The Italian's Future Bride

by Michelle Reid

  Afterwards she felt lazy and languid and much too aware of him as her irresistible lover as the two of them moved around between the bathroom, bedroom and dressing room, preparing to go out.

  Which had been the object of the exercise in the shower, she reminded herself. Several times he stopped her passing him by just fusing his mouth to hers in a slow clinging kiss and the lazily hooded way in which he watched her shyly lower her eyes and move away quickly only heightened an intimacy that was threatening to take her over completely if she didn’t watch out.

  She was relieved when he finally left her alone so she could finish getting ready without having him around as such a breathtaking distraction. By the time she joined him in the living room Rachel truly believed she had managed to get herself together—until he looked up from the broadsheet newspaper he was reading while lounging on a sofa and the whole whirlwind of awareness whipped into action again.

  She’d chosen to wear a sleek short V-neck dress in dramatic matt black. Elise had donated the dress, claiming that it did not suit her because she didn’t have the curves to fill it out.

  Well, Rachel had the curves and, the way that Raffaelle was looking at her, he had not missed a single one. Her hair was loose, its curls carefully ironed out so the style was smooth and sleek. As he rose to his feet her blue eyes followed him, defiant yet anxious—just in case she did not look as good as she hoped she did.

  But the look reassured her as he came towards her wearing the kind of black lounge suit that yelled couturehomme . When an Italian male dressed he never ever dressed badly, was Rachel’s single dry-mouthed heart pummelling observation.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured as he reached her, sending pleasurable shivers chasing up her spine as he bent to brush a caress on her cheek. ‘But I prefer the curls.’

  ‘Different woman,’ she answered with a small shrug.

  His eyes narrowed, all the sensuality hardened out of his mouth. He said nothing for several long seconds and Rachel knew she had just managed to remind him of the real reason why they were together.

  Maybe that was a good thing, she decided, as he helped her into the little black satin evening jacket she had brought into the room with her, still without saying anything else. They left the apartment and travelled in the lift down to where Dino waited by the car with the rear passenger door open. She slid in. The door clicked shut. Raffaelle rounded the bonnet and slid in from the other side. His long body folded with crease-free elegance into the seat beside her.

  Lean, sleek, supremely sophisticated, she recognised. Crossing one silk-covered knee over the other, she fixed her attention on the partition which separated them from Dino.

  Tension fizzed in the silence. Rachel found herself clinging to her little black beaded purse. The car swished along London’s busy streets, recently drenched by a heavy downpour of rain. Everything outside the car seemed to glitter and sparkle in the darkness, everything inside the car was shadowed and oddly flat.

  Raffaelle wished he knew what he was feeling right now, but he didn’t. It was crazy to have been so taken aback by her reminder of what this was all about when they’d done little else but argue about it since they’d first met.

  But he had been taken aback by it, stunned by the gut-twisting reminder that none of this was real—thatshe wasn’t real.

  Not tonight anyway.

  She was the sleek look-alike sister of Elise Castle-Savakis, pretending to be a version of Rachel Carmichael that just did not exist. Even the dress was Elise’s, classy and stylish and very sexy on Rachel, but he would be prepared to bet it was not of her own taste or choice.

  He preferred the other Rachel with the curls and the spark of defiance in her blue eyes.

  ‘Having second thoughts about risking me in there amongst your friends?’ she asked suddenly.

  Raffaelle blinked, realising that they’d come to a stop outside the restaurant. By the atmosphere inside the car, they’d been here like this for several seconds.

  The restaurant was one of the best Italian restaurants in London. It was a place where the rich set ate. It was his kind of place and his kind of life, but neither were hers.

  He turned his head to look at her. Barely an hour ago, she had been coming all around him in a breathtaking pulse of intimacy that still circulated in his blood. He looked at her silk-straight hair and her beautiful pearly-white complexion, the heavily accentuated black-lashed blue eyes and the sexy pink-coated mouth.

  He could taste them. He could feel those soft pink-coated lips warm against his own whether she was this Rachel or the other Rachel. And if he was sitting here like this, wanting to know where the two Rachels became one, then he’d found it in that mouth and what happened to her when he claimed it.

  ‘I won’t embarrass you, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ she stated, fizzing inside with resentment at the analytical way he was looking her over as if he was actually having to give some deep thought to the sarcastic question she had tossed out.

  ‘You sound very sure about that, little farmer girl,’ he said huskily.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ she admitted honestly. ‘I suppose I should have said I willtry not to embarrass you.’

  Easing his wide shoulders into the corner of the seat, his eyes glittered over her tense face. ‘Do you really believe I will care if you do decide to embarrass me?’ he asked curiously.

  Rachel offered a shrug. ‘I don’t know you well enough to judge.’

