by Alison Kent
She was the original sinner in this room, and Marisia the one to be pitied.
Well, I can deal with that, Nina told herself. I prefer to be the sinner than the sinned upon.
And on that thought she drew on every bit of her strict English upbringing and put her mother to one side. ‘Marisia,’ she greeted her warmly. ‘How very nice to see you here…’ And she smiled.
How very nice indeed, Rafael thought grimly as he watched his wife run the gauntlet of everyone’s curiosity to substantiate her greeting with the expected kisses on her cousin’s cheeks.
Hypocrite.
That word was still sticking its sharp point into him. Nina had not used the word just for effect. Did she know? Could she know?
His attention switched to his mother-in-law, who was standing beside him wearing an expression that was more anxious than Marisia’s as she watched the two cousins embrace. He hadn’t thought much about Louisa’s presence here; it would be expected that she attend her father’s birthday party, but a week ago she had been in London, being wined and dined by a rich banker who’d been recently widowed.
Had Louisa seen—heard—something and passed that information on to Nina?
Sensing his eyes on her, Louisa glanced up, her dark eyes instantly growing cold. Her lips parted impulsively, then she had second thoughts about whatever it was she had been about to say and closed them again.
‘Got something you want to tell me, Louisa?’ he prompted smoothly.
‘No,’ was all that came out, and she returned her eyes to the embracing cousins.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I really thought you were going to say something to me that you might regret later, when you’d had time to think about it.’
He was making subtle reference to the healthy amount of money he paid into her account each month, which kept Louisa’s privileged lifestyle afloat.
She glanced back at him. ‘You have eyes like a killer hawk,’ she told him.
Rafael smiled, because he hadn’t expected that comment. ‘Windows to my soul, cara,’ he confided.
Louisa shivered and looked away, again having received the message.
Her father turned towards them then—and beamed out a delighted grin. ‘This must be the perfect birthday gift for an old man, to see those two together again like this,’ he declared, as insensitive as ever to what was really going on around him. Then almost immediately he lost interest in his ‘gift’. ‘Rafael, if you have a few minutes I have a little something interesting I would like to—’
‘Another time, Alessandro,’ he cut in. ‘I promised my wife I would not spoil your birthday, you see…’
With that said, Rafael left father and daughter standing there, knowing that Alessandro had received his message too. The old man now aware that Rafael knew what he was up to, and was not pleased about it. So he would keep out of his way for the rest of the evening.
Which was exactly what Rafael wanted him to do.
Nina’s smile held without faltering throughout the next hour. She’d smiled when she greeted the beautiful Marisia like the prodigal come home again, and she shone over everyone else’s curiosity and made them smile too. She talked and she laughed and she greeted each individual as if they all were warmly welcome prodigals. Uncles, aunts, her many other cousins—and friends of her grandfather who beamed beneath the warmth of her smile.
And she drank champagne by the gallon.
By the time they were called into dinner she was amazed she could still walk in a straight line.
Everyone took their places at the long table. Nina found herself seated next to Rafael—with Marisia sitting directly opposite.
Oh, great, she thought—and smiled.
The first course arrived. Wine bottles chinked against slender-stemmed glasses. One of her male cousins was sitting on her other side, and she engrossed herself in conversation with him about—goodness knows what, until the poor guy was exhausted.
There was noise and fun and talking over talking—a meal enjoyed Sicilian-style.
Marisia wowed everyone with stories about her celebrity lifestyle, and Nonno inserted eager prompts that showed how closely he had been following Marisia’s career.
Louisa was quiet.
So was Rafael.
‘More wine please, darling,’ Nina requested, holding out her empty glass to him for its third refill.
He had spent most of the awful dinner dividing his time between watching her from under brooding dark eyelashes and sending coded little messages across the table to Marisia. As his eyes fixed her with a steady look she knew he was going to refuse.
Try it, her own flashing blue invited him. Because I hate you and I am really warming up to causing a good scene by telling you how much I hate you—and she smiled.
His gaze flicked across the table to Marisia, and another one of those infuriating messages passed between the two of them.
Nina gave an impatient shake of her glass to regain his attention.
‘Fill Nina’s glass for her, someone,’ her grandfather said.
Mouth pinned flat to his teeth, Rafael obliged, taking a wine bottle from its bed of ice and stretching out to pour some into her glass. The crisp dry white barely splashed the bottom. Nina stared ruefully into it—then at him. It was his turn to send a warning with his eyes telling her not to dare push it.
So she didn’t. She turned her attention on Marisia instead. ‘How long do you have with us before you need to go back to New York?’
It was intriguing to watch the little start she gave at being asked such an ordinary question. ‘I will not be going back,’ she said with a tense smile, and for the life of her could not hold Nina’s deeply interested blue gaze.
Guilty conscience, Nina named it. And was impressed that Marisia had managed not to look at Rafael before she spoke.
‘She is staying here with me over the Christmas period,’ their grandfather put in. ‘We mean to enjoy ourselves—heh, cara?’
