by Various
Natasha trembled as the massive diamond caught the light, It seemed to flash and sparkle with the significance of a beacon shining on top of an isolated lighthouse. But the wearing of this ring was simply to send out a message—it was not a symbol of how two people felt about each other.
The press went wild.
‘ Natasha ! Hey, Natasha ! Look this way!’
‘Over here, Natasha !’
Countless flashbulbs exploded—bleaching the night with blinding white light so that Natasha blinked and swayed a little. Raffaele’s hand tightened on her elbow.
‘You okay?’ he murmured, his head distractingly close to hers.
More flashbulbs exploded.
‘I’m…fine. Just a little dazzled.’ She wobbled back a smile. ‘Literally!’
It occurred to him that Natasha could be witty and clever even during a stressful occasion like this—or was that the most insufferably patronising thing to think? Had he forgotten that she’d been midway through a degree when she’d become pregnant with Sam ? He frowned. And that women’s lives were changed by having babies in a way that men’s never were.
‘Come on,’ he said, his voice suddenly raw and he wondered why the hell he was concentrating on inconsequential things like that when he had a whole evening of subterfuge to get through. He slipped his hand around the silken span of her waist in an unashamedly proprietorial gesture, spanning his fingers out to increase the area of her body he was touching, and realised that he was enjoying it. He was enjoying it very much.
‘Raffaele!’ someone shrieked. ‘What made you want to marry your housekeeper?’
‘ Natasha !’ shrieked another, as if they had known her all their lives. ‘What’s it like being engaged to a billionaire?’
‘Just keep smiling,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t say a thing.’
‘I wasn’t intending to.’
Once inside the foyer, which was filled with blooms so scented that momentarily Natasha felt quite faint, different members of staff converged on them like well-oiled parts of a huge machine.
‘Can I take your wrap, madam?’
She slipped it from her shoulders and handed it over to the female member of staff, unused to the deference she was being shown. And, suddenly, she identified far more with the girl in uniform than with the glamorous creatures who were milling around, laughing as if they had all been let in on some secret and fabulously funny joke. I’m just like you! she found herself wanting to say to the smiling girl.
Without the silk-velvet cloak Natasha felt bare and exposed—and as Raffaele led her into the chandelier-bright ballroom she realised that she was. Exposed to the lenses of the cameras outside, and now exposed to the penetrating gazes of the women within the spectacular interior of the room.
Were her nerves so on edge that she imagined the faint murmur of comment? No. And neither was there anything the matter with her vision. She saw the heads turn and gazes look her over—from head to toe.
‘Okay?’ questioned Raffaele, for he’d felt her tense beneath his hand.
She wasn’t—not really. But neither was she going to give up at the first hurdle. ‘Suddenly, I can identify with exhibits at the zoo!’
‘It’s that bad?’ There was a sudden gleam of understanding in the jet-dark eyes. ‘You need a drink.’
Did she? Maybe she did. ‘Thanks.’
Taking two flutes of champagne from a passing waitress, he handed her one, and, as Natasha raised it to her lips, the bubbles fizzed up her nose. She wrinkled it.
‘You are not used to champagne,’ he commented.
‘Don’t patronise me, Raffaele,’ she remonstrated softly as she drank some and thought how dry it tasted.
‘I’m not. It was an observation, not a criticism.’
‘Of course I’m not used to it. I don’t come from a champagne-drinking background—more the glass-of-wine-at-Christmas type. I drank some for the first time at university—but it certainly wasn’t anything like this stuff.’ She shrugged, wondering why the hell she had taken the conversation down to this particular dead-end. ‘The bubbly I drank wasn’t real champagne.’
‘Was that with Sam’s father?’ he demanded, seeing the way her features had become shuttered and finding himself suddenly—inexplicably—wanting to know.
He had never asked her anything like that before, and it occurred to her that now was not the right time.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said, her cheeks flaring with the memory. But she was saved from saying any more by a couple bearing down on them. Nervously, she drank a little more champagne, fleetingly thinking that maybe she could see what the fuss was all about. It really was very moreish!
