when that file revealed that Mancini had spent his adult life struggling to protect his wayward sister from her mistakes and their consequences. It was commendable that he had gone to so much trouble for a girl who was only a half-sister and the daughter of the drug-addled stepmother he could only have despised.

Mancini, however, deserved everything he had coming to him for what he had done to poor Vivi’s self-esteem, Stam reflected with harsh finality.

* * *

Raffaele di Mancini was uneasy.

And he didn’t know why, which nagged at him because he always trusted his gut. Yet there was nothing wrong in his world. His life ran with machine-like efficiency from the instant he arose at six in the morning to a perfectly cooked breakfast to the moment he retired to a bed made up with the very finest bed linen available.

All was quiet within his family circle as well. His younger sister, Arianna, for a long time a source of concern, was finally settled and on the brink of marrying a suitable man, with whom she was currently sharing a home in Florence. He had neither worries nor any thorny problems to tackle.

In London to speak at a banking conference, he had been surprised to be invited to a meeting with the notoriously reclusive Stamboulas Fotakis at his palatial and multi-storeyed London apartment. Fotakis was one of the richest men in the world but Raffaele had never met him and naturally he was curious to discover what had prompted such an invitation. He was also curious about the man himself, he acknowledged wryly. Over the years, reams had been written about Stam Fotakis and even if half of the stories could be discounted as nonsense, what remained was the stuff of legend.

Raffaele raked impatient fingers through his cropped black hair and checked his designer watch. Being kept waiting was a new experience for him. Raised to believe that good manners were integral to good business practice, Raffaele frowned, dark-as-charcoal eyes flaring with irritation. Clearly, Fotakis was running late but Raffaele was keen to get back to his town house and unwind after a very long day spent answering stupid questions and being sociable. Raffaele had a very low tolerance threshold for fools. Labelled a genius at school, he was impatient, extremely organised and only happy when following a precise schedule.

A PA, a beautiful blonde, entered the reception room and ushered him into a lift, where she tried to strike up a conversation and flirt with him. Stiffening in exasperation at her hair-tossing, fluttering eyelashes and lingering glances, Raffaele behaved much like a man swatting off a fly. Women came on to him all the time and it often irritated him. It got in the way of normal dialogue and tainted the professional atmosphere of an office environment. If she had been working for Raffaele, he would have instantly sacked her for such a display.

Women had their place in his life, of course they did. Raffaele had a high sex drive, as with many other thirty-year-old men. But he was infinitely more discreet than most. He chose his lovers with care and none of his affairs lasted longer than a few weeks. There was even a good reason for that brief timescale. Raffaele had eventually worked out that the longer he spent with a woman, the more attached and ambitious and indiscreet she became. As he had no intention of getting married until he was in his forties and mature enough to make a wise choice, he enjoyed sex only as long as it came without strings.

Raffaele was shown into a wood-panelled office of almost Victorian magnificence. Another door opened and a small white-haired, bearded man appeared. He immediately lifted the fat file on the desk and extended it to Raffaele. ‘Mr di Mancini,’ Stam Fotakis murmured flatly.

‘Mr Fotakis.’ Somewhat disconcerted by the lack of social chit-chat even though he had very little time for such time-wasting pursuits, Raffaele accepted the file and took the seat his host indicated.

‘Give me your thoughts on that,’ Stam invited smoothly.

As Raffaele leafed ever more slowly through the incredibly detailed file with a rare sense of growing horror, he breathed in slow and deep to steady himself. Arianna’s every mistake seemed to be included in that file and there were one or two that not even Raffaele had known about. He swallowed hard on his shock at being presented with such a shady dossier on his little sister’s past activities.

‘What are you planning to do with this information?’ Raffaele enquired in as civil a tone as he could manage because he was angry, seriously angry, and that was an emotion he rarely experienced but instinctively knew had to be controlled.

His host surveyed him steadily. ‘That very much depends on you. It will be released to the tabloid press only if you disappoint me,’ he revealed quietly.

‘That is an unthinkable threat,’ Raffaele breathed tautly. ‘I cannot believe that my sister has ever done you any harm.’

‘Let me explain the connection,’ Stam urged him stonily. ‘It’s the tale of two young women, one born into rank and privilege and great wealth...your sister.’

‘And the other?’ Raffaele prompted impatiently.

‘Born into poor circumstances and raised without any advantages but nonetheless a hard-working, educated and respectable young woman...and my granddaughter.’

‘Your granddaughter,’ Raffaele repeated blankly, still trying to fathom at top speed what Stam Fotakis could possibly want from him to warrant such a threat.