‘Yes.’ Another tense smile was flicked his way. ‘It feels so good to be home. I’ve missed you all so much…’
A flurry of ‘we missed you too’ rippled round the table. But for some reason the wave of assurance did not ease Marisia’s unease. Her lovely olive-toned skin had gone pale, and her mouth was actually trembling. Nina even thought she could detect genuine apprehension in her cousin’s dark eyes when she could not hold out any longer and threw yet another of those glances at Rafael.
Rafael in his turn did not move a muscle. When Nina allowed herself a quick glance at him she saw he was sitting there with his eyes carefully lowered, his glossy black eyelashes curling against his chiselled cheeks. It was as if he’d withdrawn his support, or whatever it was that Marisia looked for each time she looked at him.
Or maybe he was thinking of other things. Maybe he was hiding his eyes like that because he was seeing Marisia in his arms, in his bed.
Were they sleeping with each other?
Did she care?
Marisia uttered a strained little laugh. ‘You might all change your minds about that in a minute,’ she said tensely.
Silence followed—a hint of a warning that feathered itself down Nina’s spine when she saw one of Rafael’s hands curl into a fist. She looked back at her cousin and, like everyone else, waited for her to go on.
‘I h-have something I need to tell you,’ she continued unsteadily. ‘I w-was going to leave it until after Christmas, but I don’t think I can…’ She paused yet again, to pull in a stifled breath. ‘I’ve come home because I’m going to have a baby!’ she finished with a defiant rush.
Shock threw itself around the table. Nina froze. Rafael straightened in his seat.
Alessandro Guardino was the first to recover, his eyes beetling a look down the table towards Marisia. ‘And where is the father of this child while you sit here announcing this?’ he demanded. ‘Where is your wedding ring?’
‘Th-there won’t be a w-wedding,’ Marisia informed him. ‘H-he alr
eady has a wife, so I—’
Nina came to her feet with a jerk.
‘Nina—’ Louisa followed suit, her cry pained and anxious.
‘Excuse me,’ Nina whispered, and turned, almost staggering around her chair in her need to get away.
More chairs moved as others came to their feet. Pandemonium broke out. But she just kept on going, weaving an unsteady line towards the door and escape. Everything was moving in and out of focus. She had a horrible feeling she was going to faint.
‘Stay where you are, Louisa,’ Rafael’s grim voice commanded.
‘How could you be so cruel as to set her up for this?’ she heard her mother whip back at him, and she almost sobbed in her need to get out before it all blew up.
She managed to get the door open, then headed like a dizzy drunk for the stairs. Her mind was sloshing about on a sea of champagne bubbles. It kept trying to toss up hard truths at her, but she blocked them out. She just needed to get out of there, she told herself frantically—away from those angry voices she could hear raising hell, away from those angry feet she could feel vibrating on the oak floor as they came after her.
She was halfway down the stairs when Rafael came to a stop at the head of them, and she knew why he’d pulled to a halt there. If he came after her she might stumble. It had happened to tragic effect once before. They’d rowed, she’d walked away, and he’d come after her to apologise.
The next thing she’d known she’d been falling—falling…
No. She pushed the rest of that memory away, along with every other one trying to batter a hole in her head. Her feet made it to the ground floor and kept on going. She’d reached the front door before Rafael dared to let himself move at all.
Outside, the cold night air rushed into her lungs and she gulped at it. Instantly those champagne bubbles began fizzing and popping, flooding her bloodstream with pure alcohol, and she staggered.
A pair of hands grabbed her by the shoulders and grimly steadied her. ‘I h-hate you,’ she choked.
He said nothing. He just held her upright while she shivered and shook.
Gino had been parked across the square, but the moment he’d seen her step out of the house he had started up the engine and was already purring to a halt by her side. Rafael opened the rear door and bundled her into it, with no finesse, no striding round the car to get in from the other side. He simply followed her, forcing her to scramble out of his way.
Her coat landed on top of her. How he’d found time to get it, Nina had no idea, but she huddled into it as the car moved off.
Rafael sat beside her with a profile like granite.
‘You knew that was coming, didn’t you?’ she bit out accusingly.
There was a pause, a rasp of a sigh, followed by a teeth-gritting ‘Yes…’
CHAPTER SIX
NINA wondered if she was ever going to breathe again without hurting. ‘So you set me up.’
Rafael turned his head. ‘Your mother said something similar—as if it is a sin for someone else to have a baby while you are still grieving the loss of your own! Did it not occur to either of you that Marisia’s present situation deserves your understanding and sympathy, not some dramatic exit staged to swing the sympathy all your way!’
He was angry on Marisia’s behalf? Nina stared at him as if he had just crawled out from beneath a stone. ‘You really are,’ she breathed tautly, ‘the most absolute bastard—to dare to expect understanding and sympathy from me when your mistress announces that she is having your baby!’
‘Mistress?’ The single word shot from his lips in stunned astonishment. ‘I don’t keep a mistress!’
‘What do you call her then—your true love?’
