Rafaello's Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  Wakening in the afternoon in her crumpled garments, she felt like an itinerant. The en suite bathroom was a dream of glossy tiles and spacious luxury but all too many mirrors. She grimaced at her shadowed eyes and tousled hair. A long shower made her feel much more human. A towel anchored round her, she rubbed at the ache in the small of her back. Ever-conscious of her changing shape in recent weeks, she had begun hunching her shoulders, aware that when she practised good posture her swelling stomach was much more obvious. But enough was enough, she decided ruefully, straightening her shoulders with determination as she padded back into the bedroom.

  She stopped dead: Rafaello was in the act of walking in through the bedroom door. ‘I did knock…I assumed you were still asleep,’ he proffered. ‘Sam’s back and he tells me that your father is asking for you—’

  ‘Honestly?’ Glory exclaimed, touched and pleased by that news. Turning away from him, she headed straight for the case sitting at the foot of the bed. ‘I’d better get dressed and get over to the hospital.’

  She heard Rafaello draw in a sharp breath. A frownline indenting her brow, she glanced at him again. Rafaello was as still as a graven image, his attention fully lodged to his view of her body in profile as delineated by the unforgiving cover of a fleecy towel stretched to capacity.

  ‘Per meraviglia…’ he breathed raggedly in the simmering silence. ‘You look like a fertility goddess.’

  As a schoolgirl, Glory had once seen such a statue in a museum. Being compared with an extremely rotund female from prehistoric times was the kind of compliment she would have gone some distance to avoid. Cringing inwardly, her colour rising, she sucked in her tummy in an effort to make it meet her backbone and forced herself to laugh. ‘You’re not supposed to tell women when they’ve put on weight, Rafaello. But then, you know how much I enjoy my food and if I want to be big and beautiful—’

  ‘And…pregnant?’ Rafaello dragged his stunned gaze from the no longer visible swell and raked it up to her stricken face.

  ‘Pregnant?’ Glory parroted shrilly, most of her oxygen supply engaged in the effort it took to keep her tummy in. ‘Are you nuts?’

  ‘Let’s see. Take the towel off and start breathing again!’ Rafaello strode forward, looking very much like a guy with a mission to prove his point by any means available.

  Glory backed off, aghast. Shorn of the towel, all would be revealed: her vanishing waist, her increasingly Rubenesque curves.

  ‘Glory…I want the truth,’ Rafaello growled, intent golden eyes clashing with hers.

  Glory swallowed hard.

  ‘The baby has to be mine,’ Rafaello continued, fiercely scanning her pale, strained face for answers. ‘It’s got to be! You’re at least a few months along.’

  ‘OK…you win,’ Glory whispered through compressed lips, and she dropped her head because she could not bring herself to retain visual contact when she told him. ‘Or maybe I should say, mother nature won. Yes, of course it’s your baby—’

  ‘So why did you go out of your way to convince me that there was nothing to worry about in Corfu? Was that an honest mistake on your part?’ Rafaello demanded in a low driven undertone, his dark deep drawl no longer level. ‘Did you only discover that you were carrying my child after you’d walked out on me?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly Glory was feeling very guilty and confused. ‘One of the days I said I was getting my hair done, I also went to see a doctor. It was confirmed then.’

  Rafaello absorbed that confession with bleak, dark-as-midnight eyes. ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

  Tears gritted up her eyes and she blinked furiously. ‘You didn’t want to know—’

  ‘That is not true.’ The contradiction was lethally quiet.

  ‘I saw how relieved you were when you believed I wasn’t pregnant!’ Glory argued chokily.

  Briefly Rafaello closed his eyes as if he was praying for patience and then he swung away, the bunched muscles of his powerful shoulders betraying the ferocious level of his tension. ‘I was relieved because that was not the way I wanted it to happen. History repeating itself…I didn’t want it to be like that between us—’

  ‘History repeating itself?’ Glory echoed, totally at sea as to his meaning.

  Rafaello swung back to her, his darkly handsome features clenched hard. ‘Something similar once happened in my own family.’

