Rossellini's Revenge Affair

by Yvonne Lindsay

  “How do you know about these things? You have no child of your own. Kyle said you never wanted any, so why would you have such knowledge?” Raffaele insisted, colour slowly returning to his face.

  “Kyle said that?” Lana took a step back. It shouldn’t still have the capacity to hurt her that he’d lied about this part of their lives too. How dare he have diminished what they went through? The pain of what they’d endured in the vain endeavours to have a child of their own, and the pain of knowing she could never bear a child, all came flooding back with heart-breaking intensity.

  She chose her next words with careful deliberation. “Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps he lied?”

  With as much dignity as she could muster, Lana turned and started to walk across the room. Her eyes glazed with tears, her heart aching anew with loss.

  Raffaele watched her go, an uncomfortable niggle digging at his brain. No-one could have faked the soul-deep expression of sorrow that had crossed her face when he’d delivered his last words. A kernel of doubt opened. If Kyle had lied about something as important as having a family, what other truths had he been capable of twisting? While everything Lana had said and done since Raffaele had met her pointed to confirm her as the villain of the piece, it suddenly occurred to him that it was entirely possible he’d been thoroughly to reach such a conclusion. The thought brought anger rising to the surface. Had he been played for a fool?

  As Lana quietly and firmly closed the bedroom door behind her Raffaele resolved to bide his time and see what he could discover about the marriage of Kyle and Lana Whittaker.

  Over the next few days Lana busied herself with the necessary shopping for the move out to the house. Raffaele had authorised her to use one of his credit cards for the purchases and had also opened an account in her name, into which the allowance he’d agreed to pay her would be deposited each week. As much as it galled her to accept the money she consoled herself with the fact that she was doing a job, just like any other job. But that didn’t explain the rawness that stung in the area of her heart every time Raffaele left the hotel to visit with his sister.

  He spent hour after hour at the hospital, returning late each evening, uncommunicative and with his face grey and drawn. Several times while Lana had been out she’d had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched, but when she’d looked around nothing had prompted her as out of place or unfamiliar. Because Raffaele’s visits to Maria were quite obviously taking their toll on him, she was reluctant to bring up her fears with him, convincing herself instead that she had become paranoid since Kyle’s death.

  They were almost ready for the move out to Whitford, a change in lifestyle that Lana found herself anticipating with an enthusiasm that caught her unawares. For the first time in what felt like a long while, she was looking forward, not back.

  After finalising the delivery of supplies to the new property, Lana arrived back at the hotel suite late and was surprised to hear the sound of a loud, agitated male voice from inside. She pushed open the front door and dropped her purchases inside the vestibule, rushing inside to see what was wrong. Raffaele paced the length of the sitting room, a telephone clutched to his ear with one hand while the other gesticulated wildly in the air.

  “What’s wrong?” Lana mouthed as he turned and gave her a brief sharp nod of acknowledgement.

  He gestured toward the tabloid paper sprawled on the coffee table. Lana straightened the sheets of newsprint as she looked to see what had upset him so much. Her blood turned to ice when she saw the front page headline emblazoned across the top.

  Fraudster’s love child!

  Beneath the heading was a half-page colour photo of an unconscious pregnant woman in a hospital bed. While the picture was grainy, Lana immediately spotted the familial likeness to the angry male who stood silently, drumming the fingers of one hand against his hip, as he listened to the person on the other end of the telephone.

  This was Maria Rossellini? Lana stared hard at the photo, waiting for the anger and hatred she’d expected to feel to come foaming to the surface of her emotions. This was the woman who had stolen her husband—the woman who now sustained the life of his baby daughter within her dying body. But instead of anger, all she could feel was an overwhelming and decimating sense of loss.

  The unmistakeable proof of Kyle’s infidelity distorted the smooth fall of the bed covering. Lana’s fingers gripped the paper so tight it began to tear. Beneath the covers and within the woman lying unknowing on the hospital bed lived Kyle’s child. The child Lana could never give him. She sank to her knees, her whole body shaking with reaction to the physical evidence of the death of her marriage—of her failure. After several shuddering breaths she dragged her eyes from the photo to scan the article.