‘Raffaele! So this is why you have such a fearsome reputation as a poker player! You have a beautiful woman like this tucked away at home—and nobody’s ever seen her!’
The immaculately groomed man who spoke looked as if he was in his fifties, but the woman with him was about half that age—more like Natasha ’s. She, too, had an expensive-looking head of blonde hair and a silken dress which clung to her firm, lush young body. Had she always looked like that? Natasha wondered. Or had she, too, been subjected to the perfect makeover courtesy of someone else’s money?
Natasha suddenly had a horrible feeling of predictability—as if she had just been plucked off a production line of eager wannabes. Was that what other people thought of her—that she had bargained away her youth and her rather lowly position to be at the beck and call of a wealthy man?
Except that Raffaele is only in his thirties, she reminded herself. And it wasn’t his money she was interested in. Biting her lip, she swallowed some more champagne. It wasn’t her place to be interested in him at all!
‘Yes, this is Natasha ,’ Raffaele was saying. ‘ Natasha , meet John Huntingdon —he and I have done a little business together.’
‘A little business?’ laughed John , as he shook her hand. ‘He bought my office block in Canary Wharf !’
Raffaele was now narrowing his eyes at the blonde. ‘I’m sorry—I don’t think we’ve met?’
The blonde gave Raffaele a fluttery smile which matched her fluttery voice. ‘No, we haven’t—I’d certainly have remembered you! Hi, I’m Susi.’
‘Hello, Susi,’ said Raffaele gravely.
‘Congratulations!’ Susi had now turned her attention to Natasha , picking up her hand and looking at the ring with barely disguised greed. ‘You must tell me how you did it—I’ve been trying to get John to buy me a sparkler for—’
‘Oh, all of three months,’ put in John smoothly. ‘In fact, almost from the moment we met!
Anyway, we’re all on the same table—so we’ll see you in a little while.’ He placed his hand in the small of Susi’s back and propelled her forward, like a horse who was refusing to jump.
‘Come along, darling—there’s a good girl.’
Natasha felt slightly humiliated on the other woman’s behalf—but hadn’t she rather set it up for herself, by playing the part of gold-digger whilst flirting with Raffaele? And now more people were coming over, flocking round them like ants to a dollop of spilled jam, and she suddenly experienced a frightening feeling of vulnerability as they were surrounded by curious eyes.
Natasha was glad to sit down for dinner—though she had little appetite for the seemingly endless array of tiny but luxurious dishes which kept appearing in front of her. Quite honestly, the dress was cut so close to her figure that anything more than a morsel would have made it uncomfortable to sit in. No wonder these women managed to stay so thin!
Candles flickered and perfect white flowers cast their heady scent over the select gathering.
John Huntingdon sat on one side of her and a corporate lawyer named Charles on the other.
All the men at the table seemed to be headhunters, or something to do with finance—not really Natasha ’s area of expertise at all.
Everyone seemed to belong—as if they were all members of the same exclusive club who all went to the same
events on the city’s star-studded social calendar.
‘How come I haven’t seen you before? You weren’t at Wimbledon ?’ one of the women asked Natasha .
She admitted she hadn’t been.
‘Oh! What about Cheltenham ?’
‘That’s a horse race, cara mia,’ Raffaele enlightened her in a wry voice as he saw her frown.
Fleetingly, she thought how ironic it was that this Italian should know more about England than she did. Because it’s not your world, she reminded herself. It never has been, and that simple fact is not about to change.
As Raffaele watched her he thought how sweet she looked. And how simple—for all her expensive clothes and the ludicrously large ring which completely dwarfed her slender hand.
Whereas the other women had the definition of gym-worked muscle, which rippled rather unattractively against the silks and chiffons, Natasha’s physique came from running round after Sam, or going from the top to the bottom of the house with a vacuum cleaner in hand.
