Read the book: «One Night In…», page 9

CHAPTER NINE

MY BEAUTIFUL Rachel…

And so began the worst evening of his beautiful Rachel’s life.

Raffaelle’s stepsister did not believe a single word that either of them said to her. The others were more than happy to welcome her into their set, but they too were surprised and curious about this complete stranger who had arrived out of nowhere into Raffaelle’s life.

Rachel supposed she should be relieved that Daniella seemed to have kept her suspicions to herself—or maybe she was too scared of Raffaelle to actually say what she thought outright. But she quizzed Rachel mercilessly about Elise.

‘How is she?’

‘Wonderful, taking a holiday in Florida with her husband and son.’

‘You two met through Elise?’

‘No, we met at a dinner party given by friends of Leo and Elise.’

Daniella had eyes like bitter chocolate which constantly flicked from Rachel to Raffaelle. ‘Both of you were very secretive about this romance.’

‘Rachel liked it that way,’ her stepbrother answered. ‘We liked it that way. Look at what happened the moment we were seen in public. It turned into a witch-hunt.’

‘When a woman throws herself at you in front of a reporter, it tends to have that effect. So does standing naked in a bedroom window.’

Rachel flushed but Raffaelle remained completely unruffled. ‘Behaving like a spoiled child who does not like to know she has been left out of a secret is very unappealing,’ he responded lightly.

Reducing her to the level of a spoiled child may have silenced Daniella but it did not kill her suspicions about Rachel not being who she claimed she was—as she made very clear the moment she got Rachel alone in the ladies’ room.

‘I know he was seeing Elise Castle because it was me who told him she was married with a small son! So don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Miss Carmichael. That ring is a fake, just as everything else about you is fake.’

Rachel looked down at the sparkling diamond and sapphire cluster adorning her finger and grimaced. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, Daniella—’

‘Well, I want to fight with you,’ Daniella said fiercely. ‘I saw you throw yourself at Raffaelle the other night. I saw his rage. I think you and Elise are trying to blackmail him!’

Apart from the fact that she was so close to the truth it was scary, Rachel had to feel for Daniella if only because she looked and sounded so worried and protective of Raffaelle.

‘And you aren’t drinking alcohol!’ Daniella said suddenly. ‘Are you pregnant, is that it? Did you have a fling with him, as well as your sister, and now you’re demanding marriage?’

Rachel stared at the other girl as if she had just grown two heads. Was she psychic or what? ‘I don’t drink.’ She iced out the lie with as much calmness as she could. ‘And repeat your accusations to Raffaelle, if you dare,’ she challenged.

Then she turned and walked out of the ladies’ room. Raffaelle took one look at her flushed angry face and stood up before she could sit down.

His arms came around her. ‘Problems?’ he asked.

Rachel shook her head, aware of the others listening. ‘Just a—headache,’ she offered as a very weak excuse.

‘Then we will leave.’

It was not a suggestion and Rachel did not argue with him. As they made their farewells Daniella came back to the table. One slicing glance at her stepbrother and her chin shot up in defiance.

To make everything feel even worse, a camera flashed as Raffaelle was helping Rachel on with her jacket. He’d lowered his head to kiss the side of her neck in one of those loving displays he’d been putting on all evening.

‘What was it with Daniella?’ he demanded the moment they were back in the car.

‘She knows,’ she responded.

‘She knows what?’

‘Everything,’ she answered heavily. ‘She thinks I’m blackmailing you over your affair with Elise.’

‘You were blackmailing me,’ he pointed out dryly.

‘She also accused me of being pregnant because I wasn’t drinking tonight, and of having a fling with you at the same time you were with Elise.’ She grimaced. ‘Great reputation you have there, Signor, when even your own family can believe you are capable of swinging it with two women at the same time.’

‘She’s fishing for information, that’s all,’ he answered coolly. ‘And she—cares about me.’

‘Lucky you,’ Rachel mumbled.

