by Lynne Graham
Veiling her stricken gaze, Glory dropped her head and gulped in sustaining air like a drowning swimmer. Hurt and humiliated by that blunt assessment, she had to bite back the impulsive words rising to her lips. She could not afford to antagonise Rafaello when her brother’s whole future rested in his hands. A taut silence stretched while she fought an almost overwhelming urge to tell him what he could do with his uninvited opinions. So she had got the outfit wrong. But then, what had he expected? Some classy designer number? Never had the gap between her world and his seemed as great as it did at that moment.
‘Since you’re lousy at getting to the point, isn’t it fortunate that I can work out exactly what you’re doing here?’ Rafaello remarked drily.
Prompted, Glory glanced up, her lovely face tense with strain. Brilliant dark eyes slammed into hers and she trembled, her mouth running dry. ‘I’m certain that Sam didn’t steal that snuff box, but I know things don’t look good for him and that it’ll be very hard to prove that he’s innocent. You did say that if you got the box back you might consider not pressing charges—’
‘Only I was talking about it being returned voluntarily,’ Rafaello contradicted with chilling cool. ‘Not found during a police search.’
Glory had not really had any hope that he would not make that distinction but she had felt that she ought to try out that angle. ‘All right…’ she breathed unevenly. ‘So if you can still get the charges dropped, well…I’ll do whatever you want.’
Rafaello strolled soundlessly over to the windows before swinging back round to look at her again, his lean, strong face intent. ‘I can have the theft charge withdrawn but how do I know that you’ll respect your side of the agreement?’
At the news that the charge of theft could still be withdrawn, a little colour eased back into Glory’s complexion. But she was strung so high with tension that even her knees had begun to wobble. ‘Whatever you think of me, I’m not a cheat or a liar.’
Rafaello scanned her with unreadable dark eyes. ‘My father certainly had no grounds for complaint after the bargain he struck with you. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it has been five years since you set foot on Grazzini land. You can’t have seen much of your father and your brother since then.’
Was that actually a hint of censure that she was hearing? Sam and Glory talked on the phone most weeks. For the first couple of years she had lived in Gloucester with her father’s sister and she had often seen her family. But when her aunt passed away, Glory had had to move further north to find employment, and inevitably the frequency of their meetings had declined. No longer could Glory feel that she was as close to her younger brother as she had once been. Acknowledging that truth, she felt hugely bitter at the damage that Benito Grazzini had cruelly inflicted on her small family circle.
‘Living a couple of hundred miles away hasn’t exactly been a help,’ Glory said defensively. ‘We don’t all have limos and private jets to get around in.’
‘But you will have for as long as you’re with me.’ Losing interest in the subject that he himself had raised, Rafaello studied her with a reflective all-male intensity that sent fresh pink flying into her cheeks. ‘You can take your coat off. I assume you’re staying tonight.’
Glory froze. ‘Tonight?’
Rafaello dealt her a lazy mocking smile. ‘Were you waiting for me to schedule in a date for next month?’
‘But tonight…for goodness’ sake!’ Glory was seriously challenged to maintain any form of cool when she realised how soon he was expecting her to meet and deliver on the terms of their agreement. ‘After this I was planning to go and see Dad and Sam and surprise them.’
‘Surprise me instead,’ Rafaello invited softly. ‘If your family aren’t expecting you, you’ll find yourself facing some awkward questions. I’ll have the theft charge dropped and I’ll personally inform your father of that decision this evening.’
‘That’s great,’ Glory told him gratefully. ‘But—’
‘You will be flying out to Corfu tomorrow,’ Rafaello cut in quietly.
‘Tomorrow? Corfu?’ Her blue eyes had widened to their fullest extent. He was expecting her to go abroad? ‘Are you crazy? I have a job, a home and a whole bunch of stuff to sort out before I can go anywhere—’
‘I’ll have someone clear your bedsit, settle any final bills and inform your landlord and your employer that you’re not coming back. It’s not a problem.’
