One Night In Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘Your partner in crime did not hang around to protect you,’ he taunted grimly next.

  He had to mean Mark. ‘You don’t—’

  ‘Unless he is in one of the cars following behind us, that is …’

  Cars—? Rachel twisted around to peer through the rear window.

  ‘There are three back there I can pick out as belonging to the paparazzi,’ she was told. ‘And there are most likely more of them following not far behind them.’

  Twisting forward again, she stared at him. ‘But why should they want to follow us?’

  ‘You are not that naïve,’ he derided the question, flicking his eyes from the rear-view mirror and back to the road ahead. ‘Or you would not have chosen Raffaelle Villani to pull your life-wrecking stunt.’

  Life wrecking—? ‘N-no.’ Rachel gave an urgent shake of her head. ‘You don’t understand. This was not—’

  ‘Not that it matters,’ he interrupted. ‘We are here now.’

  As in where—? Even as Rachel thought the question, one of those shiny new apartment blocks that flanked the river loomed up close. With a spin of the wheel he sent the car sweeping on to its forecourt. He stopped it hard on its brakes and was already out of the car and striding around it to open her door.

  Rachel didn’t move. She was trembling like mad and her heart was thundering. She didn’t look at him either, but just stared starkly ahead.

  ‘Do you get out yourself or do I have to lift you?’ he demanded.

  Since she’d already learnt the hard way that he was perfectly willing to do the latter, swallowing tensely, Rachel took the more dignified choice, unfastened her seat belt and slid out of the car.

  It was an odd sensation to find herself standing close to him. Nor did that sensation make any sense because she’d stood this close once already tonight and thrown herself right against him a second time, yet he hadn’t felt this tall or as powerfully built or as dangerous as he did right now.

  She shivered, panicked and was about to make a run for it when car doors started slamming. The paparazzi had arrived right behind them and were already piling out of their cars.

  Raffaelle bit out a curse, then he was wrapping her beneath the hook of a powerful arm.

  Cameras flashed. ‘Look this way, Elise—!’ one of them called out to her.

  But she was already being ushered through a pair of doors.

  ‘Keep them out,’ Raffaelle instructed the security man manning the foyer.

  Before Rachel knew what was happening, he’d marched her into a lift and the doors were closing the two of them inside.

  It had happened so fast—all of it—everything! And she’d never felt so afraid in her entire life. Her head was whirling and her legs had gone hollow. The panic had not subsided and it sent the heels of her shoes screeching shrilly beneath her as she spun round, then she lifted an arm and hit out at him with her bag.

  He fielded the blow like a man swatting a fly away. ‘Calm down,’ he gritted.

  But Rachel didn’t want to calm down. Hair flying about her slender neck as she struggled with him, ‘Let me go—let me go!’ she choked out.

  Then she threw back her head and opened her mouth to scream.

  Only it didn’t arrive. Nothing happened. The scream remained just a thick lump pulsing in the base of her throat. And he didn’t attempt to smother it like he had done outside the hotel but just stood there looking down at her while she stared up at him.

  It was crazy—the whole evening had been crazy, but this was the craziest part because it felt as if they’d both suddenly been frozen in time.

  The panic receded. She forgot to breathe. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t breathing either and he was frowning as if he too couldn’t understand what was going on.

  Gorgeous frown, she found herself thinking. Gorgeous black silk-hooded eyes. In fact he was, she saw as if for the first time, altogether totally breathtaking to look at. His facial bone structure was striking—the high forehead and good cheekbones, the long narrow nose and perfectly symmetrical chin.

  And his eyes weren’t really grey, but an unusual mixture of green flecked with silver. His skin was amazing, a tightly wrapped casing of honey-gold her fingers remembered with a tense little twitch. The satin-black eyebrows, those luxuriously long eyelashes that were hovering just above the cheekbones, and the mouth …

  Don’t look at his mouth, she told herself tautly, but she didn’t just look, she stared at it. Slender, smooth, slightly parted. The tip of her tongue snaked out to wipe away the now familiar tingle she felt take over her own lips.

  He breathed. The warmth of his breath brushed her face, scented with the heady fruits of a rich dark wine. She tried a tense swallow, looked back into his eyes and saw what was coming. He was going to kiss her. Not to stop her screaming or even in anger, but because—

  Oh, God, she wanted him to!

  He muttered something in Italian. She released the strangest-sounding groan. In the next second he’d captured her mouth and they were kissing—really kissing. Not stolen, fought-for, punishing or smothering kisses, but like two greedy, hungry lovers with a swift, hot, urgent necessity.

  Their tongues flickered and slid in a wild, erotic dance of hungry heat. Without caring she was doing it, Rachel lifted her arms up over Raffaelle’s shoulders and arched closer until she could feel every inch of him pressing against her, from his hard-packed chest to powerful thighs.

  He was so pumped up and solid, his hands moving on a restless journey over the silk dress covering her slender body to the bare flesh of her shoulders, then back down to her small waist again. She became aware that she was purring like a well stroked kitten. He breathed something harsh, then picked her up with his hands and started walking without breaking the kiss.

