by Lynne Graham
Raffaele stared steadily back at her, his attention lingering on that unexpected hint of a smile, his golden eyes suddenly ablaze. With disconcerting suddenness, he vaulted upright. ‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’
Heat had engulfed Maya, shocking her, her face burning up as she shook her head and reached for the glass of water beside the bed to raise it to her taut mouth, so unsettled was she by the effect he could have on her at the most inappropriate moments. ‘I’m not hungry yet...probably all the medication. You should return to the yacht.’
‘I’m booked into a hotel near here,’ Raffaele slotted in. ‘It’s more convenient.’
‘Go and get some sleep,’ Maya urged.
Raffaele tensed. ‘We haven’t talked about what happened yet,’ he breathed tautly.
Maya paled. ‘I really don’t want to talk about it. I just want to leave it behind,’ she confided.
Raffaele frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s that simple, bellezza mia.’
‘It can be,’ Maya muttered. ‘Talking about stuff doesn’t always make it better. I’d confide in Izzy but I can’t, right now. She’s pregnant. If I told her what had happened to me, it would make her sick with worry and it would spoil the pregnancy experience for her. It wouldn’t be fair to do that to her.’
‘Why do you always put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own?’ Raffaele demanded in honest bewilderment.
‘I don’t, not always. I wasn’t kind to you last night,’ she pointed out guiltily. ‘I’m sorry that I lost my head like that.’
‘I can take a lot of hard hits without buckling,’ he asserted. ‘Particularly when I deserve them.’
But Maya was already losing colour, lowering her head back to the pillow with a sinking sensation as she recalled the dark hollow look in his gaze hours earlier when she had accused him of not feeling anything over the loss of their child. That look had stabbed her to the heart. She had hurt him. She knew she had hurt him, and her distress was not an excuse. The problem with Raffaele was that he hid everything he felt and she had made assumptions and learnt her mistake the hard way after taking out her grief on him.
* * *
Raffaele left the hospital with the sense that once again he was doing the wrong thing because he didn’t want to leave Maya alone, even if it was what she seemed to want. He had plans to make though, he reminded himself. Maya needed a distraction and, whether she appreciated it or not, the time and the space to recover from her loss.
Later that day, Maya wakened at lunchtime to a room filled with flowers and magazines and a selection of her own nightwear available. Although she had little appetite, she ate the light meal that arrived for her because she wanted to regain her energy. She went for a shower, dispensed with the hospital gown and doggedly fought the sense of emptiness tugging at her. The loss had happened, and she had to deal with it. Without her agreement, her bright future, shining with the promise of her first child, had reshaped itself. Breathing in deep, she walked back into her room and stiffened when she saw Raffaele poised there, momentarily dazzled by the lustrous energising power of him as he swung round to face her, stunning dark golden eyes gleaming in his lean, beautiful face.
‘Did you manage to get much sleep?’
Raffaele shrugged. ‘Enough. Sit down. We’ve got plans to make.’
‘The doctor’s already been here to see me. We can try again as soon as we like,’ Maya declared stiltedly.
‘That idea isn’t even on the table right now,’ Raffaele countered with a level of incredulity he didn’t try to conceal.
Maya blinked rapidly, surprise and disappointment flooding her because there was nothing that she wanted more just then than the chance to conceive again. ‘What is, then?’
‘We’re heading back to London so that you can see your family.’
‘We can’t do that. They don’t know about us.’
Raffaele studied her intently. ‘They do now. I phoned and told them. No, I didn’t mention what’s just happened because that’s private and nobody else needs to know about it. But I did tell your parents that we’re married, and they want to meet me.’
So taken aback was Maya that her soft full mouth fell open. ‘You told them?’ she whispered in astonishment.
‘We’ll see your family and then we’ll go up north to see my father and his,’ Raffaele completed with satisfaction.
‘You seem to have everything organised,’ Maya remarked stiffly.
