by Various
She stared into his uncomprehending eyes. Friends? Not really. And he doesn’t even realise that, either, does he? Nor does he have any inkling of how much my little boy worships him and would love more than anything for the engagement to be real. I have to leave this house and this man, Natasha thought suddenly—and I have to do it soon. Perhaps this whole peculiar scheme would make it that bit easier….
‘You want some time to think about it?’ asked Raffaele, frowning.
‘No. I’ve made my mind up. I’ll do it.’ After everything he’d done for her, it was the least she could do.
He slanted her a smile and held his glass up to chink hers in a toast. ‘Stupendo!’ he said softly. He saw her lips tremble and idly wondered what it would be like to kiss them, to seal their ‘engagement’ in the more traditional way. He was surprised by the stir of interest he felt.
But this was a game. A pretence. Nothing more. And the rather more worrying question of authenticity began to rear its head.
‘You’re going to have to do something about your wardrobe, of course,’ he said abruptly.
Natasha nearly choked on her wine. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The good thing about knowing someone as well as he did Natasha , was that Raffaele could tell it like it really was—and the truth was a luxury you didn’t get to use with most people.
‘Well, obviously, the press are going to love the rich man-poor girl aspect of the affair—the fact that you work for me—but if you look too…well, too…’
‘Too, what, Raffaele?’ she questioned, in a high, clear voice.
‘My taste in women is well known,’ he said bluntly, wondering why she hid her bottom when it happened to be such a shapely one. ‘And, at the moment, you do not fulfill any of the criteria.’
There was a pause, as if he was letting the full, hurtful implication sink in.
‘You will need to dress in beautiful things,’ he continued. ‘Tomorrow you will go and buy yourself an entire new wardrobe and charge it to my account. Buy what you like,’ he added.
But even thinking about her shapely curves was making made him grow hard—something which was not part of the deal. ‘And perhaps you should do something with your hair while you’re at it,’ he finished.
There was a space of about ten seconds when Natasha was seriously tempted to tell him exactly what he could do with his bogus engagement and then tell him how incredibly insulting he had managed to be before storming off. But the possibility dissolved away—
because there was no way she could follow through. How could she fail to do anything other than help Raffaele when he needed her help just as he had helped her that wet, dark night when she’d turned up on his doorstep? Doing this would make them even. Quits. And then she could leave him.
Because after this there would be nowhere to go with this relationship—and she had no right to get angry simply because Raffaele looked on her as nothing more than someone who worked for him. She did! If she had invested too much emotional energy and hopes in her boss, then she had only herself to blame.
‘I haven’t done anything with my hair for years.’ Natasha touched her fingers to the thick French plait which hung all the way down her back. Wasn’t Raffaele giving her the opportunity to do what all those TV makeover programmes aimed for—make her into the woman she’d always wanted to be?
And what kind of woman is that? The sobering truth was that she didn’t know.
Chapter 5
The next day, Natasha went to the most famous department store she could think of and booked an appointment with a personal shopper.
‘Call me Kirsty,’ said the grinning redhead. ‘And then tell me what it is you’re looking for.’
Natasha drew a deep breath. She knew what Raffaele wanted—someone who looked as little like a housekeeper as possible—so why not give it to him?
‘I want a complete change of image,’ she said.
She noticed that Kirsty didn’t contradict her. ‘We can do that. And what’s your budget?’
This part took a little getting used to. ‘I don’t actually have a budget,’ admitted Natasha .
Kirsty’s eyebrows underwent a rapid elevation. ‘You mean, money’s no object?’
‘Kind of,’ Natasha agreed, but some stubborn frugal ethic forced her to add, ‘Of course, I don’t actually want to waste any money.’
‘There’s no such thing as waste—not where clothes and beauty products are concerned,’ said Kirsty smoothly. ‘We women owe it to ourselves to look as good as possible. Remember that, Natasha .’
‘I’ll try,’ said Natasha faintly.
