by Penny Jordan
Beneath the thin cotton jersey of her top her nipples tightened, the small movement she made instinctively in rejection of her arousal dragging the fabric against their swollen sensitivity, conjuring up inside her head images of a male touch creating—indeed inciting—that sensitivity and then harvesting its sensuality, teasing her with skilled, tormenting caresses that played on her arousal, drawing it from her, making her want a closer intimacy. Behind her closed eyelids Charley could almost see the dark male hands tormenting her, making her yearn for their possession of her breasts. Instinctively she stepped forward—and then gasped, her eyes opening as she came up against the balcony railing.
Down below her Raphael looked up towards the balcony. It was too late for her to step back out of sight. He had seen her, and he would know that she had seen him. Suddenly conscious of how she must look, dressed in her sleepwear and with her hair all over the place, she plucked at the hairband on her wrist, her eyes widening in dismay as it slipped from her fingers and dropped through the railings, landing almost at Raphael’s feet.
When he bent to pick it up Charley could see the fabric of his linen shirt stretch across his shoulders. It was such a male thing that—the breadth of a man’s shoulders, the way his body tapered down in a muscular V-shape towards his hips, his chest hard and packed with muscles where her own was soft with the rounded shape of her breasts.
Raphael was straightening up, putting her hairband in his pocket, looking up at her, at her hair, her mouth, her breasts. Charley’s toes curled into the mosaic-tiled floor of the balcony as she sucked in her stomach against the heat that flooded over her.
A mobile phone began to ring. Raphael’s, she recognised as he removed it from his pocket and began to speak into it, turning his back to her and then beginning to walk away.
It was the warmth of the sun on her sunshine-starved body that had aroused her, not Raphael. He had just happened to be there at the same time—that was all, Charley insisted to herself as she stood under the shower, determinedly not thinking of anything other than the reason she was here in Italy.
Ten minutes later, having searched through her backpack three times, Charley dropped it onto the floor in defeat. How could she not have put in a couple of spare hairbands? She never wore her hair loose. Never. She preferred, needed to have it tied back and under control. She simply wasn’t feminine enough to wear her hair loose in a mass of curls.
His call over, Raphael looked down at the hairband he had removed from his pocket, his body hardening as he studied it. Inside his head he could see Charlotte Wareham standing on the balcony, the bright morning sunshine turning the top and shorts she was wearing virtually transparent so that he could see quite plainly the flesh beneath them—her breasts round and full, shadowed by the dark aureole of flesh from which her nipples rose to push against the fabric covering them.
How different she had appeared then, without the concealment of the shapeless clothes she had been wearing the previous day. Raphael tried to dismiss the erotic image from inside his head, but instead his memory produced another picture, this time of Charlotte Wareham pressed against the balcony, her back arched, her eyes closed in a mixture of surrender and enticement, those long, long legs of hers parted, the sunlight revealing the neat covering of hair that protected her sex. How easy it would have been for a man to slide his hand up her thigh and beneath the cuff of her shorts, so that he could stroke that sensual softness and explore what it concealed. What she had been wearing—two small plain items of clothing, not suggestive at all, so one might think—had cloaked her body in such a way that their mere presence and proximity to her body had filled him with a fierce urgency to feast on all the delights her flesh had seemed to offer. He couldn’t accuse her of being deliberately provocative, Raphael knew, and it brought a sharp edge to his irritation with himself to have to admit that against all the odds, and certainly against his normal code of behaviour, his mind had somehow developed a will of its own and had transformed clothes so ordinary into garments filled with sensual promise. Just remembering now the way in which the thin shoulder straps of her top had suggested they could be easily slid down her arms, to reveal the full promise of those dark hard nipples, filled him with angry rejection of his body’s response to her. The soft, unstructured shape of the top itself, which had finished almost on her waist, revealing a glimmer of pale flesh, had urged him to lift it up and push it out of the way, so that he could see and touch the promised soft lushness of her body. And the shorts, baggy and loose-legged… A man could take his pleasure exploring whatever part of her he chose to reveal, knowing that he had the whole of her to access as and when and how he chose to do so.