  ‘No, you don’t…’

  She didn’t like the way he had said that, or the way he was looking at her now. Her tension was zinging along just about every nerve ending she had in her body and she wished he would just—

  ‘Are we going to go in there or not?’ she flicked out.

  ‘In a minute,’ he said smoothly, ‘This conversation is just getting interesting…’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Because it has nothing to do with whether you are going to embarrass me,’ he said ignoring her interruption. ‘It is to do with you being scared that I might embarrass you.’

  Rachel stared at him. ‘Why should you want to do that?’

  ‘My thought exactly,’ he said softly. ‘Yet youare scared that I am going to take you in there, then just leave you to sink or swim.’

  Her pink upper lip gave a vulnerable quiver. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of being served up along with the main course,’ she confessed.

  He laughed. It was bad of him. But it was a very low, sexily-amused laugh and Rachel laughed too—one of those tense little sounds that jump up unexpectedly from the throat.

  The atmosphere changed in that single moment, spinning the tension into a fine thread that eddied across the gap between them then morphed into something else. He moved so fast that she didn’t see him coming, and then it was too late when he had taken arrogant possession of her mouth.

  ‘You’ve stolen all my lipstick,’ she protested when the kiss came to an end.

  ‘I know.’ He sat back a little, watching her as she fumbled in her bag for a tissue and her lipstick case. ‘Keep on reapplying it,cara ,’ he advised as she reapplied a coating of pink with a decidedly unsteady hand. ‘Because I find I like doing it. In fact I do believe I am becoming addicted to the taste.’

  She handed him the tissue. ‘It looks better on me than it does on you.’

  And he grinned, wiping pink from his lips while his eyes tangled with hers. It was no use pretending that they weren’t doing something else here, because they were.

  Then suddenly he was being serious. ‘Listen to me,’ he urged. ‘I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself tonight, okay? I don’t care if you want to spend the evening going on about the pros of organic produce. I don’t care if you decide to ruffle your hair into curls or you march off to the kitchens to tout the chef for his business—’

  ‘I’m not quite that uncouth!’ she cried.

  ‘You are missing the point,’ he chided. ‘The point being that I don’t give a da
mn if you are just yourself and act like yourself. The only thing I do care about is that you stick to the main story as to how we met and keep in mind that, when we leave here, we go home to my apartment together as a couple, then to bed and to—this.’

  Another kiss was on its way to her. ‘Don’t you dare,’ Rachel drew her head back.

  But he did dare—quickly, briefly, not enough to steal her lipstick a second time but more than enough to distract her from what he was about to do next.

  She felt her left hand being taken. By the time she had the sense to glance down, the fake sapphire ring had been removed and he was already replacing it with one that looked exactly the same.

  ‘W-what have you done that for?’ she demanded.

  ‘The fake might have been a good fake,cara , but it did not stand a chance of fooling the experts we are about to meet.’

  ‘It fooled you when you saw it.’ She was staring at the exact copy now adorning her finger.

  ‘I was too angry to notice it then.’

  ‘It’s so—gaudy.’ She sighed, staring at the ring as it shimmered and sparkled much more than its predecessor.

  ‘Not to your taste?’

  ‘Not to anyone’s taste,’ she said ruefully. ‘It was only meant to grab Leo’s attention…How did you get hold of this one so quickly?’

  ‘I am the kind of man who gets what he wants when he wants it,’ he answered with careless conceit.

  He went to put the fake ring into his pocket.

  ‘No—’As quick as a flash Rachel plucked it from his hand and pushed it into her beaded purse. ‘I’ll wear the real one when we are out together, but only then,’ she informed him stubbornly. ‘Otherwise I’ll wear the fake one.’

  ‘If you’re afraid of losing it, it is insured—’

  But Rachel gave a shake of her head. This had nothing to do with losing the real ring, but more to do with the fear that if she didn’t hang on to the fake she would lose touch with reality.

  ‘I will only wear it when we are out,’ she repeated.

  ‘And in our bed?’ he demanded shortly.

  Rachel thought about that for a second or two. ‘I won’t wear either ring,’ she decided.

  ‘Meaning our sexual relationship has nothing to do with the rest of this?’

  Unless he was able to fake what was happening there as well. Then she nodded, because the sex was the only truly honest part of this.

  He said nothing but just sighed and went to open the car door—then suddenly changed his mind. He turned on her, caught her chin in his fingers, then dipped his head for a third, definite, lipstick-stealing, full-blooded, possessive lover’s kiss.

  ‘The sexual part of this relationship does not stay behind in the bedroom, Rachel,’ he stated harshly. ‘Remember that, while you fix your lipstick again…’

  He climbed out of the car then, leaving her sitting there trembling and shaken by the anger which had erupted from him.

  What was the matter with him? Why should he care which ring she wore, so long as she didn’t makehim look the cheap fake?

