by Alison Kent
Rafael…
Just thinking his name was enough to cause the tension knot in her stomach to tighten as she drew black silk stockings up her long, slender legs.
Was he sleeping with Marisia?
She had just spent the last hour in the bathroom trying to work out why she had not just come out with it and asked him that question.
A desire not to know, maybe because confirmation would mean she would have to face the answer, crucified dignity and all?
But—no, there was more to it than that. They might not have a real marriage any more, but she still found it difficult to believe Rafael would be unfaithful to his marriage vows—and where would it put his precious pride if he did let Marisia back into his life after what she’d done to him?
Now you’re calling your own mother a liar, she thought. Are you that desperate to hang on to the status quo—useless, empty thing that it is?
She wished she could answer that question too, but she couldn’t. Each time she approached it she met with a brick wall in her head.
Self-preservation. She’d been living with it as her best friend for months, so she recognised it when it threw up one of its walls.
Just stay there while I get through this evening, she begged it. Grandpa deserved that much consideration, even if it did mean enduring Rafael’s company and all that role-playing togetherness.
That kiss had been…
Oh, don’t go there. She groaned silently as her blood sped through her heart in an accelerated rush and her lips began to heat.
She was beginning to feel things, she realised starkly. Some walls might still be shooting up, but others were beginning to fall.
The black dress dropped into place over the teddy. Slipping her feet into high-heeled patent leather shoes, she turned to look at herself in the mirror and saw exactly what she had expected to see—a blonde with blue eyes and pink lips wearing a short black dinner dress. Nothing more, nothing less.
The dress relied on its expensive designer cut for its classic styling, and on her slender figure for the rest. She’d left her freshly washed and blow-dried hair to float around her shoulders and her make-up appeared to come down to only a flick of mascara to darken her eyelashes and a coating of lipstick. In reality, it had taken some careful work to disguise how pale and bruised she was really looking beneath.
With a flick of her fingers through her silk-fine hair, followed by a nervous smoothing of them down the sides of the dress, she turned to gather up her clutch purse from the bed and headed for the door, pausing long enough to heave in a deep, steadying breath.
I’ll get through this, she told herself determinedly. Then opened the door and went out to face an evening which promised to be an ordeal.
She could hear Rafael talking in his study as she came down the stairs. The door was open, and her first glimpse of him showed a man in a dinner suit who was completely at ease with himself. Lean hips rested against the edge of the desk, long legs were stretched out and crossed, one hand lost in his jacket pocket while the other held his cellphone to his ear.
He looked up, the deep, Italian tones of his voice going silent as their gazes held for a few seconds like two guarded adversaries, trying to read the other’s thoughts. She looked away first, and he returned to his conversation. As she continued down the stairs she noticed Parsons standing by the front door, with her black winter coat draped over his arm.
Her first warm smile of the day arrived as she crossed the black and white chequered floor towards him. ‘Is it very cold out there?’ she asked lightly.
‘It is the price we pay for the clear blue skies we enjoyed today,’ the butler replied. He was about to hold out the coat for her when Rafael stopped him.
‘I’ll do that.’ The sound of his loose-limbed stride coming towards them lost Nina her smile. He came to a stop directly behind her.
‘Of course, sir,’ the ever-correct Parsons conceded, falling back a few discreet steps to stand ready to open the door.
Reaching round, Rafael took her purse from her. ‘Transformed and on time,’ he said lightly. ‘You never fail to impress me, mia cara.’
With the urge to tense up tugging on muscles she had to fight to keep relaxed, Nina said nothing as she slid her arms into the coat sleeves. Silk-lined wool settled gently across her slender shoulders, and the light touch of his hands brought her round to face him. She stood staring at the front of his white dress shirt while he spent a few seconds releasing her hair from the coat’s fake fur collar, then her purse arrived back in her hand.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured politely.
‘My pleasure,’ he answered, then shook her self-control by placing cool fingers beneath her chin and lifting it.
Their eyes clashed again—his filled with the glinting challenge of what was to come next. He was going to kiss her again, and she didn’t think she could bear it.
Please don’t, she wanted to say, but knew that she couldn’t—because Parsons was standing there and Rafael would be angry if she rejected him in front of him. It was one of the rules by which they lived.
‘You can treat me how you like when we are alone, but in front of others you maintain the status quo,’ he’d said once, icy with anger because she’d flinched away from his touch at a dinner party. She remembered the punishing kiss which had followed so clearly that she had never dared to challenge that anger again—hence yet another reason why she rarely went anywhere with him.
She dragged in an unsteady breath. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, watching as it began to lower towards her own.
Parsons opened the front door and a blast of cold air hit them. She sucked in a shocked breath. Rafael tensed and tossed a slicing glance at the butler, then changed his expression with a rueful tilt to his upper lip.
Taking her arm, he walked her out of the house with a very dry, ‘Grazie,’ to Nina’s saviour.
