by Lynne Graham
But what did that matter when she had finally been forced to give her consent? Her conscience had made her agree to his terms, she acknowledged unhappily. He had blackmailed her without an ounce of shame or compassion. How could she possibly stand back in silence while people lost their jobs when he was giving her the power to minimise that blow as far as was possible? She wasn’t callous enough to shirk the responsibility he had put on her shoulders, she reflected ruefully.
Unfortunately, the repercussions of her decision to capitulate would spread like the ripples that followed a rock being thrown into a pool. Zoe would be caught up in the backwash and put under pressure to become the third and final bride. Her grandfather would be satisfied, although only to some extent, she conceded uneasily, recalling his censorious phone call earlier. Heat flushed her troubled face, warm pink chasing the pallor from her taut cheeks. It was a source of serious embarrassment to her to accept that Stamboulas Fotakis was equally aware of her miscalculation.
Miscalculation? Vivi questioned her use of that word on another tide of self-loathing because there had been nothing calculating in anything she had done. Indeed, reason and restraint had been blown out of the water by passion, a passion beyond anything she had ever expected to feel. A passion that in retrospect terrified her. She had tried to excuse herself by blaming it all on the champagne but she hadn’t drunk enough of it to use that justification and she knew it.
Raffaele watched Vivi like a hawk, seeing the fleeting expressions chase across her delicate features, curious as to what was skimming through that agile little brain of hers. He was also wondering why he wasn’t feeling triumphant that he seemed to have finally contrived to avert the threat aimed at destroying his sister’s happiness. Instead he simply felt angry, more coldly angry than he had ever guessed he could feel. He was livid with Stam Fotakis for his crude blackmailing tactics but even more incensed that Vivi had forced him to stoop to the same distasteful level for the first time in his life.
And what if she conceived his child? He released his breath in a slow hiss of determined denial at that possibility. What were the odds? He tried to picture a baby but the only one he could recall was Arianna shrieking through her baptism in the family chapel, a troubled little bundle wrapped in heirloom lace in her unrepentant mother’s arms while his father valiantly strove to behave as though it were normal to have a wife beside him strung out on drugs.
Raffaele had been eight years old then and that was the closest he had ever come to a baby. He should have been more responsible with Vivi. Lost in the grip of lust, however, he had been intolerably careless. At that point, he censored his brooding reflections and told himself off for assuming the worst. Fate had made him very lucky in business. Why shouldn’t he be equally lucky in his private life?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SHE’S OUT?’ RAFFAELE queried, despising the emphasis he laid on that telling word and the almost frightened look that froze the tiny doll-like blonde in front of him.
‘Didn’t she mention it?’ Zoe Mardas pressed, her discomfiture unhidden.
Raffaele didn’t bother to admit that he hadn’t spoken to Vivi since the day she’d agreed to marry him. He was fairly sure that she had blocked his number on her phone. She had left him no option other than to arrive on her doorstep. And he had to speak to her before the wedding because it was impossible for him to keep that wedding a secret, which meant that all his relatives would be attending and caught up in the same charade with him.
‘Do you know where she is?’ Raffaele persisted, recognising that Vivi’s kid sister was a soft touch. ‘I could speak to her there.’
Zoe flushed and stepped off one foot onto the other like a cat being forced over hot coals. ‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t be suitable.’
Raffaele frowned, his lean bronzed features darkening. ‘Why wouldn’t it be suitable?’
‘Because she’s with her boyfriend,’ Zoe whispered shakily, her eyes locking to him with unhidden anxiety as if she expected that admission to turn him into a raging beast.
‘Her boyfriend,’ Raffaele repeated without any expression at all, trusting neither his voice nor his face in receipt of that news. ‘Then I’ll wait,’ he announced with assurance.
‘Oh...er... I don’t think she’ll be expecting that,’ Zoe muttered uneasily.
Which was exactly why Raffaele was determined to do it. He strode into the reception room Zoe indicated and turned round to give the young woman a reassuring smile. ‘Just forget I’m here.’
