by Lynne Graham
Maya tensed with discomfiture because it was far from being the first time that he had mentioned that ambition. ‘No, when I’m pregnant again, not before. I can’t see Izzy and not tell her about the miscarriage, but I can’t upset her with that when she’s expecting herself. If I’m pregnant again, it’ll be OK.’
Raffaele frowned. ‘I can’t believe you’re being so stubborn about this. I know how close you are to your sister and it may take a long time for you to conceive again...we don’t know.’
Maya shrugged. ‘I know but I didn’t think you knew.’
‘I’ve been educating myself,’ Raffaele admitted with a hint of amused one-upmanship.
Maya paled. ‘Because you’re hoping it doesn’t take too long? Because you want your freedom back?’ she exclaimed.
‘No. I want a baby too and, I’ve got to tell you, I intend to put my all into the enterprise,’ Raffaele announced, sliding over her, strong and graceful and very sure of himself, shifting against her to acquaint her with his renewed arousal.
Maya laughed in relief, overjoyed that he had warmed to the idea of a child as well, knowing that that would be a powerful link even after they parted.
And if he had been fire and fury the first time round, he was a slow sensual burn the second time, letting the waves of pleasure ebb and then flow and wash over her until she was reaching for the stars again in an exquisite release.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Raffaele mused as she lay in his arms afterwards, scarcely able to credit that they were sharing the same bed. ‘We need a house here in the UK.’
‘The last thing you need is another house,’ Maya told him gently, thinking of the many properties he had inherited from his mother, few of which he used on any regular basis. ‘You already have this place—’
‘It’s not child friendly though. We have to think of that. We’ll need outside space for a child to roam. I’ll get onto the agents and you can start viewing country properties within easy reach of London,’ he completed, his decision evidently made.
‘Me?’ she exclaimed.
‘You don’t like it that much here, do you?’
‘It’s OK.’ Maya cringed a little at making that understated description of her palatial opulent surroundings and wondered if just living with Raffaele had already made her insufferably spoiled. ‘It’s a bit bland but it’s central and convenient for you when you have meetings.’
‘I’m thinking of you and our child in the future. It makes sense to get the house organised now.’
And the penny of comprehension dropped with Maya then and she felt as winded as if she had been punched. Raffaele was already planning the separation to come, even though it could take months for her to conceive again. What else could he be doing? He saw a future in which they would occupy two separate households, one for him here in the penthouse and one for her and their child safely set at a distance from his. A country house, which naturally he wanted her to choose because he wasn’t expecting to be sharing it with her. She breathed in deep and slow to calm herself.
This was what she had signed up for, she reminded herself fiercely as her eyes stung furiously and she blinked rapidly and forced a stiff smile. She had signed up for a marriage, a child and a divorce and, ultimately, Raffaele would stick to the rules. He was comfortable with limits and rules, particularly where relationships were involved. It was typical of Raffaele that he was already working out in advance where to rehome her like a pet he had outgrown. Why on earth had she got the impression that anything between them had essentially changed?
But in the two weeks that followed, it struck her that the ambience between them had changed and not for the better. The sex was off-the-charts amazing, but Raffaele was more distant with her out of bed. He was working incredibly long hours and she would see him at breakfast and occasionally for dinner but not much else. He urged her to make a checklist of requirements before she viewed any properties and she spent hours studying houses online to fill her time, discovering that it was anything but easy to find one that ticked every box. And then the inevitable happened: she fell in love with a house.
‘I don’t understand why you want me to view this place with you,’ Raffaele declared with an edge of impatience over breakfast. ‘I don’t care where I live as long as the usual facilities are available.’
‘I would still value your opinion and, as the owners are abroad, you won’t even have to make polite conversation with strangers,’ Maya pointed out persuasively, wanting him to agree to spending some actual time with her that did not entail sex, wondering if that made her just a little desperate. He was following the rules of their strange marriage and she was trying to break the rules without him noticing.
With a groan, Raffaele agreed while reminding her once again not to organise any viewings for over the weekend.
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she told him a little tartly. ‘You still haven’t told me why—’
‘It’s a surprise. I’ll tell you later,’ Raffaele parried. ‘After you’ve done a pregnancy test.’
Maya paled at the suggestion. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘No, it’s not and you’re getting all stressed out over it, which isn’t good,’ Raffaele countered. ‘We could be doing this for months, so let’s not make a production out of a simple check. Months... Madonna mia...how will I stand all that sex?’
Maya went red as fire. ‘Raffaele...’
Raffaele dealt her a wolfish grin. ‘I can take everything you can throw at me,’ he teased. ‘Now give me the brochure for the house.’
Raffaele was picking holes in her choice even before they boarded the chopper that would ferry them to Grey Gables.
‘It’s at the very limit of a convenient distance from London,’ he warned her.
‘It’s historic,’ he pointed out. ‘You said you wanted to avoid that because it’s a protected building, which makes alterations difficult.
‘It’s also going to need more bathrooms and you said you didn’t want anywhere requiring building work,’ he reminded her annoyingly.
‘It’s got woods, acres and acres of woods,’ he commented.
