by Lynne Graham
‘I’ve been so slow to catch on,’ Glory mumbled, momentarily closing her eyes as if willing herself to get a grip on a brain that was shooting in too many directions at once and throwing up far too many different thoughts. ‘Rafaello knows Sam is his brother—’
‘Sam knows too, Glory. When Archie realised that Mr Benito had told his son, he decided that he had to tell Sam the truth as well—’
‘Everybody knew but me,’ Glory whispered thickly. ‘I think Rafaello found out that night I was at the Park. His father came to see him—’
‘He wouldn’t have had much choice. When Rafaello told his dad that Sam Little had been charged with theft it must’ve put Mr Benito in quite a sweat. So he finally owned up.’
The more the ramifications of what she had learned sank in, the more distraught Glory could feel herself becoming. Parting from the older woman with an embarrassed apology, she left the hospital.
Everything was falling into place for Glory but she shrank from the picture that was emerging. In all likelihood, Rafaello had had a flaming row with his father that evening. He must have been as shocked by the revelation as she was now but he hadn’t breathed a word to her, had he? No, he had packed her off back to Birmingham, ensuring that she remained ignorant of that secret connection between her family and his own. Then he had gone down to the gardener’s cottage to take a closer look at the brother he had never known he had and had stayed until after midnight…
In fact, the sole point Rafaello had in his favour was that he evidently did want to acknowledge and form a family connection with Sam. Or did he? Perhaps events had got out of his control and her own father had accidentally forced that issue by finally telling Sam the truth about his parentage. Once that cat had come out of the bag, there had been no putting it back. No wonder Sam was in such a volatile frame of mind. Yet Sam had also been showing every sign of being delighted by the discovery that he had an older half-brother. As opposed to a sister? A half-sister, Glory acknowledged reluctantly, liking even less a distinction that diminished the blood ties between herself and the brother she loved. Was that why Sam had more or less treated Glory like the invisible woman since her return? Stung by that hurtful reality, which she had tried to ignore until that moment, Glory splurged on taking a cab ride back to Rafaello’s apartment.
What seemed like the ultimate betrayal finally struck her. Even knowing that there was no way on earth that he could possibly prosecute his own brother, Rafaello had still held Glory to the deal they had made. He had still swept her off to Corfu to become his mistress. Not once had he been tempted or even shamed into telling her that her little brother was also his little brother!
But only as Glory made it into the lift in Rafaello’s apartment block did she make what was for her the most distressing connection of all. No longer did she need to wonder why Rafaello had been so quick to offer marriage even in advance of discovering that she was pregnant! Regardless of his own feelings, there was a family dimension to be considered now. It was bad enough that their respective parents had had an affair and that Sam should have been the result, but the fallout from Rafaello’s getting Glory into the same condition would be all the greater precisely because of that background. Sam had been quick to think the worst and Archie Little would be equally sensitive. The mere suggestion that Rafaello was treating an expectant Glory with anything less than respect would be sufficient to create an all-out war of loathing and resentment where the men in her family was concerned.
As Glory entered the penthouse Rafaello strode out into the hall to greet her. The sheer effect of his stunning dark good looks combined with his lithe, powerful physique hit Glory really hard. He was just so gorgeous. She was out of her league, way out of her league and always had been with him. The instant he had mentioned marriage she should’ve realised that there was something strange going on. Entrapment? He hadn’t been joking. A terrible sense of pain and rejection filled her and she blanked him out, fighting to retain control of her seething emotions, but all the time the anger inside her was rocketing.
‘Where’s Sam?’ she demanded, stalking past him into the contemporary lounge. ‘I want to talk to him in private.’
‘I’m afraid he’s gone—’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Taken aback, Glory spun round.
‘Sam has opted to go and stay with his friend Joe’s family for the next few days—’
‘And you just let him walk out of here in the mood he was in?’ Glory prompted in disbelief.
‘Sam’s already missed the first week of the new school term,’ Rafaello pointed out levelly. ‘He discussed his plans with your father this morning. Sam will be fine, Glory.’
‘I just bet you wanted him gone before I got back!’ Glory launched at him furiously.