‘Well, it is a problem for me. I can do all those things for myself within a couple of days,’ Glory argued in a flustered but insistent undertone. ‘But if you’re expecting me to go abroad with you I want to see my family tonight.’
‘If you walk out on me one more time you can forget about walking back in again.’
The silence shimmered like the menacing quiet before a storm. Chilled by that cold threat that cut unmercifully through her every argument, Glory studied Rafaello in genuine shock.
Rafaello gazed back at her with hard dark eyes that had no shade of lighter emotional gold.
‘Why are you being like this?’ Glory muttered helplessly. ‘I’ve surrendered every way I can but it’s still not enough for you.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, cara.’ With complete cool, Rafaello reached out to loosen her tight grip on her raincoat and fold her taut fingers into the hold of his. ‘I just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us. I’m calling the shots. What else did you expect?’
At the warmth of his hands on hers, Glory trembled. She gazed up into eyes dark as midnight but she had already lost his direct attention. Her raincoat had fallen open. His lowered gaze was welded to the exposed curves of her pouting breasts. A shocking stab of hurt travelled through her. ‘You said…you said I looked like a cheap little scrubber in this get-up, so why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Intellect aside, I’m still a red-blooded male with all the usual painfully predictable reactions.’ His smouldering dark golden scrutiny skimmed back up to her self-conscious face. ‘You’re no longer that guileless teenager who burned me up with the lure of her supposed innocence, but that’s a plus now. I want an experienced lover in my bed, a woman who can satisfy my every need.’
That admission made Glory stiffen. She dropped her head to hide the hectic flush in her cheeks. She was not ashamed of being a virgin, but nor was she prepared to take the risk of telling him the truth. Suppose he changed his mind about the arrangement he had offered her? A male, who was only interested in his own sexual pleasure would naturally prefer a woman who could match his own expertise between the sheets. And by the sounds of it, Rafaello had pretty high expectations. However, he was destined to meet with a major disappointment in that department. But to her way of thinking, there was a certain natural rough justice to that reality. Rafaello would get exactly what he deserved.
‘I think the only reason you want me is because I turned you down five years ago,’ Glory said before she could think better of that leading comment.
Lean fingers found her chin and turned up her eyes to encounter the scorching gold of his own. ‘You could be right, but then I never really turned up the heat, did I?’
‘Didn’t you?’ Her own voice sounded slightly strangled as he let that controlling hand drift down to the base of her spine instead.
All of a sudden even catching her breath and clearing her dry throat was a challenge. The tension in the atmosphere was electrifying. Her heart was racing like a trapped bird inside her ribcage and she was aware of Rafaello’s potent masculinity with every fibre of her being.
‘I was playing a waiting game,’ Rafaello confided huskily. ‘But now I don’t need to wait.’
He was going to touch her and she wanted him to touch her. Indeed, she could hardly wait for him to touch her, she registered in dismay. But even the shame that followed that acknowledgement could not still the insidious awakening of her own body. She was painfully conscious of the swelling heaviness of her breasts and the aching sensitivity of their rosy peaks but mo
st of all of the betraying surge of moist heat at the very heart of her.
He urged her closer and her nostrils flared on the heady familiarity of his scent. The faint aroma of aftershave underscored by warm male. She trembled, wanting, needing, suddenly strung up to such a height of hunger, she was dizzy with it. And then he took her mouth and kissed her with sensual probing intensity and it was as if her heart stopped on the unbearable sweetness of that sensation before thundering on faster and wilder in beat than ever before.
‘Imagine saying no to this, cara…’ Rafaello murmured thickly, lifting his arrogant dark head while she struggled for breath and the independent strength to hold herself upright instead of holding on to him for support.
Glory was devastated by her own sheer longing to be back in his arms again. ‘Stop teasing me…’
‘Is this what you call teasing?’ Shimmering golden eyes scanned her with predatory amusement. ‘Slow and seductive not what you’re used to, cara mia?’
