by Lynne Graham
‘You spent yesterday with him as well,’ Raffaele reminded her with an edge.
‘I’m going to be parted from my family for months.’
‘I’ve already assured you that you can fly home and visit them any time you want. It’s all in the pre-nuptial agreement. Didn’t you read it?’
‘I read it cover to cover.’ Maya set her teeth together before she found herself arguing with him again about the allowance he was insisting she would receive after their marriage terminated, and the even bigger fortune she would walk away with should they have a child. It all seemed so cold and dry and shoddy to her, raised as she had been to look on marriage and child-bearing as something you only did with someone you loved. Only she could hardly say that to Raffaele when she had agreed to those terms, could she?
* * *
Maya’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the sprawling mansion at the foot of the long straight drive. Somehow she had expected Raffaele’s home in Tuscany to be as aggressively modern as his London apartment, and the big graceful property with its landscaped gardens and much older design took her by surprise. Whatever, it scarcely mattered to her, she reasoned apprehensively when her wedding was only a few hours away, to be staged that very afternoon.
How could she possibly be getting married without a single member of her family present? And how could she be marrying a man she didn’t love? A kind of panic Maya had never felt before sat like a large immovable stone in her hollow tummy. That panic had nothing to do with logic and had not even been soothed by her family’s display of happy relief that week as her parents were freed from all their worst fears and were finally able to contemplate a fresh start in life. Her father, Rory, was actually looking for a job, admitting to her that he had only kept on trying to start up his own business because he had believed that a successful business was his only hope of amassing sufficient cash to pay off their debts.
But, worst of all, Maya missed her twin sister, because Izzy had always been her safe place when the cruel realities of life threatened to crush her. She was used to confiding in Izzy, being soothed by her sibling’s more light-hearted and optimistic nature. But she could not share her current predicament with Izzy, because she knew that Izzy would’ve told her not to go ahead, and that their parents’ financial problems were not solely their responsibility to fix. Unfortunately, the hard truth of that belief, Maya acknowledged ruefully, was that there was nobody else to fix those problems, and that watching poor little Matt suffer alongside their parents was more than Maya could bear when she had been put in a position where she could help. For that reason, there was no excuse for distressing her twin with a situation that could not be changed by wishful thinking. She would tell her sister afterwards, when the whole wretched arrangement was almost over...perhaps once she had conceived.
Of course, that wasn’t something she could think about when conception was inextricably linked to the necessity of having sex with Raffaele Manzini. He was gorgeous. Doubtless he would be charming and experienced and pretty much physically what the average woman could only dream of for her first experience. But what mattered most to Maya was that she had no sense of connection with him. Her body operated around him on its own agenda while her brain stayed free, recognising the cold calculation in him, the ruthlessness, the lack of caring. He could flirt, he could talk up a storm, in truth he could be incredibly entertaining, but it wasn’t enough for her...
Only it had to be enough, she reminded herself doggedly as she climbed out of the limo that had brought her from the airport, fresh from the incredible luxury of her flight in the Manzini private jet. And now it was her wedding day and she had to settle down and accept the conditions she had already agreed, she told herself urgently. Deep down inside she was far too sensitive, far too much of a dreamer, weak, she thought, full of self-loathing at that moment. With Raffaele, she needed to be tough as steel and hard as stone to hold her own.
Raffaele watched her emerge from the limo, a slender graceful figure in jeans and a light top, blonde hair braided down her back, and that fast his body reacted. He was amused because that reaction was only telling him what he already knew: Maya had a weird effect on him. The sound of her husky laughter on the phone affected him the same strange way. He only hoped that she would be pleased with the surprise he had helped to engineer for her. Surely she would be delighted? Nobody appeared to be more family-orientated than Maya was.