  ‘Oh…’ Weak from stress, Glory sank down on the corner of the bed. ‘I really didn’t know what to do when I found out I’d fallen pregnant. Maybe I have a bad habit of wanting to tell people what I think they want to hear.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’ Disconcertingly impervious to that mode of appeal, Rafaello shot her a look of angry derision. ‘You’re tough enough when you want to be. All over me like a rash one moment and doing a vanishing act the next. But this is something else again, this is my baby too. I would’ve married you in Corfu but you were quick enough to tell me that you weren’t that desperate!’

  Struck by the revealing rawness of that final sentence, Glory gave him a shaken appraisal. It was almost three months since he had made that offer and he had never mentioned it again. But only now did she see that she had actually hurt and offended him. When he had voiced that grim assurance that he would marry her if she conceived he had been serious, much more serious than she had given him credit for being. And how had she reacted? She asked herself with a sinking heart. Offered what she most desired in the world but believing it was the most grudging of proposals, she had shot him down in flames.

  ‘You’re not being fair,’ she argued shakily. ‘I was angry and upset that night. I honestly didn’t believe you were serious! But I have to admit that I still wouldn’t want to marry anybody just because I was pregnant—’

  ‘Well, what you want and what you get aren’t always the same thing in this life,’ Rafaello drawled with icy precision. ‘But I can assure you that we are getting married just as fast as I can arrange it. We don’t have a choice.’

  Glory took a very deep breath and then another. Maybe he was just really hopeless at proposing. In fact, he was a walking disaster on that subject, but on this occasion she had no urge whatsoever to utter a stubborn, proud refusal. She loved him to bits and he was the father of her baby and she was very, very willing to be convinced that they could marry and share a future together. Indeed, there was nothing she wanted more but at the same time she did not want Rafaello opting for that choice solely on the basis that she was carrying his child. ‘I can’t really agree that we don’t have any other choice. I just think I need to hear you give me some reasons why you think you should marry me—’

  ‘We’re in a bloody tight corner!’

  Glory was bitterly disappointed by that response. He was gorgeous, he was clever, he was impatient to do ‘the right thing’ about two decades after so many men had abandoned such moral niceties, but being in a very tight corner was not the kind of reason she so much needed to hear. Were he to say that he still found her madly attractive or even fun company, she would be happily convinced that their marriage would have a chance of success. But then, possibly he did not think or feel either of those things and her being pregnant was truly his only motivation in proposing, she conceded wretchedly.

  ‘You want me to help you out, Rafaello? Babies have a right to know who their father is—how about that?’ Without the smallest warning, Sam’s voice broke in on an aggressive rising note that froze both Glory and Rafaello into stillness, for both of them had forgotten that the teenager was in the apartment and neither had noticed that Rafaello had neglected to close the door. ‘Why don’t you try that one out on my sister? That reason would be a real good laugh for a Grazzini!’

  Glory barely had the time to absorb Sam’s startling interruption before her brother launched himself off the threshold and literally threw himself at Rafaello. As she had never seen her easy-going brother even lose his temper before, she could not credit the violence that just seemed to explode from him. Sam hurling abusive swear
words was another new experience for her and she sat there, rigid with shock at that physical assault, terrified that Rafaello might lose his temper and fight back.

  ‘Sam…please, no!’ Glory pleaded brokenly, torn apart by guilt at her brother’s distress at what he had overheard.

  ‘I trusted you!’ Sam shouted at Rafaello. ‘I thought you were different from your—’

  ‘I am.’ Breathing heavily as he finally got a restraining grip on Sam, Rafaello was strikingly pale beneath his bronzed complexion, his strong bone-structure hard-edged, his dark eyes mirroring the reality that Sam’s aggression had shocked him every bit as much as it had shocked Glory. ‘I was just being a smart-ass, Sam.’ Forced to pin her struggling brother against the wall in an effort to cool him down, Rafaello was suddenly talking very fast. ‘I love your sister…OK? I really do want to marry her!’