Gino was standing by the rear door of the limousine. He waited until they were almost upon him before he swung it open so that Nina could sink inside. The door closed, surrounding her in warmth and luxury leather. Rafael strode around the car to get in from the other side, and in seconds they were sweeping around the circular courtyard and onto the driveway, with Gino’s familiar dark bulk dimmed by the screen of tinted glass that separated the front of the car from the rear.
A mingling of scents teased her nostrils—one light and subtle, the other spicy and dark. There were butterflies taking up residence low down in her stomach, and nervous tension sent the tip of her tongue on a slow tasting of her upper lip.
‘Now we talk,’ Rafael said, suddenly turning to look at her and catching her in the nervy little act. His eyes blackened. Her tongue-tip stilled. Tension cracked like a whip in the space between them and—
She felt his kiss again. Maybe Rafael did too. Because there was a single tight second when his own lips parted and she thought he was going to touch his lip with the tip of his tongue.
Erotic, it would have been—suggestive, inviting. They’d used to play games like that, so she knew exactly how it went.
Then an electronic beep hit the silence. Her tongue-tip disappeared and he was digging a hand into his jacket pocket. A second after that he was holding his cellphone to his ear.
‘Ah, Fredo—ciao,’ he greeted, and Nina’s mouth changed shape into a very wry smile.
Rafael saw it and his eyes narrowed. His manner with Fredo altered to become short as he conducted a brief conversation in the Sicilian dialect that came naturally to both men.
‘Why the wry smile?’ he demanded, the moment the call had finished.
‘Fredo must be counting himself fortunate to have caught you with your phone switched on for a change.’ Maybe she did have a desire to use knives, Nina thought, as the slicing cut of her tone narrowed those dark eyes some more.
‘Fredo knows I cannot always be at the end of a telephone,’ he responded levelly. ‘He’s called you, looking for me?’
‘Several times.’ Nina nodd
ed. ‘It sounded—urgent.’
‘He should control the urge to panic.’
‘I would call it concern.’
‘I would call it an imposition I don’t much care for.’
She frowned, puzzled. ‘I don’t mind if he—’
‘I mind, cara,’ he inserted grimly. ‘If Fredo needs a sympathetic shoulder to cry on let him use someone else’s.’
‘He did not cry on my shoulder,’ she denied. ‘He simply asked if I knew where you were because he needed to contact you and your phone was switched off. And how can you speak about him like that when he’s supposed to be your closest friend?’ she demanded. ‘He’s going through a really rough time at the moment. You should feel—’
‘Sorry for him?’ he put in. ‘Trust me, it is dangerous to feel sorry for Fredo, and I advise you to heed that—for your own good.’
Suddenly it was Nina sensing knives being drawn. She stared at him as undercurrents of old issues began to ripple through the tension. He might be sitting there looking beautifully relaxed, but there was nothing relaxed about those hard features or the glint in those eyes he had fixed on her.
‘This is a ridiculous conversation,’ she said in the end, withdrawing from battle by sinking back into her seat.
‘You think so?’ he drawled. ‘Fredo is a sucker for lost souls. That makes you and him a dangerous combination. Therefore he stays away from you or I will make sure that he does.’
‘I suppose you’re not a sucker for those same lost souls?’ Nina countered, too stung by his implication that she was a lost soul not to retaliate. ‘The Monteleone Trust was set up merely for its tax concessions, and the lost souls it gathers in don’t really count?’
A frown lashed his brow. ‘My name is listed on hundreds of charities.’
‘But it heads only one. Why dismiss it as nothing special?’
He shifted tensely, turning his head away, but not before Nina had seen the vulnerable glint shoot across his eyes. He might hate to talk about it, but the Monteleone Trust was Rafael’s big acknowledgement to his past.
It was a string of projects set up and designed to give troubled young men and women from a similar background to his own the opportunity to do something constructive with their lives. He employed only the very best to guide and encourage them, and Fredo was the best of the best. He too had known the same childhood as Rafael. His ideals were in complete sympathy with Rafael’s ideals. And Rafael might prefer to sit here mocking Fredo’s passion for lost souls, as he put it, but they were his lost souls too.
A sigh hissed from him. ‘We were talking about you and Fredo.’
‘You were. I was trying to change the subject.’
‘You had lunch with him three days ago—’
Nina stared at him. ‘Are you accusing me of something—again?’ she dared to demand.
It was like teasing old issues to come out and show themselves. His lips thinned out, and his teeth, she suspected, were clenching behind them in an effort to keep those issues locked in. But they were there now, rattling away at her and reminding her why she hated him. And reminding him of things about her that he much preferred to forget.
‘He is already halfway to falling in love with you. I would prefer it if he was not encouraged to make it more than that.’
She wanted to laugh because it was such a joke. ‘We had lunch in Syracuse. We shared a bowl of pasta, not an interlude of untrammelled lust!’
The word lust turned those glinting eyes into lasers. If she could, this would be the point where Nina would get up and walk away from him.
‘I don’t know how you can sit there talking about Fredo like this when he has never been anything but loyal to you.’
‘Men in love do strange things…’
‘Is that so?’ Her laugh escaped. It was short and derisive. ‘That explains it, then.’
