- -
- 100%
- +
Or she would have done if one of his fingers had not got there before hers took the tear away; she could not hold back another small sniff.
‘I would not have done it,’ she mumbled.
‘Si, I know that.’ He sighed. ‘We were fighting. You used your weapon well. I retaliated by cutting you to pieces. I apologise for doing it.’
‘You’re so ruthless it’s scary.’
‘Si.’ On another sigh he sent one of his legs looping over her legs to draw her in a bit closer to him, then he caught her hand and pressed it to his chest.
She felt his warmth and his muscled firmness and the prickle of hair against her palm. It was all very intimate and very dangerous—especially so when she didn’t try to pull away. The shirt formed a sort of barrier to stop the more frightening skin to skin contact, but—
She eased out a sigh of her own and tried to ignore what was happening to her. ‘I’m really sorry I got us both embroiled in this mess,’ she whispered in genuine regret.
‘But you did do it,’ he pointed out with devastating simplicity. ‘Now we have to deal with what we have.’ He came to lean over her, suddenly deadly serious. ‘And what we have is one story, one betrothal, one bed,’ he listed. ‘You will not, during the time we are together, give cause for anyone to question our honesty.’
‘Our lies, you mean.’
He shook his dark head. ‘Start believing in this, cara,’ he advised. ‘The fate of your sister’s marriage rests on your ability to live, breathe and sleep the role you have chosen to play in my life.’
His life. Those two words said it all to Rachel. This was his life he was protecting. His reputation. His pride.
And why not—? she thought painfully. Her mouth quivered. The tip of his tongue arrived to taste her soft upper lip.
Rachel saw that grimness had been replaced with slumberous desire and knew what was going to happen next.
‘No,’ she jerked out.
But his tongue dipped deeper. ‘Yes,’ he contradicted in soft silken English.
‘But I don’t—’
‘You do, cara,’ and he showed her how much she did by trailing his fingers inside the shirt.
Her breast received his touch with livewire tingles. Don’t respond! she told herself, but she did. Her mouth opened wider to turn the gentle contact into a proper kiss and the globe of her breast peaked pleasurably against his palm. It was terrible; she could not seem to control herself.
On a husky murmur he took the kiss back from her and from there it all began to build again.
It should have been a huge let-down after what they’d just been fighting about—but it wasn’t. What it was, was a slow, slow attack on every sensual front he could discover by using his lips and his tongue and the light-light tantalising brush of fingers. There was not a single millimetre of her flesh that was not gently coaxed into yielding its secrets—its every weakness exposed and explored until she felt like a slave to her own sensuality and an even bigger slave to his.
By the time he prepared to come into her, she was so lost in a hazy world made up entirely of him that she just lay there, watching while he produced the protection they’d both forgotten about the last time and expertly rolled it down his powerful length.
His eyes burned hers as he came over her. When he pushed inside, her groan brought his lips down to capture the sound. They moved together in a slow, deep, serious, dark journey, which left both of them totally wiped out by its end.
And, as sleep finally swept her into boneless oblivion, Rachel knew she had been totally taken over, ravished, possessed.
I wish, was the last conscious thought she remembered having and fell asleep wondering what it was she had been about to wish for.
She awoke cocooned in a nest of warm duvet and to the sound of a telephone ringing again. Only it did not sound loud, as if it was being muffled by the thickness of walls and doors. But the persistent sound pierced through her sleep like a sluggish pulse taking place inside her head.
She didn’t open her eyes—didn’t want to. Too many bad memories were already rushing back, the worst of them being the knowledge that she’d fallen into bed with a man she’d only met the night before, had hot, unprotected sex with him and now his physical imprint was so deeply stamped on her that she could still see him, hear him, feel him and smell him with every sensory cell she had.
The ringing stopped. Rachel let her eyes open. Daylight was shrouded by the drawn curtains but she could see just enough to know that the place beside her in the bed was empty and she breathed a sigh of relief.
At least she would have some time to get herself back together before she had to face him again.
Easing out of the bed, she rose to stand up with just about every muscle feeling the extra stretch as she looked around her for something to put on.