  Sam’s still furious dark gaze was nailed to Rafaello as if he was searching for the proof of those far-reaching reassurances. ‘Glory doesn’t need you just because she’s having a baby…’

  ‘No, but I need her,’ Rafaello stated with hard conviction.

  As Rafaello stepped back and released Sam, Glory could not look at either of them. She was aghast that her brother had overheard their conversation and horribly ashamed that her behaviour and her condition should have upset him to such an extent. Rafaello was equally shaken and naturally he had endeavoured to come up with the only sort of response likely to calm Sam down.

  ‘You needn’t think I’m apologising for trying to hit you either!’ Sam hurled in a last burst of defiance in Rafaello’s direction before he backed warily out of the room as though he was still waiting on some form of violent retaliation.

  Sam left a silence in his wake that seemed endless.

  ‘I’d better go and talk to him,’ Glory muttered tightly.

  ‘No, let him cool off for a while. He’s too upset to handle either of us right now. Anyway, your father’s waiting for you,’ Rafaello reminded her, raking a not quite steady hand through his luxuriant black hair in a gesture that revealed just how shattered he still was by what had occurred. ‘I think we need a special licence, bella mia—’

  Glory squeezed her anguished eyes tight shut. ‘Rafaello—’

  ‘We’ve done enough damage. Sam’s right. Every baby has a right to know who his father is,’ Rafaello said with a quality of raw regret in his dark deep drawl that cut her sensitive soul to the bone.

  And, on that note, he left her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ARCHIE LITTLE had been moved out of the ICU into a private room.

  Maud Belper was waiting outside that room with a troubled look on her face. ‘Could I have a word with you before you go in, Glory?’

  ‘Dad’s all right, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he’s doing fine.’ The older woman sighed. ‘But Archie’s taken it into his head that he must talk to you now. It’s a lot to ask but, for his sake, could you try to stay calm whatever he tells you? He’s still very weak.’

  Glory stared at her and then nodded, her colour heightening. No matter how hard she tried not to, she resented Maud’s interference. She also felt uneasy about the obvious fact that the other woman was already acquainted with what her father wished to discuss with her. In the awkward silence, however, a sudden rueful smile of comprehension flashed across Glory’s face and she leant forward and gave the older woman an impulsive hug.

  ‘Of course, we haven’t yet discussed the fact that you and Dad are going to get married! I’m really pleased for you both. I’m not saying I wasn’t a bit taken aback when I first heard,’ Glory admitted with her usual frankness. ‘But when I saw you and Dad together, and realised just how much you care for each other, I was truly happy for him.’

  ‘You’re a dear girl.’ In spite of her answering warmth, Maud’s tension remained undiminished ‘But I can’t let you go in there thinking that that’s what Archie wants to get off his chest. It’s not.’

  Glory had no time for mysteries and she had not forgotten Maud’s cryptic remarks that night at Montague Park three months earlier. Was the older woman one of those personalities who revelled in making mountains out of molehills and who enjoyed uttering dire hints and warnings? Embarrassed by that suspicion, Glory hurried into her father’s room before her future stepmother could say anything more.

  Archie Little looked so much better with a little colour in his cheeks. Settling down into the seat by the bed, she smiled at him. ‘You’re looking good, Dad.’

  ‘I had to see you and get this over with.’ Her father released a troubled sigh. ‘But I know that what I have to tell you is going to upset you—’

  Get what over with? Glory wanted to question, but instead she cradled his hand where it lay on the bedspread between both of hers and tried to soothe him. ‘I’m not that easily upset.’

  ‘It’s about Sam. Sam…well, Sam’s not mine,’ her father said haltingly.

  Glory kept her widened gaze focused on his anxious expression, convinced she must have misheard him, and then she said uncertainly, ‘You mean…Sam’s adopted?’

  ‘No. Your mother…’ The older man grimaced. ‘She got mixed up with another man—’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ Glory told him in a teasing tone of disbelief. ‘Mum…with another man?’