It was not something she had ever done—blazed her way through a shop and kitted herself out from head to toe. When she’d been growing up, money had been tight, then she’d been a student and then Sam had come along. The array of goods on sale was dazzling, and Natasha was glad to have Kirsty to run an experienced eye over colour and design.
As Kirsty told her, most women didn’t get to the age of twenty-five without some of idea of what colours suited them—but what most of them failed to do was to try some unusual and different shades which would not have been their first and obvious choice. She put Natasha into deep leaf-green and terracotta, deep blues and purples, as well as her more usual pastels.
There were silk-satins for evening, deliciously filmy underwear and clothes that were described as ‘leisurewear’.
‘Now the good bit—shoes. Here, try these!’ suggested Kirsty.
Natasha tottered around in front of the mirrors on a pair of impossibly high heels—which she resolutely rejected.
‘But they make your legs look like stilts,’ objected Kirsty.
‘I’m not sure I want legs like stilts—and, anyway, I can’t actually walk in them!’
In the end she compromised with something lower—but Kirsty insisted that if she didn’t buy the sinful- looking shoes in scarlet patent she would regret it for the rest of her life. And Natasha supposed that she must have been on some kind of a high, because she found herself agreeing.
She shopped until she almost dropped, but her fatigue was quickly put to flight by a pedicure-possibly the most heavenly and restful experience of her entire life. Her feet were pummelled and scrubbed and soaked in sweet-smelling warm water, her toenails buffed and polished, so that, in the end, they didn’t look or feel like Natasha ’s feet at all. She felt so comfortable that she allowed herself to be shown how to make her face up, and she bought the foundation, mascara, eyeshadows, blusher and lipsticks which a fancy-looking chart said were suitable for her particular colouring. Then the beautician suggested a leg and bikini wax.
‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ she said doubtfully, wondering when it would ever end.
‘Is it a gentleman paying for all this?’ asked Kirsty delicately. ‘Yes? Well, then, let me assure you that a leg wax will be required.’
Natasha could hardly object to the insinuation—just as she could hardly tell Kirsty that sex wasn’t part of the deal. Hadn’t she told herself that if she was going to enter into this elaborate subterfuge then she would do it with good grace? More importantly, that she would actually try to enjoy herself.
‘Now, you’re ditching those jeans,’ said Kirsty determinedly, ‘and you’re going to wear some of your brand-new wardrobe. The old Natasha is dead—long live the new one!’
The new Natasha was then taken to a fancy hairdresser close to South Molton Street where, magically, their most talented stylist managed to find a slot free at the end of a busy afternoon. That was money talking again, Natasha guessed.
‘So, what are we looking at, dear?’ he questioned, lifting long strands of hair one by one and then letting them drop down again—so that in the mirror Natasha thought she looked like a kind of octopus. ‘One inch? Two?’
‘Make it look fabulous,’ said Natasha recklessly, because she’d bought Kirsty a champagne cocktail for helping her and had had one, herself, and had rather glowingly decided that it would
be ridiculously easy to get used to having a lot of money.
‘Fabulous it is!’ trilled the stylist with camp excitement.
Natasha had missed out on the frivolous side of growing up. The aunt who had brought her up had been kind, but distant—and terribly old-fashioned. She had thought it demeaning for women to rely on their looks to help them get on in life. ‘A woman should use her brains, not her body,’ she used to tell Natasha as she pored over her schoolbooks.
Little wonder that Natasha had been ill equipped to deal with all the pitfalls of a modern world from which she had been rigorously shielded. Her arrival at university after her all-girls’ school had been like being hurled down a wind tunnel—it had left her gasping and reeling. Her prim innocence had attracted a certain type of man—the kind who saw the taking of virginity as his due, but who ran a million miles when he discovered she was pregnant.