Her clothes had gone. So had the shirt she had been coveting last night like a last line of defence. What now? she asked herself. Were her missing clothes supposed to be sending her a message about where she fitted into his life?
Suddenly spying the cashmere throw he had used to cover her with the night before draped over a chair, she leapt on it and wrapped herself in it. The throw covered her from throat to ankle but she still felt like the wretched man’s concubine, imprisoned for his exclusive use.
And he knew how to use her, she was forced to admit when her senses gave a tight little flutter in response to the thought.
Someone knocked on the door. She almost tripped over as she spun round to stare at it.
‘Y-Yes?’ she called out, puzzled as to why the heck he was bothering to knock when privacy had been something he had taken no heed of last night.
‘Your things have arrived, Miss Carmichael,’ a totally strange female voice announced. ‘Shall I leave the suitcase here outside the door?’
‘Oh—y-yes—thank you,’ she answered, frowning because she didn’t know what the woman was talking about.
She waited a few seconds before going to pull the door open a small crack to make sure the woman had gone before she looked down to discover the suitcase she’d hastily packed before leaving Devon was now standing on the floor. Clinging to the black throw with one hand and still frowning, she used her other hand to lift the case inside the bedroom and shut the door again.
Last time she’d seen this, it had been lying open and spilling its contents on to the spare bed in Mark’s flat. So how had it ended up here instead?
Had Mark delivered it? Had he come here, then left again without bothering to see or speak to her to find out if she was okay?
Hurt thickened her throat as she heaved the case on to the rumpled bed and unzipped it. Inside it was everything she had brought up to London with her, plus all the extras that Elise had provided to help turn her into her look-alike.
There was also a piece of paper lying on the top of everything. Picking it up, she unfolded it to find it was a hastily scribbled note from Mark.
Did you have to send the chauffeur round to knock me up for your stuff at 6 o’clock in the morning? I’d only just crawled into bed!
Elise called you last night after I told her the good news, but your phone was dead. She and Leo wanted to congratulate you on your coming nuptials, if you get my drift. Call her later today so she can play the ecstatic sister for Leo’s benefit.
I’m off to LA this afternoon for a few weeks. See you when I get back. Love M.
Mission accomplished, in other words, so it was back to normal life—for Mark anyway. No words of concern for how she was feeling. No sign of a rescue plan for her any time soon.
Rachel stared out at nothing for a moment or two. Then, as a rueful grimace played its rather wobbly way across her mouth, she let the note fall on to the bed and turned her attention to selecting fresh clothes from the suitcase. At least she was now overloaded with expensive hair products and cosmetics, she consoled herself.
Dressed in a short bathrobe and fresh from his shower in one of the guest rooms, Raffaelle opened the bedroom door as the bathroom door shut with a quiet click.
He stood for a moment, viewing the evidence of her occupation, then walked over to the bed and picked up the note. His expression hardened as he read it. His eyes then drifted to the open suitcase, where it looked as if everything had been dumped in there at haste.
Did she feel deserted? She had to feel deserted because it was exactly what had happened to her.
Replacing the note where he’d found it, he turned then and strode across the bedroom to open the door which led into his dressing room. Ten minutes later he was dressed and letting himself out of the bedroom as quietly as he had come in while the running shower still sounded from the other side of the closed bathroom door.
CHAPTER SIX
IT TOOK nerve for Rachel to open the bedroom door and step into the hallway. She would rather be doing anything than facing Raffaelle Villani in the cold, harsh light of day.
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms in a nervous gesture as she walked, at least she looked more like herself, she tried to console herself. With Elise’s image stripped away and her hair shampooed and quickly blow-dried, she’d seen the real Rachel staring back at her from the mirror—the one who wore jeans and a long-sleeved black knit top. Her make-up was minimal and her hair had reverted to its natural style.
All she needed to do now was to convince herself that she was the real Rachel, because she certainly did not feel like her inside.
She intended to go and hunt down her bag and her cellphone before she did anything else, but she never got that far. The door next to the kitchen stood open and, having glanced through it, she then pulled to a heart-sinking halt.
