‘No. It was hell.’ Picking up a roll, he tore into it with long, savage fingers. ‘After being used to all this, I hated the greyness and the cold. My father wasn’t the best correspondent—too absorbed with his new family.’ He said the words as if they tasted bitter in his mouth. ‘And I suppose I hadn’t got over my mother’s death.’
‘Of course you hadn’t! You were just a little boy. Even with the love and understanding of your father it would have been impossible to get over something like that.’
Pouring more prosecco into her glass, he gave a dry laugh. ‘You’re quite right. Unfortunately, in the absence of love and understanding from my father, I grew up into a bitter, twisted and emotionally bankrupt—’
‘Don’t say that.’
The words came from her in something halfway between a whisper and a moan. It was as though she couldn’t bear to hear him say the things her head suspected to be true and which her heart was so fervently trying to deny. He stopped abruptly and passed a hand over his face. In the velvety quiet of the twilight Eve heard the slight rasp of his unshaven skin.
He was very still, but his eyes burned into hers through the darkness. For a moment neither of them moved. This was her moment—the perfect chance to put her plan into action—but that wasn’t what she was thinking as she got up and moved slowly round the table towards him.
She wasn’t thinking at all, but acting on pure, primitive instinct.
Her bare arm brushed against the bowl of roses, sending a ripple of anticipation over her exquisitely sensitised skin and a cascade of petals onto the table. Their scent filled the warm air as she reached him: heavy, sensual, intoxicating. As if in a trance she reached out and pressed her palm against his cheek. His gaze didn’t flicker, but remained locked onto hers, intense and unfathomable. And then his fingers closed over her hand, pulling her down towards him until her mouth met his.
It was like dying and being reborn. Adrenalin, desire, and ten thousand volts of sexual electricity crashed through her as her parted lips were crushed against his in the savagery of their need. She was dimly aware of moving, so that she was standing over him, straddling him where he sat, but it was as if she was under the control of a higher being, unconsciously obeying an imperative that she neither questioned nor understood. All she knew was that the sensation of his hands—in her hair, caressing her back, moving downwards to the firm curve of her buttocks—was the most unimaginably erotic thing she had ever experienced.
She shifted her position so that she was sitting on his knee, astride him, the thin silk of her narrow slip dress riding up over her parted thighs. His hands found the warm skin, his thumbs making caressing circles on her quivering flesh as their mouths continued their urgent, savage quest.
He made a low sound deep in his throat, a guttural growl of longing, and then tore his lips from hers.
She was aware of his fingers closing like bracelets of steel around her wrists, pulling her hands away from his face. Bewildered, bereft, she got to her feet, pressing the back of her hand against her swollen lips.
‘Wh—what …?
Raphael barely glanced at her. His face was like granite. ‘Fiora.’
Eve whirled around as Fiora bustled out onto the terrace. The older woman’s small eyes were wide and knowing, and she set about clearing the table with great focus, trying to conceal the broad smile that she couldn’t quite suppress.
‘Here—let me help.’
Eve sprang forward, needing to do something to prevent herself from having to see the look of dark despair on Raphael’s face. As she helped Fiora gather the remains of their meal and carry it through to the kitchen her mind was racing, along with her pulse.
It was what she had planned. So why did it feel as if she’d been run over by an express train?
And why did she want to lie right back down on the track and be run over again?
After they’d gone Raphael drew a deep, ragged breath and buried his face in his hands.
He should go and help. He knew that. But first he had to wait for the hard, throbbing evidence of his desire to subside.
Picking up his wine glass, he drained it in one long mouthful and slumped back in his chair. Fiora’s appearance had been entirely coincidental. He had been trying to break off the kiss anyway, trying to exercise some form of restraint from where he would make an attempt to find the right words to tell her what they were doing was impossible.
For a few moments there he had been totally out of control, and that was something he found very hard to accept. What in hell’s name had possessed him? Never before had he spoken to anyone about those things. What on earth had made him spill out all the tawdry details of his miserable childhood like some spineless, self-pitying wimp?
Being back in this house. Too many memories. Too much unhappiness and resentment. That was all it was.
And yet he’d brought other women here over the years, and none of them had ever seen the pain that lurked in the corner of each beautiful room, nor smelt the loneliness that hung like a mist over the lavish furnishings. Not a single one of those clever, ambitious, sophisticated women had ever suspected that to Raphael this villa was anything other than a comfortable family home. Catalina, the woman he had almost married, certainly hadn’t.
Eve had.
But he shouldn’t confuse her listening skills with anything else, for pity’s sake. She had a knack, it was true, of putting her head slightly to one side when you were speaking, as if she was hanging on your every word, and her turquoise eyes seemed to shine with compassion. But she was a journalist, per l’amore di Dio. Using Feminine Wiles to Extract Information was probably one of the training modules she’d completed at college. With distinction.
Maybe she was smarter than she looked. Maybe that blonde softness and the sleepy, seductive look in those clear greenish eyes was carefully cultivated. Maybe that kiss was all part of the act and had nothing to do with love.