In the grip of that passionate yearning, her quivering body no longer felt like her own. She gave way to her own frustration. She reached up and dragged his mouth back down to hers again. As her seeking fingers laced into his luxuriant black hair, he loosed a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. But in response he let his tongue probe deep between her lips in an explicit penetration that made her shiver with helpless anticipation against his hard, muscular frame. Closing his hands to her hips, he lifted her off her feet.
‘Rafaello…?’ Glory was taken aback when he settled her down on top of the antique mahogany desk.
‘You’re too short to be fully accessible upright,’ he mocked, curling his hand into the fall of her honey-blonde mane and then letting his fingertips skim appreciatively through the glossy strands. ‘Santo cielo! Your hair feels like pure silk…’
Before she could even guess his intention, he had parted her knees and drawn her right to the edge of the desk. Then he eased his hands beneath her hips and lifted her back to him in a much more intimate connection than had been possible while she had been standing. Her legs apart and left to dangle either side of his lean, powerful length as he moved into the space he had created for himself, Glory felt suddenly out of her depth and vulnerable. As she fought to force her stretchy skirt back down over her exposed thighs, even the heat of her own shivering hunger was incapable of silencing the alarm bells of panic his behaviour was rousing.
‘What are you doing?’ Glory exclaimed.
Rafaello looked down at her with stunning dark golden eyes, a frownline etched between his winged dark brows. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Glory demanded incredulously half an octave higher. ‘You’re expecting me to carry on with you on top of a desk and you’re asking me what’s wrong?’
Rafaello stilled as if she had thrown a stop switch. Lush black lashes dropped down to conceal his gaze.
‘Because cavorting on desks is out!’ Glory told him fiercely, the fear that he was trying to make a fool of her trammelling through her in an enervating wave. ‘I’ve met some real full-on creeps in my time but even they didn’t try to jump me on a desk—’
‘Is that a fact?’ Rafaello breathed not quite levelly, apparently transfixed by her frantic efforts to drag the hem of her skirt down over her thighs. Helpfully he stepped back so that she could lock her knees together again and achieve that feat.
‘Yes, that is a fact,’ Glory told him chokily, tears roughening her voice as her distress climbed in direct proportion to her embarrassment. ‘I want respect. I want boundaries to this “anything you want” stuff—’
‘I get the feeling that, on your terms, the desk is the absolute outer limits,’ Rafaello murmured in a taut undertone that shook slightly, his Italian accent thicker than she had ever heard it.
‘It’s a question of what’s decent.’
‘You’re not very adventurous, are you?’
‘Not in lifts or on desks,’ Glory agreed shakily, sliding off the wooden surface in haste and smoothing her rucked clothing down with trembling hands.
‘I wasn’t actually planning to consummate our agreement on the library desk—’
Too self-conscious to look at him, her cheeks hotter than hellfire, Glory shrugged a slight shoulder in a jerky, defensive motion. ‘How was I supposed to know what you were planning? You embarrassed me—’
‘Tell me, do you know what foreplay is?’
If Glory had been feeling overheated before he said that in the charged tone of a male trying hard not to laugh at what he obviously found amusing, her temperature hit boiling point in receipt of that mocking enquiry.
‘I do know you’re not talking about golf, if that’s what you mean!’ she launched back at him angrily, bright blue eyes sparking fierily. ‘But I’m not here to be the butt of your smart-mouth comments, Rafaello Grazzini—’
‘And you’re not here to cavort on my desk either. Sorry, couldn’t resist it, cara,’ Rafaello drawled, lean, strong face expressionless. ‘I think what we need here is a list—’
‘A…what?’
‘Of places where sexual activity is forbidden. And, while we’re on the subject, possibly you ought to consider throwing in news of any other strong aversions before I share a bed with you.’
Encountering those brilliant, beautiful dark eyes, Glory paled. ‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’
‘No, I’m fascinated. In my entire experience of women, I have never had a conversation quite like this,’ Rafaello assured her, smooth as silk. ‘It looks as if your mother is going to have the last laugh on me after all. And please do not take that comment as any form of insult to her memory.’
