‘I don’t belong to you, Rafe. You set me free a long time ago and I have no intention of coming back.’
Chapter 4
The aroma of freshly ground coffee drifting from the kitchen warned Eden that her unwelcome visitor was still in residence. Having vowed that she wouldn’t sleep a wink while under the same roof as Rafe, she’d been horrified to find her room bathed in sunshine when she woke up, a disbelieving glance at her watch revealing that it was almost ten o’clock.
‘Buon giorno, cara,’ he greeted idly, lowering his newspaper fractionally to survey her, and Eden closed her eyes as a wave of memories rolled over her.
She’d loved the intimacy of sharing breakfast with him in the big, cool kitchen of his villa that nestled on the edge of Lake Como. Despite his fabulous wealth he was a man of simple tastes, simple pleasures. He employed few staff at the villa and more than anything she’d loved the fact that they were able to spend time alone, away from the circus of the Formula 1 scene. Energetic nights followed by lazy days had been a way of life for a few precious weeks and she had treasured the closeness they shared.
How had it fallen apart so spectacularly? she wondered despairingly. How could he have been so taken in by Gianni’s lies? The painful answer was that he hadn’t trusted her. To him she had been just another in a long line of women who briefly shared his life and bed, and when it came to crunch time, family loyalty, the blood ties that bound him so closely to the Santinis, had won over a relationship that meant little to him.
‘I thought you were leaving,’ she snapped, desperate to disguise the way her heart flipped at the sight of him sitting at the table, and his brows rose quizzically.
‘You were never this grouchy when you used to spend the night in my bed, but sexual frustration is a well-known cause of depression. Want me to cheer you up?’ he added unforgivably and she glared at him.
‘The only thing that’ll cheer me up is the sight of you walking out of the door, with the assurance that you won’t be coming back.’ She boiled the kettle and reached into a cupboard for the garish green teapot that was shaped like a frog.
‘I see you still have a fascination for slimy creatures,’ he observed and she stared at him pointedly.
‘I wouldn’t bank on it, I stopped being fascinated by you a long time ago.’
His low chuckle did strange things to her equilibrium, as did the slow smile that curved his mouth.
‘I assure you I’m not slimy, cara mia. Touch me and see.’ He moved before she had time to react and she gave an indignant yelp as he jerked her onto his lap, her frantic wriggling to escape only ceasing when she discovered the effect it was having on a certain area of his anatomy.
‘You’re disgusting,’ she hissed, temper her only weapon against the warmth that flooded through her, as she was held captive against his thighs. ‘Let me up, Rafe, you’ve proved your point—you’re not in the least bit slimy and neither, actually, are frogs,’ she added, desperate to take her mind off the throbbing hardness of his arousal she could feel beneath her bottom. ‘They’re cute and definitely my favourite animal.’
‘Which presumably is why, when everyone else presented me with expensive gifts after winning the world championship for the fourth time, you gave me a green plastic frog that squeaked.’
Rafe watched the soft colour stain her cheeks with an element of satisfaction.
When he had first seen her at the Press conference he’d been struck by her new air of sophistication, but this morning, in her faded jeans and cotton T-shirt, her hair a tangle of gold silk around her sleep-flushed face, she looked like the young, innocent Eden who haunted his dreams. She wasn’t as sure of herself as she would have him believe, or as immune to the sexual chemistry that fizzed between them.
With a determined effort she slid off his lap, and the fresh, lemony scent of her hair evoked a curious pain in his chest. Indigestion, he told himself derisively as he glanced down at his paper, but the printed page meant nothing and when he looked at her again the pain was still there.
‘I guess the plastic frog was a pretty stupid gift,’ she muttered, ‘but I didn’t know what else to buy for a man who had everything.’
He hadn’t had the one thing he really wanted, Rafe reflected and he wondered what she would say if he told her he competed in every race with a squeaky amphibian squashed into the pocket of his flame suit.
