by Lynne Graham
Raffaele gazed back at her, the pulse of desire thrumming through his lean, powerful frame, tensing his muscles and accelerating his heartbeat.
Her gaze colliding with those dark golden eyes, damp heat seemed to coat her entire skin surface, her nipples snapping taut, her mouth running dry. She tore her attention from him but still he lingered in her mind’s eye, sleek and dark and beautiful with a sensuality that burned and made her ache unbearably. She swallowed hard on that grudging acknowledgement and suppressed it even quicker because they had far more important questions to consider and she was mortified by her lack of mental discipline.
‘So, we let the wedding go ahead because I’m pregnant and you think it’s safer for our child to be born legitimate with regard to the law and all that sort of thing,’ she concluded in a weary surge.
‘And because I believe that you should have my support throughout your pregnancy.’
Vivi’s eyes opened wide and violet disbelief darkened them as she glanced back at him again. ‘Throughout? Look, I’m prepared to go through with the wedding but I don’t want anything to do with you beyond that!’
‘That’s no longer an achievable objective when you’re carrying my baby,’ Raffaele spelt out with finality.
‘Oh, yes, it is!’ Vivi argued vehemently. ‘I don’t need you for support while I’m pregnant.’
‘But I want to be there for you,’ Raffaele countered levelly.
‘Oh, stop being so pious!’ Vivi flashed back at him as she sprang to her feet in passionate annoyance. ‘Maybe you think you’re saying what I want to hear! Or maybe you think I couldn’t cope without you! Or maybe even you simply suffer from an over-developed conscience! But you don’t ever get to attach strings to me just because you knocked me up!’
Raffaele grimaced. ‘Don’t be crude.’
Vivi tossed her head, copper hair glinting like polished metal in the sunshine, her triangular face flushed and glowing with resentment as she hurriedly turned away from him. What a nightmare she would be storing up for the future if she allowed herself to become dependent on a guy who had no feelings for her other than those of obligation! If she wasn’t careful, she might start getting attached to him again, she thought fearfully. Heaven knew she could already hardly keep her hands off him and what more might result from such a powerful attraction? ‘You get to attach strings to the baby after it’s born, not to me.’
‘While you are carrying my child I have a duty of care towards you both,’ Raffaele contradicted drily. ‘A desire to be supportive is not attaching strings. I want you to agree to stay married to me and live with me until our child is born, at least.’
Vivi took an outraged step back from him. ‘Absolutely not! Are you crazy? Our agreement was that we go through with the ceremony and then go our separate ways!’
Raffaele groaned out loud in frustration. ‘And now we have something much more important to factor into that calculation...our baby,’ he reminded her. ‘Nothing is the same now. Our priorities have to change.’
‘Well, they have changed,’ Vivi proclaimed defensively, angry that he was unappreciative of the sacrifice she was already making and indeed was now demanding even more from her. Here she was struggling to hold him at arm’s length and minimise their interaction while he was demanding that she expose herself to much more. ‘Obviously I’m willing to agree to go ahead with the wedding without any further argument but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to sacrifice my freedom for the whole of my pregnancy.’
‘What vital freedom will you have if you live separately from me?’ Raffaele demanded. ‘Are you planning to continue drinking and dating while pregnant? Is that the freedom that you fear losing?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Raffaele, I haven’t even thought about stuff like that!’ Vivi fired back at him in exasperation. ‘I won’t be doing anything against medical guidelines, and right at this minute dating has about as much appeal for me as plunging into an ice pool! But on the other hand, living with you when you’re so arrogant and judgemental and domineering has even less appeal!’
Raffaele, unaccustomed to criticism and prepared from the teenage years to see himself as a very eligible partner, released his breath in a controlled hiss. ‘What will you do when you don’t feel well? Surely there will be such times? Who will you lean on then? Who will look after you?’
Vivi gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t need looking after and I don’t lean on people for support!’ she fielded with distaste and a proud toss of her head.
Raffaele stood poised and cool and resolute, impervious to the wash of her angry denial of vulnerability. ‘But you may need to over the next few months and surely it is better to lean on me than on others?’
