“A likely story.”
Chiara drew herself up. “I do not have to listen to this idiocy.”
“No. You have to clean up my kitchen.” Rafe glared. “Look at it. You tore it apart, and—”
The sound of something bubbling drew his attention. His gaze swept past her. His French press was on a front burner of the big Viking range. The burner glowed red-hot; the press was filled with water.
With boiling water.
He cursed, sprinted across the room, grabbed the French press and yelped when his fingers closed around the hot glass. The predictable thing happened. It slipped from his hands, smashed against the floor, and spewed hot water over his bare toes.
“Oh, Dio mio!”
Chiara threw out her hands. One connected with a cast-iron skillet. The predictable thing happened again. The skillet tumbled from the counter and landed on Rafe’s still-naked, now scalded toes.
“Figlio di puttana!”
“Raffaele!” Chiara said, sounding shocked.
Rafe ignored her, hopped to the fridge and hit a button. Ice cubes tumbled into his hand. He squeezed his fingers around some, let the others dump on his toes.
Damn it all, his life had turned into a reality show. And it was all this woman’s fault. No. It was his. Why had he brought her home with him? Okay, maybe he’d had to marry her. So what? He could have left her in Palermo. He could have dumped her at a Manhattan hotel. He could have done a hundred things that wouldn’t have put her under his roof.
Chiara said his name again and he swung toward her.
“Are you…are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said coldly.
She gestured at his hand, then at his foot. “I am sorry, Raffaele.”
Her voice quavered. She was on the verge of tears. Who gave a damn?
“I only meant to do a good thing. To show you that I appreciate all you have done for me.”
“The only way you could do that would be to erase yesterday, and that’s not about to happen.”
The tears appeared, filling her eyes until they glittered like diamonds. So what? Women were good at producing instant tears. It didn’t change a thing.
“Stop that,” he growled.
She turned her back and cried harder.
It made him feel bad but, hell, she probably wanted him to feel bad. She was clever. Somewhere between the ceremony in San Giuseppe and their arrival here, he’d managed to forget that. Well, he wouldn’t forget it again. This was the woman who’d waylaid him on the road. Who’d kissed him as if she wanted to suck out his tonsils right before she went into her Petrified Virgin routine. Forget what he’d thought last night, that she was as much a victim as he was.
Still, he sure as hell didn’t want her crying over a couple of stupid accidents.
“Okay,” he said, “that’s enough. It’s only a kitchen.”
“I burned your fingers.”
“You didn’t burn them, I did.” He turned her toward him, held up his hand, flexed his fingers. “See? They’re fine. That ice did the trick.”
“I broke your toes.”
“Toe. Just one. The big one.” He looked down; so did she. He flexed his toes, forced himself not to wince. The damned thing probably was broken but he’d sooner have walked on nails that admit it. “See? It’s fine. Ice can do wonders.”
She gave a little hiccup and raised her face to his. Hell, he thought, his throat tightening, didn’t they teach women how to sob delicately in Weeping 101 anymore? Because there was nothing delicate about Chiara’s red eyes and runny nose. She was a veritable mess, as sorry a mess as the room and their marriage.
And yet she looked even more beautiful.
How could that be? Everything she had on was ugly. She wore no makeup. She’d wept her way into ruddy-faced disaster.
“Raffaele.” Her voice broke. More tears overflowed and trickled down her cheeks. “I am so sorry. For everything. For ruining your life, ruining your kitchen—”
“Hush,” he said, and then he did the only logical thing.
He cupped her face, brought his lips to hers and kissed her.
His head told him it was a mistake. You didn’t kiss a woman you intended to get rid of. You certainly didn’t kiss a woman who’d made it clear she was afraid of any kind of physical intimacy.
Except…except, she wasn’t struggling. Wasn’t gasping with fear or anger. No, he thought in wonder, no…
She was melting in his arms.
It happened so fast that it stunned him.
One second he was holding a weeping woman whose spine might have been fashioned of steel. The next, she was on her toes, leaning into him. Her arms were tight around his neck. Her heart was racing against his.
It was what should have happened early this morning, he thought…
And then he stopped thinking.
Her hands speared into his hair. She moaned, dragged his face down to hers. He whispered her name, slanted his mouth hungrily over hers, cupped her backside and lifted her up and into his straining erection. Her breath caught. He thought he’d frightened her but she moved against him, moved again, a tentative thrust of her lower body and it came as close as anything could to undoing him.
“Raffaele,” she whispered.
The word trembled on her lips, wafted over his.
“Chiara. My beautiful Chiara.”
His hands rose. Cupped her breasts. She cried out, said his name, made the sweet little sounds a woman makes when she wants a man.
He swept aside whatever remained on the granite counter, clasped her waist and lifted her onto it. Not like this, logic said, not here, not for her first time!
To hell with logic.
He wanted her, now. Needed her, now. He was dizzy with it, crazed with it, with wanting to kiss her, touch her, bury himself inside her.
Somehow he forced himself to slow down. He kissed her eyelids, her temples, her mouth. Sweet. Soft. Warm. Her lips clung to his. He felt the first delicate whisper of her tongue against his, and desire, hot and fierce, shot through him like an arrow.