Maya was disconcerted to find Raffaele poised in the grand hallway. Her luggage was being ferried past her while a maid waited to show her upstairs to her room. A smile curved his shapely sculpted lips and, for once, carried up to lighten his dark eyes to shimmering gold, and her heart stuttered as though he had punched her, she reflected with inner recoil at her response to him. Posed there in sunlight, blue-black hair gleaming, his flawless bronzed features smiling, and his tall, powerful physique casually clad in jeans and a tee, he took her breath away...whether she liked it or not.
‘I have a surprise for you. I can only hope it’s a good one,’ Raffaele murmured quietly. ‘Your grandparents are here, hoping to meet you.’
‘My... P-Parisi grandparents?’ Maya stammered in disbelief.
‘Aldo told them about the wedding, and they contacted me to ask if they could attend. They’re a little disappointed that your mother and your siblings won’t be coming but they’re very eager to meet you,’ he told her.
‘But I thought they wanted nothing to do with any of us!’ she exclaimed, taken aback by the development but wondering only briefly how to behave because she had been raised to always be polite and kind.
‘I think you’ll find that the passage of time and loneliness have changed their outlook. Your mother is an only child,’ Raffaele reminded her. ‘But be warned, your grandmother cries a lot. She’s very emotional.’
‘So is my mother,’ Maya confided with a sudden smile as she braced herself because Raffaele already had a hand at her spine to press her into the room.
Maya focused on the two people who had stood up to greet her. They were older than she had expected, must have been quite an age when her mother was born, she worked out, searching their faces for familiarity and finding it there in her grandmother’s damp dark eyes and her small, portly grandfather’s anxious expression. She could see her mother’s lineage in their faces, and it warmed her into moving forward and extending her arms to the weeping older woman.
‘Maya, this is Fortunato and Assunta Parisi, your grandparents,’ Raffaele told her.
‘I am your nonna,’ the elderly lady framed on the back of a sob.
‘I’ll leave you to get acquainted,’ Raffaele volunteered, closing the door again.
And there was much chatter and many tears from Maya’s nonna as the older woman looked in delight at the photos on Maya’s phone to see the daughter she had not seen for over twenty years and the pictures of her other two grandchildren.
‘You see, now we understand that life had moved on, but we had stayed the same,’ Assunta explained. ‘We brought up Lucia as we were brought up and expected her to be identical, but the world outside our walls was a different and more modern one and we ignored that influence.’
‘You threw her out when she was pregnant,’ Maya could not help reminding the older couple.
‘We wanted her to agree to have the baby privately adopted, and she wouldn’t.’
Maya sighed. ‘Thank goodness she didn’t or Izzy and I might never have known our parents.’
‘I didn’t think your father was good enough for her,’ her grandfather admitted reluctantly. ‘He was penniless and my daughter had never worked a day in her life.’
‘They’ve had their problems with money management,’ Maya confided wryly. ‘But they are still very much in love with each other.’
Her grandparents looked relieved to hear that news, as if even though that marriage might not have been what they had wanted
for their daughter, they were still pleased it had worked out for her.
Raffaele reappeared. ‘Sorry to break this up but the bride has to start getting dressed,’ he announced.
And her grandmother was up in a trice, keen to accompany Maya. Before Maya left the room, he signalled a maid to show the older woman upstairs and said levelly to Maya, ‘Did I make the right choice in letting them come?’
Maya smiled brightly and nodded simultaneously. ‘Yes, you did. It was a little embarrassing admitting to them that this is a secret wedding, but I encouraged them to consider contacting my mother and I passed over the phone number,’ she confided in a rush. ‘I think there will eventually be a reconciliation. Everybody seems to be in the right place now for that to happen.’
‘And your family being happy makes you happy?’ Raffaele queried in apparent surprise.
‘Doesn’t yours?’
‘I don’t have a family. My mother’s dead, I first met my father when I was twenty-one and my acquaintance with Aldo only began last month,’ he told her flatly.
‘I didn’t realise any of that,’ Maya admitted, silenced by those admissions, striving to think of what her life might have been like without the background of support and love that she pretty much took for granted. ‘You’re very alone.’