‘Didn’t you ever want to build a tree house when you were a kid?’ she gibed in frustration.
‘My play properties were built for me,’ Raffaele admitted. ‘And I would never have got to run free in the woods because Julieta would have deemed that, like a tree house, too dangerous. She had a whole list of pursuits which I wasn’t allowed to follow and places I wasn’t allowed to go...her control only loosened after I started boarding school.’
‘Yes, but we’re not going to be the same with our child,’ Maya pointed out brightly, wishing she hadn’t mentioned anything to do with his childhood with his troubled mother because that only roused unhappy memories.
Raffaele sent her a sardonic smile and handed the brochure back to her. ‘And presumably, you’re planning to give me triplets at the very least. Grey Gables has an awful lot of bedrooms.’
‘But you’ll need those rooms for extra bathrooms,’ Maya tossed back, lifting her chin.
A couple of hours later, Raffaele watched as she toured the house while the agent waited outside to give them some privacy. Maya’s hair was in a long golden braid, as rigidly contained as she was, slender shapely legs outlined in casual cropped jeans mounting the stairs. She was beautiful, so beautiful, her delicate profile absorbed, her soft mouth still unnaturally taut because he had dared to mention the pregnancy test they had agreed to do every month. Her entire focus was on conception, which was why he was praying that it simply happened, and quickly, to take that complication off the table. Once that was achieved, she would relax, open her eyes, maybe even see what else was on offer...
Raffaele studied the gracious landing, ancient polished boards creaking beneath his feet. Grey Gables was pretty much everything he had avoided throughout his life but that didn’t mean
that he couldn’t see the appeal of the Georgian gem set within its own estate. It was, primarily, a family house with a warmth that even he could feel. The owners were downsizing, their children long since grown up, but happy snapshots of the life they had led at Grey Gables, fashionably presented in black and white, abounded. Maya, predictably, paused again and again to study the photos because that was what Maya wanted even if she didn’t know it: she wanted a family life, a happy, perfect family life like the one she had grown up with. It galled him to acknowledge that truth but there it was. Maya’s debt-ridden parents had still, against all the odds, contrived to raise happy kids.
‘So, what’s this surprise you won’t tell me about?’ Maya pressed as she stood at one of the windows in the master bedroom, which looked out across the front lawns.
The main bedroom was a beautiful room in a very elegant house with the delicate ceiling and wall mouldings and gracious marble fireplace still intact. She had already pictured the bedroom with that fire lit on a winter evening and she bit down hard on her lip when she registered that she was imagining Raffaele by her side. By the time winter came, she would very probably be pregnant, and he would be long gone, only reappearing after their child was born. Her heart clenched as if someone had squeezed it and she forced herself to focus on the view instead. Beyond the window, she could see long stretches of well-maintained lawn surrounded by towering graceful lime trees. Their weeping branches of bright green leaves almost touched the ground and beyond the formal gardens stretched a dense belt of natural woodland.
Raffaele strode across the room, opening doors, glancing in at a superb well-appointed bathroom and a pair of formally fitted-out dressing rooms, which she had already inspected. ‘At least they didn’t stint on the details,’ he commented grudgingly.
Maya studied him. Even in faded designer jeans and a shirt, he still contrived to take her breath away at a glance. Nothing he wore said billionaire, aside of the slender gold watch on his wrist and possibly his handstitched shoes. His whole attitude of masculine command and expectation, however, screamed his exclusive status for him. She had seen the female agent’s fluttering, hair-tossing instant reaction as Raffaele had vaulted out of the chopper that had brought them to the estate and then paused to lift Maya out with the care he always utilised around her. The agent had had that glazed expression that women often wore in Raffaele’s presence.
He was drop-dead gorgeous from his lean, powerfully built, hard body to his chiselled, breathtaking features. All that and money too, she had seen the woman thinking as she’d scanned him before staring at Maya as if trying to penetrate the mystery of how Maya had captured such a husband. No mystery, Maya had felt like saying, more of a trap sprung by Aldo, who had made both of them victims.
Raffaele could never just stand still in business. He had a great need to prove himself even if that meant competing against his own best performances year on year, and the prospect of anything new or challenging, like the current underperformance of her grandfather’s technology company, had grabbed his interest and held him fast. Maya, in comparison, had become the victim of the belief that she could save her family without harming or changing herself. She thought it was fair to say that neither she nor Raffaele had appreciated quite what they were getting into when they had married. They had thought they could do it without pesky feelings and personalities getting involved and both of them had got it badly wrong.
‘The surprise, Raffaele,’ Maya prompted a second time, hitching a fair brow in emphasis.
Raffaele lounged back fluidly against the door frame and in that one sleek, graceful movement ensured that her fingers literally tingled with the desire to touch him. She wanted to trail her fingers through that tousled silky black hair, trace the sensual line of that full lower lip, smooth her hand down over his tightly muscled abdomen. ‘We have guests coming this weekend.’
Maya struggled to drag her brain back out of the gutter, where his extraordinary physical pulling power had taken her. ‘Guests?’ she queried in surprise.
‘We’re holding a big family reunion,’ Raffaele extended with a twist of his shapely mouth.
