by Tara Pammi
The moment she walked into the outer lounge, Raphael stood up. His gaze took in her wet T-shirt. He scowled. “You should have called me when she woke up.”
“She didn’t. I had some trouble working those monstrous taps at the tub and splashed myself.” It was the first time they had been alone since that episode at his sister’s house. Pia wiped her damp hands on her jeans, butterflies partying in her stomach. “Didn’t you have an engagement to get to? I can stay until your mother comes back.”
“Teresa will be here any minute. Then I will drop you off and continue to my engagement.”
Pia nodded, unease climbing up her spine. It was the way he said it. It was the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Who are you meeting?” she asked. She tried for nonchalance but wasn’t successful.
“It’s an old friend who’s in town. We have a standing engagement when she’s here. I completely forgot about it. But since she’s here—”
Pia’s heart sank to her toes. “She? It’s a woman?”
“Si.”
“Is she single?”
“Si.”
It was like getting blood out of stone.
“So this engagement is sort of a date?”
His silence told Pia everything she needed to know.
Walk away, a part of her screamed. Turn your back on this, on him, came another warning.
But dear God, she’d make herself crazy imagining all kinds of scenarios. “If it’s a date, won’t she talk about it later? You know, to someone who knows Gio? Wait, doesn’t she know that you...you’re supposed to be engaged?”
“I’m sure she’s heard the gossip now.”
“And yet, she called you?”
He pushed his hand through his hair roughly, his gaze never leaving hers. A sense of dread curled up in Pia’s stomach. What was he saying that she wasn’t understanding? God, how she loathed her lack of sophistication.
Instead of answering her, he dialed Emilio on his cell phone, ordered him to pick up Pia, and then hung up. “It’s getting late. You should be getting home.”
“I don’t get it. How can she want to go on a date if you’re in a relationship?”
With me, she left out the pathetic lie that she was beginning to wish was true.
“It’s not that kind of a date. Ava and I know each other from university. We’re friends and—”
“Lovers?” She had no idea how she’d been able to say it without choking.
Their gazes collided and held, a hundred unsaid words flying in between. Finally, he nodded.
Everything fell into place. “So you’re going there to just...” Heat climbed up her face. “You’re going there to have sex with her?” she forced herself to say, images of him kissing some faceless woman bombarding her.
“Ava and I go way back and I just... I need to be anything but your lover right now.”
Anger came to her rescue. The thought of Raphael with another woman made bile rise to her throat. “Are you that heartless?”
“Heartless?” A tightness crawled up his face, making him that arrogant stranger from the ball. “You’ve begun to believe your own lie, cara mia. I don’t remember promising you anything, much less my fidelity. You mean nothing to me, Pia. You need to remember that you and I wouldn’t have crossed paths if not for the fact that you’re his granddaughter. His precious princess. And the cost of touching you is...far too high for me.”
Each calculated word landed like a poisoned arrow. God, how could he hurt her like this? Why was she letting him?
She had had enough of this pathetic spectacle she was making of herself. Enough of wondering if he would ever look at her with something other than polite courtesy.
“Brutally honest, as ever. At least you’re reliable. But you know what? I can’t do this anymore. I—”
“You can’t do what?”
“I can’t pretend to be your bloody girlfriend. Frank was right. I’m not sophisticated enough for these kinds of... Find a way to call this thing off. Find a way to protect your bloody company from Giovanni’s meddling. But I’m done with this, with you.”
She turned and angrily swiped at her cheeks. Damn it, she refused to cry in front of him. His pity would kill her.
But she got no more than a few steps before he slammed his palm on the door. She couldn’t turn. She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. “I don’t understand you at all. Foolishly, I thought I was beginning to. That you were more than the ruthless, ambitious businessman that everybody calls you. What you’re thinking, it’s horrible, clinical.”
The warmth of his body, the scent of him seeped into her back. One more step and she would be in his embrace. Oh, how she wanted to take that step, how she wanted to lose herself in him...
“You, this pretense, it’s driving me crazy, don’t you get it? I’m wound up so tight I can’t sleep. I can’t work. You’re—” But she cut him off before he could say the horrid words.
“I’m ruining your life—yes, I know,” she said loudly, tears knotting in her throat. “You think it’s easy for me? The whispers I hear, the snide innuendoes, that the only reason you’re with me is because of what Gio has. That Gio’s wealth compensates for what I lack.
“It’s like reliving the episode with Frank. Only, this time, I know the truth beforehand.”
“Damn it, I’ll knock the bastard’s teeth down if I see him ever.”
“Just tell me one thing. Were you lying the other day at your sister’s house? Were you just protecting me and my tender feelings? Was it the fact that you haven’t been with anyone recently that made you lose control? Tell me that being with another woman while you want me doesn’t bother you, and my rose-tinted glasses will come off.”
Raphael couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t say no. It didn’t matter that even the very idea of touching Ava felt like a betrayal of his own self.
Damn it, even his overnight trip to Venice, his meeting with an old friend, which should have progressed from the restaurant to her hotel room, it had taken all his wits just to get through the dinner.