  Whoever had written it had done their homework only too well. It was all there—every detail about her marriage to Kyle together with statements from people who’d been their neighbours and their friends. People she’d thought were her friends. The sense of betrayal cut even deeper. And worse, they’d closed the article with a promise to next week’s readers for more dirt on Lana’s privileged upbringing and the shadow of her own family’s hidden secrets including details of a mystery man she was reportedly living with since her husband’s death.

  Raffaele’s angry voice penetrated the fog of shock that held her wrapped in disbelief.

  “This is unacceptable. I want the person responsible for allowing that photo to be taken of my sister to be found. If your hospital cannot protect her sufficiently, I will provide my own security for her.”

  He fell silent as the person on the other end of the phone spoke.

  “See that you do!” Raffaele enunciated with deadly precision. “Or I will hold you personally responsible.”

  He snapped his cell phone shut with an angry flick of his hand and thrust it back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “Maledizione!” he uttered as he spun around to face Lana. A frown creased his brow as he saw her kneeling on the floor, her fingers white with the tight grip she had on the paper. No-one was that good an actress. What kind of fool was he to think that she wouldn’t have such a shocked reaction to the news? He’d been thinking solely of Maria and her safety; he hadn’t spared a thought for how Lana would feel. It was only a week since she’d heard news of the baby and now here she was, faced with the proof. As much as he’d schooled himself to distrust Lana Whittaker, his own sense of honour should have asserted itself and softened the blow from which she was obviously reeling.

  “Lana?” he coaxed, reaching for the tabloid that had so raised his ire and left him insensible to anything but the most immediate of action. Prising the paper from her fingers was easier said that done. In the end he ripped it gently from her grasp then, supporting her by her elbows, coaxed her to her feet before settling her more comfortably on the sofa.

  She felt cold to his touch, her face void of expression. He cursed under his breath and turned to the sideboard, splashing a measure of brandy from the crystal decanter into a tumbler and bringing it over to her. He pushed the glass into her hands and coaxed her to raise the glass to her lips and take a sip, then another.

  Twin flashes of colour appeared on her alabaster pale cheeks, a sheen of moisture in her blue topaz coloured eyes. She dragged in a deep breath, and put the glass back on the table.

  “Are you certain you don’t wish to have more?”

  “It won’t cure what hurts inside, Raffaele. But thank you anyway.”

  The emptiness of her voice cut to his core. Over the past three days, on those occasions when they’d crossed paths, he’d seen a different side of her. She’d been animated and excited about her purchases and, at the end of each day when he’d returned from the hospital, had discussed with him all manner of items she’d bought. He’d found himself beginning to look forward to her presence here in the suite on his return—almost a homecoming in some bizarre way. But now, she was reduced to the same frozen, cold-natured female he’d me
t after Kyle’s funeral. Withdrawn. Untouchable.

  Suddenly he missed the warmth of her excitement. The pleasure in her voice. It was a sensation he did not feel comfortable with.

  “I’m sorry, Lana. I should have kept the paper from you. It was insensitive of me to expose you to that.”

  “No, not insensitive. You don’t need to wrap me in kid gloves. I can take it, honestly. It just came as a bit of a surprise—that’s all.”

  She went through the motions, he noted, said all the right words, but he could tell there was far more going on inside her head than she was letting on. He felt her withdrawal from him as if it was physical. The damn picture reminded them both of their purpose, and of the end result.

  She was right, he realised with damning accuracy. Nothing would heal what hurt inside. Nothing.

  “I will deal with the paper, force an injunction on them—something, anything. They will print no more lies or conjecture about our families,” he ground the words out like a vow. Lana fell under his protection now. He needed her and, whether she liked it or not, she needed him.