  Her hands were in his hair now, raking his scalp and scrunching its smooth style, the swollen globes of her breasts nudging at him high on his chest.

  This should not be happening. This should not be happening! a shrill voice screamed inside her head.

  The panic returned; Rachel yanked her head back at the same moment that he did the same thing.

  Like two people who did not know what the hell was happening to them, they stared at each other again, her eyes wide dark pools of shocked horror and confusion, his blackened by stunned disbelief. Her mouth was burning, her lips still parted and pulsing and swollen as she panted for breath.

  He put her down so abruptly she almost toppled off the thin heels of her shoes, her fingers trailing around his shirt collar then down the front of his jacket where they clung, because they had to, to his black satin lapels.

  Anger burned now. A thick, dark, intense anger that pulsed from every hard inch of him as he used a key to open a door. Rachel had not noticed that they’d left the lift, never mind crossed another foyer to reach the door!

  Manoeuvring them both inside, he kicked the door shut with a foot before peeling her off his front. She staggered dizzily. He walked away down a spacious hallway, then disappeared through another door.

  She wanted to faint. She wished she could faint. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. Every inch of her body was still alive and buzzing with excitement and a shrill ringing was filling her head.

  The ringing stopped abruptly and she blinked. Then she heard his voice ripping out words in sharp Italian and realised the sound had been coming from a phone. She caught Elise’s name and reality came tumbling over her like a giant snowball, dousing every bit of heat.

  It took real willpower to make her trembling legs walk her down that hallway. But she needed to know what he was saying and to whom he was saying it.

  The door was flung wide open on its hinges and she stilled in the opening, staring starkly across a spacious living room with wall-to-wall glass on one side and an expanse of warm wood covering the floor softened by a big creamy-coloured rug. Everything in here was clean-lined and modern. He was standing beside one of several black leather sofas that were careful
ly placed about the room.

  His back was to her. He had a land line telephone clamped to his ear and his hair was still mussed. Her fingers tingled to remind her who had done the mussing. As she continued to stand there, he lifted up a set of long fingers and mussed it up some more.

  ‘Daniella—’ he snapped out, then stopped and sighed.

  Whatever his stepsister said to him then made his voice alter, the snap going out of it and low, dark, soothing Italian arriving in its place, aimed to apologise and reassure.

  Me too, please, Rachel wanted to beg. Reassure me too that this is all just a big nightmare.

  But it wasn’t and her heart was still beating too fast. The low dark flow of his voice seemed to resonate directly from deep inside his chest before reaching the rolling caress of his tongue.

  Oh, God. She put a set of trembling fingers up to cover her eyes. Did all Italian men have deep, sexy voices, or was it just that she had been unlucky enough to meet the only two that could do this to her?

  Then an impatient ‘Daniella,’ arrived again. ‘Take my advice and call Gino. Take your bad temper out on him, for I am in no mood to hear this.’

  He had switched to English. Rachel dropped her hand in time to watch his shoulders give a tight shrug.

  ‘If Elise upstaged you then count your blessings that she was more interesting to the cameras than you and your behaviour were five minutes before!’

  Elise … Rachel tensed as a sudden thought hit her. If Raffaelle’s stepsister had been fooled tonight into believing she was Elise, then maybe, between them, she and Mark had managed to pull this off!

  Rafaelle’s voice returned to smooth Italian. Rachel listened intently for the sound of Elise’s name being spoken again but it did not happen. A few seconds later he was finishing the call.

  Raffaelle put the phone down, then flexed his wide shoulders. He could feel her standing somewhere behind him but he did not want to turn around and find out where.

  He did not want to look at her.

  He did not know what the hell she was doing to him!

  With an impatient yank he undid his bow tie, shifted his stance to angle his body towards the drinks cabinet, then plucked with hard fingers at the top button of his dress shirt as he strode across the room. His jacket came next. He lost it to the back of a sofa. The silence screamed across the gap separating them as he flipped open the cabinet doors and reached for the brandy bottle.

  ‘Drink—?’ he offered.

  ‘No thank you,’ she huskily declined.

  Husky did it. He felt that low sensual voice reach right down inside him and give a hard tug on his loins.

  ‘Keeping a clear head?’ he mocked tightly.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed.

  Pouring a brandy for himself, he turned with the glass in his hand. She was standing in the doorway in her turquoise dress, with her arms held tensely to her sides. Her hands were gripping the black beaded bag she had tried to hit him with in the lift and her blue eyes were telling him that she was scared.

  Some might say that she had asked for everything that was happening to her but Raffaelle was reluctantly prepared to admit that he had been behaving little better than a thug.

  He took a sip of his drink, grimly aware that what had broken free in the lift was still busy inside him. He wanted her. He did not know why he wanted her. He’d been tempted by sirens far more adept at their craft than she was without feeling the slightest inclination to give in.

  Yet he did—want to give in. In fact the want was now a low-down burning ache in his gut.

  She wasn’t even what he would call beautiful. Not in the classic Elise-sleek-catwalk-fashion-sense, that was. There again, neither had Elise been catwalk-sleek by the time he’d met her. And this woman’s face did not possess the same striking bone structure that Elise had been endowed with. The eyes were the same blue but the nose was different—and the mouth.