‘Do you say that because your family shows so little concern for you?’

That hit her right below the belt. ‘My family care,’ she insisted.

‘Your uncle, maybe,’ Raffaelle conceded. ‘But even he made the quick getaway once he believed he had established that I was not your heartbreaker from Naples. I could have been lying to him. He did not hang around long enough to put me to the test.’

‘He’s a busy man.’ She shifted tensely on the seat next to him.

‘Like your half-sister and -brother are so busy they have not had time to check if I have chopped you into little pieces and dumped you in the Thames?’

‘Sh-shut up,’ she breathed.

They finished the rest of the journey in silence. As they travelled up in the lift to Rafaelle’s apartment, Rachel stared fixedly down at her feet and he—well, she didn’t know what he was looking at but she had an itchy feeling it could be her.

Once inside the apartment she headed for one of the spare bedrooms because there was just no way she was going to sleep with him tonight.

He didn’t try to stop her, which only stressed her out more. She slept restlessly beneath a navy-blue duvet wearing only her bra and panties, woke up early the next morning and remade the bed, then crept back into the other bedroom to get some fresh clothes before Rosa arrived.

The plum-covered bed was empty and, by the look of it, Raffaelle had enjoyed a restless night too. She glanced at the closed bathroom door to listen if the shower was running, hoping to goodness that he’d already got up and dressed and taken himself off to work and out of the firing line.

‘Discovered your sense of fair play, amore?’ a smooth voice murmured.

She spun around to find him standing in the dressing room doorway wearing only a towel slung low around his hips. It was like being hit by that high wattage charge again.

‘I—thought you would have left by now,’ she said without thinking.

He just smiled then began walking forward. Rachel started to back away.

‘Slept well?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Need any help tying that robe?’

She glanced down, then released a gasp when she saw the robe she had pinched from the other bathroom was hanging open revealingly. It was too big, a man’s full-length heavy towelling bathrobe that trailed the floor at her feet and engulfed her hands. She’d thought she’d tied the belt, but the stupid thing had slid undone.

‘Go away,’ she shook out, trying to fight with the sleeves so she could grab the two ends of the belt.

But Raffaelle Villani wasn’t going anywhere. He just kept coming until he was standing right in front of her. Then, while she mumbled out a protest, he pushed her fingers away and calmly cinched the belt around her waist. His fingers brushed the skin of her stomach as he did it. She breathed in sharply. He ignored the revealing breath, finished his task, then calmly turned away, dropping the towel from around his hips, and strode like the arrogant man he was back into the dressing room and closed the door.

It was the same as a slap in the face. She refused to sleep with him and he was showing her that it made little difference to him.

Rachel ran into the bathroom and wished she was dead, because her body was such a quivering mass of frustration that if he’d stripped the robe from her and thrown her to the bed, she would not have stopped him.

Her day was long and she was tired by the time she trailed into the apartment again. Rosa had gone home hours ago. Raffaelle was still out, which allowed her some time for herself to take a long bath behind a firmly locked bathroom door in an effort to relax some of the tension grinding at her every nerve and muscle.

She stayed in the bath longer than she’d meant to. By the time she let herself back into the bedroom she could sense more than hear that Raffaelle was home, though he was not in the bedroom, thank goodness, which gave her a chance to pull her jeans back on and a fresh T-shirt before she heaved in a breath and went looking for him.

He was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich, the jacket to his suit gone, white shirt-sleeves rolled up. He turned at the sound of her step. Her stomach dipped. She found herself running self conscious fingers through her curls.

‘Ciao,’ he said lightly. ‘You look—pink.’

‘I stayed in the bath too long,’ she explained as naturally as she could.

He turned back to what he was doing. ‘Want a sandwich?’

Her stomach gave a hungry growl. ‘What’s in it?’

‘Take your pick,’ he invited, pointing to the variety of salad things he had already sliced up. ‘There’s cheese in the fridge, some chicken and ham.’

