- -
- 100%
- +
‘I—can’t find my phone,’ she said and she looked pale and defensive again.
‘The battery was flat. I put it on the charger in my study. I’ll go and get it …’ Then he paused. ‘Who do you want to call?’
Irritation ripped down his backbone because he knew it was none of his business who she wanted to call. By the expression on her face, she thought the same thing.
Still, she answered him. ‘I will have to ring round a few people if I am not allowed to leave here—’
‘No.’ Raffaelle shook his head. ‘We will do it your way, only we both go and we will use my car instead of the train.’
‘But—’
‘Ten minutes,’ he said gruffly, turning away again. ‘And don’t keep me waiting. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get back.’
He drove them in a silver Ferrari with the same reckless efficiency he’d driven the night before. But then, his driving had had to be nifty when they’d met with the paparazzi waiting outside for them to leave. They’d picked the car up from the basement car park but the moment they’d emerged on to the street they’d been spotted and all hell had broken loose as camera-toting reporters fell over themselves to get into their cars and give chase.
‘I don’t understand why they’re still hanging around,’ Rachel said after they’d lost their pursuers in a sequence of dizzying turns down narrow back streets. She hadn’t dared speak before then in case she broke his concentration and they ended up hitting a wall. ‘What do they think we are going to do? Get married on the apartment steps or something?’
‘They don’t know enough about you.’ He sounded so grim that Rachel felt a cold little shiver chase down her spine.
‘I hate this,’ she whispered. ‘I hated it when I used to get caught up in it with Elise. I don’t know how you people live your lives like this.’
‘We live in a celebrity-driven world,’ he answered levelly. ‘The masses are greedy for the intimate details of the rich and famous—or, for that matter, anyone who lives a high profile life. You have now joined the celebrity ranks, so get used to it, because this is only the beginning of it.’
The beginning of it …
After that Rachel did not speak another word. They reached the motorway and suddenly the powerful car came into its own, eating up the miles with the luxurious smoothness that promised to cut the journey time by half.
He stopped once at a motorway service station, led her into the café and bought sandwiches and coffee.
‘Eat,’ he instructed, when she stared at the unappetizing-looking sandwich he’d placed in front of her. ‘You look like death and you have eaten nothing since you threw yourself at me last night.’
And I look like death because I hardly had any sleep last night, she threw back at him without saying the words out loud. Because out loud meant opening a Pandora’s box full of what they’d been doing instead of sleeping.
The indifferent-tasting sandwich was washed down by indifferent-tasting coffee. Rachel was surprised he ate his sandwich or drank the coffee. They just didn’t look like the kind of food this man would usually put anywhere near his mouth.
When they hit the road again he wanted to talk. ‘Tell me how your family works,’ he invited.
So she explained how her mother had lost her husband to a long-term illness while the twins had still been very young. ‘A few years later she married my father and then had me.’
‘So what is the age difference between you and the twins?’
‘Six years,’ she replied.
‘And who did the farm originally belong to?’
‘My father. But he—we—never differentiated between Mark and Elise and myself. And it isn’t really a farm,’ she then added because she thought she better had do before they arrived there and he saw it. ‘It’s what we call a smallholding, with three acres of land, a house, a couple of greenhouses and a couple of barns.’
‘Another lie, cara?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘It’s run like a farm.’
And the … neighbour that helps you out when you need it—what does he do?’
‘Jack owns the land adjoining our land—and his is a farm,’ she stressed. ‘He’s been good to us since our parents died.’
‘Call it as it is,’ Raffaelle said. ‘He has been good to you.’
Rachel turned to look at him. ‘Why that tone?’ she demanded.
His grimace stopped her from becoming hooked on watching his face. ‘I don’t think I want to elaborate,’ he confessed.
‘Suits me,’ she said and, turning the collar up on her coat, she leant further into the seat and closed her eyes.
His low laugh played along her nerve endings. ‘You are prickly, Miss Carmichael.’