Raffaele lifted the folder he had set down on the table and tugged some sheets out of it to toss them on the bed. ‘And now that I’ve given instructions for the house on Aoussa to be demolished, I could do with some ideas for the replacement dwelling. The architect wants some ideas from us concerning preferences.’
‘Demolished? You’ve started that already?’ Maya exclaimed, wide-eyed.
‘I hate the house. You were right: it has to go.’ Raffaele lifted and dropped a shoulder with graceful finality. ‘But I could do with some ideas about what to build in its place.’
Maya nodded slowly. She never knew what he was likely to do or say next and it was, she was learning, part of what made him so uniquely fascinating. He didn’t think or operate within conventional limits as she did. He made decisions at nuclear speed, followed stray impulses, did what felt right to him and stood by it even if, ultimately, it turned out to be a wrong move. She supposed marrying her, planning a child with her, fell into that latter category and now he was focusing his energies on other things.
But not on conceiving another child, she registered in confusion, wondering what that meant and wondering why on earth she should feel weirdly rejected. Was it because she had somehow become attached to him? It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love—she wasn’t fool enough to fall for a guy in a temporary marriage, particularly one who already had to be thinking of her as flawed and unfit for purpose because she had lost their precious baby within days of conception.
Her brain buzzed with conjecture. What was his ultimate plan? What was the bigger picture? To work out Raffaele’s goal, she had to start thinking as he did. And he was clever and calculating and unscrupulous. All of a sudden he was taking her home for a visit, restoring her to her family. Was it a guilt thing? Was he trying to undo the damage he believed he had caused?
Hadn’t he already pretty much admitted that he should never have offered her the chance to marry him in the first place? And never have acted on the plan for them to have a child together? Was it possible that Raffaele was already working towards putting her out of his life again and reclaiming his freedom? And why did that fill her with a sense of panic rather than relief?
CHAPTER EIGHT
THREE LITTLE GIRLS engulfed Raffaele in a wave of giggling, chattering excitement. Andrea was five, Sophie was three and Emily was an adorable toddler with a mop of black curls. And every one of them reminded Maya of their half-brother, Raffaele, and tugged at her heart with a wounding sense of what might have been because, with their dark colouring, they gave her a very good idea of what Raffaele’s own children might look like. Clearly, the Manzini genes were strong, for Raffaele bore a striking resemblance to his father, Tommaso.
‘The girls are always like a mob of little thugs with Raffaele, all competing for his attention at once,’ Claire, a brunette in her early forties, groaned. ‘Luckily, they calm down after a while, particularly once the presents are open. I’ve told him so often not to bring them anything unless it’s birthdays or Christmas, but he doesn’t listen.’
Tommaso’s wife and Raffaele’s stepmother, Claire, was a social worker with warm eyes and an even warmer smile. The couple lived in a rambling old farmhouse outside Newcastle and it was very much a family home, from the children’s pictures stuck to the fridge door to the clutter that lay around the kitchen. Boots lay in a heap by the back door while piles of kids’ toys filled colourful baskets by the wall.
&nb
sp; ‘He does tend to do his own thing,’ Maya agreed, accepting the beaker of coffee her hostess passed to her. ‘Thanks.’
‘He’s very generous. He tries to stick to the budget I gave him most of the time,’ Claire conceded wryly. ‘He’s fantastic with kids too, much more relaxed with them than he is with adults.’
That was true. Maya had been downright startled watching Raffaele’s easy interaction with his little half-sisters. He was very good with them and clearly a man who enjoyed the company of children.
The two women watched the two older girls learn to ride their new scooters in the custom-built playground at the back of the house. After throwing a tantrum because she had not got a scooter as well, Emily had gone down crossly for a nap, still attired in one of her new princess outfits from the wardrobe of dress-up garments she had received.
Raffaele had provided the playground for his half-siblings with all its safety features and the canopied roof that allowed for its use on wet days. Claire had been very frank on the topic of money with Maya, explaining that she and Tommaso only accepted gifts for their children and preferred to maintain their independence, rather than take advantage of Raffaele’s wealth and generosity. Across the garden, Raffaele was standing talking to his father, a still-handsome man in his fifties. The two men had the same bone structure but Tommaso was smaller and slighter in build.