Vivi paled at that unwelcome point, thinking of how under par Winnie had been in the initial months of her pregnancy while simultaneously recognising in dismay how her grandad might react to news of her condition. Disapproving as he had been of her sister being a single parent, he would not be pleased even though Vivi would be legally married before her child was born. Furthermore, the idea of having to approach the older man for any form of help, financial or otherwise, during her pregnancy was equally off-putting and would decimate her pride. She would have to put her money where her mouth was, as the saying went, and manage on her own. Accepting Raffaele’s support might be an unpalatable concept but as he was as responsible for the child she carried as she was, it would hurt her pride less.
Raffaele scrutinised her tense stance and wondered if anyone had ever resisted him to such a degree. It annoyed the hell out of him that she refused to see common sense, that she was determined to deny the obvious benefits of remaining his wife while she was pregnant. Shouldn’t she want that security and support? Her slight frame was drooping a little and it crossed his mind that she was not only tired but also very slender.
Healthily slender? It seemed to him that she had lost weight. Had she been worrying too much to take time out to care for herself? Of course, she had been worrying, he told himself impatiently. Hadn’t he threatened redundancies at her place of work? He had put a lot of pressure on her quite deliberately. Was it any wonder that she should now struggle to see him as a potentially supportive partner with whom she could share her pregnancy?
‘You don’t trust me,’ Raffaele murmured grimly.
‘Oh, don’t be offended!’ Vivi urged with an embarrassed gesture of dismissal. ‘I don’t trust anyone but my sisters and John and Liz. It’s safer that way and you don’t get disappointed or...hurt.’
Raffaele reached for her knotted fists and slowly smoothed out the tension in her thin fingers. ‘I will not disappoint or hurt you. I will look after you to the best of my ability and once the baby is born you will have your freedom back.’
Vivi glanced up involuntarily and collided with dark golden eyes. Her colour heightened, a knot tightening in her throat. She swallowed convulsively, her eyes prickling. His hands over hers were soothing but he was her enemy and she would be foolish to forget that for a second. Nor could he possibly appreciate that if she lost control of her feelings for him again he was very likely to hurt her. ‘I feel like bursting into tears,’ she confided chokily. ‘And I don’t know why. Think it might be pregnancy hormones or something.’
‘Maybe so. I’ll feel better once you’ve had a doctor check you over,’ Raffaele admitted tautly.
‘I’m so tired,’ she whispered unevenly. ‘I’m so tired I could go to sleep standing up.’
‘Stress,’ Raffaele framed, hoping she didn’t choose that moment to remind him that he had put her under that stress. ‘I have to fight for what’s right, bella mia.’
‘But I don’t agree with you,’ she muttered ruefully.
‘You never agree with anything I say,’ Raffaele countered with sardonic amusement. ‘But right now, all I want to do is whisk you home to London and ensure that you consult a doctor. Is that accepta
ble?’
Just at that moment the image of her own comfortable bed had immense appeal and she nodded grudgingly, uncertain that she wanted to see a doctor as yet but reckoning that it couldn’t do any actual harm to be clued up on what lay ahead, even if her sister’s experiences had already warned her of most of the physical pitfalls.
‘And while we’re with your foster mother, we’ll work out some way of getting her and your foster father to London for the wedding,’ Raffaele concluded with assurance.
‘It won’t work. They’ve got too many responsibilities on the home front with the kids.’
‘Somehow we’ll make it work,’ Raffaele proclaimed with immoveable assurance.
And Vivi wondered what it said about her that even when Raffaele was endeavouring to be decent, she wanted to slap him. She bit her tongue, compressed her lips and said nothing and reckoned that that was possibly the best way of dealing with him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IT DOESN’T LOOK too tight?’ Vivi pressed anxiously, sucking in her breath and turning this way and that in front of the full-length mirror to check her reflection.
Her sister looked nervous, stressed, not her usual cool, snippety self, Winnie acknowledged worriedly, crossing the room to pour her sister a drink and give her some Dutch courage. That was the joy of them all having spent the previous night in their grandfather’s grandiose split-level London apartment. Every room came equipped with more extras than an exclusive hotel.