  The mouth …

  Lifting the glass to his lips, Raffaelle half hid his eyes as he studied the mouth, wiped clear of pink lipstick now and still softly swollen from their kiss in the lift. Elise’s mouth was a wide classic bow shape whereas this mouth was shaped more evocatively like a heart and was frankly lush. And Elise was taller, though he would hazard a guess the lost inches would not show on a photograph as this one had stretched up and plastered herself against his front.

  The dress was expensive—you didn’t live most of your life around fashion conscious females without being able to pick out haute couture when you saw it. But it did not fit her. It was too tight in places, like across those two white breasts that were in danger of falling out of it, and it hugged the rounded shape of her slender hips like a second skin.

  ‘Turn round,’ he instructed.

  She tensed in objection.

  ‘I am looking for your likeness to Elise,’ he informed her levelly. ‘So humour me and turn around …’

  She did. Raffaelle grimaced because he would have been prepared to swear that right now she would rather spit in his face than comply with anything he wanted her to do. The passionate kiss in the lift coming hard on the back of the way she’d looked at him in the car had made her so uptight and defensive he could almost taste her hostility towards him even as she stood there with her back to him.

  And that was just another thing about her. Elise might have been a damn good liar but she had not possessed a single spark of passion or spirit. She’d been quiet and surprisingly shy for someone who had earned her living sashaying along catwalks and posing for glossy magazines.

  But that was thinking with hindsight, because he had not known who Elise really was at the time. And he was looking in the wrong place if he expected to find the very married ex-model’s nature in a woman who was definitely not her.

  The back view did it, though. The back view with the straight hair and the narrow shoulders and tight backside told him exactly why this woman believed she could get away with pretending to be Elise from that angle.

  ‘Had enough?’ She spun back to face him so she could fix him with an icy stare.

  It made him want to grimace, because if she was allowing herself to believe that such an expression was going to hold him back she was sadly mistaken. Despite the frost, she’d switched him on and now, he discovered, he was not feeling inclined to switch himself off again.

  In fact he was beginning to enjoy the sexual sting that was passing between them.

  The way he was standing there with his glass in his hand and his eyes half hidden, he reminded Rachel of a long, lean jungle cat lazily planning the moment when it would pounce.

  Still dangerous, in other words.

  The loss of his jacket wasn’t helping. The bright white of his shirt only made his shoulders look wider and his torso longer and tougher, and the way his loosened bow tie lay in two strips of black either side of his open shirt collar kept on drawing her eyes to the triangle of golden skin at his throat.

  Rachel’s throat went dry. Oh, please, she begged, will someone get me out of here—?

  Because looking at him was recharging the sexual buzz. She could feel it moving through her blood in a slow and sluggishly threatening burn, scary yet exciting—like a war she was having to fight on two fronts.

  ‘Don’t you think it is time that you told me your name?’

  Rachel tensed, her eyes flicking into focus on his face. Then a strained little laugh broke in her throat because it hadn’t occurred to her that he didn’t know who she was.

  ‘Rachel,’ she pushed out. ‘Rachel Carmichael.’

  Something about him suddenly altered. For some unknown reason she felt as if the air circulating around him had gone as tense as a cracked whip. And the eyes—the eyes were not merely hooded now, they’d narrowed into sharp eyelash-framed slits.

  ‘Well, hello, Rachel Carmichael,’ he drawled in a very slow, lazy tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Now this has just become very interesting …’

  ‘Why has
it?’ she asked warily.

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit down so we can talk about it?’

  She had the impression that the jungle cat in him had just sharpened its teeth. Taut as a bow string and balanced right on the balls of her feet now, Rachel wondered if this would be a good time to try to make a run for it.

  But the idea lasted for only a moment. He had not brought her up here to his apartment to let her get away before she had given him an explanation as to why she’d set him up tonight.

  Making herself walk across the room took courage, especially when he watched her all the way as if she was performing some special provocative act designed purposely to keep his attention engaged.

  Oh, God, did he have to look so sleekly at ease and so gorgeously interested?

  Beginning to feel disturbingly hollow from the neck down, if she did not count the sparking sting making itself felt, Rachel picked one of the black sofas at random and sat down right on its edge.

  The skirt to her dress immediately rode upwards to reveal more slender thigh than was decent with a peek of her stocking lace tops. Unclipping her fingers from the death grip they had on her bag she gave a tug at the dress’s hem, only to notice to her horror that its bodice wasn’t doing much to keep her modesty covered, either.

  And still he stood there watching her every single move, deliberately, she suspected, building on the sexual tension that was fizzing in the air. Her heart was pounding. She refused to look up. She wanted to swallow but would not allow herself the luxury of trying to shift the anxious lump lodged in her throat.

  Then he moved and she jerked up her head, unable to stop the wary response, only to feel almost dizzy with embarrassment when she saw how he was looking at her.

  ‘I will have that drink now,’ she burst out, desperate for him to turn away so she could pull up the bodice of her dress without him watching.

  One of those sleek black eyebrows arched in quizzing mockery at her abrupt change of mind about the drink. He knew what she was trying to do. It was scored into his eyes and his body language.