‘You don’t have family... I mean, apart from Aldo and your father, and London is too far for Aldo to travel,’ Maya remarked, her smooth brow furrowing.
‘Your family,’ Raffaele corrected silkily. ‘Your Parisi grandparents, your own parents and siblings. All of them are eager to have the chance to get to know each other.’
Maya blinked in bemused disbelief. ‘And you just decided to go behind my back and arrange this reunion?’ she exclaimed in disbelief. ‘Without even discussing the idea with me first?’
‘Your grandparents approached me. Someone had to step in and sort things out, although I can’t take the kudos in this case. Rafiq, Izzy’s husband, contacted me first.’
Maya froze in dismay at that admission. ‘Why? Why would Rafiq contact you?’
Raffaele dealt her a pained look. ‘Your twin’s been worrying about why you haven’t visited her or asked her to visit you. You’ve made a lot of ridiculous excuses and naturally she’s worked out that you’re avoiding her.’
‘I haven’t been avoiding her!’ Maya raked back at him angrily, outraged that he had got himself involved in something that had nothing to do with him. ‘My relationship with my sister is none of your business!’
‘I’m not standing by while you endanger a relationship that I know is very important to you, just as Rafiq wasn’t prepared to stand by and ignore Izzy worrying that she’s done something to upset you. I told him about the miscarriage.’
Maya stiffened, all the colour draining from her shocked face. ‘You had no blasted right!’
‘And he immediately understood why you’d been keeping your distance and why you didn’t want to share that experience with Izzy right now. He won’t reveal your secret. If it’s any consolation, he believes you made the right choice even if I don’t. Of course, he’s looking at the situation from Izzy’s point of view, but I’m looking at it from yours.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Maya slammed back at him tempestuously.
‘I know you’re still hurting and that your sister’s support might have helped you to adjust. And don’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I do,’ Raffaele warned her grimly. ‘But don’t worry. Izzy hasn’t been told and she won’t be told unless you choose to tell her. Instead, I’ve taken the fall to explain your unavailability in recent months.’
‘You’ve taken the fall?’ Maya repeated blankly. ‘What on earth are you saying?’
‘That with Rafiq’s agreement, he will inform Izzy that you’ve been avoiding her because our new marriage has been rocky and you didn’t want her to see us together and notice anything wrong and start worrying about you,’ he extended curtly. ‘It’s a good cover story and you can see her tomorrow evening.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Maya gasped in disbelief. ‘Izzy’s arriving tomorrow?’
Raffaele nodded confirmation. ‘In advance of your grandparents. They’re arriving the following day. And you can rubbish me in the husband stakes to your heart’s content with Izzy. I’m not that sensitive,’ he declared curtly.
‘I’m not going to be rubbishing anyone!’ Maya protested, moving restively off one foot onto another, shaken at the knowledge that she would be with her twin again after months of being deprived of her company. She was torn between joy at the prospect and rage with Raffaele for intruding. ‘You shouldn’t have interfered.’
‘You were making a mistake and you didn’t give me a choice.’
‘I’m not still hurting!’ Maya proclaimed hoarsely, her green eyes flashing a defiant challenge.
‘Yes, you are, bellezza mia, and so am I. That’s completely normal,’ Raffaele murmured sibilantly, curving an arm to her rigid spine and urging her out of the room.
Her clear eyes prickled. ‘You�
�?’
‘Sì. I may have got with the programme when it was a little too late but...’ Raffaele shrugged a shoulder wordlessly. ‘Let’s walk through the grounds now.’
Consternation gripped Maya as it occurred to her that her refusal to talk about the miscarriage had also denied Raffaele any way of expressing his feelings, his grief. She had hugged her sadness to herself, excluding him, and that knowledge filled her with regret.
‘I can’t tell Izzy,’ she whispered apologetically. ‘She would be so hurt for me and I’m used to protecting her. I’m used to being the strong one.’
‘It’s your decision, but she’s got Rafiq now and I have the feeling he would stand in the path of a tornado to protect her. You need your family, Maya. You’ll need them in the future when we’re no longer together,’ he bit out in a harsh undertone.
And at those words, Maya broke out in a cold sweat all over her body. She felt sick and dizzy and she pulled away from him to hurry into the cloakroom off the main hall before she disgraced herself. Her head was pounding fiercely, her stomach heaving but, luckily for her, she made it in time and for long moments afterwards, having bathed her clammy face and freshened up as best she could, she rested her brow against the cold tiled wall and breathed in slow and deep in an effort to calm herself down.
When we’re no longer together.
He had said it, he had put it into words that could not be unsaid, words that cut through her like slashing knives. He had said out loud what she could not even bear to think about.
How very considerate of Raffaele to ensure that she had her family behind her for support when he walked away! She supposed that set-up would make his life easier, lightening up his conscience, if he would even have an attack of guilt at ditching her. And why would he? Why would he feel guilty when she had asked him for another baby? She had made that choice, that plea, that demand. Thinking about how she had approached him in the club that night, Maya shuddered with shame and comprehension. She had used sex to hold onto him, hadn’t she?