‘It’s a figure-hugging dress,’ Winnie pointed out. ‘It’s supposed to be a good fit.’
‘But she had to have the seams let out yesterday because it was too tight over the bust in the final fitting.’ Zoe chuckled from across the room. ‘The designer was aghast. I mean, who puts on that much weight there of all places?’
‘Yes,’ Vivi muttered. ‘She was distinctly irritated behind the understanding smiles.’
Winnie thrust a glass of spirit into her sister’s hand. ‘Here, drown your sorrows,’ she advised. ‘Obviously you’ve been comfort-eating. You shouldn’t be letting all this get to you to that extent.’
‘It got to you as well,’ Vivi reminded her elder sibling.
‘Yes, but I had to stay on after the wedding because Eros still had Teddy. You’re not required to stay beyond the reception today,’ Winnie pointed out breezily.
Vivi paled and abstractedly tipped the glass to her lips and then remembered what she couldn’t forget for even as long as two minutes and she hurriedly set the glass down again, her nerves twisting in a climbing spiral of tension. Her boobs ached in the tight confines of the corseting beneath her dress. Never before had she sported such generous curves. All part of the process of change taking place in her body, the nurse at the swanky medical practice Raffaele had taken her to the day before had told her cheerfully. Vivi didn’t feel quite so cheerful about those changes, which were happening sooner than she had expected.
‘You know, that is a truly fabulous dress.’ Zoe sighed appreciatively, studying her sister’s lithe and slender silhouette in the off-the-shoulder gown fashioned from rich gold lace sprinkled with shimmering embroidery. ‘That colour against your hair is breathtaking. Quite the fashion statement too.’
‘Teamed with the tiara and the diamonds that Raffaele sent you yesterday, you look like a queen,’ Winnie murmured with an amused smile. ‘Very dignified, very elegant.’
‘Yeah,’ Vivi muttered, scrutinising the platinum and diamond tiara anchored in her upswept hair, not to mention the diamond necklace and the drop earrings. ‘I don’t know what Raffaele was thinking of offering me such expensive jewellery to wear. I don’t feel entitled to wear his family stuff.’
‘He has close relatives attending today,’ Winnie reminded her wryly. ‘He’s having to make this show look more real than it is for their benefit and I suppose the bride wearing the family heirlooms is part of that.’
Close relatives... Arianna would be attending for sure, Vivi reckoned absently. How would she behave? She couldn’t imagine Arianna being nasty and she herself was willing to let bygones be bygones this long after the scandal that had separated them.
‘This all feels real enough to me,’ Vivi confided in a brittle voice, her tension climbing even higher at the prospect of walking down the aisle to Raffaele on her grandfather’s arm in front of so many people, because she was only now appreciating that it was going to be a very big society wedding. She had paid no heed to the actual wedding arrangements. They had been left in her grandfather’s hands while she continued to act as though none of it were anything to do with her because she had still been desperately looking for an escape route. In any case, why would she have had preferences or opinions to express about a wedding that was a virtual fake?
Unfortunately, that false bravado had deserted her the night before while she and her sisters and Winnie’s husband had dined with their grandad. Stamboulas Fotakis had been downright ecstatic about the number of wedding invitations he had had to send out and the very high number of acceptances that had come in. He was equally delighted that so many titled society figures were keen to attend his granddaughter’s wedding and he had unashamedly rejoiced in the bridegroom’s pedigreed connections.
Listening to that uninhibited enthusiasm, Vivi had finally understood the older man’s eagerness to marry his grandchildren off to men of high social standing. Their grandfather was a self-made man from a very poor background and grand social connections clearly meant a great deal to him. Luckily for them all, however, no media outlet had yet connected the bride, Vivi Fox, with Vivi Mardas, once slated in the tabloids.
Winnie squeezed Vivi’s hand in a comforting gesture and then winced and frowned. ‘Your fingers are as cold as ice... Where did you put that drink? You need to warm up.’