  “Don’t bother, they’ll just find another way to spread the poison, to eat into my past and blow it all over the papers again.” Lana placed a small slender hand on his coat sleeve. “It’s nothing anyone hasn’t tried to do to me before and I survived the last time. I’ll survive now. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow. Personally, I can’t wait to get out of the city.”

  For once Raffaele heartily concurred. While he’d be further from the hospital and the commute to the city would take precious hours from his time with Maria, once the baby arrived and was strong enough to come home, she would be secure in the new home he’d purchased. After today, that security seemed more vital than ever before.

  His gaze dropped from her earnest face to the fine tapered fingers that branded his arm. Her touch set off a jolt of electricity through his veins. Before he could think, or act, on it she withdrew her hand and rose to her feet.

  “I think I’ll take a bath and then turn in for the night. We have an early start tomorrow if we’re going to beat the delivery truck out to the house.”

  “You wouldn’t prefer to have a meal before you retire?” Food was the last thing on Raffaele’s mind, but for some reason he was reluctant to let her go and lose her company. Before he could examine his reasons for coercing her to stay with him any longer, she shook her head and turned for her room.

  Lana went through the motions of preparing for bed but her mind continued to race. By the time she’d soaked for half an hour in a foam-filled bath she was no more relaxed than she’d been when she’d first seen the newspaper. It was going to take far more than a long soak in a bath to rebuild her self-esteem.

  She stroked a washcloth over her body, removing the last of the grime of the day. If only it could be as simple to wash away the pain of rejection and failure. Her hand stilled over her flat lower belly and the picture of Maria Rossellini’s belly, swollen with the life of the unborn child Lana would have given anything to have borne, imprinted itself on her mind. Would any man ever want her knowing she couldn’t bear his children? Kyle had told her it didn’t matter, but quite obviously the evidence proved his conciliatory words to be the pathetic lie they were.

  With a frustrated sigh of resignation she rose from the bath and reached for one of the hotel’s thick fluffy towels. The texture of the warmed towelling on her skin sent a wave of heat through her body, and awoke a deep-seated want in her she hated to acknowledge. She needed to feel like a woman again—needed the affirmation she was still attractive, that life wasn’t measured in how fertile or otherwise a woman was, but instead in the other things she could bring to a relationship. The things that apparently hadn’t been enough for Kyle. Hot tears stained her cheeks as, later, she lay unmoving on the bed, waiting for sleep to claim her and give her surcease from the painful truth.

  Nine

  The night sounds from the city outside did little to soothe Lana’s tumbling thoughts. Eventually she gave up her attempt at sleep, and decided to see if she could find something to read in the main lounge. She dragged on the matching sea foam coloured peignoir to her sheer nightgown more out of habit than out of any practical need to cover herself. Raffaele would be long since in bed. The toll his time with his sister was taking on him was visible in every line on his face and the emptiness in his eyes when he returned each evening. Tonight’s fiasco with the paper had struck an even deeper cast of weariness about his features.

  Lana tied the belt of her wrap tight at her waist and opened her bedroom door. A light still burned in the sitting room and she stilled in the doorway to her room when she recognised that the object of her thoughts was still very much awake. Dressed only in navy pyjama bottoms Raffaele looked up at her, a frown creasing his brow. Lana’s eyes were riveted on the expanse of muscular tanned shoulders and his broad chest, which was dusted with a light coating of dark hair that fined and trailed to the centre of his flat abdomen, and below.

  “Is there a problem?” His voice sounded thick.

  Lana stilled in shock. Surely he hadn’t been crying? Not the indomitable Raffaele Rossellini. Throughout this whole ordeal he’d shown cool calculating control or individually targeted anger—never sorrow, never weakness.

  “I—I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m sorry.”

  “You do not disturb me. I cannot sleep.” He lifted a hand to wipe his eyes and turned his head from her, away from the light.

  He had been crying. Lana didn’t know what to do. Her instincts wanted to drive her into the room, to stroke her hands over his cheeks and remove the silver tracing of moisture she’d glimpsed there. But she remained where she was. Raffaele would never accept comfort from her. Clearly he wanted to be alone.