‘Now, what has put you in this mood?’ Rafaello mused, shrugging back his wide shoulders and viewing her with enquiring dark golden eyes.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Glory flung him a livid look and she was so mad, so worked up, she couldn’t stay still and she walked all the way over to the window before spinning back again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that your lousy father seduced my mother and just about wrecked my parents’ marriage?’
Rafaello stilled, spiky black lashes semi-screening his keen gaze. ‘So you know—’
‘No thanks to you!’ Glory snapped, outraged by that almost calm reaction to a revelation that had virtually torn her apart. ‘Just when were you planning to tell me that Sam has rotten Grazzini genes in him?’
Rafaello’s gaze shimmered and then flashed. ‘Cut it out, bella mia…or I might just hit back.’
‘I’m not afraid of anything you could have to say. In every way possible your father has caused enormous distress to my family!’ Glory condemned.
‘My mother had a nervous breakdown when I was thirteen. I never knew why until I found out about Sam three months ago,’ Rafaello admitted, shocking Glory into silence. ‘She was a very reserved woman. She tried to pretend the affair wasn’t happening, but when my father confessed that there was going to be a child she fell apart. Did you imagine that wealth and position protected my mother from being as hurt as your father was?’
‘I never thought about her…maybe because I don’t ever remember seeing her.’ A hectic flush on her cheeks, Glory was momentarily ashamed of the way she had tried to hurl blame without appreciating that, one way or another, everybody involved had suffered. But conceding that point in no way lessened the bitter sense of betrayal she felt.
‘My mother never returned to Montague Park and Benito admitted that, but for Sam’s existence, he would have sold the estate. Let’s face it, between them, my father and your mother made a hellish mess but the only real victim now is Sam,’ Rafaello murmured flatly. ‘My father always knew that Sam was his son. However, he had no idea that Archie knew as well, so he had no choice but to keep his distance.’
‘I guess not,’ Glory was forced to admit.
‘Now that the truth is out, Benito very much wants to get to know Sam,’ Rafaello admitted. ‘But Sam needs time to adjust to that idea.’
Rafaello had given Glory another shock and one she could have done without. Benito Grazzini wanted to get to know his illegitimate son? Why did the obvious always have to be spelt out to her? For here was yet another powerful reason why Rafaello had to marry her. If Rafaello didn’t marry her, his father could kiss goodbye to any hope of Sam’s warming to him in the foreseeable future. Devastated by that further realisation, Glory tried to shut it out again because she shrank from the challenge of speaking such humiliating thoughts out loud.
Her lovely face tight and pale, her anguished eyes screened, she said hoarsely, ‘You found out the truth about Sam that night I was with you but you didn’t tell me—’
‘How could I tell you? At that stage, I believed your father didn’t know he’d been raising another man’s son,’ Rafaello countered in blunt exasperation. ‘However, Archie disabused me of that idea the minute Sam went up to bed that ev
ening. He said that, although he might’ve been willing to tell Sam the truth, he couldn’t do it because he didn’t want you to know that your mother had had an affair!’
‘You still should have told me,’ Glory retorted stubbornly.
‘It wasn’t my secret. To be honest, I didn’t think your father would ever tell Sam, so it would have been wrong for me to interfere,’ Rafaello stated with immovable conviction. ‘But while we were in Greece Archie decided that if my father could tell me that Sam was my brother then Sam had the right to the same information.’
‘But I was still left out of it, even by my own family,’ Glory said bitterly, struggling to hide her hurt.
‘It’s not exactly the kind of news people want to break on the phone.’
‘And it’s certainly not the sort of news you were likely to share when you were using Sam and those theft charges to make me agree to become your mistress!’ Glory flung back in fierce condemnation.
Rafaello threw back his arrogant dark head and stood his ground in silence.
‘Even knowing that there was no way on earth you would have let those charges stand against your own half-brother, you went ahead and dragged me into bed!’ Glory continued in a rising crescendo. ‘How low can a guy sink?’