Cursing himself silently again, Raphael commanded his self-control to dispel both his thoughts and the arousal they were creating. If he needed a woman then there were plenty available to him who would make more suitable bedmates than Charlotte Wareham.
Charley longed to fasten her hair and hold it gripped off her face as she stood in front of the desk behind which Raphael was seated. She had been summoned to his presence like a miscreant about to be punished—which, of course, as far as he was concerned was exactly what she was. She couldn’t touch her hair, no matter how uncomfortable she felt with it tumbling down onto her shoulders, because if she did it might remind Raphael, and would certainly remind her, of the circumstances in which she had lost her hairband.
In an attempt to distract herself she studied her surroundings. The fact that the large room was on the ground floor of the palazzo indicated that its original purpose would have been for business to be conducted: orders given, favours sought and deals made—the administrative centre of the ducal estate.
The ceiling was decorated with painted lozenges depicting various hereditary arms and symbols. The polished wood of the library shelving which held huge leather-covered books, their gold lettering gleaming softly, added to the imposing air of the room. Traditionally it would no doubt have been here where those who administered the estate would come to present their accounts to the duke, to answer his questions and receive his praise—or his wrath.
Charley shivered. There was no doubt which of those things Raphael believed she deserved.
The heavy, ornately carved and inlaid desk, positioned to make the most of the light coming in through the narrow windows, was covered in papers.
Raphael looked briefly at Charley. She was wearing her hair down, and the sight of it, freshly washed, the delicately scented smell of it and of her reawakened the desire he had felt earlier. What was the matter with him? He was no mere hormone-driven boy, to be tempted and tormented by the thought of sliding his hands into those thick wild curls, of lacing his fingers through them as he covered her naked body with his own, arousing her as she had aroused him. Using the determination with which he had always so ruthlessly crushed any challenge or resistance to his self-control, Raphael closed down his unwanted thoughts as firmly as though he had trapped them behind an impregnable steel door. To allow himself to feel desire for Charlotte Wareham would be unacceptably inappropriate behaviour and, more than that, a weakness within himself that he was not prepared to tolerate. He had no idea why she should have such an effect on him. She was neither groomed nor elegant. She was not witty or sophisticated. In short, there was nothing about her that should have had any appeal for him.
All he could think was that somehow his body had been confused by the anger she aroused within him and was thus acting inappropriately. The reality was that Charlotte Wareham was proving to be a thorn in his side in more ways than one.
‘I have copies here of the original plans for the garden. I want you to study them and see what is to be done within the garden.’
‘Yes, Il Duce.’ Charley responded through gritted teeth.
There was a small, dangerous silence, as though he knew how she had almost choked on delivering the title that in her own estimation reduced her to little more than a slave, forced to do his bidding, and how she had spoken the words
with her angry contempt. She could see the thunder in the now dark grey eyes and she waited, knowing that she would be punished.
But when he spoke he shocked her by saying dismissively, ‘You will address me as Raphael and not Il Duce.’
Use his name and not his title? Charley almost told him that she would do no such thing, but just in time realised how ridiculous such a piece of defiance would be.
‘Now,’ he continued, ‘let me assure you that any attempt on your part to despoil the restoration of the garden with items of the sort I saw yesterday will result in your immediate dismissal. The garden will be restored to its full glory in every detail.’
Charley could almost feel the intensity of his commitment. If he could make that kind of commitment to a garden then how much more intense would be the commitment he made to the woman he loved?
Her body convulsed on a small betraying shiver. Once, a long, long time ago as a girl, before she had realised that tomboys were not the kind of girls the male sex wanted to protect, she had dreamed of growing up and being loved by a man whose love for her would be so strong that it would protect her always.
