by Various
So what was it that made her pick it up today? Did it have something to do with the way the two men had looked at her in the study—or rather the way they’d not looked at her? As if she was some old piece of furniture—reliably comfortable, but not something you’d want to show off to a guest.
Defiantly, she opened it and stroked on some of the strawberry-scented gloss. Perhaps some of her reluctance to dress up had come from knowing that she could never compete with the other mothers, who arrived at the school looking as if they’d stepped out of the pages of a glossy magazine. Maybe that was why she was always being mistaken for one of the nannies—though she had to admit that most of them made more of an effort than she did.
Outside, the late-afternoon sky was a clear blue and the trees were etched against it in startling relief. All the leaves were turning rich shades of bronze and toffee and gold and, in the distance, she thought she could smell the faint drift of smoke, which was unusual in London , though this area was exclusive enough to have gardens big enough to cope with bonfires.
Natasha was suddenly overcome with the sense of nostalgia which autumn always provoked.
The end of the summer and the start of winter and soon Sam beginning full-time school.
During no other season was she quite so aware of the passing of time as this, when the leaves began their dizzy spiralling dance to the ground below.
There were luxury cars in abundance parked in the streets near the school—most people had to travel from all over the capital to get there—and Natasha never forgot to count her blessings that she lived close enough to walk there.
She watched as the children began to file out in their rather old-fashioned uniform of knee-length shorts for the little boys and kilts for the girls, along with thick sweaters which looked like home-knits, and sturdy shoes and dark socks. Sam was excitedly anticipating the time when he would graduate to long trousers—like the ‘big’ boys at the middle school—and Natasha began to wonder how long she could let things continue like this. With Sam getting more and more used to the luxurious lifestyle which Raffaele could afford to give him. Was it time for her to start getting real? To live within her means?
‘Maman!’ Sam called as he came running over, his little friend in tow. ‘You’re wearing lipstick!’
‘Hello, darling—was it a French day today?’
‘You’re wearing lipstick!’ accused her son again.
‘Yes, I am—do you like it?’ She smiled down at Sam ’s best friend. ‘Hello, Serge. How are you?’
‘Très bien, merci!’ replied Serge, with the solemn confidence learnt from his French diplomat father.
‘Well, that’s good,’ she replied, as the three of them began to walk the route home, which took them past the area’s best conker tree. ‘I’ve made monster cakes!’
‘Monster cakes?’ Serge frowned as Sam began to scoop up the shiny brown nuts. ‘But what are monster cakes?’
‘It means you turn into a monster if you eat them!’ chanted Sam . ‘Will Raffaele be there?’
‘He’s probably busy, darling—we’ll see.’
‘Oh!’ The boys played with their conkers in the garden and then came inside for supper.
Because it was Friday, there was no homework, so she left them playing a complicated game with battleships. She was just wondering whether Raffaele wanted her to make him supper when she almost collided with him.
‘Just the person I wanted to see,’ he said grimly.
It didn’t sound that way. And why was he looking at her like that, with an expression on his face she had never seen before? The black eyes were brilliant and piercing and they narrowed as they swept over her, as if they were assessing her for something—but what?
Some kind of sixth sense set off a distant clamour which seemed to make Natasha acutely aware of the pulsing of her blood—as if something had just sprung to life within her.
Alarmingly, she felt the tips of her breasts begin to rub against the rough lace of her bra and the corresponding flood of colour to her cheeks.
‘Well, here I am,’ she said.
But Raffaele wasn’t listening. He was struck by the way her cheeks were looking uncharacteristically pink—like the wild roses of summer. And by the way…the way… Madre di Dio , but this could not be happening!
Irresistibly, he found his gaze locked onto the luscious curve of her breasts, and he started wondering whether this was because of what had happened earlier—an awakening which had been triggered by something as simple as a woman bending down to pick up a toy. The sudden realisation that behind the guise of her unerring efficiency Natasha was a woman. A real flesh-and-blood one at that. He found that he wanted to cup his palms over those buttocks and bring her right up close against him.