  ‘You were only a kid of seven when Sam was born,’ Archie reminded his daughter heavily. ‘For a long time after that your mum and I lived like strangers.’

  Even as he said that, Glory’s memory was stirred. Only at that prompting did she recall that her mother had shared her bedroom for a while when she was around that age. Her parents had been sleeping apart, she realised in dismay, shaken that until that moment it had never occurred to her to put that knowledge into its adult context and question what that separation had meant. Her tummy muscles clenched. ‘But you and Mum were happy,’ she heard herself say as if she was still that young child and begging for reassurance. ‘I remember you being happy—’

  ‘Later we were again. But Sam is Benito Grazzini’s kid and Rafaello’s half-brother,’ her father framed, tiredness and stress visible now in his lined features. ‘I never would have told you, Glory. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you or spoil your memories of Talitha.’

  ‘It’s all right…’ Glory managed to say but she had to release his fingers because her own hands were trembling.

  No, it could not be true. How could her mother, who had preached purity to her own daughter for so many years, have engaged in an adulterous affair? Worse still, given birth to her lover’s child? Her mother and Benito Grazzini? Sheer madness! Where had her poor father picked up this crazy story? Was it in his own head? Something to do with the surgery? Was he getting all confused about people and mixed up about the past?

  ‘I forgave her but she never got over the guilt or the fear of you or Sam finding out,’ the older man muttered heavily. ‘It was one of those things that nobody could’ve stopped. I was there the first time Benito Grazzini saw her at an estate party. He and your mum…they couldn’t take their eyes off each other and that was the start. It went on all that winter.’

  Glory was now straining to catch every word and her refusal to credit what she was being told was being challenged. What was it Maud had said to her that night at Montague Park on the subject of how Archie Little would feel about his daughter being involved with Rafaello? ‘You’re getting into a situation you don’t really understand.’ She shivered, chilled inside and out. If Benito Grazzini had fathered Sam it meant that her brother was Rafaello’s brother too. Was it possible? She did not want it to be possible.

  ‘I’m sorry, Glory. I’ve not been fair to you either.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘When Benito Grazzini made you give up Rafaello when you were eighteen I was pleased because I didn’t want the two of you getting together either.’

  There was a horrible ring of truth to her father’s discomfited admission.

  ‘But how
could you bear to keep on working for Benito Grazzini?’ Glory asked, struggling to keep her mounting incredulity out of her voice.

  ‘Because I won. I kept your mother,’ Archie Little muttered with a rich satisfaction that seemed undimmed by the passage of years. ‘He did everything he could to take her away from me but he lost!’

  Glory blinked at that most unexpected conclusion. She was in so much shock at what she had learned that she simply sat there, staring into space. When she finally parted her lips to speak again she discovered that she had waited too long to do so, for her father had fallen asleep. As it was unthinkable to wake him up and bother him with further questions on such an issue, she lurched out of his room on legs that were wobbling. Maud was waiting outside.

  ‘Dad’s asleep…quite happy,’ Glory told her stiltedly. ‘You knew, you knew all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t know for sure about Sam until your father told me this year. But yes, I knew about the rest,’ the older woman confirmed wryly, guiding Glory into the greater privacy of the waiting room. ‘I’ve worked at the Park for the best part of thirty years and I’ve not missed much of what went on there.’

  Glory was still in a shattered state of nerves. ‘How could Mum do that to Dad?’

  ‘I don’t think she meant to hurt anybody—’

  ‘He was a married man,’ Glory muttered in a shaking undertone. ‘And she was married to Dad…’

  ‘I reckon they both paid a steep price for what they did,’ Maud sighed. ‘Anyway, your mother came to her senses when she fell pregnant. She told Mr Benito to get lost and that was that.’

  ‘Was it? Dad had to bring up another man’s child.’ Try as Glory could, she could not square the memories of the mother she had loved with the woman who had irresponsibly indulged in an affair that had damaged her marriage, her husband and the whole future of the son she had brought into the world.

  ‘That was Archie’s decision. He adored your mother. He felt he’d come off all right.’