Abandoning what was left of the glass of vodka and her bag to the floor at her feet, she made herself stand up again, preferring to meet what was about to come back at her from an upright position with her hands free rather than have him loom over her like a threatening thunderclap.
Why did he have to be so intimidatingly tall and big?
She found herself sending him a plea for understanding with her eyes as she lurched back into speech. ‘Elise provided this d-dress and the invitation to the charity thing tonight,’ she explained. ‘Then she was packed off to Chicago with her son this afternoon f-for a surprise visit to Leo, while Mark and I …’
‘Set up the sting on me?’
Pressing her lips together, she nodded, deciding not to object to the latest label he’d hung on them because it was the truth, and there was still more to come.
‘Tomorrow morning you and I will appear together in a Sunday tabloid—’
‘Saying what—?’ he bit out.
Oh, God, she groaned silently. ‘S-something like— Raffaelle Villani goes public with his latest w-woman …’
Having to really bite down hard on her bottom lip now, Rachel searched the hard angles of his face for a small sign that he wasn’t into murder—but she didn’t see it.
‘It was important to convince Leo that the woman in the photographs he has in his possession and the one who will appear in tomorrow’s paper are the same person and cannot be Elise if she is in Chicago with him!’
And that was the bottom line.
Suddenly he was a tall dark stranger standing there. A man so cold and so very still it was as if he had pulled on the same awesome cloak of implacability that Leo always wore.
The silence gnawed. So did the heightened tension which began sapping the defences that had kept Rachel going through all of this.
‘It should have ended there,’ she pushed into the taut atmosphere. ‘If you had behaved as predicted and let me get away from you, I would have disappeared back to Devon and tomorrow’s tabloid spread would have become Monday’s bin liner—over and forgotten about—and my sister’s marriage would have been safe!’
It was the way it worked, Mark had said. Raffaelle Villani would have no case to deny. He might bluster and demand a retraction from the paper but that would be all he could do. Elise’s name would not be mentioned by Mark and other than Leo receiving hard evidence that his wife was not the woman in the grainy photographs with Raffaelle Villani, everything else would just—go away.
But this man had not reacted as predicted. He’d grabbed and held on to her. And the pap-pack had caught their scent. Now she was stuck here in his apartment with the pack no doubt waiting outside ready to pounce on her the moment that she tried to leave.
And where was her darling quick thinking half-brother? Putting his twin’s needs first, as he always did.
Now Rachel hadn’t a clue as to where it was all going to go from here except—
It was time to beg, she recognised starkly. Time to appeal to one very cold and angry Raffaelle Villani for his understanding and co-operation, when deep down she knew they deserved neither.
She moved towards him. ‘Mr Villani,’ she murmured huskily, ‘please, just think about it. I was actually doing you a favour too tonight because if Leo—’
‘What the hell is—this?’
Rachel hadn’t realised she’d lifted a hand out towards him in appeal until his long fingers were suddenly clamped around her wrist.
‘W-what—?’ she said jerkily.
Grim mouth flattening, he lifted up her hand until her fingers dangled in front of her confused face. She had to blink twice to focus on the diamond-encrusted sapphire ring twinkling back at her.
‘Oh,’ she said and swallowed. She’d forgotten all about the ring.
‘You are betrothed—?’ he enquired with blistering thinness.
‘N-no.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘It—it’s nothing; the ring is a f-fake, just w-window-dressing.’
‘Window-dressing,’ he repeated.
‘Part of the look …’ She was beginning to squirm inside again. ‘Leo needed to see it if he was going to …’
‘Believe you were not his wife?’
She nodded, then swallowed again. ‘Elise’s engagement ring is a big single yellow diamond. Th-this one is so glaringly different that it …’
Her voice trailed away, the hiss of his breath making it do so because she knew he had caught on.
‘So, let me see if I have this clear,’ he said grimly. ‘You dressed yourself up to look like your half-sister—from behind, then you threw yourself at my neck, kissing me as if I am your…?’
He wanted her to say it. Her heart began thumping. He was going to make her confess the final full duplicity.
‘L-lover,’ she breathed.
‘Betrothed lover?’ His voice was getting softer by the second.
Rachel licked her lips and nodded.
‘And I was not supposed to issue an instant denial about this?’
‘Th-there’s a letter going to be h-hand-delivered here to you tomorrow along with the relevant newspaper,’ she told him shakily. ‘The letter will explain everything we have talked about and point out to you that to expose the photograph as a lie will leave you open to questions about wh-whose baby it is Elise is carrying.’
‘Madre de Dio,’ he breathed. ‘You are truly devious.’
He was right and she was, but— ‘This is serious, Mr Villani!’ she cried out. ‘You don’t know Leo! He’s one hell of a strict Greek! He’s also an absolute killer expert on law! If he decides that his wife has been cheating on him with you and could be having your baby … for all your wealth and power, he will drag you to the courtroom and through the gutters along with Elise!’
He threw her hand away. ‘I never touched her—!’ he bit out angrily.
‘Even this very trusting sister can’t believe that!’