‘If he wants a woman as much as I wanted you…probably even lower,’ Rafaello conceded with disconcerting frankness, brilliant dark eyes bleak, hard jawline clenched. ‘I am not proud of what I did, cara.’
‘That didn’t stop you, though, did it?’
Pale beneath his bronzed skin, lean, powerful face taut, Rafaello surveyed her steadily. ‘I got pretty much what I asked for. You walked out on me again—’
‘You were about to dump me—’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ Rafaello stated.
‘Why are you lying about it?’ Glory shot at him shrilly. ‘You think my being pregnant means you can’t be honest any more?’
‘No…’ Rafaello responded. ‘I think your being pregnant means that I’m not going to fight with you. It can’t be good for the baby.’
Off-balanced by what struck her as a shockingly smooth and devious sidestepping of the major issues she was striving to confront him with, Glory experienced such a surge of unfettered rage that she felt light-headed. ‘Just you leave my baby out of it—’
‘It’s my baby too—’
Her teeth gritted on that unarguable point. ‘You used me in Corfu—’
His expressive jawline took on a more aggressive slant, his dark eyes suddenly flaring gold. ‘Don’t you dare try to tell me that you didn’t want me. Don’t you dare.’
‘Is that how you excused yourself?’ Glory was impervious to that warning intonation and accelerating tension in the air.
‘You were the one who needed the excuse. I won’t let our parents’ mistakes tear us apart—’
‘How did I need an excuse?’ The atmosphere was humming, setting up a chain reaction in Glory’s own trembling length.
Rafaello strolled closer, all dominant male, all confident threat. ‘An excuse to enjoy the passion,’ he drawled soft and low and insolent as all get-out. ‘I gave you that excuse, that outlet, that freedom. As long as you could blame me for forcing you into that arrangement, you didn’t have to feel guilty. You were no unwilling mistress!’
Outmatched by that demanding reminder of her own weakness, Glory turned scarlet, unable to think of anything to hurl back which would not be an outright lie. Infuriated and embarrassed, she tried to brush past him but Rafaello caught her to him. Trapping her struggling slim body into the unyielding strength of his hard, muscular frame, he crushed her mouth beneath his with passionate force. Sensual shock lanced through Glory in a debilitating wave. In the midst of her raging turmoil she felt her own desperate hunger for that physical connection pulling at her with talon claws, but she fought it.
‘Don’t do this to us,’ Rafaello lifted his dark head to demand in ragged appeal. ‘Don’t make me so mad that I’ll say things that will hurt you, bella mia.’
Encountering the blaze of those smouldering golden eyes, reacting to that disconcerting note of masculine urgency, Glory was mesmerised into stillness. It was as if he pressed a magic button and the rage went out of her. She quivered, shifting inexorably into closer contact. The magnetic attraction of that lean, powerful physique of his against her own softer feminine curves was immense. She was madly aware of the hard contours of bone and sinew beneath the formal business suit, and the thrusting promise of his undeniable arousal. Between one breath and the next she was lost to temptation, all resistance beaten down by the answering ache of her breasts and the moist heat stirring between her thighs.
‘Rafaello…’ she muttered in desperation, fighting to call a halt to her own susceptibility.
Rafaello dealt her a scorching smile and hoisted her up into his arms without another word. He carried her out of the lounge. You can’t do this, you mustn’t do this, cried her conscience on a frantic note. But she ignored that inner voice, pushed her face into a wide, solid shoulder, letting her nostrils flare on the familiar scent of him, feeling every skin-cell she possessed switching onto a higher frequency in response. He laid her down on a bed in an unfamiliar room and plucked off her shoes. Straightening with easy grace, he removed his jacket and tossed it aside.
Glory sat up, flushed and stiff. ‘We were fighting—’
‘This beats the hell out of fighting, amore mia,’ Rafaello pointed out with husky conviction.