‘When are you going,’ she demanded, ‘and, more to the point, when is your executive and his family due to arrive? It would be nice to have a bit of notice, something you obviously didn’t feel was necessary.’
‘I phoned several times yesterday evening to inform you I was on my way to Wellworth,’ Rafe told her coolly. ‘You must have been busy, or out somewhere.’
His questioning tone irritated her. What right did he have to query her every move? ‘I had dinner with Nev,’ she informed him sweetly. ‘We didn’t get back until late.’
‘You entertained him here? Not a wise move, cara; don’t do it again.’
‘Excuse me! What right do you have to veto my friends? And I didn’t entertain Nev in the way you’re suggesting, I simply made him a cup of coffee. It seems ridiculous in the light of things now, but I wanted to thank him for giving me the opportunity to live in the Dower House. If I’d known you were involved I wouldn’t have bothered.’
‘Just make sure you’re not tempted to thank him too enthusiastically,’ Rafe warned darkly, and her temper caught fire.
‘I’ll do what I like and you can go to hell,’ she bit out, shaking back her hair and glaring at him, her hands on her hips.
‘Not in my house, cara mia, and not at all if you value your life.’
He was the most arrogant, infuriating man she had ever met and she felt like stamping her foot like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum. ‘Fine, I quit.
I’ll move my stuff out of the house today and you can find another damn housekeeper to run around your executives.’
‘You signed a contract.’
‘Which wouldn’t stand up in court,’ she challenged.
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Possibly not, although I’m prepared to test its legality. More pertinently, word going round that your friend Monkton can’t be relied upon to hire suitable staff would be highly damaging to his business. He deals with a lot of exclusive country-house lets, doesn’t he?’
‘I hate you,’ Eden flung at him bitterly when she realised she had run out of retorts. ‘You can’t stand not having your own way, can you?’
‘I pursue what I want with single-minded determination,’ he corrected her, ‘and I always win. You should know that by now, cara.’ He folded his newspaper and closed the lid of his briefcase before he spared her a glance, seemingly unmoved by her bristling fury. ‘Bruno is due to arrive on Tuesday. He’s aware that you work for the newspaper during the day and you’re not expected to run around like a skivvy. However, I assume you’ll get up earlier in the mornings, and you’ll have to tidy yourself up a bit.’
Eden took a deep breath and counted to ten as his gaze roamed her admittedly dishevelled appearance. She’d dressed in a hurry and simply grabbed the first items of clothing on the top of her suitcase. Her jeans were faded and paint-spattered and her T-shirt had shrunk in the wash so that it clung to her body, drawing attention to the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The atmosphere in the kitchen was suddenly sizzling with electricity as Rafe focused on her breasts, and to her shame she felt them swell and tighten.
‘Are you cold, cara?’ he queried mockingly and she blushed and folded her arms across her chest in an effort to hide the prominent peaks of her nipples. It didn’t help that he was impeccably dressed. His grey suit was superbly tailored, no doubt designer, as were his silk shirt and tie, and today he looked like the powerful head of a global company rather than a racing driver, but of course, now that his father was unwell, he had to fill both roles.
‘Let’s make a deal. I’ll go and change into something more suitable
and you’ll just…go!’
His laughter followed her up the stairs, and his query, ‘When did you develop that sassy tongue?’ didn’t deserve an answer, although she took a savage satisfaction in slamming her bedroom door.
The house was empty when she went back downstairs and she assured herself she was glad. It was time to look to the future and Rafe didn’t feature in hers. She dumped her suitcase in the hall and groaned as she remembered she had left her bedroom window open. Although she had no intention of staying in the Dower House, she didn’t want to be held responsible if it were burgled. Besides, she already loved this house and couldn’t bear the idea of it being ransacked by intruders.