Choosing the ham because she saw it first, she took over and handed it to him. Then surprised herself by staying there watching as he layered fresh bread with salad stuff.

‘Not going to offer to do it for me?’ He arched a look at her.

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I might grow the produce but I can’t cook it,’ she confessed. ‘Ask me to make a sandwich like that and it will fall apart the moment you pick it up.’

‘No culinary skills at all, then.’

‘Not a single one.’

‘Any good with a coffee machine?’

‘Hit and miss.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m an instant coffee girl.’

‘Tragic,’ he murmured. ‘Give it a try anyway.’ He nodded to where the coffee machine stood. ‘It’s loaded and ready to hit the cup like the instant stuff does, only it tastes better.’

‘That’s an Italian opinion.’ She moved across to the machine and fed it a cup as she’d done two days before.

Two days, she then thought suddenly—they felt like years. How had that happened?

‘Tony tells me you have been treading the miles again,’ he murmured.

She turned to look at him curiously. ‘How often does he report in to you?’

The wide shoulders gave a shrug inside expensive white shirting that didn’t quite stop the gold of his skin from showing through. ‘Each time you stop somewhere.’

‘Do you think it’s necessary? I mean, I haven’t seen a glimpse of a reporter in the two days I’ve been out and about.’

‘Then you would make a lousy detective.’ Turning he pointed to the newspaper lying on the table.

Going over to it, Rachel saw a photo of herself sitting at a table in a top Knightsbridge restaurant drinking morning coffee with its famous chef owner. A flush arrived on her cheeks because, not only was she aware that she had not seen the lurking reporter but she’d now realised that the only reason why she had been sitting there at all was because the chef had recognised her and his curiosity had been piqued.

‘Where was Tony when this was taken?’ she demanded. It was his job after all to stop this from happening.

‘He did clear the reporter off, but not before he had managed to take this one photograph. Then the guy waited until you had left the restaurant and went back to quiz the chef.’

The chef had given an interview, getting a plug for his restaurant by happily telling the reporter what Rachel Carmichael did for a living. There was another photograph in a different paper showing Raffaelle kissing her cheek as he helped her on with her jacket.

‘What it is to be famous,’ she murmured cynically.

‘Well, your secret other life is now out,’ Raffaelle declared. ‘Which means you can stop hiding behind the mask of Elise when we go out.’

‘Daniella is going to love it.’

He turned with two loaded plates in his hands. ‘I’ve spoken to Daniella.’

Rachel froze as he put the plates down on the table.

‘She sends you her apologies and promises to behave the next time that you meet.’

‘She had nothing to apologise to me for,’ Rachel said flatly. ‘Actually, I could like her despite …’

‘Daniella not liking you?’

‘Yes,’ she said huskily.

He pulled out a chair and sat down on it. ‘You can tell her you like her later when we meet up at the theatre—’

‘Theatre—?’ Rachel stared at him. ‘I don’t want to go to the theatre!’

‘Sit down and eat,’ he instructed. ‘If you are eating for two you must have a good balanced diet.’

Rachel stared slack-jawed at him.

Steady-eyed, Raffaelle just shrugged. ‘I’m the fatalist, remember? I work through problems sometimes before they are problems. It is what helps to keep me at the top.’

‘You’re not short on insufferable arrogance either. You and Daniella should share the same blood.’

He just grinned over the top of his sandwich. ‘Tell me why you don’t want to go to the theatre,’ he instructed.

She pulled out a chair and sat down on it. ‘I don’t get the opportunity to go often enough to get to like it.’

‘Well, that’s about to change.’

‘What kind of theatre?’ she asked dubiously.

‘Opera,’ he provided. As her jaw dropped again, he said, ‘Get used to it because it is the love of my life. Eat.’

Rachel picked up her sandwich. It arrived by instinct at her mouth because her eyes certainly didn’t guide it there—they were still looking at him in horrified disbelief.