‘Any more news about Elisabetta?’
Her question was like an icy bath on his senses, and he discovered that he had been guilty of some very impure thoughts, indeed—and that wasn’t on his agenda at all. He hardened his voice. Elisabetta was the reason he was about to do all this—and the only reason, he reminded himself.
‘No,’ he said, staring at her mouth and thinking that there was something different about that, too. Was it all shiny and pink? Or was that just his imagination? He frowned. Was he out of his mind to go through with this crazy scheme? And yet hadn’t he been racking his brains all day and coming up with remarkably few solutions to this particular dilemma? For all his wealth and power and connections there were some things he couldn’t control, and the press was one of them. ‘Is Sam here?’
‘He’s downstairs with Serge. He’s got a new conker he wants to show you.’
For a moment the tension on his face eased, the faint smile nudging at the corners of his mouth completely transforming his rugged features.
‘I’ll go down and take a look.’ He raised his brows. ‘And later—will he be here then?’
She shook her head and frowned. ‘No, he’s going to stay over at Serge’s—it’s his turn this week. Is there a problem?’
‘Not really,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suggest that you and I eat together.’
Natasha shrugged. It wasn’t as if their eating together was unknown. She didn’t go out that often—and certainly not when Raffaele was around. She felt that being there was part of the fabulous deal he had made with her—she made the house warm and comfortable when he was home.
She wanted to ask him what was on his mind and, yet, there was something very censorious in his eyes which dared her to even try—a dark, warning light that made her very aware of his position over her. Because—despite all their familiarity and the usual ease with which they lived their lives—sometimes Raffaele unmistakably pulled rank, and he was doing it now. This wasn’t a casual suggestion that they might eat supper together, it was an order, and Natasha ’s pulse began to race. ‘Sure. Would you like me to cook something special?’
‘No. That won’t be necessary. I’ll cook.’
Raffaele? Cook? ‘R-right.’
Her anxiety grew as she saw the boys off when Serge’s impossibly glamorous nanny came to collect them. Natasha could tell that she was dawdling unnecessarily in the hall.
‘ Signor de Feretti —he is at home?’ the girl asked guilelessly, her enormous dark eyes like velvet saucers, searching the tempting spaces behind Natasha ’s shoulders.
‘He is—somewhere. Quite busy, I expect—unless it was something specific?’
‘I want to go to Italy to be a nanny next year—I thought maybe he could tell me some things.’
‘ Signor de Feretti is very busy,’ said Natasha , a little more crisply than she had intended.
‘Perhaps you should try one of the agencies? I’m sure they can tell you everything you need to know.’
After they’d gone, the house seemed more echoing than usual, and Natasha could hear the sounds of Raffaele clanking stuff around in the basement kitchen in between the phone ringing and ringing. He shouted up to tell her to leave it on the answer-machine, but
then his mobile started, and he must have picked it up because she could hear the low, urgent sound of his voice.
She felt odd—as if she wasn’t quite sure of her place anymore, as if something had changed but no one had bothered to tell her about it.
Slowly, she went downstairs, where Raffaele was stirring something in a pot. He wore jeans—old, faded and blue—hugging his lean hips and skating down the muscular shaft of his long legs. With the jeans he wore a shirt made of thick white cambric, through which she could just make out the hard outline of his torso.
He heard her come in and turned round and, inconsequentially, she noticed that there were two buttons of his shirt undone and that dark hair curled there—a shadowy dark triangle, contrasted against the snowy material. His black hair was still damp, as if he had recently showered and his feet were bare. Natasha was suddenly filled with an overwhelming wave of longing and weakness.
‘Hungry?’ he questioned.
She shook her head, wanting to ask him what was going on—why he was talking to her and treating her in a way which made him seem like a stranger to her.