Raffaelle was there, standing by a long dining table. He was wearing a soft loose-fitting smoked-grey T-shirt and a pair of charcoal trousers that hung easily around his hips. And, if she had ever wanted to know the difference between expensive man dressed in a formal dinner suit and expensive man dressed casually, then she was looking at him.
The aroma of fresh coffee would have sailed right by her if he had not used that moment to lift a cup to his mouth. She was held transfixed by his height again, by his sensual dark good looks, by his mouth sipping coffee and his long golden fingers holding the cup.
Sensation quivered right down her front as each and every sense unfurled and responded to the sight of those hands, that mouth, the long legs and wide shoulders—to her exciting new lover. Her breasts grew tight and tender in her bra cups, her tongue grew moist in her mouth, her breathing stopped completely as a tight tingling erupted low down. It was like falling into a deep, dark pit of forbidden pleasures. She didn’t want to feel like this but she could not break free from it.
Then he glanced up and caught her standing there staring at him. It was like being pinned to a wall by her guilty thoughts. Heat rushed up from her toes and through her body until it suffused her face to her hair roots while he just stood there with his cup suspended just below his sensual mouth.
The agony of mutual intimacy was nothing short of torture as she watched his eyes drop to the pair of simple flat black shoes adorning her feet, then begin a slow journey upwards, along well-faded denim that clung to her legs and her hips and the flatness of her stomach like a second skin.
His scrutiny paused right there and suddenly something else was adding to the turbulent mix. Rachel knew what he was thinking. She felt the muscles around her womb clench tightly as if it was acknowledging that it already belonged to him.
Maybe he saw the tightening because his eyes darkened. When he lifted them to clash with her eyes, the sheer power of what was passing between them put her into a prickling hot sweat.
He broke eye contact and she could feel her heart drumming against her ribs as he dropped his attention to her mouth, slightly parted and trembling, with its light coating of pink lipstick, then back to her eyes, looking out at him from a fixed hectic blue stare between quick flicks of mascara. Finally he let his eyes drift over her hair, where long and sleek straight had been replaced by a mop of silky loose curls that framed her still blushing face.
‘Where did the curls come from?’ he asked softly.
Forced into speech, Rachel had to moisten the inner surface of her lips. ‘They were always there, just hiding,’ she answered, lifting a self-conscious hand up to push the curls from her brow.
He continued to stare as the curls bounced back into place again. Shoulder-length straight now finished in a sexy blonde bubbly riot almost level with her pointed chin.
‘They suit you,’ he murmured.
‘No, they don’t,’ she denied. ‘But I was born with them, so …’ She added a shrug, then stuck her hands into her jeans pockets and finally managed to drag her eyes away from him.
Raffaelle frowned as he watched the defensive body language.
‘Is there any of that coffee going spare?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ he answered. ‘In the kitchen. I will go and get it—’
‘No.’ She jerked into movement. ‘Let me.’
She’d disappeared before he could stop her, fleeing like a scared fluffy blonde rabbit. It made him grimace—a lot of things made him grimace, like the tension she’d taken with her—the knowledge of what they’d done the night before. And the lack of awareness in her own natural beauty, for which he placed the blame firmly at her glamorous half-sister’s feet.
Draining his coffee cup, he made the decision to follow her. Now the morning ice was almost broken he had no intention of letting it freeze over again.
She was standing by the coffee machine, watching it fill a cup.
‘Here,’ he said, striding over to offer his empty cup. ‘I like it black.’ He moved away from her before she had a chance to react to him. ‘What do you like for breakfast—a fresh croissant? Cereal? Toast?’ he listed lightly. ‘There is some fresh orange juice in the fridge if you—’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she cut in. ‘Th-thank you,’ she added. ‘Just a caffeine shot then I will have to be going …’
‘Going …’ He turned slowly to look at her.
‘Yes,’ She was clearly refusing to look at him, staring down at her watch instead. ‘I have a train to catch back to Devon and half the morning has gone already.’