She’d known that the chance to live here in its gentle splendour was too good to be true, she thought dismally as she took one last look round, but as she was about to lock the French doors that led onto the terrace a movement caught her eye. Rafe was standing by the fish pond, his arms folded across his chest, his stance as arrogant and supremely self-confident as ever until she looked more closely. He was unaware of her presence and she was able to study him, her greedy eyes travelling over him, drinking him in.
He looked older, she realised with a pang. It was four years, after all, and his life on the racing circuit was demanding, both physically and emotionally. She remembered the intense pressure he had been under to win every race. As a young man his father, Fabrizzio, had been a brilliant engineer whose marriage to the daughter of a wealthy car manufacturer had enabled him to develop the exclusive sports cars that had become one of Italy’s major exports. Santini had already been a dynamic and successful company, but when Rafe won his first world championship driving the car that had been developed exclusively by his father’s company, it rocketed the Santini name to the top of the table alongside other world leaders such as Ferrari and Renault. The pride and fortune of the Santini Corporation, of Italy itself, it seemed, rested on the shoulders of the country’s golden boy. Rafe was a national hero but the price of such adulation was high and the idea of failure inconceivable.
It was lonely at the top, he once confided, and she had looked around the packed room at the throng of guests who had come to celebrate another win, and laughed.
At the time she had thought he was joking—everyone wanted to be with Rafe, everyone wanted a piece of him, so how on earth could he be lonely? Watching him now, she suddenly understood and with that understanding came remorse and shame, because she had been as guilty as any of demanding her share of him.
Suddenly he looked up and trapped her gaze, but instead of feeling embarrassed that she had been caught staring at him she was shocked at the bleakness in his dark eyes before his lashes fell, concealing his expression.
‘Why did you think I was going to marry Valentina?’ he asked quietly and Eden shrugged and tore her eyes from him to stare at a patch of daises.
‘Gianni told me.’
‘Gianni!’ Rafe’s head came up and there was no disguising the shock in his eyes.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s the truth,’ she insisted. ‘The night you found us together by the pool, it wasn’t what you thought. Gianni had just explained that an arrangement between the Santini and de Domenici families had been made years before, and you were determined to marry Valentina to please Fabrizzio.’
‘I am not my father’s puppet,’ Rafe bit out furiously, ‘and this is the twenty-first century; arranged marriages went out several hundred years ago.’
‘Do you deny that you ever discussed marriage to her with Fabrizzio?’
‘It was mentioned,’ Rafe admitted with a shrug. ‘My father would have liked it, it’s true, but he knew there was no chance of it happening.’
‘But Gianni told me,’ Eden cried desperately. This was the first time Rafe had ever really listened to her, but the contemptuous disbelief in his eyes made it hard to go on. ‘He said the fact that you seemed to delight in making our affair so very public, the newspaper scoops and the magazine articles about our relationship, was a ploy. You knew that when you appeared to end our affair, it would be headline news that would please Valentina and her family. But if you believed I would have stayed as your mistress after your marriage, you really didn’t know me at all.’
Rafe’s jaw tightened ominously but his voice was deceptively soft as he queried, ‘And Gianni told you this? My brother, who is dead and cannot defend himself? Now, that’s what I call convenient.’
‘Why would I lie?’ Eden demanded angrily. ‘Gianni didn’t want to tell me, but things hadn’t been right between us for weeks. You were cold and distant and I suspected that you’d grown tired of me. I badgered Gianni until he admitted what you were planning and when you found us together he was comforting me, that’s all—despite what he said about us having a secret affair.’
‘So that’s your version of the truth?’ he drawled sardonically, and the tiny flicker of hope in her chest drowned in the depths of his scornful expression.
‘Is that really the best you can come up with, cara?’
‘The truth,’ Eden stated with deadly calm, ‘is that you are a deceitful, two-timing bastard who hoped to increase his social standing by marrying the daughter of an aristocrat whilst having a mistress conveniently tucked away in the background. This is hopeless,’ she muttered. ‘You made your mind up about me four years ago and you still haven’t got the guts to admit you might have been wrong.’