‘Not yet. I’d like a drink, please.’
He frowned. ‘You mean, a drink drink?’
She glanced over at the already open bottle of red. ‘If that’s all right.’
‘Sure. It’s just that you don’t usually—’
‘Drink? No, I don’t.’ But Natasha had had enough of this walking-on-eggshells feeling. If he was about to tell her he wanted to sack her, then why the hell didn’t he just come out with it—instead of all this awkwardness which left her feeling lost and helpless? ‘And you don’t usually behave like this.’
‘Like what?’ he demanded.
‘Oh, Raffaele—I don’t know!’
He stared at her and, for a moment, he almost made a joke about the glaring lack of feminine logic, the way he might usually have done, but he poured her a glass of wine, instead, and turned the heat off from underneath the pan. Then he drank a large mouthful of his own drink and sat down on the edge of the large kitchen table, his black eyes fixed unwaveringly on her face. ‘You know what Troy and I were discussing earlier?’
‘You discussed rather a lot. And then I left,’ she said pointedly.
He realised that there was no correct way of going about what he was going to propose. That maybe being businesslike was the only way in which either of them might find it acceptable.
‘I have a favour to ask you, Natasha ,’ he said quietly.
‘Go on.’
‘You’ve heard the phone ringing? Si? It was the editors of two national dailies, asking about Elisabetta—wanting to know more details. For now, a blank refusal to tell them anything seems to have worked, but they won’t let up—I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve spent the afternoon going over and over what might be the best course of action. I thought of taking her to the States, or back to Italy—but the former is a long way for her to travel at the moment, and, as you know, the worst place in the world for her at the moment is Italy—and that man.’
There was a pause while he looked at her—at the mediocre jeans she wore, with a very ordinary sweater. At the cheap canvas shoes on her feet—footwear which no woman of his acquaintance would ever be seen wearing. He thought about all the things Troy had said and found himself agreeing with some of them. What alternative did he have? No woman knew him the way she did—and no other woman would be prepared to take him only on his terms.
Would she do it? he wondered, and—more importantly—would anyone really believe that he, Raffaele de Feretti , would enter into a relationship with someone like Natasha Phillips ? But his mind was made up. In a day of ever-decreasing possibilities, this remained the only one which made any sense to him.
‘I want you to become engaged to me, Natasha ,’ he said slowly.
For a moment her mind played tricks on her as a thousand latent fantasies sprang into glorious Technicolor life. Dreams that she’d tried desperately hard not to nurture were sudenly given life—dreams about a man who had seemed way beyond the grasp of someone like her.
Yet sometimes, when the dark cloak of night banished all reasonable objections, her hopes would flare as she allowed herself to think about his glowing olive skin, with his black eyes set in it like dark jewels. Or the autocratic and proud features and the body which was all hard muscle and sinew. She would allow herself a heavenly glimpse of what it would be like to be held in his arms, to be kissed by such a mouth as Raffaele’s. And then be left aching and empty when the morning light mocked her for her foolish longings.
But Raffaele was asking her…to marry him? If Natasha hadn’t been so befuddled by events she might have made the connection with what she’d overheard earlier—as it was, she just stared at him, her lips parted.
‘You want to marry me?’ she questioned breathlessly.
‘No. I want us to become engaged.’
The first cold drip of reality pinged into her brain. ‘Why?’ she asked numbly.
Why the hell did she think? ‘Because it will kill the Elisabetta story stone-dead.’
Somehow Natasha kept the hurt from her face—the stupid hurt which might let him catch a glimpse of the crazy fantasies she had been nurturing. Instead, she used her matter-of-face voice—the one she sometimes used if she thought he looked tired and said so. ‘You don’t think that it might look like a set-up? That any editor worth their salt will realise that?’
‘What they think and what they print are two different matters—and no editor will be foolish or cynical enough to come out and say that the engagement is just a—’
‘Publicity stunt?’ she put in shakily.