‘We’ve been over this,’ Raffaelle reminded her. ‘You are staying right here with me.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ She nodded, setting the blonde curls bouncing as she concentrated on the job of swapping her filled cup for his empty one beneath the stream of coffee from the machine. ‘But I need to get some clothes if …’
‘I will buy you any clothes you will need.’
Rachel stiffened. ‘No, you will not! I have clothes back in Devon—and don’t you dare make such a derisory offer like that again!’
‘It was not derisory,’ he denied. ‘I was being practical.’
‘Well, I’m trying to be practical too, and I can’t just drop everything as if I don’t have another life. I need a couple of days to—organise things with the farm.’
‘You mean you actually run the farm yourself?’
More derision? Rachel stared at him but only saw honest disbelief in his face. ‘Efficiently,’ she stated coolly.
‘So who is looking after it while you are here?’
‘A—neighbour.’ She frowned as she said that, wondering why she had put her relationship with Jack in such odd terms. ‘But he has his own place to run, so I …’
Something altered in his demeanour, though Rachel wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
‘Use your phone to make your arrangements, as I have had to do,’ he said coolly.
‘God, you’re so insufferable,’ she gasped. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re Mr High-flyer. You can order people about by phone, but I can’t.’
Ignoring the high-flyer quip, Raffaelle walked towards her. ‘You think?’
‘I know.’ Rachel nodded backing into the corner of the kitchen units as he approached, then feeling well and truly trapped by the time he towered over her. ‘I’ve seen the way it works with Leo. W-when he needs something done he just throws his weight around by telephone.’
‘But you need to be hands-on to water your organic lettuce,’ he mocked.
‘You don’t need to be so derisive about it!’ she flashed in her own defence. ‘When this is all over with, Mr Villani, you might be unfortunate enough to have lost a deal or two because you weren’t paying proper attention, but I risk losing my whole livelihood!’
‘If you are carrying my child then this will never be over.’
Placed coolly into the argument, Rachel swallowed thickly. ‘Don’t start hitting me with the worst thing that could happen again,’ she shook out huskily.
He went to say something, then sighed and changed his mind. Tension stung—antagonism that wasn’t all to do with what they were arguing about.
‘You said it was family-run thing,’ he then prompted.
‘It is,’ she confirmed. Then she took a breath and altered that answer to, ‘It was a family run thing until my parents were killed five years ago in—in a road accident. Now the farm is split three ways between me, Mark and Elise.’
‘Which means that you do the work and they do nothing?’
‘I like the work, they don’t.’
‘Loyal little thing, aren’t you?’ he mocked her. ‘Has it not occurred to you yet that they are not very loyal to you—?’
Raffaelle wished the words back as soon as he’d said them. But it was too late. She’d already gone pale and she lost her cup so she could make a defensive fold of her arms across her front.
‘My family loyalty is none of your business,’ she muttered.
‘You think—?’ Anger with himself made his voice sound harsh. But since the anger was there now, he took a grip on her clenched left hand and prised it upwards. ‘This ring on your finger demands that I should have your complete loyalty now.’
‘It’s fake.’ She grabbed the hand back and thrust it beneath her arm again.
Things were starting to happen. Fights with women usually did end up as sexual battles and Raffaelle was beginning to feel the sexual pull. He reacted to it by snaking his hands around her slender nape and tilting her head back so he could claim her mouth.
She tasted of mint toothpaste and pink lipstick. He found he liked the combination. And she didn’t try to fight him, which he liked even more. By the time he raised his head again, her arms were no longer defensively crossed but clinging to his shirt.
‘This isn’t fake,’ he rumbled out deeply, still toying with the corner of her mouth. ‘So let’s forget about Devon and go back to bed. I don’t know why we got out of it in the first place.’
‘No.’ She gave a push at him and when he released her she scuttled sideways. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
‘You mean you’re running scared all of a sudden.’ He grabbed her hand to pull her out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. ‘If you are hoping to escape to a pharmacy in Devon,’ he said brusquely, ‘then first you should take a look at these …’
He brought her to a stop beside the dining table where a selection of the Sunday tabloids lay spread out.