“Raffaele? Raffaele. I want—I want—”
“Tell me,” he said hoarsely, between deep, hot kisses. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”
Everything, she thought. Oh Dio, she wanted everything.
Raffaele’s mouth, drinking from hers. The silken intrusion of his tongue. His thumbs tracing the arc of her cheekbones, her throat, her breasts. And, yes, what he was doing now. Undoing the endless row of jet buttons on her dress. Baring her flesh to him. The curve of her breasts, rising above her bra.
He kissed the hollow of her throat. Nipped lightly at the skin. She gasped; her head fell back. She would have fallen back, too—she was boneless—but he caught her shoulders, his strong hands supporting her as he brought her to him and kissed her again and again.
It wasn’t enough. None of it was enough. How could it be enough? She ached for him.
For his possession.
She sobbed his name. His eyes met hers. They were black with desire; the bones of his face stood out in stark relief.
She knew what it meant.
For the first time, a frisson of fear slid greasily through her belly.
“Raffaele,” she said breathlessly, “Raffaele…”
He grasped the hem of her dress, bunched it in his big hands and raised it to the tops of her thighs. Stepped between them. Still watching her face, he laid one hand over that place between her legs, that temple of evil her mother had warned against.
She cried out.
“Raffaele,” she said, and he slipped his fingers under the edge of her underpants, and now she felt the wetness in that place, the heat, the throbbing of her pulse…
“Omylord,” a woman’s voice squealed. “Oh, Mr. Orsini! I had no idea—”
Chiara froze. Rafe went still.
“I’ll come back later, sir, shall I? Of course. That’s what I’ll do. I’m so sorry, sir…”
A low moan rose
in Chiara’s throat. She shot into motion, a blur of energy as she jumped from the counter, then tried to fight free of Rafe’s arms as they swept around her.
“Easy,” he whispered.
She struggled against him but he refused to let go. She was saying something in Sicilian, saying it again and again in a low, anguished voice.
He thought it might be that she wanted to die, and his heart turned over.
“Chiara.”
She shook her head. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, like a child’s, as if what she couldn’t see couldn’t hurt her.
“Sweetheart. Look at me.”
Another shake of her head. Rafe sighed, brought her face against his shoulder. For all her offer to leave and return later, his housekeeper was still standing in the entrance to the kitchen, her eyes as round as her face, one hand plastered over her heart.
Rafe cleared his throat. “Good morning, Mrs. O’Hara,” he said pleasantly.
The woman bobbed her head. “Morning, Mr. Orsini. I am terribly sorry. I never meant—”
“No, of course you didn’t.”
He looked from his housekeeper to the woman in his arms. There were simple choices here. He could let Chiara go. She’d bolt and run and probably add this to her already distorted ideas of sex.
Or he could hold on to her while he played the scene through. It was, after all, only a minor embarrassment. Someone stumbling across a man and woman about to have sex? There was nothing original about it. Told in the right company, it would prove amusing.
He could feel Chiara trembling against him, her tears soaking his sweater.
Rafe paused. In his twenties, he’d gone bungee jumping. He remembered how it had felt, that gut-wrenching moment when he’d been about to jump off the bridge railing into the there’s-no-turning-back void.
“Mrs. O’Hara,” he said, “Mrs. O’Hara…I’d like to introduce you to my wife.”
CHAPTER NINE
IF YOU were an anthropologist doing field work, you might have put The Bar on a threatened-species list.
No rope at the door to keep out those who might offend the fashionistas. No VIP lists. No hot babes in spandex, no guys with more money than brains, no drinks with names that made a man laugh.
In fact, the place was so low-key that you had to know it existed before you could find it. Wood-paneled, dimly lit, it was located in an unremarkable Soho neighborhood. At least, it had been unremarkable when the Orsini brothers had discovered it years ago.
They’d been just starting out back then, three of them with unused degrees in finance and business in their pockets and one, Falco, with enough university credits for a couple of degrees but not enough concentration in any one area to matter. They’d all turned their backs on the white-collar world. Cesare, sneering, said it was to find themselves.
The truth was, they’d gone off to lose their connection to everything he represented.
Rafe and Nick had ended up in the military, one in the Marines, one in the Army, both fighting wars neither wanted to talk about. Falco was even more tight-lipped about his time in Special Forces. Dante had headed north to Alaska and the dangers of the oil fields on the North Slope. He and Falco were the only ones who’d returned with money in their pockets, Dante from his job, Falco from the high-stakes poker games he loved.
Dante, Nick and Rafe had quickly figured out that they wanted to build a future together. Falco wasn’t sure what he wanted.
They began getting together a couple of nights a week at a place called O’Hearn’s Bar. It was a neighborhood place, located just downstairs from Rafe’s one-room-with-what-passed-for-a-kitchen walkup. The beer was cold, the sandwiches were cheap, and nobody gave a damn who the brothers were.
Gradually the last booth on the left became known as theirs. It was where they met and discussed Life and Women and What To Do with Their Lives.