‘Explains what?’ he asked, and then, while she fought with the answer she knew was bubbling up inside her, ‘Has he already made his feelings clear to you? Is that it?’ he shot at her.
‘You are such a hypocrite, Rafael,’ she informed him coldly. ‘I wonder sometimes how you manage to justify it to yourself.’
The car came to a stop then. Nina had never been more relieved about anything. Without waiting to listen to what else he had to say, she opened her door and stepped out into the crisp, cold night.
She was trembling all over, but she told herself they were shivers of cold and huddled into her coat.
Her grandfather’s house was a tall, thin palazzo situated in one of the tiny squares in Syracuse. Lights blazed from the windows; cars lined the square. Nina had never felt less like going to a party, but the alternative was to finish what she had just started and she would not ruin her grandfather’s birthday!
Rafael was striding around the car towards her. Gino had not even bothered to get out. The chauffeur could sense a heated row when it was taking place feet away from him, and was wisely keeping out of it.
Nina made for the house. As she reached the front door it swung open, flooding her with light, and she walked in with her head high and her legs trembling dangerously. A servant murmured polite greetings as he waited to take her coat. She could feel Rafael’s anger as he waited for the servant to move away from her again.
Another door came open on the floor above, and the sounds of a party already in full flow poured out. As the servant moved away with her coat Nina turned towards the stairs which led up to the main salon, defiance running like fire in her veins—only to suddenly feel chilled to her very bones as one particular sound separated itself from all the rest.
Laughter.
It had always been able to do that, she was thinking dizzily. Had always managed to shine brighter than anyone else’s laughter could.
Rafael arrived beside her, big and dark and angry because she’d spoken to him the way that she had. He caught hold of her arm again.
As he swung her to face him her eyes had already glazed, her skin prickling with rising nausea, her face turned so pale it took on a whole new dimension of paste.
He saw the change, and whatever angry retort was about to shoot from his lips altered. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked sharply.
‘You bastard,’ she whispered, and the fact that she was using that word to him of all people made it all the more potent.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHOCK rendered Rafael still for a second. Nina began to shake. It came again then, as clear as a lightly toned bell chiming out its presence—and Rafael heard it too.
A curse ripped from him. That curse said more to Nina than if he’d tossed out a full confession to her.
‘You knew she was here and you didn’t bother to tell me. How could you do this to me?’ she breathed.
‘She has as much right to be here as you do, Nina,’ he returned grimly. ‘A two-year exile from her home and family is long enough. Show a little compassion, for goodness’ sake.’
Nina would have smiled at that if she was able—but she was incapable of doing anything right now.
Another sound from upstairs separated itself from the others. It was her grandfather’s voice, calling her name. Looking up, Nina saw him standing looking down at her over the first floor balustrade. Rafael uttered another thick curse.
With her stomach churning out dire warnings and the rest of her clutched in bands of steel, Nina dredged up a smile from somewhere.
‘Happy birthday, Nonno,’ she called up to him, and began walking on legs that didn’t feel real.
‘Grazie piccola.’ He beamed a smile back down to her. ‘I do not feel like the seventy-year-old man people insist I am. But come up—come up,’ he added impatiently. ‘You are late. I was about to telephone your house to find out where you were. Good evening, Rafael, I am happy that you could make it…’
Rafael said nothing. He was tracking behind her up the long staircase and she could feel his anger and frustration hitting her rigid spine. Her grandfather didn’t notice the missing answe
r; he didn’t notice Nina’s sickly pallor or her tension or tremors as he welcomed her into his arms.
He was too excited, his eyes flashing with it. ‘Has Rafael told you about the surprise he delivered to me on his way home this afternoon?’
Rafael delivered—? Nina froze yet again.
‘Have I put my big foot in it?’ her grandfather responded sharply. ‘Did he not tell you?’
Brazen it out, she told herself. Pretend you’re ecstatic. ‘Of course he told me,’ Nina assured him—and smiled.
‘Good—good.’ Relief fluttered momentarily behind his excitement. Then he was fitting her slender frame beneath the crook of his arm. ‘Then let us go in!’
The first person she saw when she stepped into the salon was her mother, her face looking whiter than the silk gown she wore. Louisa hurried forward, ostensibly to embrace her daughter, but the real reason was the hurried words she whispered. ‘I knew nothing about this until I arrived here five minutes ago or I would have told you.’
‘I know,’ Nina said. It was all she could manage, because her eyes had already found the real star of the show.
She was standing not far away, wearing purple for passion, beautiful, exotic, her dark hair floating around her exquisitely perfect but apprehensive face.
The first thing Nina felt was a rush of warm tenderness for this cousin who had once been her closest friend—until she reminded herself that the face which had spent the last two years fronting one of the biggest beauty campaigns did not do apprehensive. And the way Marisia lifted those anxious eyes up over Nina’s shoulder to where Rafael stood, grim and silent, told her why she was playing the vulnerable one.
If he offered any reassurance then it did not alter Marisia’s expression. She dropped those incredible dark eyes back to Nina’s face. And what made the whole charade all the more sickening was that everyone present here believed that Nina had stolen Rafael from Marisia in the first place.