He made a sharp noise of self-disgust. Of course it was an act. Love? What the hell had make him think of that? It was a word he had banished from his vocabulary and his emotional repertoire years ago—probably about the time that Catalina had accused him of being incapable of it.
He hadn’t bothered to argue with her. She’d been right. He’d never really loved her. Wanted her, yes, and enjoyed her athletic model’s body and the textbook sex that had made up their relationship, but she’d never really got beneath his skin in that visceral, all-consuming, irrational way that to him meant love.
He frowned as the knife of guilt twisted in that old wound. It hadn’t occurred to him that she hadn’t felt like that too until she’d left with Luca, and he had to live with the knowledge of what had happened to her as a result every day. But he’d learned from it, and he had vowed never to risk causing such pain to anyone again.
And that included Eve Middlemiss.
She was just a kid—twenty-one or twenty-two at the most. He had brought her here to protect her, not take advantage of her. One destroyed life on his conscience was bad enough. No matter what she did for a living, he would not risk screwing Eve up too.
Cursing quietly, he dropped his head into his hands. It hardly mattered what the truth was.
Either way, from now on she was strictly off limits.
After the muggy heat of the kitchen the warm evening air was like a caress on her skin, and Eve took a deep steadying breath of it as she stepped back onto the terrace. The two tiny cups of espresso she carried rattled slightly in her trembling hands.
The kitchen was immaculate, and Fiora had made sure all the lights downstairs, except the lamps in the salon, were put out before she had agreed to retire to her room. Assuring her that they would take care of everything else, Eve had said goodnight and watched her stiffly climb the back stairs.
Her mind was in turmoil. This was it.
She stopped, feeling the sweat break out on her forehead. The pulse between her legs was like a raw, primitive drumbeat, echoing the pounding blood
in her ears. She was bewitched by its insistent rhythm, like the girl with the red shoes in the fairy tale, unable to stop her body from responding, increasingly terrified by the strength of that response. Maybe it was some primeval instinct for self-preservation that at that moment wouldn’t allow her to make the connection between Ellie’s death and the man she was about to approach.
Maybe it was just pure, old-fashioned, selfish lust.
Trembling violently, she bit down on her lip, assailed by doubt. What if he rejected her? She steeled herself, remembering the chilling moment at the press conference, when she had met his eyes and found only distaste.
But she couldn’t turn back now. Not for Ellie. Not for herself.
She walked tentatively towards the table. He was leaning back in his chair, his long legs outstretched. As she came closer and saw his face she realised that he was asleep.
One arm was thrown across his body while the other supported his head, and in spite of the obvious discomfort of his position he looked peaceful. Sleep had softened his features and smoothed away the harsh lines of bitterness and cynicism.
God, he was perfect.
Crushing disappointment fought with an acute sense of frustration as she kneeled beside him and gently she took hold of his hand.
‘Raphael?’
He didn’t stir. Holding his hand, she gave it a little shake, and he turned his head a fraction so that the light from the salon fell onto the high arc of one cheekbone and gilded the dark crescent of his eyelashes. Then he was perfectly still again.
Hardly daring to breathe, she turned his hand over.
The sleeve of his shirt was rolled back, and gingerly she eased it up a little further. Heart hammering, her eyes swept over the underside of his arm. It was a smooth, uniform butterscotch-brown.
There was no sign of the cruel black scars of drug abuse that had marred Ellie’s arms when Eve had seen her in the hospital morgue.
She closed her eyes for a second and exhaled slowly, shutting the lid on the image that haunted her nightmares. Gently replacing his hand, she felt almost light-headed with relief, and had to check herself firmly. Just because he showed no signs of addiction himself, it didn’t mean he couldn’t be a supplier.
But that was unlikely, wasn’t it?
The heat was gradually ebbing out of the evening, and Eve suddenly realised that she was shivering. She hesitated, unsure whether to wake him. Bending down, she put her lips to his ear and whispered.
‘Raphael.’
The faint lemon and sandalwood scent of his skin knocked the air from her lungs and sent a surge of honeyed heat rushing through her. She could just discern the beat of his pulse beneath the skin of his neck, and it took every ounce of self-control she possessed to stop herself reaching forward and brushing her lips against it.
She stood up quickly, stealing an anxious glance at his face. He was still far away in the darkest depths of an exhausted sleep, but a faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Taking off her pashmina, she draped it over him, then stepped back hastily, suddenly too tired and confused to ask herself why she should want to look after this man.
Picking up the cups of cooling coffee, she had turned to go back into the house when the ring of a mobile phone stopped her in her tracks.
Her first thought was that it was her phone, and she should silence it before it woke him.
Her second thought was that she didn’t have her phone on her.
The little silk shift had no room for the kind of pocket that would accommodate a mobile phone, and she hadn’t brought a bag down with her—so where the hell was it?
Swiftly she replaced the cups on the table and followed the sound. It was coming from Raphael’s direction—maybe he had the same phone she did? Leaning over him, she slipped her hands into both front pockets of his jeans.
Nothing.
The ringing continued. To get her hands in his back pockets she had to adopt pretty much the same position as she had done just half an hour earlier. Steeling herself to ignore the butterfly kiss of his breath against her breasts, she managed to reach round him without waking him. Just when she thought her self-control might snap she felt her fingers close around the phone. Gently she extracted it.