‘I saw you, and not just that night. You always had your eyes on Gianni, you were always laughing with him.’
‘He was the only one of your family who was nice to me,’ Eden said, defending herself. ‘Your father made it obvious that he despised me and everyone else followed his lead and treated me like I had bubonic plague. I only had eyes for you,’ she whispered sadly, and she still had. He was the only man she had ever loved, the reason, if she was honest, why she had spent the last three years living in constant danger. Focusing on her survival had been the only way she could prevent herself from thinking about him and the life they had once shared.
He, on the other hand, had spent the years since they’d parted jetting around the world, spending his time in glamorous locations with equally glamorous women. She was all too aware that he possessed a high sex drive. Add to that his stunning looks and plenty of Latin charm and it was impossible to believe he had spent the time pining for her.
‘How you have the nerve to accuse me of cheating on you beats me when not a week goes by without a feature in the tabloids about you and your latest conquest,’ she said bitterly, tensing as he walked around the pool towards her.
‘I’ve had other lovers in the last four years, I can’t deny it,’ he told her with a shrug, and Eden felt a knife skewer her heart at his casual admission.
‘As you say, there are plenty of women on the circuit who advertise their availability, and I have never pretended to be a monk,’ he went on, ruthlessly ignoring the flare of pain in her eyes. ‘But while we were together I was faithful to you. I certainly wasn’t eyeing up members of your family.’
She had to get away from him before her composure cracked. Already she could feel the ache of tears behind her eyelids and she spun away, stumbling blindly towards the steps leading to the house.
‘The other women, they meant nothing,’ Rafe insisted, catching hold of her shoulder and forcing her to turn and face him. ‘I used to close my eyes and pretend I was with you.’
‘That’s sick,’ Eden whispered, and watched, wide-eyed, as he lowered his head until his mouth was millimetres from her own.
‘It’s the truth,’ he whispered back before his lips claimed hers in a kiss that drove every other thought but him from her mind.
Her first instinct was to resist, and it was a desperate attempt at self-preservation that had her beating her fists against his shoulders as she fought the insidious warmth that flooded through her. In reply, he merely tightened his grip and hauled her up close against his chest while his hand at her nape angled her he
ad so that there was no escape from his mouth, which seemed intent on taking everything she was so unwilling to give. His tongue traced the outline of her lips and she clamped them shut, refusing him access as his careless admission that he had had other lovers taunted her.
The image of him holding another woman in his arms, of him kissing her, caressing her, making love to her, caused her body to clench in rejection. It was unbearable and she hated him but at the same time it was growing harder and harder to fight her response to the mastery of his touch. He knew her so well, too well, even after all this time, and her fists slowly unfurled and crept up around his neck, the feel of silky black hair between her fingers evoking memories of how he had loved her to massage his shoulders after a race. The pressure of his lips increased and suddenly she couldn’t fight him any more. Her mouth parted on a little gasp as he slid his hand down to her bottom, forcing her thighs up against the hardness of his, his arousal a potent force that made her realise she wasn’t the only one who was spinning out of control.
‘I have fantasised about making love to you every night for the past four years,’ he admitted huskily when at last he lifted his head, but by then she was beyond any sort of reply. Her lips were bruised and stinging and as she ran her tongue over them his eyes narrowed and he muttered something in Italian before he swept her into his arms. As he laid her down, the coolness of the grass broke through the sensual haze that surrounded her, but when she struggled to sit up he came down on top of her, the weight of him crushing her into the earth.
Overhead, the leaves on the trees formed an intricate lace canopy beyond which she could see the sky, cloudless and an intense blue. The sweet smell of the grass mingled with the scent of his cologne, musky, male and fiercely elemental, and her senses quivered in recognition of the only man who had ever been a part of her. His mouth captured hers again, gentler this time, as if he knew he had breached her defences, but no less passionate, the sweep of his tongue hot and hungry, fanning the flames of her desire.
His Private Mistress Page 6