‘I can’t believe you want to put me through an opera,’ she protested.

‘We either go to the opera or we stay in and make love …’

And, just like that, their few minutes of near normality disappeared without a trace.

Rachel put down the sandwich. He chewed on his, his eyes gleaming with challenge.

‘I’m will not be blackmailed into your bed—!’ She flew to her feet.

‘Then prepare for an evening of Tosca,’ he countered coolly. ‘Wear something long and—sexy. Oh, and take your sandwich with you, mi amore,’ he drawled as she went to flounce out of the room. ‘The opera starts early and supper will be late.’

She wore a long slender blue gown that faithfully followed her every curve. Raffaelle took one look at her and staked possessive claim with a hand to the indentation of her waist.

‘Mine,’ he declared huskily. ‘Make sure you remember it while we are out.’

Sitting for hours beside a man who seemed to take pleasure in playing the deeply besotted lover throughout the interminable though admittedly moving music heightened her senses to such a degree that she had never felt more relieved to walk out into the ice-cold evening air so she could breathe.

They ate supper with a crowd of people including Daniella, who was quieter than the night before and was almost pleasant to Rachel, though Rachel could tell by the glint in the other woman’s brown eyes that the pleasantness ran only skin-deep. Daniella was still suspicious and hostile and hungered for the real truth as to what was going on.

Rachel gave Daniella no chance of getting her on her own that evening, staying put in her seat and keeping her attention fixed on everyone else. At least they seemed to accept her at face value—it was difficult not to when the man sitting beside her rarely took his eyes from her face. Tension zinged between them like static. Rachel refused to so much as glance at him, smiling where she thought she should do and trying to ignore the ever increasing pulse of awareness he was making her suffer. She was quizzed about her occupation and it seemed a good time to launch into the benefits of organic farming with an enthusiastic vigour that set such an animated debate going she almost managed to forget Raffaelle was sitting there.

Then he reached out to gently take hold of her chin and turned it so she had no choice but to look at him. His expression was difficult to read, kind of mocking yet deadly serious at the same time.

‘You are here with me,’ he said huskily.

‘I know who I’m with.’ She frowned at him.

‘Then don’t ignore me.’

‘I wasn’t ignoring you. I was—’

‘Smiling at every other man at this table but me.’

The idea that he might be feeling left out and jealous sent a different kind of sting singing through her blood. Her eyes must have showed it because his thumb arrived to rub across her lower lip in an intimate, very sexual proclamation that brought a telling flush to her cheeks.

But she could not pull back or break eye contact. It was too much like being plugged into an electric current again—lit up from the inside and sensually enlivened. He knew it, he built it until her breathing quickened and her eyes darkened. She could feel Daniella watching them. She heard someone else murmur dryly, ‘Time to break up the party, I think.’

‘Good idea,’ he murmured and leant forward to replace the thumb with his mouth in a brief promise of a kiss that brought him smoothly to his feet.

They travelled back to his apartment in absolute silence. They rode the lift in exactly the same way. Rachel kept her eyes fixed on her feet again but refusing to look at him did not ease the sexual pull taking place. They walked along the hallway towards the bedrooms still accompanied by that highly strung clamour of perfect silence.

When they reached the door to his bedroom they paused. Still he said nothing and still she was fighting it until—

‘Well—?’ he asked softly.

Rachel drew in a tense, sizzling, battling breath, tried to let it out again but found that she couldn’t. Her senses were singing out a chant of surrender and in the end she gave in to it, turning to reach for the door handle to his bedroom.

Without saying a single word he followed her inside and closed the door. Now she’d made the decision to come in here she did not go for modesty but just turned to face him and, with the light of a looming sexual battle lighting her blue eyes, she began to undress right there in front of him. His face was deadly serious as he watched her for a few seconds before he began to undress too.