Even after her glossy transformation she still had some quality about her which marked her out. Some stillness—almost a purity. She looked, he thought, like a flower which had been picked from somebody’s garden—all soft and natural and a complete contrast to the scentless perfection of the hothouse blooms which surrounded them.
His mouth hardened. What was this cynic thinking? Was he projecting some kind of wishful fairytale onto this particular woman because they inhabited different worlds? It was easy to fantasise about someone when you knew that reality would never be allowed to intrude to shatter it.
Yet you wanted her when you kissed her, didn’t you? And—more than that——you wanted to pin her down somewhere and to thrust into her until you had lost yourself.
He barely tasted the fine wines and the food was unremarkable—despite the cost and the lavish attention paid to its preparation. But Raffaele wasn’t hungry.
He glanced across the table at Natasha again—it seemed that she had overcome her initial shyness and was now nodding intently at something the man opposite her was saying. She said something to John Huntingdon , who was sitting beside her, and Raffaele was surprised and not pleased to see both men laughing.
He felt the unfamiliar thump of jealousy—bizarre and inexplicable—and instead of inwardly groaning at the sound of the orchestra, which was just starting up, he found himself rising to his feet to walk round table and hold out his hand proprietorially.
‘Dance with me.’
As so often with Raffaele, it was an order and not a request, but that didn’t stop Natasha excusing herself to the people she’d been talking to. Because, even if Raffaele hadn’t been her boss and even if they hadn’t been masquerading to the world as a newly engaged couple, she just wanted to dance with him.
She had been trying her best not to feast her eyes on him during the meal, but she hadn’t made very much headway, blown away by the knee-weakening vision he made in formal evening wear. Black suited him. Well, everything seemed to suit him—but black especially so. It accentuated the charcoal depths of his hair and his eyes and contrasted with the golden-olive glow of his skin. There were many men there tonight—all of them rich and well-connected—but there was not another in the entire ballroom who could have held a candle to her Raffaele.
‘I’d love to,’ she responded softly, ‘seeing as you asked so nicely!’
Raffaele’s eyes narrowed as he led her onto the floor—the only time he could remember ever being first up to dance. Was she…teasing him? Was she perhaps taking this whole subterfuge a little far—responding to him as his equal?
But all thoughts evaporated into insignificance when he pulled her against him. She felt…well, sconosciuta…strange—and not just because it was a brand-new woman in his arms. They began to move in time with the music.
With Natasha he felt acutely aware of her body. Of the undulation of her waist as he wound his fingers around it, sinuously as a snake. Of the light brush of her breasts against his chest, the knowledge that her amazing bottom was so tantalisingly close. That he could reach out his hands and cup it with possessive anticipation, then grind her hips towards his, so that she could feel for herself the hard ache of desire which was threatening to—
He groaned, experiencing a confusing mixture of wanting the forbidden and yet being confronted with the sweetly familiar. Had he thought this was going to be easy? Of course he had.
‘It’s…it’s a fantastic band,’ said Natasha , sensing his tension and feeling more than a little tense herself. He felt so good. He smelt so good. She found that she wanted to reach up on tiptoe and whisper her lips over the dark curve of his jaw. Beneath the thin silk of her evening gown she could feel the wild, uncontrollable flutter of her heart. Unseen, with her cheek close to the dark shoulder of his dinner jacket, she whispered. ‘Isn’t it?’
What the hell was she talking about? Ah, yes—the music. He wished it wasn’t there—for he would have preferred to have listened to the soft sigh of her breath and the heavy beat of her heart. The music of her body as it began to play out the familiar melody of desire.
He found that he wanted to press his body against hers, to slide his hard thigh between the giving softness of hers. And, yet, while such a display of intimacy might almost be expected of a couple who had just announced their betrothal, he knew that he could not do it. If it was anyone other than Natasha then, yes—he could pretend. But the game might get out of hand and, if it did, then wouldn’t he be tempted to do it properly, to make love to her? And that really would be taking advantage of her subservient position in the most despicable way possible.