‘Would you like coffee...or anything?’ his reluctant hostess almost whispered, clearly wishing he would vanish but too scared of her own shadow to argue with him.
‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine,’ Raffaele declared, taking a stance by the window to gaze down into the street below, marvelling that the fiery Vivi could have such a little mouse of a sibling. How much easier would his challenge have been with such a woman?
Oddly enough though, he registered in surprise, he respected Vivi’s sheer fearlessness and her need to rise to every fresh challenge. She was no easy touch. Even so, a boyfriend she had not chosen to mention and with only two weeks to go before the wedding, evidently, she was still seeing the boyfriend. How was he supposed to feel about that? Just over a week ago she had been a virgin, uninvolved in a sexual relationship with anyone. But then she had given herself to Raffaele and, as far as he was concerned, that changed everything. After that encounter with him, had she then chosen to practise what she had learned and become intimate with her boyfriend as well? Why else had she kept quiet about the man’s existence?
But if she had slept with the boyfriend as well, what was it to him? A knot of hard black rage twisted deep inside Raffaele at the very idea of her with another man. Some sort of weird possessiveness had ensnared him once he’d realised he was Vivi’s first lover, he decided in exasperation, because for the first time ever he was feeling territorial over a woman. That acknowledgement made his teeth grit because he wasn’t and never had been that kind of guy. Sex had always been easy come, easy go with him and he moved on to the next woman without a backward glance. He didn’t like ties and he didn’t attach ties or expectations to the women who discreetly shared his bed. But he had not and would not have touched another woman since that night with Vivi because he recognised that, however little he liked it, he and Vivi were currently in a relationship and it would be wrong for him to have sex with anyone else. But, evidently, Vivi did not make the same moral distinction.
She had not been honest with him and that infuriated him. She had also closed down all communication with him. Having set about forcing a meeting, he was only now discovering that she was seeing another man and had carefully kept that a secret. Of course, he didn’t trust her. How could he? The dark rage in Raffaele climbed closer to the surface.
Vivi received the warning text from Zoe midway through what was proving to be a very trying evening with Jude. Fresh from a week abroad competing in a martial arts tournament and having won a medal, Jude had been in the mood to celebrate over drinks. As soon as she could, Vivi had given him the story she had decided was best in the circumstances, admitting that she had met someone else while he was away. Jude had, seemingly, taken the news well but had blocked her every polite attempt to cut the evening short, pointing out that they could still surely be friends. Guilt had made her acquiesce while the prospect of having to deal with Raffaele once she finally got home made Vivi break out in a cold sweat.
Since that breakfast with him when she’d caved into the inevitability of marrying him, she had steered clear of both Raffaele and her grandfather. At her grandfather’s expense she had gone out and purchased a wildly expensive wedding gown complete with all the required accessories. She would play her part in the wedding and that would be that. Tearing herself up about Raffaele or the actual wedding was foolish when she didn’t have a choice. Winnie had echoed that view, reasoning that making too much of
the necessity was pointless while also commenting at the same time that Raffaele’s use of blackmail was complete overkill.
Thinking with bitter contempt of just how far Raffaele was prepared to go to make a killer profit, Vivi stalked into the lounge of her home. Raffaele stood very tall in the window embrasure. He settled shimmering dark golden eyes on her and gooseflesh prickled at the nape of her neck. He had a dark five o’clock shadow that merely enhanced the wide, sensual shape of his beautiful mouth. She remembered the crash and burn effect of that mouth on hers and nervous perspiration dampened the valley between her breasts.
‘Where were you?’ he demanded succinctly, scanning her lithe, long-legged appearance in jeans, a casual top and knee-high boots.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Vivi declared, tilting her chin. ‘I agreed to marry you. I didn’t agree to keep you informed of my every move!’
Raffaele flung his wide shoulders back and lifted his arrogant dark head high, ebony brows set level, lean, strong face grim. ‘You didn’t mention that you had a boyfriend either!’