Clothes landed on the floor all around them. Her dress pooled in a slither of blue silk at her feet. It was all part of the battle that they did not break eye contact.

Rachel walked towards the bed on legs that no longer wished to support her. Indeed they preferred to tingle and sting like the rest of her body, making sure they did not give her a moment to change her mind about this.

No chance—no hope of a last-minute reprieve. She wanted him so badly she couldn’t think beyond the need.

He took up a position on the other side of the bed and the tip of her tongue crept out to curl across her upper lip as she let her eyes glide over him. Big, lean, hard and aroused. Her breasts grew heavy and her nipples peaked, the wall of muscle around her lower stomach contracting as she tried to contain the ache.

She lifted the duvet. He did the same. They slid into the bed together and arrived in the middle of the mattress in a limb-tangling clasp of body contact.

Then he kissed her. No, he punished her for putting them through twenty-four hours of denial.

That night Rachel learned what it was like to be totally taken over, excruciatingly sapped of her will by a man with a magician’s touch. He wove sensual spells around every pleasure point. He drove her wild until she cried out. Then he possessed her, deep, tough and ruthlessly, staking claim in this final act of ownership that had her clinging and trembling and sobbing out his name as she tumbled into release.

And so began four hellish weeks trapped inside heaven.

When Raffaelle had said they were to be as if they were glued together, he’d meant it. Wherever his business took him, Rachel went with him, hopping from London to Milan, Paris, Monaco then back to London then Milan again. In one short month she learned what it was like to become a fully paid-up member of the jet set and how it felt to be recognised as the woman who’d managed to pin the very eligible Raffaelle Villani down.

Everywhere they went he took her out into public places— more restaurants, more theatres, nightclubs and private parties— all very select venues where they could be displayed as a couple.

It was almost all glitz and glamour. There were those in his close circle of friends who were the kind of people she could relate to mainly because they were easy to like. Then there were the other kind who hovered on the fringes of it all who would have sold their grandmothers to be included as a member of his inner set.

Then there was the seemingly endless stream of his ex-lovers from all over the world who had no problem with telling her what they used to be to him and thought it fine to discuss the ins and outs of having a lover like him.

‘Have they never heard of the word discretion?’ she tossed at him after one particularly vocal beauty had seen nothing wrong in singing his sexual praises to Rachel—in front of Raffaelle. ‘Or does it stroke your ego to hear someone talk about you as if you were a stallion put out to stud and therefore free to be debated for your sexual prowess?’

‘I don’t like it,’ he denied.

‘Then don’t smile that smug smile while they list your assets.’

‘It is not a smug smile, it is a forbearing one. And you sound like a jealously disapproving wife.’

‘No, just a lover who does not think you are so great in bed that you deserve so much attention,’ she denounced.

‘No—?’

She should have read the intimation in that no but she missed it.

‘No,’ she repeated.

‘Maybe you found the Italian heartbreaker and sex tutor of innocents a better lover?’

She turned icy eyes on him. ‘If you’re fishing for information, then forget it. Unlike your ex-lovers, this one does not kiss and tell.’

He had been fishing for information, Raffaelle acknowledged. She might be the best lover he’d ever enjoyed but he had no clue as to where she placed him on her admittedly short list.

And he’d accused her of being jealous when he knew that was his issue. Jealous, curious, wary of the way she sometimes looked at him as if he was a being from outer space. Their age difference bothered him. Her youth and her beauty and that softer side she had to her that made some of his previous women appear sex-hardened and clinical. Did she see him like that: sex-hardened and clinical?

His male friends were drawn to her. He did not like to see it because he knew exactly what it was about her that drew them. They wanted to experience what he was experiencing. They wanted to know what it felt like to simply touch a woman like Rachel and have her melt softly for them.

And she did melt. It was his only source of male satisfaction. In company, out of company, he touched her and she melted. He looked at her and she melted.

‘Well, remember that I am the lover who takes you to heaven each night,’ he said.