Glory swallowed hard. Her throat thickened. She felt more like bursting into tears. Just then she did not need the reminder of her late mother. Not on the very night she was being expected to abandon those principles. She saw that nerves and shyness had made her overreact to an unfamiliar and seemingly threatening situation. He had only wanted to kiss her, maybe touch her a little. But she had thrown a three-act tragedy and made an ass of herself in the process.
‘I’m glad I’ve given you a laugh,’ she muttered, cut to the bone.
Rafaello released his breath on a slight hiss and reached for her tightly knotted fingers to urge her back to him. She moved only when the pressure got too much to withstand. With a rueful groan, he murmured, ‘I wasn’t laughing—’
‘You were,’ she mumbled tightly, the tears threatening.
‘You’re wearing a real in-your-face sexy outfit. I didn’t think a woman who dressed like that would take fright quite so easily,’ Rafaello admitted above her downbent head.
‘I did not take fright,’ Glory bit out in a driven tone, picturing a panicking Victorian spinster screaming on a stool at the sight of a mouse.
‘OK…you took offence, but it’s over,’ Rafaello rephrased in his deep, husky drawl. ‘Go on upstairs. After I’ve called your father, I’ll join you.’
Glory froze, all her nervous tension returning. ‘Where?’
‘In my bedroom. Of course, you’ve never been upstairs. I’ll take you up—’
‘No, just tell me where,’ Glory interrupted tautly.
A phone began to ring. Rafaello released an imprecation in his own language, hesitated and then strode impatiently back over to the desk. ‘It’s my private line. I should answer it in case it’s something important.’
‘Where?’ she prompted again, grabbing up her coat and sticking her arms into the sleeves.
‘First door off the main landing. Stay,’ Rafaello urged as he reached for the phone and, studying her, he surprised her by stretching out an inviting hand.
Glory hovered. A smile curved his wide, expressive mouth, a smile full of heartbreaking charm. The smile that had once enslaved her heart as efficiently as chains. Her heartbeat quickening, she found herself returning to his side and reaching out to clasp that outstretched hand.
Rafaello’s grip on her fingers tightened. She glanced up
, saw the frownline indented between his brows and listened to him talk in what sounded like Italian. His tone was questioning and a faint look of irritation narrowed his incisive gaze. He replaced the receiver and released her hand again.
‘Fate seems to have it in for us tonight,’ Rafaello breathed with a wry look. ‘That was my father.’
‘Oh…?’ Glory tautened with unease.
‘He’s staying in London with friends this weekend. But he’s just informed me that he’ll be here in ten minutes to discuss some urgent matter that he insists cannot wait until tomorrow.’ Raking lean brown fingers through his thick black hair, Rafaello sighed. ‘Perhaps now that the novelty has worn off, he’s finding retirement a challenge. But he did sound troubled and that isn’t like him.’
‘I should clear off down to the cottage and see my own family,’ Glory proffered in an eager rush at the prospect of escape.
‘No.’ It was one word said with quiet force but it stilled her in her tracks.
‘I don’t want to bump into your father, Rafaello.’ She almost told him that one Grazzini at a time was quite sufficient for her.
‘You’ll be quite safe in my bedroom. Benito hasn’t tucked me in at night since I was five years old,’ Rafaello informed her with sardonic bite. ‘But, for what it’s worth, I don’t feel any need to hide you. Join us. He’s going to know about us sooner or later anyway.’
Benito Grazzini would be astonished and angry to find her under his son’s roof, and Glory had not the slightest desire to meet the forceful older man again. However, Rafaello’s invitation shook her. ‘That doesn’t mean I want to be around when he finds out—’
‘Coward,’ Rafaello mocked, leaning down to capture her tense lips and extract a hungry kiss.
‘I’ll be more comfortable upstairs,’ Glory protested, her reddened mouth tingling from the effect of that sensual collision and her feet inexplicably welded to the spot.
Rafaello gave her a wolfish grin. ‘So will I be…’