Zoe must’ve told him about Jude, Vivi realised in dismay, wishing that her sister had included that revealing information in her text message. But Vivi dismissed her unease and tossed her head, copper curls bouncing across her cheeks and her shoulders. ‘Well, what does that have to do with you?’ she enquired shortly.
‘We’re getting married in two weeks.’
‘But it’ll be a fake, not a real wedding,’ Vivi reminded him dismissively. ‘I can do whatever I like in the meantime.’
‘Not if there’s a risk that you could be pregnant by me,’ Raffaele bit out wrathfully. ‘At the very least that should’ve kept you away from other men!’
Vivi’s eyes lit up with violet flames of anger because she could not credit that he could believe he had any rights over her. At the same time, she was struggling against an almost overwhelming need to stare at him and drink in his visual presence like an addictive drug. And the awareness of those conflicting urges only infuriated her more and made her tongue sharper.
‘Nothing would keep me away from other men, least of all a very unlikely possibility of that sort!’ she challenged back with ringing emphasis. ‘You don’t own me, Raffaele, so don’t behave as though you do!’
‘That is not how I am behaving,’ Raffaele proclaimed with a raw edge to his accented drawl, his lean, darkly handsome features set hard as granite. ‘You’re not in a position to be with anyone else right now.’
‘And how do you make that out?’ Vivi prompted very drily, aware of his fury because the very atmosphere was smouldering with his tension. His eyes were bright as gilded metal, his sculpted bone structure rigid. Yet on some level she wanted to move closer and smooth her fingertips over the rigidity of his shapely mouth, breathe in the scent of his skin, feel the heat of him. But how could she still want such things from him? After all that had happened between them, how could he still make her feel that way? It reminded her that her only real defence with Raffaele was to keep him at a safe distance and if that made him angry, so be it.
‘Do I really need to spell it out?’
‘I think you do because I’m not getting it,’ Vivi admitted shakily. ‘I can’t see why anything that I do should be your business either before or after this stupid wedding. It’s not as though we’re in a relationship.’
‘Che diavolo!’ he intoned with suppressed savagery, stalking across the small room like a volcano threatening to erupt. ‘If you do prove to be pregnant, am I supposed to take your word for it that you have not been with another man since you were with me?’
Those harsh words slammed into Vivi like bricks. Loathing and anger engulfed her in a heady wave. He thought she had gone from sleeping with him to sleeping with another man that fast? That she was such a treacherous slut that she couldn’t even be trusted to act in a fair and decent way? Incredulous at the insult, Vivi walked out to the front door.
‘What are you doing?’ Raffaele demanded.
White with anger, Vivi yanked open the door. ‘Waiting for you to leave.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Either you leave or I call the police and have you removed,’ Vivi warned him fiercely. ‘You’re a hateful, arrogant, insensitive man and I refuse to have anything more to do with you! Get out!’
‘I spoke only the truth. I said out loud what any man would’ve been thinking,’ Raffaele argued succinctly in his own defence.
‘Out!’ Vivi exclaimed breathlessly. ‘How dare you insult me? How dare you suggest that I would go from making that mistake with you to making it with someone else as well? Who the heck do you think you are? And if you think I’m going to marry you now, you’ve got another thought coming!’
‘Vivi,’ Raffaele breathed in a driven undertone, staring down at her, willing her to calm down, but her vibrant face was frozen and her eyes were as luminous with temper as distant stars.
‘Go!’ Vivi snapped impatiently.
Raffaele left, colour mantling his high cheekbones, a huge sense of angry dissatisfaction gripping him. He had wanted to know who the boyfriend was, how long she had been seeing him, where they had spent the evening. But, inexplicably, he had asked none of those questions. Why? His brain had zeroed in on the suspicion that she had now become intimate with the other man and he hadn’t been able to think beyond that disturbing level. Apart from the putative possibility of a pregnancy and the lines that would be blurred if she was also having sex with someone else, why had he got so angry?