  “I should go back to bed.” She turned to go back to her room.

  “No. Please. Sit with me a while. It is obvious you cannot sleep either.”

  On legs that suddenly felt as weak as water, Lana crossed the room and sat where he indicated. Next to him on the wide sofa.

  “What troubles you now, Lana? Why do you not sleep?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, knowing it was a lie. The discomfort that had slowly ignited in her earlier tonight had reached the stage where it could no longer be ignored. Her self-esteem had taken one battering straight after another over the past week and a half. She needed—her heart began to race—she needed to reaffirm herself as a woman. As a desirable woman.

  She started as Raffaele’s hand lifted and he trailed a long warm finger down her cheek to her jaw line.

  “I think you know what troubles you.” His voice dropped an octave. “I also think you do not wish to talk.”

  She nodded in silence, her eyes linked with his. His long thick lashes, still slightly damp, framed dark grey eyes—eyes that held her enthralled with the sudden flare of desire that grew within them. A shiver of anticipation ran the length of her spine, making her body straighten, her breasts thrust out ever so slightly.

  His finger traced the edge of her jaw before following the corded line of her throat and lower until it reached the edge of her wrap.

  “I do not want to talk either.” Raffaele leaned closer until she could feel his breath against her skin.

  The air in her lungs dried. Every nerve in her body focussed on the trail of heat his finger left in its wake as he slowly eased aside the edge of the flimsy fabric and exposed the spaghetti strap of her nightgown. A tight curl of need spiralled low and deep in her belly. A tiny sigh escaped her lips only to be caught against the heat of his mouth, his tongue. She felt the tremor that spread through him as his hand slid across her skin and under the bodice of her gown to cup her breast. Her nipple beaded tight, the sensation bordering on the pleasure-pain of intense desire.

  She felt the sash at her waist loosen and fall away, the peignoir followed, dropping off her shoulders and down, imprisoning her arms at her sides in its silken folds. Ra
ffaele brushed his thumb over her taut aureole, circling the rigid point and sending darts of pleasure deep inside to her core, then lifted both his hands to her shoulders. Slowly he eased the thin ribbons of fabric over the soft curve of her shoulder. The bodice of her nightgown fell away with the merest brush of his hand.

  Raffaele tore his lips from hers and murmured in Italian, something soft and low that Lana couldn’t understand. His eyes darkened as he looked at her—a long slow appraisal of her face, her throat, her breasts. For a moment she felt self-conscious, and started to move—to gather up the fabric to hide herself again. Kyle had been her first and only lover. This was frightening new territory for her. But the look, the appreciation, in Raffaele’s eyes made her hesitate.

  “Ti desidero. I want you, Lana. Be very certain of your reply because I will only ask this once. Will you make love with me tonight? Just tonight. I need you.”

  The plea in his voice was her undoing and her strength at the same time. This strong influential man wanted her. Her. In itself it was a powerful aphrodisiac, but the sensations he aroused in her were her affirmation. In answer she leaned forward, feathering light kisses across his forehead, his cheekbone, until she reached the corner of his mouth. The taste of him was on her lips and she wanted more. Much more.

  She pressed her lips to his, and whispered, “Yes.”

  It was all he needed to hear. Raffaele stood in one fluid motion and scooped Lana’s delectable willing body into his arms. He was not prepared to sate the clawing overwhelming need to be with another person, to do what he wanted with her, on a couch in the sitting room. No, he wanted the comfort and expanse of his bed, the privacy of his room.

  The gentle golden light of the lamp in the sitting room cast long deep shadows in his bedroom as he laid Lana against the covers of his bed. She pulled her arms free of the sleeves of her wrap and raised them to him. For an instant he questioned the wisdom of his decision but the instant was fleeting, overwhelmed instead by the inferno of want that now drove him to seek comfort and diversion in her body.