As the colourist pulled various strands of hair through an alien-looking, silver cap and the cutter snipped away, Natasha wondered whether she had just stayed stuck in a rut. She had been safely cocooned at home with her aunt, and now she was safely cocooned at Raffaele’s.
Her one foray into the outside world had left her feeling scorched and so she had retreated from it. Well, not so safe anymore, she thought, as the dryer whooshed the shorter, brighter strands of hair around her head.
‘There!’ said the stylist, beaming.
Natasha blinked, hardly recognising the face which gazed back at her from the mirror. The dress and the make-up were amazing, yes—and the lingerie she was wearing underneath made her feel completely different from the usual drab mum she considered herself to be. But it was the hair which effected the most dramatic transformation of all. No wonder thieves wore wigs to disguise themselves, she thought.
The stylist had lopped several inches off and cut into the ends of it, so that it hung in a thick, scented curtain to her shoulders. With the colourist’s help it was now a mass of subtle variations, a warmer and lighter version of her original shade, so she would have described it as golden or honey instead of the ubiquitous pale mousy-brown.
‘What do you think?’ the stylist asked excitedly. ‘There’s still enough length to wear it up, if you want to.’
‘It…well, it doesn’t look like me,’ she breathed.
‘That was the idea, dear!’ he commented wryly.
It had been easy during her makeover to forget just why she was doing it. But as the taxi neared the house, laden down with enough shopping bags to sink a battleship, Natasha began to feel nervous.
Would Raffaele think she’d lost it and had gone completely over the top? More importantly, could she actually go through with this whole crazy scheme?
But something had happened as she had stared at herself in the mirror in the hairdresser’s.
Something which she couldn’t really put into words, but it had a lot to do with giving her a certain sense of herself—as if when she’d gazed back at that calm, perfectly made-up face she had seen someone different from the person she considered herself to be.
Not Natasha the mum.
Nor Natasha the housekeeper.
Or Natasha who knew nothing about men.
She had blinked at the very real discovery that she could be whoever she wanted to be—she just hadn’t found out who that was. Not yet.
The taxi drew up outside the imposing townhouse and the driver tooted his horn. ‘Anyone inside? You’ll need a crane to help you get those in,’ he joked.
Raffaele appeared at the door. And stood for one long, silent moment staring down at her, black eyes narrowed and impenetrable, before he ran down the steps.
He paid the taxi and took the shopping bags from her, and Natasha was suddenly and acutely aware of his proximity, of the raw masculine heat radiating from his body and the sensual trace of lemon and sandalwood aftershave which was so particular to him. Her newfound confidence began to seep away, drained by the ebony blaze of his gaze as it raked over her.
Say something, she pleaded silently.
The taxi roared away and they stood on the pavement—facing each other like two people who’d just met.
His eyes travelled from the tip of her expensively shorn head down to the dress of fine cashmere which moulded itself to her body in a way he’d never seen a dress do to her before.
A leather belt was slung low on her hips and leather boots slouched midway down her slender legs. Raffaele was unprepared for the savage kick of lust.
‘Where’s S-Sam?’ she questioned unsteadily.
Reluctantly, he tore his gaze away from her legs to her face—to eyes that were newly huge and the soft glimmer of rose-petal lips. ‘Inside. We were watching a DVD but he’s just fallen asleep—worn out from playing football. He’s had a busy day.’ There was a pause, and when he spoke again, it was with a soft and almost dangerous stealth. ‘And so have you, cara mia, to judge by your appearance.’
Her heart missed a beat—for that was surely disapproval which glimmered from those coal-black eyes, a note of condemnation which had deepened his voice? ‘You don’t like it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t say the opposite, though, did you—that you liked it?’
His mouth pursed into the mockery of a kiss. ‘Madre di Dio,’ he mused. ‘Is this what a little finery does to a woman? It changes her from demure to demanding?’
‘That’s not fair, Raffaele!’