And, like Alonso, Rachel knew that he would break her heart one day.

He obsessed her mind and her body. She hated him sometimes, but her desire for him was stronger than hate. He knew it too and the inner battles she fought with herself turned him on. She watched it happen, watched right up until the moment they reached the lift which would take them into privacy and saw the social face he wore fall away to reveal the hard, dark, sexually intense man.

The lift became her torture chamber. The stinging strikes of his sexual promise flayed her skin. By the time they stepped through his front door she was a minefield of electric impulses, hardly breathing, hyped up and charged beyond anything sane.

Sometimes he would crash into that minefield right there in the hallway. Sometimes he would draw out the agony by making her wait before he unleashed the sensual storm. She learned to live on a high wire of expectation that allowed no respite and little sleep, with him even invading her dreams.

He knew every single sensitive inch of her. Sometimes he would coax her to stretch out on the bed with her arms raised above her and her legs pressed together, then he’d begin a long slow torture that she loved yet hated with equal passion because he would make her come—eventually—with only the lightest stroke of a finger or the gentlest flicker of his tongue. It was an unashamed act of male domination which left her aching because he never gave in to his own need on these occasions or finished such torments off with an intimate, deep physical joining.

Why did he do that? Even after four weeks with him she still did not have an answer to that question.

And then there were those other times. The times when he allowed her to perform the same slow torment on him. He would lie there with his eyes closed and his long body taut with sexual tension while she indulged her every whim.

Being equals, he called it. She called it dangerous, because it had reached a stage where she could not look at him without seeing him lost in the throes of what he was feeling on those occasions. A big golden man, trembling and vulnerable, a slave to what she could make him feel.

The elixir which kept her rooted in their relationship, wanting—needing more.

And other things began to torment her which were far more disturbing than the constant overwhelming heat of desire. She knew she had fallen in love with him. She could feel it tugging constantly at the vulnerable muscles around her heart. If he touched her those muscles squeezed and quivered. If she let her eyes rest on him, those same muscles dipped into a sinking tingling dive.

But Raffaelle was not in this for love. He wanted her, yes. He still desired her so fiercely that she would have to be a complete idiot not to know that he was content to keep things the way they were right now.

If she had any sense she would be walking away from it. Elise and Leo were back in Chicago. Elise was happy, Leo was happy and keeping his pregnant wife and his son close to him; the crisis in their marriage was over.

All of this should be over now. And, if it wasn’t for the worrying prospect that her period was overdue, she would have no excuse left to call upon which could allow her to stay.

Then it all went so spectacularly pear-shaped that it threw everything they had together into a reeling spin.

They were in Milan when it happened. Raffaelle was tense, distant, preoccupied—busy with an important deal, he said. But Rachel wondered if the stress of waiting to discover if she was pregnant was getting to him too.

He didn’t say so—never mentioned it at all and neither did she.

She knew that she needed to buy a pregnancy test. Putting it off any longer was silly when she was almost a whole week late. She was supposed to be going shopping with one of Raffaelle’s many cousins but Carlotta had rung up to say she couldn’t make it.

On impulse she snatched up her purse and headed out of the apartment. She should have called Tony to get him to drive her, but she didn’t want anyone with her to witness what she was going to do.

She caught a cab into the city, then headed for a row of shops that included a pharmacy. Anxiety kept her locked inside her own thoughts as she walked, but the last thing she expected to happen was to be woken from them by a loud screech of brakes as a glossy red open top Ferrari swished to a sudden stop at her side.

The man driving that car did not bother to open the door to climb out but leapt with lithe limbed grace over the door. ‘Rachel—amore!’ he called out.

Shock held her completely frozen, her blue gaze fixed on his familiar handsome face.

‘Alonso—?’ she gasped in surprise.

‘Si—!’ He laughed, all flashing white teeth, black silk hair and honey-gold beauty. ‘Is this not the greatest surprise of your life?’