Rachel froze, wondering how she had missed seeing them before. But she knew why she’d missed them; she’d been too busy drinking him in to notice anything else in the room.
In every photograph but one, she and he were standing outside the apartment block displaying the ring and looking convincingly loverlike and besotted. The only photograph that was different was in Mark’s paper, which bore the clever caption, ‘First public kiss for newly engaged lovers.’
‘My fifteen minutes of fame,’ she jibed tensely, looking at the sleek stranger in the photographs, who happened to be her. Raffaelle looked no different than his tall, dark, handsome self and how he’d managed to pull off that smile without making it look cynical was worthy of a headline all by itself.
‘This is set to last a lot longer than fifteen minutes, cara,’ he responded dryly.
‘Because you’re newsworthy.’
‘Which is the only reason why you hit on me in the first place,’ he pointed out. ‘This is what you wanted.’ He waved a long finger at the photograph her half-brother had taken. ‘I must admit you look very like your sister in that.’
The picture showed a clinch which looked like they’d been lovers for ever. That wave of tingling intimacy shot down Rachel’s front again and she quickly shifted her eyes to the other more carefully staged photographs, all of which were accompanied by catchy tag lines aimed to turn them into tacky celebrity fodder.
‘I did not want all the rest of this, though. That was your fault.’
‘You cannot be so blind.’
It was the way he said it that made Rachel look sharply at him. It had been hard and sardonic—tones that repeated themselves in the expression on his face.
‘Explain that,’ she demanded.
‘I meant nothing.’ He went to turn away.
‘Yes, you did!’ She caught hold of his arm. ‘And I want to know what you meant!’
He swung back to her, face hard, eyes angry. ‘Did you never think to question if your brother’s cronies would know who his twin is? Of course they knew—’ he answered his own question ‘—which is why they came after us and called out Elise’s name. They saw you looking like her and him making his quick escape, then they saw a very contrived yet really juicy scandal brewing involving Elise, Leo Savakis and Raffaelle Villani in a gripping sex triangle. I can forgive you your naïvety, cara, if you are as shocked as you appear to be, but I will not forgive your stupid brother for not thinking this thing through and foreseeing the obvious outcome if I had not intervened!’
Rachel pulled out a chair and sat down on it. He was oh-so-sickeningly right. And the worst of it was that he seemed to have worked all of it out within seconds of her explaining it all last night.
‘Now ask yourself how long you think it will take the press to sleuth out exactly who you are,’ he persisted. ‘And your fifteen minutes of fame becomes a roller coaster ride to hell and back while they dig into your past, with Leo Savakis waiting in the wings for you to fall off the rails and accidentally reveal it is all just a big ugly cover-up for his wife’s transgressions.’
‘You don’t have to say any more,’ Rachel whispered. ‘I get the full picture.’
‘Do you?’ he rasped. ‘Well, add this into the mix. Start running scared now and I will blow the whole lie sky high and damn your sister’s marriage. I can take the heat of the repercussions if she cannot!’
He walked out of the room, leaving Rachel alone to stew on what he’d said. It didn’t take long. He was right and she had been running scared when she’d made that bid to leave here and go back to Devon. But that had nothing to do with the lies, though they were bad enough. Her reasons did not even have anything to do with their stupid delving into unprotected sex!
It was to do with him and what he did to her. What he made her feel. If he could affect her this badly in only one night, then she was going to be an emotional wreck by the time it came to the end.
If it came to an end, she then amended, recalling that marriage warning he’d made.
Raffaelle was pacing his study wondering what was the matter with him. Why had he bitten her head off like that?
Because she wanted to go home to collect some clothes and organise her life, or because she still persisted in defending her selfish family?
Or was it because she’d mentioned a man down there in Devon? A neighbour she had not bothered to mention before …?
He did not know. He did not think he wanted to know. Something was happening here that scared him witless each time he came close to looking at it.
He heard her moving about then and went to see what she was doing now. He found her in the living room with her bag in her hand.