Her denunciation bounced off the walls and the sheets of plate glass while the air sizzled with his undiluted rage.
‘One kiss, Mr Villani,’ Rachel stressed urgently. ‘One small kiss stolen from the wife of Leo Savakis and he will never forgive her, and you will find yourself stuck with the worst kind of enemy there is!’
He just turned and walked off, striding across the expanse of wood flooring and out through the door.
Rachel followed, quivering, shaken to the roots because it was only now, when faced with what this all meant to him, that she was beginning to realise how none of them had given much thought to how unfairly they were treating him in all of this.
She hurried after him. ‘I’m so sorry …’
The husky quaver of her apology fell on stony ground. It had been such a useless thing to say anyway, so she didn’t blame him for the filthy comment he threw back at her, as one of his arms flew out with an angry hand attached to it, which hit open another door to allow him to keep walking without altering his angry stride.
Rachel found herself coming to a trembling halt in yet another doorway. This one opened on to a shiny black and white kitchen and he was standing by a huge black mirror fronted fridge. One of the doors was swinging open, but by the way he was just staring Rachel received the pained impression that he didn’t know what it was he was staring into.
‘Please believe me when I say I did try to explain it all to you earlier—at the charity thing!’ she tried again—frantically. ‘I insisted to Mark that we should at least attempt to get your understanding and cooperation but …’ she sucked in a breath ‘… you wouldn’t give me the chance to speak and then the whole thing j-just ran out of control!’
He slammed the fridge door shut and turned to face her. If her trembling legs would have let her, Rachel knew she would be running by now.
But—look at him, she told herself helplessly as he began striding towards her. He was so gloriously magnificent in his anger, his face muscles stretched tight across his amazing bone structure and his torso pumped up like a warrior about to be
gin a slaying-fest.
He reached for her.
She quivered. ‘Y-you—’
He shut her up with his hard hot mouth to mouth that totally blacked out her brain. When he let her up for air again she was dizzy and disorientated, in no fit state to find herself being dragged by the hand down the hallway then out of the door to the lift.
His free hand stabbed the call button. Bright balls of panic spun in her head. He was going to throw her out. He was going to hand her to the wolves out there and—
‘Please don’t do this,’ she begged him on the very—very edge of tears now.
He pulled her into the lift. They rode down with him standing there in front of her, with her wrist still his prisoner and the rest of her pinned against the lift wall by the steely glitter in his eyes.
‘Think about it,’ she begged unsteadily. ‘You don’t want to—’
He swooped and cut the words off the ruthless way, with another open mouthed onslaught that lost her the will to even stand.
But she had to stand. She had to follow where he pulled as they left the lift and crossed the foyer with a curious security guard looking on. Then a hard hand pushed open the main doors and Rachel lost the next few seconds beneath the glare of flashing flickering lights and the pandemonium of questions that burst out.
His arm was around her shoulders now, hugging her to him and keeping her upright.
‘Smile,’ he hissed and she smiled like an alien.
Then the words came, those low, smooth accented tones dryly confirming that no, as they could see, she was not Elise. She was in fact Elise’s beautiful half-sister, Rachel Carmichael.
Then he let drop the big one, by calmly inviting their congratulations because they had just become engaged to be married.
The fake ring was displayed on her finger for the pack to snap to their greedy hearts’ content.
How long had they known each other? Where had they met?
He answered all the questions with the relaxed humour of one who had all the answers, since he was merely duplicating facts from his short affair with Elise.
Breathing took on a shallow necessity aimed to maintain the fragile beat of her heart. The rest was a haze, a fog of nothing in which she must have performed well because no one suggested she was about to pass out or, worse, that she looked more like a horrified prisoner being hauled to the gallows than a happily betrothed future bride.
‘Now you have what you came for would it be possible that you can do us a favour and leave us in peace?’
So lightly requested, so full of lazy charm. The pack laughed. He turned her within the iron grip of his arm. Silence hit with a deafening force as the doors closed with them back inside.
‘Congratulations, Mr Villani, Miss Carmichael,’ the eavesdropping security guard said with a grin.
If the man holding her clamped to his side said anything in response then Rachel didn’t hear it. She was too busy trying to decide if she was dizzy with relief because he hadn’t thrown her out there to face the paparazzi alone, or if she was dizzy with fear over what was still to come.
They travelled back up in the lift. She was in shock. She had been totally incapacitated by a man locked into his own agenda. An agenda that involved him seizing control of a situation they—she had taken away from him.
His apartment door closed behind them. Rachel shivered. And still the ordeal did not end there. The arm propelled her down the hall and in through another door. It closed with a quiet deathly click and only then did she manage to find the strength to break free.
She had moved three shaky steps before it hit her that this was a bedroom. A very male bedroom with very masculine items scattered around it and a very large bed standing out like a threat, with its very dark plum-coloured linen upon which it was too easy to imprint the solid frame of a dark-haired honey-skinned man.
She turned. He was still by the door and watching her. Not one small gram of anger had softened from his face. Her skin gave a fizz of alarm-cum-excitement because, even in anger, the way he was looking at her was stripping her bare to her quivering skin.