Eventually they figured out a way to combine their talents, temperaments and education. Rafe and Nick pooled their resources, played what was then a booming stock market, put the money into the new venture. Dante added his impressive oil field savings. Six months later Falco decided to throw in his luck with his brothers and put them over the top with the not-so-small fortune he’d made at poker.
Orsini Brothers was born.
Their corporate baby flourished. So did the neighborhood around O’Hearn’s. Tired old tenements, including the one where Rafe had lived, were gutted and reborn as pricey town houses. A factory building became a high-priced club. Bodegas became boutiques.
The Orsinis could tell that O’Hearn’s days were numbered.
“We’ve got to do something,” Falco had grumbled, so they did. They bought the place, and it became the smallest and least noticed part of the Orsini Brothers’ holdings.
They cleaned it up, but only a little. Had the planked oak floor refinished. Tore out the worn leather stools and banquettes and replaced them with new ones. Everything else—the scarred wood tables, the pressed-tin ceiling, the long zinc counter, the beers on draught, the overstuffed sandwiches and killer grilled-with-onions burgers—stayed the same.
To the brothers’ shock, O’Hearn’s Bar—by now, simply known as The Bar—became what people referred to as a “destination.” Still, only the bartenders knew who owned it, and that was exactly how the Orsinis wanted it.
That way they could avoid the reporters from the Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as the ones from the tabloids. It wasn’t easy to keep your privacy when you’d created a company worth billions—and your old man was still numero uno whenever some damned investigative reporter dredged up the M word.
So, The Bar was the logical place to get together every couple of Friday nights, or maybe after closing on Saturday night if a date had proved especially memorable. It was also where you went if you just wanted to talk.
Like today.
Falco and Nick, back from their business meetings overseas, were already there when Rafe arrived. Only Dante was missing. He was off somewhere in South America. Nobody knew where or why. Rafe figured it had something to do with that Sunday morning meeting with Cesare but decided it was Dante’s business to talk about it, not his.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything about what had happened at his Sunday morning meeting with his father…and if he wasn’t, what was he doing here? he thought, as he stepped from the sunlight into The Bar’s artificial gloom.
He’d phoned Nick and Falco on the spur of the moment. They’d both been at work, as he should have been, when he called. “Got time for a beer?” he’d said, and they’d said sure.
Now, seeing them, his gut knotted.
Why he’d suggested getting together was beyond him. He had a problem on his hands but he wasn’t about to lay it out for discussion. There was still time to turn around and walk away—but Nick looked up, spotted him and it was too late.
Nothing to do now but fake some casual conversation. Rafe fixed what he hoped was a smile on his face, sauntered over to their usual booth and slid in beside Falco.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
So much for casual conversation.
The bartender, who’d spotted Rafe the second he walked in, came over with an icy mug of ale. Rafe nodded his thanks. His brothers watched as he took a long swallow.
“Well,” he said brightly, “it’s good to see you guys.”
Nick looked at Falco. “At least he doesn’t look as bad as he sounded.”
And so much for getting through this unscathed. Rafe concentrated on his mug of beer.
Falco shrugged. “He looks worse.”
Okay. Enough. Rafe looked up.
“I am,” he said, “right here. No reason to talk as if I weren’t.”
“Sure.” Nick nodded agreeably. “No reason not to tell you, to your face, that Falco’s right. You look like caca.”
“Thank you.”
“You want compliments, you’re in the wrong place,” Falco said, but his usually hard expression so
ftened. A bad sign, Rafe thought glumly. “So, you want to tell us what’s going on?”
Rafe thought of making another clever response, but what was the point? His brothers knew him too well to be fooled. Besides, he was the idiot who’d called this meeting and brought this on his own head.
“Nothing. It’s just been a long couple of days.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”
Another shrug. Another swallow of beer. Then Rafe pressed the icy bottle against his temple, where a Chinese orchestra playing traditional Mandarin melodies had moved in to replace the departed trolls.
“I, ah, I have some things to sort out.”
“Such as?” Nick asked.
“Just…things.”
Nick looked at Falco. “Your turn.”
Falco scowled. Nobody could scowl quite like Falco.
“You want to tell us what’s happening? You don’t show up at the office—”
“I’m entitled to a day off,” Rafe said, trying not to sound defensive.
“You don’t show up,” Falco continued, “then you phone us and say you need to talk—”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s Monday, the market’s in the toilet and here we are, taking a break at your request. You really think we’re going to think it’s just so we could all say ‘hello, what’s new, how was your weekend?’”
“Hello,” Rafe said, “what’s new, how was your—” A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Okay. It’s true. I have a, uh, a slight problem.”
“Blonde or brunette?”
“That’s insulting, Nicolo. I mean, why jump to the conclusion that it’s a female problem?”
“Blonde or brunette,” Nick repeated, and Rafe sighed.
“Brunette.”
“What happened to the Valkyrie?”
“She’s history.”
“How come?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to discuss the past or the current situation?”
“Don’t get testy,” Falco said mildly. “Okay. So, what is the current situation?”
Rafe stared at his brothers. The thing was, he did know why he’d phoned them. Who else would he turn to when he was in a mess straight up to his eyeballs? And, damn it, yes, this thing was a mess.
Raffaele: Taming His Tempestuous Virgin Page 10