All he could see in the woman who’d been a friend for years was the brittleness her two divorces had given her, the false warmth of her smile as she’d played footsie with Raphael’s leg under the table, the utter lack of connection between them.
Because of the infuriating woman and her outdated ideas about affection and companionship and respect, all his old connections began to look cheap and tawdry.
She was turning his life upside down.
He owed her nothing. He needed her to see the true him. He needed her to realize that he was no hero and definitely not hers.
And yet, the words wouldn’t rise to his lips.
All he could see were her big eyes that saw too much. Her lush lips. Her chest falling and rising. The raw honesty of her emotions was written across her face. So was the desire that she couldn’t hide every time she looked at him. And the ease with which she was fitting into his very life. Her adoration of his child...
The remembered taste of her was a siren’s call he couldn’t resist. Without warning, he suddenly kissed her. Hard and hungry with not a bit of his usual finesse. He devoured her mouth with bites and licks and nips until she was moaning and arching into his touch.
“This is what you want, Pia?” he said, pulling her skirt up. Sending his hand on a foray for silky skin, even as he plunged his tongue into her sweet mouth and swallowed her yes.
How he wanted her now, here. He wanted to thrust into her wet warmth and get rid of this madness.
What magic had she woven around him?
He cupped a barely covered buttock with one hand while his other met the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Mouths tangled, he pushed aside the silky thong she wore until he could find her core.
Sweat dampened his brow. A current of electric desire pooled in his groin as he found her soft folds.
Dio mio, she was ready for him. Silky and slick against his fingers.
He swallowed her soft gasp, pressed her against the door. Pulled her leg up until she was wide-open for him.
Without giving her a moment to breathe, he set a fast rhythm with his fingers. She sobbed, she moaned, she was like a spark plug touched by the fire.
Madness filling his blood, Raphael snaked his tongue around hers and increased the pressure of his strokes.
The moment he rubbed her swollen clit in concentric circles, she broke apart. Her spasms against his fingers sent his own blood rushing south. Her soft cries pelted against his skin.
He wanted to push her hair from her damp forehead. He wanted to take her in a soft kiss. He wanted to tell her she was incredibly beautiful, that her passion would bring any man to his knees.
He did nothing of the sort.
If anything, tonight only proved how wrong they were for each other. How dangerous she was to his control. How easily he could break her spirit.
He pushed away from her. Like the ruthless bastard that he was, he didn’t even try to hold her up when her knees shook beneath her. Her eyes were closed; her face was turned away.
But he didn’t miss the lone tear that tracked a path down her cheek.
“That is all I can give you, Pia. That is all I give any woman.”
He walked out of that room and the house and went outside to wait for Emilio.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“HOW DARE YOU go behind my back after everything I’ve done for you?”
Raphael refused to look up before he finished perusing the design document as Giovanni walked into his office with all the force of a stomping elephant. The rush of affection welling up in his chest was a soothing balm against the guilt festering for the actions he’d taken.
Giovanni meant the world to him.
He had taught Raphael to aspire to bigger dreams, had spotted Raphael’s unusual talent for fixing cars of any kind, believed in his talent and hard work when even his mother hadn’t.
He’d been expecting this siege for a week now. From the minute he’d set about buying more and more stock in the company. Getting the members to oust Gio from the board—whose proxy had rested with Raphael all this time anyway.
If he succeeded, Gio wouldn’t ever be able to bring someone like Stefano onto the board. He’d never be able to manipulate Raphael again. He’d never put Raphael in a situation where he had to face Pia again.
But of course Gio had his spies in the company just as Raphael had his at Gio’s house.
Once he finished, he closed down the design software and leaned back in his seat.
“Good afternoon to you too, Giovanni,” he said casually, and only then looked up to meet his gaze.
A thread of unease wrapped itself around his chest, tugging hard.
His eighty-four-year-old godfather had the stubbornness of a mule and the constitution of a boxer. And yet, his pallor was visible under the olive of his skin. Concern pushed Raphael out of his chair as Gio huffed into his office with short breaths and irately dismissed his chauffeur Emilio.
Who cast a worried glance at Raphael.
“You look like hell, Giovanni.” Try as he might, he couldn’t stop the concern seeping through. Emotion was a weakness that Gio would lap up.
Giovanni walked into the sitting area, his body vibrating with his famous temper. “I look like hell because my godson—the boy I taught everything—is a backstabbing cheat.” A string of Italian fell from his mouth as Gio detailed all the backstabbing Raphael had done.
However pale he might look, Raphael didn’t intend to go on the defensive. “Have you no explanation for why you are trying to push me out of my own company?”
“I’m cleaning house. I should’ve done it years ago.”
“You’re the bloody CEO, Raphael. What more could you want?”
“You and I are both aware that a quarter of the board members are always looking for ways to go behind my back. I’ll not tolerate any dissent. This is my company now, Gio.”
“No one would dare question your command. They know it’s you who drives the stock prices higher. Your reputation is fierce. And if they crawl back to me, it’s because they know you loathe them.”