Her hands were shaking and she wound them round her upraised knees while she fought to find the strength to get back off the bed again, reinstate control and common sense. But her defences weren’t working, weren’t there to call upon. Her whole world had begun to cave in around her when her father had started speaking a couple of hours earlier. The bricks and mortar of her childhood stability had taken a heavy hit. Little memories were still sneaking up out of her subconscious and striking hard: the phone constantly ringing but never answered, her mother taking it off the hook, pacing the floor, back and forth in tortured circles, hands knotted as if she was praying, tears running down her face as she shooed her curious little daughter into the kitchen and suggested she set the table for supper. A woman fighting temptation, a woman craving the man she loved but denying herself. And just as Talitha Little had loved Benito Grazzini, Glory loved his son.
‘Forget them…forget all of it,’ Rafaello urged with angry impatience as if he was attuned to her very thoughts.
But how could she forget when that was why he would marry her? Then would she rather do without him? Would pride be any consolation when she denied herself what she most wanted? Rafaello on any terms. Any way she could have him, she conceded painfully, recalling those wanton weeks on Corfu. Any excuse. He knew that but she was only now facing that same fact that pride had a lesser hold on her than he had.
She connected with his blazing golden eyes, sensing his anger, his frustration and mercifully his desire. Desire was there in the smouldering caress of his gaze as it roved over her, lingering on her full mouth, the pouting thrust of her breasts beneath her buttoned cotton top. Even without the fancy frills of the right make-up and the right clothes, he was hungry for her.
‘I am so hot for you, I am burning up,’ Rafaello growled, throwing his shirt aside, exposing the hard hair-roughened expanse of his muscular torso and the hard bronze slab of his flat stomach.
‘Yes.’ Acknowledgement escaped Glory’s already parted lips in a sighing breath for she was melting just watching him strip. Total weakness, total lack of resistance, that was what she was feeling and it was running through her like a burst dam of susceptibility. With hands that were all thumbs she began to pull at the pearlised buttons on her top. Then, losing patience, she tugged it over her head and emerged in time to see him strip off his boxer shorts. She caught her breath and her mouth ran dry at the potent virile proof of his male hunger for her.
Arrested bright blue eyes pinned to him, Rafaello padded over to the bed and reach
ed for her. He took about five seconds to extract her from her combat trousers. Kneeling on the bed, he pulled her to him and let his tongue slide once, twice into the moist depths of her mouth in an erotic penetration that sent the blood thundering through her veins in helpless response and left her trembling.
‘You’re so sexy,’ she whispered unevenly.
‘And you have the most divine body I’ve ever seen,’ Rafaello husked, depriving her of her bra, freeing the ripe swell of her breasts from confinement, shaping his hands to her burgeoning curves with near reverent care.
Is that all? she almost asked, needing to be so much more, but that pained thought was as quickly lost in the rush of pleasure induced by his caressing fingers brushing over her distended pink nipples. The sensation was so intense as to be almost unbearable and she shut her eyes in embarrassment as a moan escaped her.
‘You’re even more sensitive now, amore mia,’ Rafaello murmured thickly, impatient hands dispensing with her panties and then rearranging her so that she lay fully exposed to his plundering gaze.
In dismay she opened her eyes wide, and she moved her arms to cross them protectively over herself. He caught her hands in his and settled them back either side of her. ‘Rafaello!’ she gasped strickenly, painfully aware of her changing shape, needing and wanting to conceal those alterations from too close a scrutiny.
‘Dio mio…you excite the hell out of me,’ Rafaello ground out, raw appreciation in the fascinated appraisal he dealt her prone figure, releasing one of her wrists to run a satisfied hand over the slight swell of her stomach and splay his long fingers possessively there. ‘Those Grazzini genes you insulted are inside you, part of me, part of you—’
‘Pushy genes,’ Glory mumbled, not really knowing what to say because his attitude had taken her by surprise.
Rafaello dealt her a scorching smile that sent her vulnerable heart racing. ‘Strong and assertive, cara mia,’ he countered with amused agreement.
He really did want their baby. For the first time she recognised that reality and, even as relief coursed through her, it brought pain in its wake, for his warmth seemed directed at the child she carried, rather than at her. His child lay at the very heart of his wish to marry her. So when he kissed her there were tears in her eyes, but when he touched her quivering body she could no longer retain such thoughts. Indeed, she was all the more eager to forget and find the only true oblivion she had ever known.