  Her lips felt tender and bruised this time as she reapplied the lipstick. He’d walked around the car and was now standing with her door open, waiting for her to join him on the pavement.

  It was chilly outside and her satin jacket had not been made to keep the cold out. She shivered. He stepped closer, fitting her beneath his shoulder and curling his hand into her waist.

  Gosh, don’t we look the picture of romance? she thought dryly as he walked her towards the restaurant.

  ‘Smile,’ he instructed as he pushed the door open.

  Rachel looked up to find that he was looking down at her. One of those frozen in time moments suddenly grabbed them, locking them inside their own private space.

  ‘Heavens, Raffaelle,’ another voice intruded. ‘You were out there so long we were about to lay bets as to whether or not you were going to just take her back home again.’

  ‘As you see, Daniella,’ he came back smoothly, ‘Rachel’s manners are so much better than mine…’

  He held Rachel’s eyes as he said it. He watched her cheeks warm to a blush when she realised what Daniella had meant. Then he took hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips. The engagement ring sparkled as he kissed it. Her soft pink pulsing mouth gave a telling little quiver that shot an injection of heat down to his groin.

  Someone else spoke—he did not know who. When he turned, he could barely make sense of the blur of faces all smiling at them.

  What the hell was the matter with him? Was he sickening for something to have double-vision like this? It would be the first germ to catch him out since his childhood, he mused grimly, frowning as he looked back at Rachel.

  Her face was in perfect focus. He did not like what that discovery was trying to say to him. With a taut shift of his shoulders, he pulled himself together and turned to face his dinner guests again, then switched on his lazy smile.

  ‘Buona sera,’ he greeted. ‘My apologies for keeping you waiting when I know you are dying to meet my beautiful Rachel…’

  CHAPTER NINE

  MY BEAUTIFULRachel…

  And so began the worst evening of his beautiful Rachel’s life.

  Raffaelle’s stepsister did not believe a single word that either of them said to her. The others were more than happy to welcome her into their set, but they too were surprised and curious about this complete stranger who had arrived out of nowhere into Raffaelle’s life.

  Rachel supposed she should be relieved that Daniella seemed to have kept her suspicions to herself—or maybe she was too scared of Raffaelle to actually say what she thought outright. But she quizzed Rachel mercilessly about Elise.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Wonderful, taking a holiday in Florida with her husband and son.’

  ‘You two met through Elise?’

  ‘No, we met at a dinner party given by friends of Leo and Elise.’

  Daniella had eyes like bitter chocolate which constantly flicked from Rachel to Raffaelle. ‘Both of you were very secretive about this romance.’

  ‘Rachel liked it that way,’ her stepbrother answered. ‘Weliked it that way. Look at what happened the moment we were seen in public. It turned into a witch-hunt.’

  ‘When a woman throws herself at you in front of a reporter, it tends to have that effect. So does standing naked in a bedroom window.’

  Rachel flushed but Raffaelle remained completely unruffled. ‘Behaving like a spoiled child who does not like to know she has been left out of a secret is very unappealing,’ he responded lightly.

  Reducing her to the level of a spoiled child may have silenced Daniella but it did not kill her suspicions about Rachel not being who she claimed she was—as she made very clear the moment she got Rachel alone in the ladies’ room.

  ‘Iknow he was seeing Elise Castle because it was me who told him she was married with a small son! So don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Carmichael. That ring is a fake, just as everything else about you is fake.’

  Rachel looked down at the sparkling diamond and sapphire cluster adorning her finger and grimaced. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, Daniella—’

  ‘Well, I want to fight with you,’ Daniella said fiercely. ‘Isaw you throw yourself at Raffaelle the other night. Isaw his rage. I think you and Elise are trying to blackmail him!’

  Apart from the fact that she was so close to the truth it was scary, Rachel had to feel for Daniella if only because she looked and sounded so worried and protective of Raffaelle.

  ‘And you aren’t drinking alcohol!’ Daniella said suddenly. ‘Are you pregnant, is that it? Did you have a fling with him, as well as your sister, and now you’re demanding marriage?’

  Rachel stared at the other girl as if she had just grown two heads. Was she psychic or what? ‘I don’t drink.’ She iced out the lie with as much calmness as she could. ‘And repeat your accusations to Raffaelle, if you dare,’ she challenged.

  Then she
turned and walked out of the ladies’ room. Raffaelle took one look at her flushed angry face and stood up before she could sit down.

  His arms came around her. ‘Problems?’ he asked.

  Rachel shook her head, aware of the others listening. ‘Just a—headache,’ she offered as a very weak excuse.

  ‘Then we will leave.’

  It was not a suggestion and Rachel did not argue with him. As they made their farewells Daniella came back to the table. One slicing glance at her stepbrother and her chin shot up in defiance.