Raffaele shrugged and frowned. ‘I’m a loner by nature. It hasn’t harmed me.’
Maya almost dared to differ with that sentiment because it explained a lot to her—his lack of emotional understanding, for a start. ‘You did something kind for me. I didn’t think you were capable of that,’ she admitted frankly.
Raffaele inclined his arrogant dark head and one of the staff approached with a pile of gift-wrapped boxes. ‘It’s a wedding gift.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Who from?’
Raffaele tensed, outrageously long black lashes curling up with incredulity. ‘From me.’
‘Oh...’
‘I decided that I didn’t want you wearing my mother’s jewellery.’
Her facial muscles tightened. ‘That’s perfectly understandable.’
‘No, you’re misunderstanding me...again,’ Raffaele stressed. ‘For me, there’s nothing but bad memories attached to my mother’s jewellery, and I’ve now arranged to have it auctioned off. These jewels are new, and for you to wear and keep.’
Bad memories? Curiosity assailed her, furthered by the haunting darkness of his gaze. But she was also disconcerted and embarrassed because it would never have occurred to her to buy anything for him even as a token wedding gift. Maya nodded jerkily. ‘Thank you very much.’
Raffaele gazed down at her in mounting frustration, craving something he wanted from her, unable to label it, only able to recognise by his own dissatisfaction that he wasn’t receiving it. ‘It’s no big deal. I’ve got money to burn,’ he fielded drily.
‘I’d better go and start getting dressed,’ Maya muttered, backing slowly away, her eyes locked involuntarily to the liquid burning gold of his.
‘All I can think about is undressing you,’ Raffaele confided without even thinking about it, and then he watched her face freeze and shutter and knew it had been the wrong thing to say. But why was it the wrong thing? Once again, he felt at a tactical disadvantage, as if everyone else but him had the right script in Maya’s radius. She wanted him. He could see that in her eyes, when she looked at him with need and desire. What could be wrong with expressing that? Was she really that shy? And if she was shy, how did he handle that? Because vast as his experience was, he had never been with a shy woman.
A maid leading the way, Maya hurried upstairs to arrive breathless in an opulent bedroom suite embellished with superb polished antique furniture. There a hair stylist, a make-up artist and her grandmother eagerly awaited the bride’s arrival. Her nonna addressed the maid in Italian, ordering some drink that Maya had never heard of.
‘We drink it at weddings,’ Assunta Parisi assured her, her likeness to Maya’s mother, Lucia, in her greying dark hair and warm eyes lifting Maya’s spirits. ‘It’s wonderful that you speak Italian. Raffaele didn’t mention that.’
‘He doesn’t know yet. He speaks to me in English. I picked it up from Mum when I was a child and then added Italian in as an additional course at university,’ Maya admitted, and when the maid arrived with an elaborate decanter and fancy glasses, she felt that it would have seemed churlish for her to declare then that she didn’t usually drink.
Anyway, she thought rebelliously as the preparation of the bride began, perhaps she needed a little pick-me-up to face what lay ahead: sex with Raffaele. Of course, she could get through that as long as she didn’t think about the logistics of having to strip off in front of him, open her body to a virtual stranger and act as if it were no big deal. Easy-peasy, she told herself firmly, no silly timid bride here, as she drank down the sweet liqueur. A little while later, a faint buzz hazed her thoughts and she began to feel a tad more relaxed. So, one or two drinks just to grease the wheels of her family-saving marriage and why not? After all, she probably wouldn’t be drinking while she was trying to get pregnant, she reasoned ruefully.
She had set the gift boxes on the dressing table when she entered the room and while the stylist was doing her hair, her nonna asked what they were and, learning, urged her to open them immediately. With reluctance, because gifts struck her as inappropriate in her non-relationship with Raffaele, she opened the first and everyone present gasped. The opened boxes revealed a king’s ransom in jewels, ranging from a superb tiara to a necklace that was a glittering waterfall of diamonds.