He met that piece of flaying sarcasm with silence. Nina looked away, hating—hating him! How could he do this to her?
Her mouth began to tremble, her eyes to fill with hot tears. She clutched her coat to her with icy fingers and stared fixedly out of the car window, seeing through the layer of tears that they’d already left the lights of Syracuse behind them and were climbing the hill towards home.
Home. No place had ever felt less like home to her. She hated the house—hated the life she had been living there in a marriage that had never been anything but a huge pretence.
‘I think you had better explain what the hell it is you are talking about,’ he said finally.
‘I know about you and Marisia,’ she obliged, and wished that she’d said it the moment he’d stepped into her bedroom this afternoon. Then she would not have been exposed to the horror of tonight! Her head swung round, blue eyes stabbing into his taut profile. ‘Did you think you could swan around London with her without someone I know seeing you together there?’
His first response was to turn his head to look at her, the next was to draw himself in. Danger suddenly lurked in those lean, hard features. The kind of danger that arrived when a man like him found himself backed into a tight corner he knew he was not going to get out of.
‘Who was it?’ he rapped out.
He wasn’t even going to lie and deny it! Stomach-churning distress joined in with the rest of the mayhem taking place inside her.
‘You know what, Rafael?’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter who told me, or even if I did know about the two of you before that staged scene you put me through tonight. The fact that she was there at all says that you must have given her your blessing, or my grandfather would not have dared let her in the house!’
It was all to do with priorities. Her grandfather might love Marisia, but he loved Rafael’s money more.
A frown broke his rigid expression. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘It has everything to do with me!’ Nina cried. ‘She is the woman you were in love with—the one you would have married if she had not walked out on you! To have given your consent for her to come back here means you have to have had contact with her. To have had contact with her means you broke a promise you made to me on our wedding day! To have broken that promise means that my feelings matter less to you than hers do—which you well and truly proved tonight.’
‘You’re crazy,’ he breathed.
Maybe she was, Nina allowed. Maybe she had been out of her head for the last two years!
The car came to a stop. Reaching for the door, Nina pushed it open and scrambled out. As she ran up the shallow stairwell Parsons opened the front door.
‘Good evening,’ he greeted her. ‘I did not expect you back so—’
‘Close the door,’ she instructed as she ran past him. ‘I don’t want him in here!’
With that she kept on going, dropping the coat in a black puddle on the floor at the foot of the stairs. She was trembling and shaking and the champagne was still fizzing.
The door did close, but it wasn’t Parsons who did it. ‘Nina!’ Rafael roared after her. ‘Go up those stairs the way you came down your grandfather’s and I will kill you—if you don’t do it to yourself first!’
She stopped two steps up and twisted to glare at him across the length of chequered flooring. He was standing there in his black dinner suit and bow tie looking as handsome as hell, yet so pale she knew what he was envisaging.
Maybe it was the look on his face that made her bend to take her shoes off. Then again maybe it wasn’t, because the next thing she did was launch the damn shoes towards his still frame.
‘Just get out of my house!’ she yelled at the top of her trembling voice as the black patent leather shoes landed just short of their target.
Then she turned and ran up the curving staircase in a heaving, stumbling mess of anger and tears.
Rafael tried telling himself he should be pleased to see that she’d turned on all her emotions again. But pleasure was not the emotion he was feeling as he watched her fly up that damn staircase while her coat lay at the bottom like a grim reminder of how she had looked that day she had landed in a final heartbreaking twist of slender limbs.
He hated this house. He hated that damn s
taircase!
As soon as she had safely reached the top, one gut-wrenching set of feelings were swapped for a different set, and it broke him free of his grim stasis.
Marisia—his mistress?
The child she was carrying was—his?
He began striding after her, stepping over the shoes and the discarded coat, leaving the butler standing by the door trying his best to appear as if he had not witnessed that little scene.
But Parsons had witnessed it, which only infuriated Rafael all the more. He took the stairs two at a time, arriving on the upper landing as her bedroom door slammed. With dire intent burning like a blister on his pride, he strode through the archway, feeling as if his face had been carved from stone it was so rigid with anger.
His fingers grasped the handle; he threw open the door and stepped inside. She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms wrapped tightly around her. He slammed the door.
‘Right, let us get a few facts straight,’ he gritted. ‘Marisia is not my mistress. She is not having my child!’
Nina responded by turning for the bathroom. Bright balls of pain and anger were propelling themselves to the backs of her eyes.
She took just one step before a pair of strong arms came around her and scooped her off her feet.
Her shrill cry of protest earned her nothing. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he gritted. ‘Not this time.’
With a lithe twist of his body followed by two strides he tossed her onto the bed, then followed her down there, a solid package of lean, hard, long-limbed masculinity pinning her to the bed.
She gasped at the shock of it, and found herself staring into black holes for eyes and a tensely parted mouth that was so close she could actually taste it. Awareness rushed through her like a raging torrent, every sense she possessed leaping to life at the return of a physical contact they had been denied for months. She tingled and pulsed—and despised herself for letting it happen.