‘Why—?’ she breathed.
‘You wanted my co-operation and you have had it,’ he answered. ‘Now I want what I want, and you, Miss Carmichael, are about to pay your dues.’
He started closing the gap between them.
‘No.’ Rachel shook her head and began backing away. ‘I won’t let you do this.’
‘Oh come on, mi amore,’ he taunted coldly. ‘We are betrothed to be married. You wear my ring on your finger and my impeccably mannered family is going to try not to be shocked that my bride is wearing farmers’ boots to her wedding and straw to decorate her hair.’
‘Very funny,’ she muttered, looking about her for an escape.
‘They will tread daintily between organic lettuce and—’
‘Will you just stop this!’ His words might taunt but the rest was now getting scary. ‘Look,’ she said quickly. ‘I know you are angry—and I know that you have every right to be.’
‘Grazie.’
‘Oh, God,’ she choked as his hands closed around her waist and the shock of feeling them there again lit up her skin. ‘I’m sorry about everything, okay?’
His dark head began to lower. Rachel tried to arch away.
‘Your heart is racing.’
‘Because you’re frightening me!’
‘Or exciting you.’
No, frightening—frightening me! Rachel repeated—though only inside her head where a strange tumbling darkness was gathering, closing around her like a cold mist that began to take her legs from beneath her and brought forth a string of soft tight curses as she began to go limp.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE came around to find she was lying on the bed and her head was pounding. Someone moved close by and she flicked open her eyes as Raffaelle Villani came to lean over her.
With a startled jerk she tried to get up but he pushed her back down again.
‘Be calm,’ he said grimly. ‘I do not ravish helpless females.’
Well, forgive me for not believing you, she wanted to say but, ‘W-what happened to me?’ she whispered instead.
‘You—fainted.’ His mouth tightened as he said that and his eyes were hooded; in fact his whole face was hidden behind a tightly controlled mask that did not make Rachel feel any safer. ‘You are also very cold.’
It was only as a soft cashmere throw landed across her that she realised she was shivering.
‘I should not have taken you outside to meet the press wearing only that dress.’
The press. It all came flooding back like a recurring nightmare and she closed her eyes again. ‘I can’t believe you actually did that,’ she whispered unsteadily.
Straightening up, ‘Mi dispiace,’ he offered stiffly. ‘I have no excuse for frightening you as badly as I did.’
‘I wasn’t talking about you playing the sex maniac!’ She sat up and this time he did not stop her. ‘I meant what you just did down there in front of all those reporters.’ She grabbed her dizzy forehead and stared up at him. ‘Have you no idea what it is you’ve done?’
‘I did what I had to do,’ he stated coldly.
‘Great,’ she choked. ‘You did what you had to do and managed to escalate this whole thing right out of control!’
‘It was out of control long before I became involved. You said as much yourself.’
So she had. ‘Well, we are now stuck with a fake betrothal, complete with a fake ring and all the other fake stuff that is going to come with it.’
‘But your sister’s marriage will be safe, which, of course, makes the subterfuge, sacrifice and lies worth it?’
The sarcasm was still alive if the frightening anger had lessened, Rachel heard, and went to get up.
‘Stay there,’ he commanded, turning to stride towards the door. ‘Give yourself chance to—warm up a little and—recover.’
Recover for what? Rachel wondered half hysterically.
She was never going to recover from this awful night for as long as she lived!
Ignoring his command, she moved to sit on the edge of the bed, then sat trying to calm the sickly swimming sensation still taking place in her head.
‘I have to find a way to get out of here undetected so I can go home,’ she mumbled, more to herself than to him.
Still, he heard it and paused at the door. ‘Where is home when you are in London?’
Usually with Elise but, ‘With Mark, right now,’ she replied, then squinted a look at her watch. ‘He will be worrying where I am.’
‘Not so I noticed, cara,’ he drawled cynically. ‘Not that it matters,’ he then dismissed, ‘because from now on you will be living right here with me.’
‘I will not!’ she gasped out.
He had the door open now. ‘If my freedom to choose what I do with my life has been curtailed, then so has yours,’ he declared. ‘So, until we find a way out of this situation which does not involve my loss of face, you and I, Miss Carmichael, will in effect be stuck to each other with glue. So lie down again and get used to it.’
With that he walked out, leaving Rachel gaping at the empty space he’d last filled with his cold anger, which was just as bad as the hot anger from before!
‘But that’s just stupid—!’ she fired after him. ‘Betrothed people don’t have to live together!’
If he heard her he did not come back to argue and, after a second, Rachel slumped her shoulders where she sat, wondering dully if he didn’t have a point. Now the press wagon was rolling, nothing was going to stop it in the near future without someone—or all of them—losing face.
She closed her eyes, wishing her head would just stop spinning now so she could think.
She needed to ring Mark. The whole story had gone bottom upwards and she needed to warn him then get his take on what she should do next.
Ignoring the swimming room, she got up then just stood looking down at her feet. Her shoes had disappeared. Tugging the throw around her chilled shoulders, she began searching for them but they weren’t anywhere to be found.
One Night In Collection Page 5