An aching sense of painful loss filled her. She would never know that kind of love—Raphael’s kind of love.
Love? What on earth was going on? Love and this man had no place together in her thoughts. No place at all. She could not afford to be vulnerable. She was too vulnerable already.
A discreet but firm rap on the door broke across her thoughts and had Raphael turning towards it, commanding, ‘Come.’ It opened to admit his serious-looking male PA, Ciro, whom Charley had met earlier, when he had introduced himself to her and told her that Raphael was waiting to speak with her.
Ciro spoke quickly and quietly to Raphael, causing him to frown slightly and then tell her, ‘I have to go and speak with the manager of the vineyard. I shall not be long. Ciro will arrange for Anna to have some coffee sent in for you whilst you wait for me to return.’
His words sounded polite enough, but Charley wasn’t deceived. What they really were was an order to her that she was to remain here until his return—when no doubt she would be subjected to more contempt and more verbal castigation, she decided as Raphael strode through the door his PA was holding open for him, leaving Ciro to follow him.
Thanking the maid for the coffee she had just brought, Charley picked up the cup the girl had filled for her, wrapping both her hands around it for comfort—like a child holding a comfort rag or toy, Charley thought, deriding herself for her own vulnerability.
As a child it had always seemed that she had been the one to get the blame for the accidentally naughty things the three of them had sometimes done—even when Lizzie had insisted that the fault was hers. There had been many times when she had gone to bed at night crying into her pillow in silent misery, feeling misunderstood, feeling she was less worthy of parental love than her two sisters. Now the way Raphael was treating her had evoked some of that long-ago misery and sense of injustice, adding to her existing despair.
She took a quick gulp of her coffee and then got up from her chair, putting the cup down as she was drawn to the sketches and plans laid out on Raphael’s desk. Since they were of the pleasure garden, there was no reason why she should not look at them, she assured herself. She had, after all, seen the plans before, at home in England.
These, though, were not modern drawings, but sketches and watercolours of parts of the original garden, Charley quickly recognised, immediately becoming so absorbed in them that everything else was forgotten as she was mentally swept back to another century, enviously imagining what it must have been like to be involved in such a wonderful project. The plans and sketches alone were minor works of art in their own right, and Charley’s fingertips trembled as she touched the papers on which those long-ago craftsmen had etched their sketches and detailed measurements of fountains, statues, colonnades and grottos.
A perspective overview showed the full layout of the garden. The formal sweep of a curved, colonnaded entrance opened in the centre, to draw the eye down a wide avenue planted with what looked like pleached limes. Either side of it the garden was intersected by narrower walkways, opening out into sheltered bowers decorated with seats and statuary, beyond which lay a stone fountain, in the middle of which was a huge piece of statuary. A paved terrace shaded by vines marked the boundary, where the land fell away with a view over an ornamental lake, complete with a grotto.
There were sketches for small, elegant pavilions, ‘secret’ water gardens designed to spring into life when the unsuspecting walked close to them. Charley ached with longing to have seen the garden following its completion. Raphael was right to say that trying to recreate such beauty using cheap manmade materials was an insult to the original artists.
She was so wrapped up in the world those long-ago craftsmen and artists had created that she didn’t hear the soft click of the door opening, and was oblivious to Raphael’s return and the fact that he was standing watching her as she stood looking down at the papers on his desk, her expression one of absorbed intensity.
Charley lifted her gaze from the desk, her eyes shadowed with all that she was feeling, lost in her own world—only to come abruptly out of that world when she saw Raphael.
How long had he been there? The way he was looking at her made her feel acutely vulnerable. She stepped back from the desk, so intent on escaping from his gaze that she forgot about the small table behind her on which the maid had placed the tray of coffee.
As she bumped into the table she dislodged the heavy thermos jug. Before she had time to react Raphael had reacted for her, reaching her side, pulling her away from the table just as hot coffee spouted from the jug and onto her jean-clad thigh.