‘Isn’t it? And is it fair to dress like a siren—to say to a man you may look but not touch?’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘Oh, you didn’t?’ His eyes widened, like a cat’s. ‘That is exactly what I wanted to hear, bella mia,’ he murmured. He dropped the bags to the pavement, pulled her into his arms, and Natasha found herself being almost lifted against the hard, muscular length of his body. With a low laugh of what sounded like triumph he raised his hand to catch hold of her beautifully cut hair, winding his fingers through its silken depths and bringing it towards him so that her gasping face was lifted to his.
‘Raffaele!’
‘What is it, mia bella?’ he taunted. ‘You want me to kiss you? Is that it?’
She opened her mouth to say no, but the word never came—and, if it had, it would have been a lie. Maybe he knew that—just as he seemed to know the precise moment to crush his lips down against hers in a powerful kiss that was about possession as much as passion, like a man staking his claim.
Was it because she had not been kissed by a man for so long that Natasha reacted so completely and instinctively to Raffaele’s kiss—or was it simply Raffaele effect?
Whatever lay behind it, all Natasha knew was that she seemed powerless to do anything other than close her eyes and open her lips and submit to the sweet, heady pressure. Her hands flew up to grip at his shoulders as she felt the soft graze of his teeth, the tantalising flick of his tongue against the roof of her mouth. Did he sense how helpless she felt. Or was her little cry of disbelieving pleasure a giveaway in itself?
Because hadn’t Raffaele’s kiss been her greatest and most forbidden wish of all—the one which had used to eat away at her when she least expected it? When he curved her that hard smile before he left in the mornings. Or when he returned from abroad and she had missed him more than he would ever know. Or occasionally—and much too dangerously—when he had just taken a shower and his black hair still glistened, and she’d imagine the hard, olive-skinned body standing beneath steaming jets of water.
Well, this kiss was real enough and, for once, reality far exceeded the kiss of her imagination.
She moaned as she felt her knees weaken and her grip on his shoulders tightened.
He felt her unspoken surrender, and it blasted into his senses simply because it was so unexpected. He felt confused—because this was Natasha he was kissing. Natasha whose sleek curves he could feel beneath his seeking fingers. Natasha who was inciting him to the kind of kiss which only led to one place, and that place was bed. And
Raffaele knew that if he didn’t stop doing what he was doing then she was going to get a whole lot more than she had bargained for.
He tore his mouth away from hers, the thunder of his heart seeming to drown the sound of traffic which hummed in the nearby street. Her lips were still parted, wet from where he had licked them, and the pale blue of her eyes was almost completely obscured by the blackness of desire. He felt some strange feeling overpower him—more anger than frustration—as if he had been just playing with her and she had damned well played him back at his own game.
So, was she sexually more experienced than she let on? Her quiet evenings nothing more than a bluff for when he happened to be in residence?
Natasha stared up at him, her kiss-crushed mouth trembling, trying and failing to read that dangerously wild, dark glint in his eyes. ‘Why did…why did you do that?’ she whispered.
Why, indeed? To punish her for the crime of making him want her when she was out of bounds? Or for having worked too effective a transformation from housekeeper to wife-in-waiting? Or maybe because he couldn’t ever remember wanting to kiss a woman that badly in a long time?
But all this was a pretence, he told himself furiously, and maybe they both needed to be reminded of that fact.
His autocratic mouth curved into a close approximation of a smile, but it stayed light-years away from his eyes. ‘Didn’t you know that there’s a journalist hiding nearby, sniffing around for a story? And I think we may have provided him with one,’ he whispered, steeling his heart to the dawning hurt in her eyes. ‘What a pity there wasn’t a camera to hand!’
For a moment, she thought he was joking, but one look at his mocking face made her realise he was deadly serious and she began to try to wriggle out of his arms. But Raffaele’s grip was too firm for her to be able to move away effectively. In fact, all it was doing was…Her eyes widened.
‘Si,’ he said grimly. ‘You feel it? You feel me? What you do to me? How much you make me want you?’