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, 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’msorry abouteverything, okay?’
His dark head began to lower. Rachel tried to arch away.
‘Your heart is racing.’
‘Because you’refrightening 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
SHEcame 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 youno 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 involvemy loss of face, you and I, 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.
He must have taken them with him. To stop her from making a bid for freedom? He had to be crazy if he thought her mad enough to run out there where the paparazzi waited—with or without her shoes!
She did find a bathroom, though, which she was sincerely glad about, since she had not been near one for hours and hours. It smelled of Raffaelle Villani: clean and tangy, with a hint of spice.
Nice, she thought as she washed her hands in the basin. The kind of expensive scents you expected to surround a super-elite male. Then she supposed she must also smell super-elite right now, bearing in mind that her body had been pampered by a whole range of expensive products Elise had provided along with the expensive hairstyle and dress.
She caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror then and was actually taken aback because she hardly recognised herself—that sleek blonde thing with dead straight hair and heavy make-up.
Well, she thought grimly as she viewed the thick licks of mascara that lengthened her eyelashes and made her eyes look bluer than they really were, everyone just loved to tell her that she had the potential to look almost as good as Elise if she’d only take time with her appearance. Now it seemed they’d achieved their dearest wish, only—
She was not and had never wanted to be Elise, had she? And that person she could see in the mirror was just someone pretending to be something she was not.
The fraud, in other words—the fake.
The pink lipstick had all gone by now, she saw, but her lips still looked fuller than she was used to seeing them. Fuller and sexier because of too many hot kisses shared with a complete stranger.
A stranger who was in for a big shock when he eventually got to meet the real Rachel Carmichael.
Releasing a sigh, she turned away from the mirror and
went back into the bedroom to search for that other item that had gone missing—her bag with her cellphone inside it.
It wasn’t in the bedroom so she let herself into the hallway, then walked down it and into the living room. The dress did not feel so indecently short now that her ankles were no longer elevated by four-inch heels, she noticed as she walked.
She heard the bag before she found it because her phone was already ringing. It had to be Mark—who else? she mocked grimly as she followed the sound and found the bag lying on the floor by the sofa she’d last sat down upon.
Her half-finished glass of vodka stood alongside it. As she bent to get her bag there was a moment when she considered picking up the glass first and downing what was left in true Dutch courage style before she told Mark what had happened.
In the end she didn’t need to tell him. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she put the phone to it.
‘Rachel, what the hell are you doing in Raffaelle Villani’s apartment?’ Mark’s voice all but pounced.
‘How did you find out where I am—?’ she asked.
‘Because it’s all over the bloody Internet!’
A sound from behind her made her turn to find Raffaelle Villani propping up the living room doorway. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now, revealing tanned muscular forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to make her wonder where else on his body it might be.
Her stomach muscles quivered. Her mouth went dry. Fluttering down her eyelashes, ‘It’s nothing for you to panic about,’ she said huskily into the phone. ‘I—I’ve been explaining the—situation to R-Raffaelle.’ The name fell uneasily from her lips and she caught the way one of his eyebrows arched in mocking note of that. ‘He—he’s being very understanding about it as—as I told you and Elise he would be once he’d heard all the facts.’
There was a short silence. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
‘No—!’ Rachel pushed out. ‘It—it’s better that you stay away from here.’
‘Because I’m the press? Because between the two of you—you’ve come up with this crazy engagement announcement that is flying round Europe as we speak?’
That far, that quickly—? Rachel swallowed.
‘I’m your brother first, Rachel,’ Mark was saying angrily. ‘And if that bastard is—’
‘Well, it’s just a bit too late to remember that, Mark!’ she cut in. ‘After the way you left me standing tonight, I wish I didn’t have a brother!’
‘I thought you were right behind me until I reached my car.’ He had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘When I did think to look back, the rest of my cronies were piling out of the hotel and I couldn’t see you anywhere, so I assumed you’d disappeared in the other direction.’
‘And, happy with that very stupid idea, you just went home without me to post your scoop.’ Wasn’t that just typically Mark?
‘I had a deadline,’ he grunted.
I had alife , Rachel thought angrily. ‘Well, it’s too late to come at me with the brotherly concern now.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Rachel. So he’s okay with all of this, then?’
Straight from apology back to business, Rachel noticed. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He sucked in a breath. ‘So when are you coming back here?’
‘Coming back?’ She looked at Raffaelle Villani. He was standing there, waiting to hear her answer as much as Mark was.
And she knew suddenly that she was going nowhere. She owed it to this man to play the game the way he had decided it would be played.
‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention. ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’
‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.
She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—
‘Yes,’ she said.
But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’
Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you—tomorrow,’ was all she said.
‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’
And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.
‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’
‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’
The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.
Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale again and if her body language was speaking to him then it was telling him that she had just been tossed aside like a used bloody pawn.
Anger pumped at his chest. He wanted to kick something—her twin siblings, for instance.
‘What did you expect?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘A full rescue, complete with armour and swords? You are not the main player on this chessboard,cara —Elise is.’
‘I know that,’ she whispered and sank down on to the sofa.
He breathed out a sigh. ‘At least her unborn child will get to know its rightful father.’
He’d meant that to sound comforting but it had come out sounding harsh. She winced, pressing her lips together and dipping her head. Her hair slid forward, revealing the vulnerable curve of her slender white nape.
Raffaelle brought his teeth together, his tongue sitting behind them and tingling with a mixed-up desire to taste what he could see and the knowledge that it was at real risk of being bitten off if he did not take more care about what he said.
With a reluctance to let his mood soften, he pushed himself away from the door and walked towards her. She heard him coming and stiffened her spine. When he leant down with the intention of picking up her glass to offer it to her, she actually shuddered.
‘Please don’t start dragging me around again,’ she choked out.
Was that what he had been doing—?
Yes, that was what he had been doing, Raffaelle realised, and straightened up with a jerk. ‘I’m—sorry,’ he said.
‘Everyone is sorry.’ She laughed tensely. ‘Doesn’t help much though, does it?’
He couldn’t argue with that so he threw himself down on the sofa beside her and released another sigh. ‘Beginning to feel more like the real victim now,cara ?’ He could not seem to stop the taunts from coming. ‘It is a strange feeling, don’t you think—being kind of frustratingly helpless? If we then start to wonder how our present lovers are going to feel when the news hits the stands, the sense of frustration really begins to bite.’
‘You have a lover?’ Her chin shot up, her slender neck twisting to show him blue eyes stark with horror and the glittering evidence of held-in tears. His inner senses shifted, stirring awake from what had only been a very light slumber anyway.
‘Do you?’ he fed back.
‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I would have got involved in any of this if I had a lover who could be embarrassed by it?’
‘Whereas I was not allowed to make that choice,’ he pointed out. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ he finished coolly. ‘You are still less the victim here than I am, so—’
‘And you are justso loving being able to keep saying that to me!’ Rachel got to her feet, restless, tense without knowing why.
Then she did know and she turned on him. ‘So who is she—?’ she speared at him as if she had the right to ask such a question.
; Which she didn’t, as the mocking glint in his eyes told her.
But it did not stop her stupid brain from conjuring up some other leggy blonde creature with a very expensive pedigree draping herself over him while he lounged in much the same way he was now—all long limbs and tight muscles and rampant sex appeal waiting to be adored because it was his due.
She took in a short breath, despising the heat of jealousy she could feel burning in her chest, as if a few angry kisses and a sham announcement had given her exclusive rights of possession over him!
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