‘Vivien Mardas, better known as Vivi,’ Stam supplied. ‘For a little while she was a friend of your sister’s.’

Raffaele went rigid, the link established and comprehension now possible. ‘I remember her,’ he said stiffly. ‘She is a member of your family?’

‘Yes,’ Stam said, equally stiffly. ‘And I am as protective of her as you are of your sister and determined to rectify any injustices she has suffered.’

Raffaele remained diplomatically silent, for a slow, deep anger was burning like hellfire inside him as he joined the dots and hit pay dirt. When he had known her, Vivi had definitely been unaware that she had a very rich and powerful grandfather. Evidently, having discovered that no doubt welcome reality, she had lied about the less presentable parts of her past in an effort to cover them up.

‘Injustices?’ he prompted flatly.

‘You ruined her reputation by referring to her as a prostitute. As that ludicrous designation and the story is still available online to anyone who cares to look her up, Vivi found it impossible to find a job commensurate with her abilities,’ Stam revealed. ‘She suffered a great deal for someone who was innocent of fault. Her friends dropped her, her name was bandied about. She was laughed at, despised and she was obliged to leave jobs until she was finally forced to legally take another surname to hide that embarrassing past. She is now known as Vivien Fox.’

Raffaele nodded, that little sob story of Vivi’s woes touching him not at all. Of course, he wasn’t an elderly man, keen to believe only the best of his grandchild, he reasoned without hesitation. He was cool, logical, innately critical and suspicious, particularly when it came to labelling a woman an innocent. He had yet to meet a genuinely innocent woman.

He remembered Vivi very well. Hair that glittered like copper wire in the sunlight but which felt like spun silk. A tall, beautiful redhead, who could look impossibly elegant in anything she wore, even jeans. Skin like translucent porcelain and eyes as brilliant a blue as the Italian summer sky. He also remembered how very close he had come to succumbing to her wiles, even though she didn’t fit his preferred expectations of a woman in any field. He had had a narrow escape there and he was still grateful for it and not one bit regretful for anything he had said that could have offended Stam Fotakis.

Unless his misfortune in offending Stam was to lead to his kid sister being harmed, he adjusted grudgingly. And harmed Arianna very definitely would be, if that dossier of her past foolishness was ever to be released to the press, because her fiancé’s family were very conventional, and he would come under a lot of pressure to ditch her. That would send Arianna reeling and straight back into the erratic behaviour she had left behind her after falling in love with Tomas.

‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Raffaele intoned levelly. ‘But I cannot believe that you genuinely want to injure another naive young woman like my sister. Arianna was born with problems.’

Stam lifted a silencing hand. ‘I know she was born addicted to drugs and suffers from poor impulse control. I know she’s not particularly bright and is far too trusting of strangers, but she’s not my responsibility, she’s yours,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘To make restitution, I want you to marry Vivi and give her your illustrious name.’

‘Marry her?’ Raffaele exclaimed in angry disbelief before he clenched his jaw shut and bit back any unwise comments as to the likelihood of Vivi’s much-vaunted innocence.

‘Only for the ceremony, suitably publicised to give her proper standing in society,’ Stam continued in the same mild tone, much as though he were discussing the weather. ‘I want nothing more. You will part on your wedding day and a divorce will duly follow. No financial settlement will be required on her behalf either. It is a modest request.’

‘Modest?’ Raffaele queried with incredulous emphasis.

‘Yes. I have no doubt that you think yourself very much above my granddaughter in terms of background and breeding,’ Stam conceded drily. ‘I won’t hold that against you. But you should be grateful that the temporary use of your good name is all that I require from you in return for that dossier, which would have a catastrophic effect on your sister’s marital plans.’

Fotakis knew it all, Raffaele acknowledged grittily, and, no matter how outrageous Stam’s demand that he marry Vivi, he knew he would have to consider it to protect Arianna’s future stability and security. Tomas was charmed by his sister’s giggly immaturity and impulsiveness where many men would have run a mile, and he didn’t want her only because she was an heiress either. Tomas, as sensible and stable as Arianna was not, was his sister’s perfect match and, what was more, Arianna loved him.

How could he stand by in silence while she lost all that over matters as trivial as a naked bathing episode in a famous fountain and being mistakenly arrested as a shoplifter? Unhappily, there were other murkier episodes involved and included in that file, he conceded grudgingly, such as the time she had spent the night with two men because her so-called friends had dared her to do so.

‘I hated it,’ she had muttered guiltily, appalled that he had picked up on that unsavoury rumour. ‘But everyone else had done stuff like that and I wanted to fit in... I wanted them to like me.’