“I loathe them because they’re not worthy of anything.” Half of them had turned his father away during the hour of his need. “I’ll not allow any vipers on the board.”
He was deceived by the very people he trusted.
Pia’s words wouldn’t leave Raphael alone. In eighteen years, he’d not once looked at it that way. He’d only seen his father’s actions from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old boy. But never as a man who’d been betrayed, as a man who’d been honorable until his last breath.
“Your work consumes you.” He sighed. “I think at the cost of everything else. This compulsion you have to reach even higher goals...”
“It is what keeps my family in the style they’re used to.”
“Si, exactly. This wealth, retrieving your family’s social standing, it’s an obsession. Marco wouldn’t have wanted you to sacrifice your personal happiness.”
Hands clenching into fists, Raphael turned away. “I’m nothing like my father.”
Gio’s head jerked toward him as if Raphael had committed blasphemy. “Businesses fail, Raphael. Men make unwise investments, bad choices.”
His throat raw, Raphael gave voice to the pain he had bottled for years, the complaint he hadn’t let himself make even in the darkest of his nights. “He took the coward’s way out. He should have been a stronger man.” For me. Shame choked those two words.
“He adored your mother—did you know that? He spent years building his little business, trying to win her hand. But at the first sign of calamity, Portia fell apart. She blamed him. Your mother’s inability to cope with the loss, the weight of your sisters’ disappointments, the large unit of leeches that constitute your various uncles and aunts and cousins, and their taunts—that was what sent him to that early grave. No one believed in him anymore, Raphael, not even the woman he loved.”
Raphael felt winded as if he’d been dealt a hard blow. He’d thought of his father as a coward. Instead, had his heart simply been broken? Had he given up on them because they had given up on him? Because he couldn’t bear to be diminished in the eyes of the woman he loved?
His father had been a man who’d cared deeply, a man who’d loved his wife, his family from the bottom of his heart.
His vulnerability had only brought him ruin and a broken heart. “You backed me into a corner. And I fought back.”
A shrewd light entered his grandfather’s eyes. “How?”
“You’d hear it from my own mouth? About Pia?”
He shrugged and examined his nails. “What does my granddaughter have to do with you buying up stock?”
“Basta! Stefano Castillaghi, Gio? You think I’d let that bastard touch VA? Did you think I’d ever give you the chance to pull something like this again?”
“So you claimed Pia.” A cat wouldn’t have looked as satisfied as Gio did. That his hunch had been right made Raphael’s blood boil.
“I didn’t claim Pia as much as I agreed to her scheme about pretending that I did. You terrified her with your demands and your ill health. She came to me as a last resort.”
Silence thundered in the air instead of the outrage he’d expected. Damn it, had Gio known that it was a pretense too?
“No one will come near her again. At least no one that cares about her and not her wealth. In the last month, all of Milan has seen how possessive you are of her. Do not think I have not seen you look at her like a starved dog stares at meat.”
“Christo, Giovanni. Do not be crude. That is your granddaughter you speak of.”
“See how protective you get of her? You might as well see the pretense through and marry her, Raphael. You want the company? It’s yours. You want my share of stock that would rightfully be hers? It’s yours. All I ask is that you take care of her. You watch over her when I’m gone. Marry her, Raphael.”
All his bluster had been leading to this. Every move he’d made since the night of the ball had been toward this. “You know I’ll never marry again.”
“Pia is different from Allegra, from any other woman you’ve known.”
“She’s not my type,” he said, even as the idea took root, digging into him and settling down. He forced a harshness into his voice. “She’s neither beautiful nor sophisticated. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She sees too much where there’s nothing.”
He hadn’t thought of her as anything less than intoxicating for so long. He was always on edge because his only satisfaction came from his imagination and his hand, while seeing Pia every day. While touching Pia. While her subtle perfume and body heat sneaked into his bloodstream.
Worse was the bruised look in her eyes after what he’d done at his mother’s house. She barely even met his eyes anymore.
Gone was the laughter, the teasing wit, the endless questions about his past, his mother and sisters, and even Alyssa.
With one ruthless move, he’d shattered her rose-tinted glasses but he hadn’t realized how much it would disturb him that he’d become less in her eyes too. He’d thought it was better to alienate her but it had backfired. And he hated himself for what he’d done to her.
“A girl with more substance than glitter is not your type, si.” Giovanni snorted with that proud wisdom that the old thought they had over the young.
Raphael could not say it was not justified. This one time.
He had gone for the glitter once before, had come away burned. Allegra was all polished veneer with no strength beneath. His mother had once been called the beauty of Milan. She was not cruel or fickle like his Allegra had been. She even loved him and his sisters, in her own way. But Gio was right, she possessed nothing of substance. She had had nothing to offer his father when he’d needed her the most.
And Pia was as different from his mother or Allegra as he himself was from his father. He would never trust anyone like his father had done. He would never need a woman’s strength like Marco had done. He just didn’t have that kind of vulnerability.