‘A damage limitation exercise,’ he corrected.
There was a long pause while Natasha tried to work though what the repercussions might be, but her head was whirling with it. ‘And just when are you proposing that we get ‘engaged’?’
she asked quietly.
Raffaele relaxed by a fraction. ‘We can go and buy a ring as soon as you like.’ His eyes narrowed as he saw her bite her lip and, for the first time, he began to consider how such an action might sit awkwardly with such a quiet and plain woman. ‘I can understand your reservations—’
‘Can you?’ She gave a short laugh.
‘Of course I can. It seems a little theatrical, but we really ought to make it look as real as possible.’
As real as possible. Natasha kept her face in check. Not a hint of disappointment would he read there. ‘But it isn’t real, is it?’ she questioned, almost brightly. ‘None of it.’
Raffaele laughed, some of the tension beginning to leave him as he realised that she was joking. This was going to be ridiculously easy! ‘No, of course it isn’t! Don’t worry, Natasha
—it can be the shortest engagement on record, if you like. Just long enough to take some of the heat off Elisabetta. You can even keep the ring afterwards, if you want—or sell it, of course.’
There was a dreadful kind of silence. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said, in a choked kind of voice. ‘I’m not asking for any kind of payment.’
He realised that he had said the wrong thing. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Really, I didn’t.’ He stared at her, waiting for some light-hearted response and, when none came, he softened his voice in the way he only dared risk doing with her—because Natasha was sensible enough not to see anything in it other than friendly concern. ‘You’re the only woman I know who won’t read anything else into it. It makes perfect sense, when you think about it—since we know each other so well.’
Natasha looked at him. He just didn’t get it, did he? They didn’t know each other at all. If he had known even a fraction about the way her mind operated, then he would know that he’d really insulted her with his crass suggestion that she keep the ring or sell it. As if such a ring wouldn’t be anything other than a mocking reminder of what could have been but which never would.
His words had opened up the great, gaping chasm which lay betwee
n pointless dreams and harsh reality. She was useful to Raffaele, nothing more than that—and never more so than now.
Raffaele’s eyes narrowed as another far more unsettling objection occurred to him. ‘Unless you have some man-friend of your own?’ he suggested silkily. ‘Someone who might object on the grounds of your relationship with him?’
Had Natasha stupidly thought that her pain threshold had been reached? Because as she shook her head in answer to his question she was discovering a capacity for more. And, oddly enough, this suggestion hurt more than anything preceding it—that he could think she might be seeing someone. And that he shouldn’t even care! But Natasha forced herself to embrace the pain which washed over her.
Maybe this was the wake-up call she needed. The one which would banish all her wistful longings once and for all and allow her to move on with her life. To maybe start looking out for herself—even to think that one day she might meet a man she cared about enough to consider spending her life with. It was true he wouldn’t be Raffaele de Feretti —but if she chose to compare other men with him, then she was going to end up a very bitter and lonely woman.
‘What exactly will this so-called engagement entail?’ she asked.
‘We’ll announce it, obviously—and then just a few high-profile occasions when we’ll need to be seen at together. Nothing too onerous,’ he added, with the glitter of a smile.
How privileged he was, she thought suddenly—and not simply in the material sense. Here was a man who could snap his fingers and get exactly what he wanted.
‘And what about Sam ?’ she asked, her heart undergoing a swift somersault of misgiving.
‘What about him?’
‘It’s going to confuse him,’ she said quietly.
There was silence for a moment.
‘Will a five-year-old boy even notice?’ he questioned. ‘This isn’t something that’s going to make any difference at home. Nothing is going to change for Sam , is it? We can explain about Elisabetta being sick, if you want, and that us being a couple is simply to help her—as long as he doesn’t tell anyone else. Or we can just answer his questions if and when they come up. All Sam needs to know is that we’re still going to be friends afterwards.’