After that affair, Raffaele had begun vetting her friends as well, recognising that his sister was too vulnerable to be left at the mercy of those ready to take advantage of her gullible nature to entertain themselves at her expense.

‘Presumably you have already discussed this idea with Vivi,’ Raffaele remarked curtly. ‘And she, of course, will be keen.’

‘Keen?’ Stam surprised him by laughing out loud. ‘Vivi hates you and she definitely doesn’t want to marry you! I’m afraid that persuading Vivi to the altar is your personal challenge.’

‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe that she isn’t involved in this proposition?’ Raffaele incised in disbelief.

‘Of course, she isn’t involved. Vivi doesn’t work off logic, she works off emotion. My...er...suggestion that she marry you made her very angry but I’m sure a high achiever of your calibre will know exactly how to transform her view of you,’ Stam completed with wry amusement brightening his snapping dark eyes. ‘If you want that dossier to stay private, you have to get Vivi to the church.’

‘That’s to be my penance, is it?’ Raffaele pronounced between gritted teeth.

‘If you like to think of it in those terms, do so. It’s immaterial to me. You give her a wedding ring but you keep your hands off her,’ Stam Fotakis warned him bluntly. ‘I want her back as untouched and unharmed as she is now. Is that understood?’

Dark colour edged the smooth planes of Raffaele’s high cheekbones, accentuating his taut bone structure. He could not credit the warning he was being given. ‘I have never touched an unwilling woman in my life,’ he countered with icy hauteur.

‘Well, you will find my granddaughter very unwilling,’ Stam forecast with satisfaction. ‘I dare say you’re accustomed to a different response from women...although you didn’t rise to the bait of my PA giving you a come-on in the lift.’

‘That was a set-up?’ Raffaele breathed in thundering disbelief, momentarily betrayed into speech.

‘I like to know the nature of the men I deal with and you passed the test. You’re not a womaniser,’ Stam retorted crisply. ‘I am very protective of Vivi.’

It was on the tip of Raffaele’s tongue to say that on the one occasion he had had Vivi in his arms, the very last thing she had been was unwilling, but he swallowed back that unwise admission, choosing instead to be grateful that there were, after all, some things that Vivi’s grandfather did not know.

And now, Raffaele reflected as he travelled back to his London town house in the comfort of his limo, he had to decide what to do next. It was ironic that he had always had the comfortable belief that being very, very rich protected you, he conceded, stunned into shock and an unfamiliar sense of powerlessness by the situation he found himself in. But wealth hadn’t, after all, protected Arianna from her misfortunes from conception, nor was it sufficient to hold at bay an old man determined to claim restitution for a sin that Raffaele had not actually committed.

He had not called Vivi a prostitute. For a start, she had been an escort rather than a prostitute and he knew the difference, having met women of both persuasions in even the most exclusive circles and learned how to detect and avoid them. That Vivi had almost slipped past his guard still infuriated him. The prostitution designation, however, had been manufactured by the press to provide an attention-grabbing headline.

Unfortunately, that truth would not remove that dangerous dossier on his sister from Stam Fotakis’s calculating and vengeful hands...

* * *

An upsetting memory was playing through Vivi’s mind as she put on her make-up for her date with her boyfriend, Jude. She had had a blazing row with her grandfather during his birthday party at her sister and brother-in-law’s home in Greece and she hadn’t let off steam by telling her sisters about it because she had known it would upset them when they preferred to play happy families.

‘Once Mancini marries you, you will never have cause to fear that scandal again because naturally the man who referred to you in those terms would scarcely be marrying you if you were a...er...woman of ill repute.’ Her grandfather selected the phrase with distaste. ‘Obviously, a rich, extremely successful man from his aristocratic background would never consider such a wife.’

‘I’d sooner marry a toad than Raffaele di Mancini!’ Vivi flung back at the older man in furious disbelief. ‘But the real truth is that I don’t want to marry anyone!’

‘Winnie is happy,’ he reminded her doggedly.

‘My sister’s a people pleaser and I’m not!’ Vivi countered with spirit. ‘I love her to death but what’s all right for her isn’t all right for me. When I get married, I want it to be real, not some phoney cobbled-together arrangement for the sake of appearances and status!’

‘I can’t believe you’d want to keep Mancini!’ Stam sniped, refusing to get the point or listen and hanging onto his mindset with the tenacity of a bulldog gnawing at a particularly tough bone.

Refusing to rise to that bait, Vivi tossed her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re such a miser that you couldn’t save my foster parents’ home for them without attaching unreasonable conditions to your generosity! We’re supposed to be family but you don’t behave like family are supposed to behave. But then what would I know about that, never really having had that experience?’ she muttered, falling into an awkward silence.