Her nonna squeezed her shoulder and leant down to whisper, ‘He told your nonno and I that it was a marriage of business, but he lied. No man gives such magnificence in those circumstances,’ she assured her grandchild with proud satisfaction. ‘You are very beautiful and educated and he has fallen in love. Finally, the old bitterness between our families will be buried and forgotten.’
Maya might have been betrayed into laughing out loud at that fanciful conviction had not the maid brought out the wedding gown to display to them. Her breath caught in her throat because it was gorgeous and absolutely not what she had expected when Raffaele had done the choosing. She had been prepared for something tight, revealing and sexy such as he preferred, not a dream of a long dress with fine lace sleeves, a fitted bodice and layers and layers of silk in the skirt that glistened with handmade embroidery and shimmering crystals. The most daring aspect of the gown was the cutaway above the waist, which would bare a section of her back, so not very daring at all, not chosen for him, but chosen by him for her, which was another surprise.
And she didn’t like Raffaele surprising her, especially not after she had believed she understood him to perfection and had set him in stone to play his role as the spoiled, selfish and dissolute bridegroom. As her grandmother enthused about the wedding gown, wild horses could not have dragged the truth out of Maya, that in fact Raffaele had chosen the dress, because suddenly she was ashamed of that truth, that she had agreed to their marriage but had nonetheless refused to play her role. Shame made her reach for her glass of liqueur again and sip in haste because the alcohol was blurring her dark thoughts. She, who prided herself on being kind, fair and reasonable, had been mean, angry and resentful of a choice she had made because she could have walked away from Raffaele’s offer.
* * *
Her fingers curled on her grandfather’s arm as he escorted her proudly down the aisle of the picturesque country church, which was festooned with flowers and crammed with smiling, staring guests. The wedding had never felt more real to Maya than it did at that moment as her gaze travelled anxiously to the male awaiting her at the altar. There he stood, Raffaele Manzini, the last man alive she had expected to try to turn their business marriage into a more normal one when she had made no effort whatsoever. And he was beautiful, tall and lithe and dark and sleek, for once formally clad in his wedding f
inery, a light grey morning suit teamed with a cravat, waistcoat and tailored dress pants.
Her throat tightened, butterflies buzzing like bees in her taut stomach, every inch of her reacting to his raw masculinity, and it was so completely, utterly unnerving to Maya, who felt so threatened by that instinctive response, that she hastily dropped her gaze again.
They knelt on velvet cushions and the priest performed the ceremony in both English and Italian, yet once again mutiny and a sense of wrong stirred within Maya, who had only ever expected to wed in all sincerity and love. Raffaele eased a slender platinum band onto her finger and tugged her round to face him as though he intended to kiss her while their guests swelled the church with song in celebration of their rites.
‘You look divine...like a breathtakingly beautiful ice maiden,’ he whispered, stunning dark tawny eyes locked to her flawless face with an intensity she could feel, and it only made her tremble.
‘It’s cool in here,’ she deflected with a faint shake in her voice, turning her head away from him in denial that he could make her feel so unlike herself.
Maya had never allowed a man to affect her, had believed that that was her choice alone, and now she was discovering different and it scared her. She met Raffaele’s eyes and her body lit up like the sunrise at dawn, sexual awareness flooding her in an unstoppable tide, heat and tension gripping her. It made her feel out of control for the first time ever and she hated that.
On the steps of the church he introduced her to his great-grandfather, Aldo, the man she knew she had to blame for masterminding her predicament, she conceded. Yet how could she bestow blame on anyone when her family was finally free of the debts that had stolen their happiness for so many years? Deciding that she could not, she met Aldo’s shrewd dark eyes, set in his worn face, with a smile.
‘That was generous of you,’ Raffaele remarked in surprise as the nurse accompanying Aldo wheeled the elderly man away again.