It was her phone.
Typically, at that moment the ringing stopped, and Eve was left in the sudden silence feeling more alone than she ever had in her life.
In the safety of her room she threw herself down onto the bed without even bothering to switch on a light, and called Lou back.
‘Eve! I was about to file you as a missing person! What’s going on?’
‘It was my phone that was missing, not me. Although I am beginning to feel completely and utterly lost.’
That summed the situation up pretty well. Lost as in alone in a strange house in a foreign country. Lost as in uncertain of what was going on. Lost as in unrecognisable to herself. The Eve Middlemiss she knew didn’t leave her seat at the dinner table to climb on top of the man opposite and eat his face rather than dessert.
‘Let’s start with the basics, then. Where are you?’
Eve sighed. ‘Paradise. Antonio Di Lazaro’s villa, just outside Florence.’
‘With?’
‘Raphael.’
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. When Lou eventually spoke her voice was sharp with anguish.
‘Do you want me to call the police now, or would you rather wait until he actually has his hands around your throat and a gun to your head?’
Eve squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her forehead. ‘Don’t, Lou. It’s not like that. Honestly, I’m not in any danger.’ Except from my own rampaging emotions.
‘How do you know that?’
Eve sighed. ‘I just do. I feel safe.’
Lou let out a shriek of disbelief. ‘Oh, I see! Well, that’s OK then, is it? You feel safe! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard since … well, since this morning, when you came out with that line about Raphael Di Lazaro “having a strength about him”. Honestly, what’s the matter with you? Has he brainwashed you, or something? Is he there now, with a gun trained on you?’
‘No,’ she said in a small, cold voice. ‘Look, Lou, I know it sounds crazy and I’m not sure what’s going on myself. It’s just that despite all the evidence I thought I had before I left, my instincts are telling me that Raphael di Lazaro isn’t a drug dealer.’
‘And the evidence for that interesting hypothesis is.?’ The sarcasm in Lou’s tone was blistering.
‘Nothing yet. But I’m not coming back until I’ve proved it.’
‘Or disproved it. In which case you may not be coming back at all. Alive, anyway.’
After she’d put the phone down, Eve wandered over to the dressing table. Her head ached from the effort of too much thinking, and from not wearing her glasses for two days, and her face was pale and drawn in the ghostly light.
She had never lied to Lou before, and never kept a secret from her—so why was she starting now? Lou only had her best interests at heart, so maybe it would have been a good idea to admit that Raphael hadn’t exactly offered her a lift so much as deliberately used his stratospheric powers of seduction to get her into the car. Shortly after he’d offered her twenty thousand pounds to go home and shut up.
And while she was about it she might also have mentioned the bit about him stealing her phone, effectively cutting her off entirely from the outside world.
Why hadn’t she said that?
Because, she admitted despairingly, all that added up to one thing. Against which her instinct wasn’t worth a damn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RAPHAEL woke up slowly, swimming groggily up through the fathomless depths of sleep inch by inch, so that he wasn’t sure what was real and what he had dreamed. Eve.
He heard the whisper of her voice in his ear, felt the caress of her breath on his neck, the cool pressure of her fingers on his skin. The scent of her filled his head, seeming to envelop him in war
mth and comfort, until he opened his eyes expecting to find her beside him.
He was alone on the dark terrace. The candles had burned themselves out, and the coffee on the table was icy cold. But the subtle floral fragrance persisted. It took him a moment to realise it was coming from the soft wrap she had been wearing that evening, which was now spread over him.
Resisting the temptation to bury his face in it and breathe in her lingering perfume, he groaned quietly as the events of the evening slotted into place in his memory.
That kiss. The stupid, selfish, reckless pleasure of that kiss.
He’d intended to talk to her seriously when she came back, and make it perfectly clear that it had been a complete mistake. But like an idiot he must have fallen asleep. And she had come back and wrapped her shawl around him to stop him getting cold.
Not that there had been much chance of that, given the dream he’d been having …
The thoughtfulness of her gesture exasperated him as much as it touched him. Roughly he pulled the shawl off and stood up, stiffly stretching his cramped limbs, instinctively feeling in his pockets. Almost at the same moment that he remembered he still had her phone he realized it was missing and swore softly.
So the bit where she’d stood over him, her warm breasts rising and falling just centimetres from his face, while her hands moved over his body. That hadn’t been a dream, then.
Making his way slowly upstairs, he yawned. At least a few hours’ sleep would assuage the tiredness that numbed every muscle, every joint, every nerve in his entire body. If only it would be so easy to satisfy the deep ache of longing in his groin.
He paused outside the door to her room, torn apart by conflicting feelings he was too weary to analyse. But a second later all that was driven from his mind as a scream split the silence.
The man was so close behind her she could almost feel the heat of his breath on her neck. But it was always the same: the closer he got, the harder it was to keep running, until she felt as if she was wading through quicksand, and she knew that he would get her too, just as he’d got Ellie. She felt his hot hands grasping at her and let out a scream of pure terror.
Latin Lovers: Italian Playboys Page 41