‘You know, Tommaso was convinced that Raffaele would never marry,’ Claire confided quietly.
‘My family were equally surprised by our marriage. We were crazily impulsive.’ Maya trotted out the same story she had told her own parents and, of course, her mother had thought it was madly romantic because a hasty supposedly love-at-first-sight match mirrored her own courtship history with Maya’s father.
‘It’s amazingly positive to think that Raffaele can do anything crazy,’ Claire remarked reflectively. ‘I used to think that, for his age, he was always a bit too controlled, a bit too sensible and when it comes to women...well...’ the brunette grimaced ‘...you’re the very first he’s brought to meet us and those I’ve seen him with in the media were pretty...er, trampy, for want of a better word.’
‘I knew I should’ve worn a short skirt and a plunging neckline to fit the mould!’ Maya teased with a chuckle, relaxing completely in the other woman’s candid company. ‘Raffaele likes those sorts of clothes on me, but I don’t.’
At the sound of her laughter, Raffaele turned his head to look at Maya, noticing with satisfaction the healthy colour blooming in her cheeks and the smile curving her mouth. Maya had been as pale and silent as a wraith after she left the hospital but over the past few weeks she had gradually begun to return to normality. Restored to the company of her family during a lengthy stay in London, she had blossomed, vitality and humour returning to her clear green eyes. Only with him was she still reserved and withdrawn. He thought it was tragic that he had had to resort to using the company of others to draw her out and to make her relax again. But it wasn’t surprising, he acknowledged grimly, not after what had happened between them.
For the first time ever, he was doing what he had to do even if it wasn’t what he wanted to do. He owed Maya and he always paid his debts. Maya with her curtain of silky fair hair, long lissom legs and delicate curves, who made no effort whatsoever to be sexy but who could make him rock hard with one playful glance. He shut down hard on that very physical thought, reminding himself that all he could reasonably do was attempt to redress the damage he had done before letting her go again. But, regrettably for him, letting go of a woman he still craved didn’t come naturally to him. The biter had been bitten, he acknowledged grimly. He was no martyr, no penitent, he wasn’t essentially a good man, but he would force himself to go through the motions because that was what she deserved from him.
‘No, a woman capable of telling Raffaele where to get off is unheard of and exactly what he needs,’ Claire opined with a grin. ‘From what I’ve heard, he runs rings round most women. They’re too impressed by who he is while you seem to treat him as if he’s normal.’
‘Which he’s not,’ Maya conceded.
‘And he never will be with that dreadful background of his and all that money,’ Claire sighed. ‘But he still needs someone to treat him as though he is.’
Only, not necessarily me, Maya reflected unhappily, already somewhat stressed by having recently heard her twin’s frank opinion of her marriage. Since Maya had told her parents about her marriage, she had spoken to her twin on the phone and given her the same story.
Unhappily, she hadn’t felt able to tell Izzy the whole truth either, not about the choice Raffaele had given her, not about their parents’ debts being settled with their marriage and certainly not about the baby she had willingly conceived and then lost. Maya refused to burden her pregnant, newly married sister with the disturbing facts of her own situation, deeming it better to let Izzy believe that she had tumbled headlong in love with Raffaele while working for him and had rushed foolishly fast into marrying him.
Ultimately, Izzy had been most shaken by Maya’s news only after she had acquainted herself with the online gossip about Raffaele. Izzy had called Maya back purely to raise the topic of Raffaele’s raunchy reputation as a womaniser and refer worriedly to the unlikelihood, in her apologetic opinion, of such a male choosing to stay faithful on a long-term basis. Her fear that Maya could not possibly hope to find lasting happiness with Raffaele had been unmistakable. Evidently Rafiq, Izzy’s new husband and the father of her unborn twins, didn’t have that kind of better-left-buried sexual past. Well, bully for him, Maya thought ruefully as she went pink with discomfiture.