Glancing around, Winnie spotted the glass that Vivi had abandoned and retrieved it to extend it to her again.
‘I can’t,’ Vivi muttered tightly.
‘I can think of only one reason why you wouldn’t take one little drink,’ Winnie said with a frown of bewilderment. ‘And that’s not possible.’
‘I’m afraid it is. I’m pregnant.’ Vivi almost whispered the confession, grateful to have finally got the announcement out.
‘You can’t be,’ Winnie assured her confidently.
Zoe was quicker on the uptake and more informed. ‘That night you spent at Raffaele’s house?’ she queried wide-eyed. ‘You actually slept with him? But you said you had had too much to drink.’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to admit that to you, was I?’ Vivi fielded, her cheeks a feverish pink as she lifted her head defiantly high.
‘Oh, my goodness, Vivi!’ Winnie collapsed down on the edge of the bed while staring at her copper-haired sibling with wide dismayed eyes. ‘You’re expecting a baby? Seriously?’
‘Yes,’ Vivi confirmed flatly. ‘And I won’t be coming home after the reception either. Raffaele is obsessed with his belief that it’s his duty to look after me while I’m pregnant, so I’ve agreed to stay with him until the baby is born.’
‘But you hate him,’ Zoe murmured in disbelief.
‘He has his moments,’ Vivi muttered repressively.
‘Obviously,’ Winnie pronounced witheringly. ‘When are you planning to share this particular piece of good news with Grandad?’
‘Be my guest and do it for me. I’ll only have a massive row with him, which is a bit pointless when, essentially, I will have kept to my side of the deal and gone through with the wedding he demanded,’ Vivi pointed out ruefully. ‘It’s all his fault anyway.’
‘And how do you make that out?’ Winnie prompted.
‘Well, if Grandad hadn’t forced me into seeing Raffaele again and spending time with him, this would never have happened,’ Vivi declared, struggling to justify her fall from grace any way she could.
‘Do you find Raffaele that irresistible?’
Winnie asked curiously.
Vivi shrugged, refusing to be drawn on that score, but her face was burning.
‘It says something in Raffaele’s favour that he’s willing to take responsibility for the baby and that he’s so keen to look after both of you,’ Zoe commented thoughtfully.
Vivi squared her slim shoulders. ‘I don’t need anyone looking after me.’
‘And yet somehow you’ve agreed to let him do it,’ Winnie remarked with a suggestive roll of her eyes just as a knock sounded on the door. ‘I think that’s our cue to leave for the church.’
* * *
The instant he heard the low buzz of comment spreading through the big church, Raffaele knew that the bride had arrived and he swung round to steal a look.
‘Porca miseria,’ he intoned in astonished appreciation because Vivi looked stunning in that gown. She had not even kept him waiting as he had expected, arriving bang on time, typically contriving that Vivi trademark of surprising him. She was a dazzling figure sheathed in gold lace that enhanced her porcelain skin and copper hair, while the legendary di Mancini diamonds glittered on her proud head and at her slender throat and delicate ears as befitted his bride. He seriously doubted, however, that any previous bride in his family history had enjoyed quite her level of beauty. His chest swelled with pride. No, nobody looking at Vivi’s exquisite face and shape would be surprised by his sudden impetuous marriage. Stronger men than him would’ve succumbed to such undeniable allure, Raffaele conceded, fighting the throb of arousal threatening at his groin.
His keen gaze mercilessly sliced away the sight of Stamboulas Fotakis beaming by the bride’s side and his handsome mouth compressed into a hard line. The old man would pay dearly for his mistake in having threatened Raffaele’s family. Raffaele had already fine-tuned the punishment and put it in place like bait, secure in the knowledge that Stam invariably went for a certain type of deal. Stam would not enjoy being burned and he would learn not to cross Raffaele again. Raffaele would’ve gone for an infinitely more ruthless penalty had it not occurred to him that Vivi’s child, his child, would be Stam’s great-grandchild, which now qualified the callous old codger as family. And today was also obviously the day when he would retrieve that dangerous dossier on Arianna and that threat would be suppressed for all time.