‘And you are loathsome, Signor.’
‘Because I don’t mind saying that I dislike the way your siblings use you?’
‘No. You are loathsome simply because you are.’
‘In bed?’
Rachel didn’t answer.
‘You prefer, perhaps, this Jack in bed as your lover because he is so good to you.’
He was fishing. Rachel decided to let him. ‘Maybe.’ She smiled.
‘But can he make you fall apart with pleasure there as I can, or does he bring the smell of farmer to your bed, which you must overcome before he can overcome you?’
‘As I said. You’re loathsome.’
‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘However, when I said that I don’t sleep around I meant it, whereas you seemingly did not.’
Rachel turned her head and flicked her eyes open to look at him. Once a liar always a liar, she thought heavily when she saw the grimness lashed to his lean profile.
And a tease could only be a tease when the recipient knew he was being teased. Sitting further up the seat with a sigh, she pushed a hand through her curls and opened her mouth to tell him exactly who and what Jack was—when her attention was caught by a giant blue motorway sign.
‘Oh, heck,’ she gasped. ‘We need to take this next turn-off!’
With a startled flash of his eyes and a few muttered curses, he flipped the car across several motorway lanes with one eye on the rear-view mirror judging the pace of the traffic behind them and the other eye judging the spare stretch road in front of them. By the time they sailed safely down the slip road Jack’s name had been washed right out of Rachel’s head by an intoxicating mix of nerve-fraying terror for her life and the exhilarating thrill of the whole smooth, slick power-driven manoeuvre.
‘Which way?’ he demanded.
Rachel blinked and told him in a tense breath-stifled voice while her senses fizzed and popped in places they shouldn’t. What was it about men and danger that struck directly at the female sexual psyche?
He glanced at her and saw her expression and sent her a wide slashing masculine grin that lit her up inside like a flaming torch.
‘Scared, cara?’ he quizzed.
‘You—you—’
‘Had it all under control,’ he smoothly provided. ‘Which, in Italian terms, makes the difference between a mere good lover and a fabulous lover.’
Rachel knew exactly what he meant, which was the hardest thing to take. If he stopped the car now she would be crawling all over him in a hot and seething sexually needy flood.
It was everything—the powerful car and the reckless man and the adrenalin rush still singing through her blood. She tried to breathe slowly and lost it completely when he reached across to her and gently stroked her cheek. Static fire whipped across her skin cells, she whispered something and turned her head. Their eyes clashed. For a short, short split second in time it was like falling into a vat of writhing, hissing, snapping snakes.
He looked away. The smile had gone but the atmosphere inside the car had heightened beyond anything real. Rachel sat on her hands to stop them reaching for him and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening while he drove on with a sudden grim concentration that only made everything worse.
She gave directions in short, sharp, breathless little bursts of speech that only helped to increase the tension. He said nothing but just reacted with slick control of the car. They were both sitting forward in their seats. They were both staring fixedly directly ahead. She knew where this was going to end up just as he knew it. And the agony of knowing was as tough as the agony of having to sit here and wait.
At last—finally they turned into the private lane which led to the farm. Winter fields barely waking up to early spring spread out on either side of them, neatly ploughed and ready to sow. The old farmhouse stood in front of them, its rustic brick walls warmed by a weak sun. Flanking either side of it stood the adjoining barns and behind the house they could just see the greenhouse’s glass glinting in the weak sunlight.
In front was the cobbled yard where Rachel’s muddy old Jeep stood tucked in against a barn wall. On the other side stood another car, a Range Rover, making Rachel’s heart sink, though whether that was due to disappointment, because she knew what was buzzing between the two of them was about to be indefinitely postponed, or relief for the same reason, she refused to examine.
Raffaelle brought the car to a stop in the dead centre of the courtyard, killed the engine, then climbed out without uttering a word. Rachel was slower in moving, unsure if her stinging legs would hold her up if she tried to stand on them.
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.