Truth to tell, after all, Raffaele’s amazing versatility between the sheets was more of a colourful memory for Maya than a current event. Raffaele hadn’t shared a bed with Maya, never mind actually touched her in any intimate way, since she had lost their baby, and that distance he had forged between them hurt and made her feel more rejected than ever.
They were based in Raffaele’s penthouse apartment in London where they were occupying separate bedrooms. That had been his choice. In spite of Maya’s clumsy attempts at flirtatious encouragement, Raffaele had made no moves whatsoever. It was as though any sexual attraction she’d had had vanished after her stay in hospital. Evidently he wasn’t planning or hoping to get her pregnant again and he wasn’t interested enough in her to even approach her for sex. What did that tell her? Well, all it told Maya was that, in Raffaele’s eyes, their marriage was already over. He had changed from a guy who couldn’t get enough of her into a guy who didn’t even seem to appreciate that she was still alive and kicking.
And what about what she wanted? Well, that was a ridiculously complicated question, Maya acknowledged ruefully. Every time she looked at Raffaele, she knew she wanted him, and being shot without warning from a passionate relationship into a platonic one was a shattering shock to the system. Naturally, she had told herself that she shouldn’t still be attracted to him. Obviously, she had told herself that she should be relieved that he didn’t expect to share a bed with her any more. But the logical approach hadn’t helped because during the weeks of their marriage, all those sunny lazy days exploring the Mediterranean, she had grown deeply, illogically attached to Raffaele.
How had that happened and did it really matter that she didn’t know how? The reality was that she had fallen in love with Raffaele. His dysfunctional childhood and his experiences since had made him cynical where she was naïve and too trusting; his droll take on his life, born out of those experiences, was nonetheless very entertaining and he often made her laugh. She had also learned that nobody could be kinder or more caring than he. But most of all, on the day he’d told her about his dogs being shot she had caught a glimpse of the broken-hearted, lonely, unloved boy inside him, of the terrible damage done to him and the lingering vulnerability that he worked so hard to hide from the world. And that had been that for Maya: her heart had op
ened up and taken him in and she knew she would fight like a lioness to protect him from hurt.
Yet she had hurt him at the hospital, reminding him of their unlovely beginnings and the child he had persuaded her to conceive to seal a business transaction. And she had seen him acknowledge the wrong that he had done, had witnessed the deeper understanding that he was developing and the care and support he was so determined to give her. She had grasped then that, in many ways, Raffaele had been a case of arrested emotional development ever since his disturbing childhood experiences and now, finally, he was emerging from that shell to change and grow as a man. At the same time, though, she suspected that he was finding the emotions assailing him now almost as confusing and unsettling as she had once found his former emotional detachment.
It was mid-evening when they returned to the London penthouse. They had eaten on the flight back and Raffaele strode off to his room, leaving Maya marooned in the vast reception area with its sumptuous seating and fantastic view of the London skyline as night fell. She had never felt more alone in her life than she did at that moment, wondering why he was avoiding her, barely speaking, wondering why she didn’t have the courage to reach out and demand answers from him. Because she was afraid, she accepted numbly, because she was afraid of hearing the truth that their marriage was over. And once Raffaele said those words, he would be free to leave and stay at one of the many, many properties he owned across the world instead. Once he was gone, he would be gone for ever and the very thought of that simply terrified her...and yet, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t. It would be a return to the life he had taken her from, and she couldn’t face the emptiness of that again. She hadn’t even known how empty her life was until he’d entered it.
‘I’ll see you...later,’ Raffaele murmured from behind her. ‘Probably tomorrow as I won’t be back early.’
Maya unfroze with a jerk and glanced across the room at him, shot rudely from her reverie. He had changed into an exquisitely well-tailored suit, a dark claret-shaded shirt with an expensive sheen open at his bronzed throat. ‘Where are you going?’