‘I’m bored with dancing,’ he said curtly. ‘Let’s break, shall we? Do you mind?
Natasha shook her head as he led her off the dance-floor. Or does he really mean that he’s bored with me? she wondered, somehow managing to stop her smile from slipping. But this isn’t about you, she reminded herself. Ultimately, it’s about Elisabetta.
He caught her by the arm, his fingers gripping into her soft flesh. He saw the way her eyes widened as they searched his face anxiously——and something about her concern put him on the defensive. Why the hell were they still here? Hadn’t they done enough for their diversionary plan to succeed? ‘I can’t face any more sitting around that table and making small talk.’
‘I thought you were discussing deals—I was the one making small talk!’
‘So I saw. You seemed to have all the men round the table eating out of your hand.’ His mouth hardened into a determined line. ‘So why don’t we just leave quietly, before anyone actually notices we’re gone?’
As if no one would notice that Raffaele de Feretti was no longer in their presence! ‘Won’t they think it rude?’ Natasha asked, turning her face up to his.
‘They’ll think it perfectly understandable for us to want a little time on our own,’ he clipped out, because when her lips parted with innocent question he wanted to crush them beneath his.
‘Okay, then—but I really think we ought to say goodbye first,’ said Natasha stubbornly.
He opened his mouth to tell her that what she wanted was irrelevant, but to his astonishment she was already walking away from him, the taut curves of her bottom drawing his eye irresistibly as she made her way back to the table.
Chapter 7
Outside, the press had multiplied like bacteria, and two heavy-looking security men had to clear them a path to the waiting car.
‘Blame yourself!’ Raffaele snapped, as he pushed Natasha into the back of the limousine and then jumped in behind her, slamming the door on the jostling pack as it moved away.
‘Wh-why?’ Natasha didn’t like to ask him to move his thigh from where it was pressing against hers—not when his eyes were spitting irritated black fire at her.
‘You went around saying goodbye to everyone like they were long-lost friends, meaning that someone got word out to the press that we were leaving!’
‘It was just good manners,’ said Na
tasha , her determination to remain cheerful at all costs evaporating under the onslaught of his quite unreasonable display of temper. And there was still that leg, of course.
He could hardly believe what she had said. ‘You think that I…I need a lesson in manners?’
She stared right back. He thought he was immune to criticism, did he? ‘Right now, yes. Yes, I do!’
‘From you?’
‘Why not from me?’ she retorted furiously. ‘If I’m good enough to be engaged to you and brought here on your arm, then I’m reckon I’m good enough for just about anything else!’
‘Oh, you do?’
‘Yes, I do!’
There was a heartbeat of a pause.
‘Good enough to kiss, perhaps?’ he questioned deliberately.
The confined atmosphere of the car closed in on them. The hungry flash of warning in his eyes. The gleam of his lips. And still the warm, hard pressure of his thigh. She should have seen it coming. She wanted to say Raffaele, please don’t do this!
And she wanted to beg him to just do it—and do it now.
‘Raffaele,’ she breathed, her voice low and husky and complicit.
‘“Raffaele!”’ he mimicked, almost harshly—for she had him in her power, something he had not anticipated nor prepared for, and she would now taste the consequence of that for herself.
He was going to kiss her, and it was wrong, more than wrong—she knew that and he knew that. But— Madonna mia—he was going to do it all the same!
With a throaty sound halfway between a groan and a tiny roar, he pulled her unprotesting body into his arms, his hands digging into her sweet, yielding flesh and drove his mouth down on hers in a kiss that was filled with anger as much as lust.
With an answering cry of need Natasha fell back against the skin-soft leather seat of the car.
His hands were on the bare flesh of her back, his lips coaxing hers open—while that rogue thigh was pushing its way insistently between hers. She shivered with violent need. She knew she should stop him and, yet, nothing could have made her call a halt to the debilitating sweetness of that kiss.