She must have cried out, although she wasn’t aware of having done so, because immediately Raphael looked down to where the hot liquid had soaked through her jeans, his sharp and almost accusatory, ‘You have been burned,’ causing Charley to shake her head.
‘No. I’m all right,’ she insisted.
Her face was burning with a mixture of emotions. Her leg was stinging painfully beneath the wet fabric of her jeans, but it was her own embarrassment at having been so clumsy rather than any pain that was making her feel so self-conscious. There was a small puddle of coffee on the snow-white starched linen tray cloth with its discreet monogram, and coffee on the floor as well, but thankfully it had missed the rug that covered part of the marble-tiled floor. Her parents would have shaken their heads if they had witnessed her mishap, pointing out to her that she was dreadfully clumsy. How she had longed to be deft and delicate in her movements, and not like the baby elephant her mother had always teasingly told her she was.
‘It’s my own fault,’ she told Raphael. ‘I shouldn’t be so clumsy.’
Clumsy? Raphael frowned. She was tall, yes, but her hands and her feet were elegantly narrow, her body far too slender for her ever to be ‘clumsy’. In fact if anything Raphael had noticed how controlled and economical her movements were, almost as though she was afraid to express herself.
‘You’ll want to get changed. I’ll wait for you down here.’
‘There’s no need for me to change,’ Charley told him. ‘My jeans will dry.’
He was looking at her in a way that said very explicitly what he thought of a woman who cared so little for her appearance that she was content to continue wearing jeans that were stained with and smelled of coffee.
Gritting her teeth, Charley lowered her pride to admit, ‘I haven’t got anything to change into, since you insisted that I was to stay here instead of going home and then returning.’
Now that the immediate shock was receding Charley was beginning to realise that the scalding coffee had hurt her more than she had first thought. Her leg was throbbing and burning, the pain growing more intense with every passing second, but she was stubbornly determined not to let Raphael see that.
‘Go up to your room,’ Raphael commanded. ‘I’ll speak to Anna about provi
ding you with something to wear for now.’
It was easier to give in than to argue—especially with the pain growing more intense by the second, Charley admitted as she stood up. And then, to her shock, she felt her burned leg give way beneath her, causing her to stumble into Raphael’s desk.
Raphael was on his feet immediately, opening a drawer in his desk, coming towards her as she clung to the edge of the desktop for support.
‘No!’ Charley protested, and protested a second time as she saw the scissors in his hand. But it was no use. He was cutting through the wet denim as ruthlessly as he would have cut down an enemy. The cool air on her burned flesh caused Charley to shudder. She felt slightly sick and light-headed when she looked at her leg and saw how the flesh had reddened and blistered.
Raphael’s mouth tightened as he looked at the burned flesh. ‘This needs proper medical treatment,’ he announced grimly.
‘No. I’m all right,’ Charley insisted. ‘I’ll go upstairs and bathe it with some cool water.’ She let go of the desk and took a couple of steps, the blood draining from her face as her body responded with a surge of pain.
Raphael had seen enough. Of all the stubborn, stupid women… Before Charley could stop him he was lifting her into his arms, his action forcing her to hold on to him tightly by putting her arms around his neck. He couldn’t possibly be intending to carry her all the way to her room—but it seemed that he was, and Charley could only guess at the power in the muscles cloaked by his fine linen shirt as he did so, as effortlessly as though she weighed little more than a child.
Once they were inside her room, Raphael placed her on the bed and then, after instructing her not to move, he left.
Strange how the pain had subsided whilst she was in Raphael’s arms. But it had returned now, and if anything was even worse. It was ridiculous for her to feel as though she had been abandoned, and even more ridiculous—dangerously so—for her to wish that Raphael had stayed with her. Charley looked down at her lower body which, unlike her damaged leg, was still encased in her jeans. She wasn’t helpless, she reminded herself. She sat up and started to ease her jeans off, wincing as the fabric brushed against her burned flesh.