He couldn’t possibly be jealous. He didn’t have a jealous bone in his entire body, had never once experienced that unpleasant emotion. He stayed in control of his emotions, rose above the negative aspects and refused to give them ground, he reminded himself stubbornly. But he had lost the detachment he valued so highly and had contrived to offend Vivi into threatening not to marry him, after all. She didn’t mean it, of course, he told himself doggedly, of course she didn’t mean it. Nobody got so mad that they burned their boats while still sitting in them, not even Vivi could be that foolish...
* * *
The next morning, Vivi was packing a travelling bag when Zoe appeared in the doorway. ‘You had a fight with him last night,’ she muttered, wide-eyed with consternation. ‘You told him you weren’t going to marry him, after all.’
‘And he didn’t listen!’ Vivi hissed back between furiously gritted teeth. ‘Raffaele doesn’t listen to what he doesn’t want to hear. Well, he’ll soon find out that I mean what I say.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going down to John and Liz for a few days. I need a break and I’ve got some holiday time to use. If I hurry I can catch the early train,’ she pointed out, looking at her younger sister with belated concern. ‘Will you be all right here on your own for a while?’
‘Of course,’ Zoe assured her, gently removing a top from Vivi’s crushing grip to shake it out and fold it neatly before slotting it into the bag for her enraged sibling. ‘If you don’t marry him, where does that leave John and Liz?’
Vivi swallowed hard, thinking it took Zoe to voice that leading question and paling as the consequences of her angry refusal formed in front of her. ‘I don’t know. I’ll work something out,’ she swore.
Raffaele had always prided himself on his nerves of steel but when Vivi extended her leave and stayed missing right up until forty-eight hours before the wedding, he was desperate enough to visit her sister again and ask if she knew where she was.
‘Our foster parents’ place,’ Zoe revealed. ‘I assumed you must know.’
Raffaele clenched his teeth, got the address and organised a helicopter. He didn’t know what he was planning to say to Vivi. He toyed with the idea of telling her the truth about that dossier on Arianna but who could tell what would happen if he opened that can of worms? Would she even care about the threat to her former friend’s happines
s? Would that revelation cause trouble between her and her grandfather? And if it did cause trouble, how might that rebound on Raffaele and Arianna when he could not picture the older man backing down? He had no answers to those questions and decided he would have to work out his strategy according to what he learned when he got there.
That particular morning was a very trying one for Vivi. She had spent ten days with her foster parents in the familiar hurly-burly whirl of life at the old farmhouse. Not much had changed there. There was still a queue for the single bathroom every morning, noisily knocked doors, raised voices, shouts, squabbles and the thunder of noisy impatient feet on the stairs. Only when she heard John drive off with a carload of teenagers to do the school run did she emerge from the attic room where she had been staying. When she crept into the now vacant bathroom, she could hear Liz clattering round downstairs while she tidied up the kitchen and Vivi’s heart was in her mouth as she opened the pregnancy testing kit she had bought the day before.
She was late and she had never been late before, her cycle usually being as regular as clockwork. Furthermore, the signs she had assumed were signalling the arrival of her period had intensified without the expected event arriving. She had waited and waited, hoped and prayed but the sensitivity of her breasts, the occasional bouts of nausea and the other unusual changes troubling her had persisted.
It couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be, she was thinking as she performed the test with shaking hands and sat down to wait for the result. It couldn’t possibly happen with Raffaele di Mancini, whom she hated...could it? No, fate couldn’t be that cruel. Her hands coiled together tight and squeezed hard. She had had sex with him without precautions. Logic warned her that she deserved whatever she got from that ill-judged encounter. It was not as though she were stupid, it was not as though she hadn’t known the risk as well as any other young woman. Unhappily, common sense hadn’t featured in that episode and now she was appreciating that passion was even more dangerous than she had thought and that uncontrolled passion in that particular field could mean life-changing consequences.