by Alison Kent
‘Due to your seduction of me,’ he put in.
Cheeks flushing, she ignored that. ‘You’ve been leading me around by the nose and I don’t know why I’m letting you do it!’
‘Because you want to?’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, because he was so right. She almost stamped her foot in angry frustration. She retreated to the bathroom instead.
When she came out again, wearing one of the soft bathrobes that always hung behind the door, she found him waiting for her—dangling her flimsy white lace panties from his fingers like a taunt.
‘I kept these,’ he said, ‘because you knowing I had them added an excruciating kind of tension to the rest of our journey. And I wanted to keep us both up there on a sexual high until I could get you alone.’
Nina snatched them away from him, so full of tumbling conflictions she didn’t know whether to laugh at his audacity or just break down and cry.
‘A few days ago you were still the only woman I wanted near me,’ he continued. ‘Twelve hours ago our marriage was in a mess, but salvageable—thank God. I had no wish to humiliate you and I did not seduce you. We made love,’ he declared, ‘because we both badly needed to, and I uprooted you from Sicily to offset a fight with your grandfather until he learns the truth, and because you were in danger of being swallowed up by that cold, empty shell of a house!’
Her sharp gasp at that last part had him muttering something, but did not stop him from going on. ‘Marisia is not and never has been my lover. I did not break any code of marital ethics by bringing her to stay here for the night.’
‘So if I brought Fredo to stay here overnight you would have no problem with it? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No I am not saying that.’ His mouth snapped together and he frowned.
‘Then stop expecting more of me than you can give back,’ she denounced. ‘Now, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed—to sleep,’ she added as a warning afterthought.
With that she stalked around him, walked up to the huge, deeply sprung divan bed, dropped her robe to the carpet like a defiance, then lifted a corner of the featherlight duvet and slipped between it and the cool cotton sheet.
If she’d expected a response then she did not get one. As she lay there shivering—the bed was cold and she was wearing nothing because her hastily packed suitcase still languished in the boot of the car—that other part of her—the part trembling with expectancy—withered when she heard the bathroom door quietly close.
He was taking his turn in the bathroom. Nina curled onto her side, closed her eyes, and grimly willed herself to fall asleep before he returned.
Surprisingly, it happened. One second she was deciding how she was going to freeze him out when he joined her in the bed, and the next moment she’d simply dropped like a stone into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
BY THE time Rafael approached the bed she was so deeply asleep that he found himself smiling ruefully as he slid in beside her. With a stealth aimed not to awaken her he drew her naked body into the curve of his, whispered, ‘Shh,’ when she murmured something, then reached out to touch a switch by the bed, plunging the room into darkness. Then he settled his head on the pillow beside her, closed his eyes, and at last dared to let himself relax.
Two hours later a grey winter dawn seeped slowly into the bedroom. Two hours after that neither of them had moved. Two hours on again the familiar feel of his hand gently stroking between her thighs plus the wet heat of his mouth tugging gently on one of her breasts brought her awake.
She opened her eyes to find harsh daylight softened by the curtains still drawn across the window. She was still for a few seconds, absorbing the sultry hush that lay over everything. Then blue eyes drifted down to where his head covered her breast. Dark hair tumbled like springy silk, and tanned shoulders were glossed by those natural oils which came during sleep to lubricate skin like stretched leather.
Lifting a hand, she let her fingers gently trail through his hair, making him raise his head, lips still parted and moist, eyes dark with desire as they clashed with hers.
‘Ciao,’ he greeted softly.
‘Ciao.’ She smiled.
The smile had its effect. ‘You still love me,’ he declared.
Why deny it? Nina thought. So, ‘Yes,’ she sighed, and received her reward in the warm crush of his mouth on hers.
Making love with Rafael in the morning had always been special. Nina thought it had something to do with him not yet having had the chance to pull on his sophisticated garb, so she got the real man—raw passions and all.
He liked to watch her melt; he liked to make her cling to him and plead and beg in a breathlessly sensuous voice. And when he came inside her he liked to make sure every inch of flesh possible enjoyed the experience at the same time. Arms wrapped around her and long legs tangled with hers, their bodies in touch from breast to hip and their mouths bonded as if they would never be able to break them apart.
He was everything her heart desired when he was like this—giving yet demanding, darkly passionate yet unbelievably willing to let her know how deeply she affected him.
At some point while he was stroking them towards the waiting turbulent climax the doorbell rang. If either heard it they dismissed it, because what was happening here was so much more important than anything else.
The first ripples of release began to shake her body, and his tongue caught her gasps of pleasure as he increased his stroke. Slow and deep, harder with each thrust. She clung with her hands to his neck and his back—to his solid calf muscles with the bare soles of her feet and curling toes. Then came the blinding rush of orgasm, the tight, tingling shots of electric pleasure, which flowed between them in the kind of fusing that turned two into a whole.
It was no use trying to move afterwards. No part of either of them was fit to move. He was heavy on her, yet she felt as if she was floating, and she never wanted to come down to earth again.
A light rap on the bedroom door warned of Parsons’s imminent arrival. With a muttered curse Rafael responded like lightning, by reaching out with a hand to grab hold of the duvet. The next thing Nina knew they were buried beneath it, and Rafael was still cursing as he covered her shocked face with kisses.
The door opened. A short silence prevailed. Nina felt the nervous urge to giggle, but that urge quickly died when the butler announced, ‘Mrs St James and Miss Marisia have arrived and are asking to see you, sir—madam…’
The door closed again. Another short silence arrived. Then Rafael was pushing back the all-enveloping duvet and launching himself off the bed. Nina shivered at the loss—not of the duvet but the man.
‘Stay here,’ he instructed angrily. ‘I will deal with this.’
‘Not this time.’ Nina was off the bed and stooping to pick up the bathrobe from the floor. ‘If Marisia is here to cause trouble then she will do it to my face.’
He paused on his way to the wardrobes, turned to utter a protest, then saw the stubborn look on her face. ‘You’re going out there looking like that?’ he asked as he watched her cinch the robe’s belt around her waist.
‘Why not?’ Her chin came up, her face still wearing the flush of loving but her eyes like blue glass again. ‘Does it bother you that she will guess what we’ve been doing in here?’
‘Dio,’ he rasped. ‘You still don’t believe me about her!’
‘You should not have brought her to this apartment,’ she said, turning away from the sheer beauty of this naked man, still aroused and angry with it.
‘If you wish to play it this way then so be it,’ he said, and diverted from the wardrobes to the bathroom. A second later he was pulling on a matching bathrobe and striding across the room in the other direction, to open the bedroom door.
His mocking bow invited her to precede him. Nina sailed past him with her chin in the air—only to find herself captured by a strong arm that curved her into his body.
‘One day,’ he murmured, ‘you are going to have to
concede you are wrong about me, and when that day comes I will expect a full apology—on my own very particular terms.’ Then he swept the two of them down the hall and into the sitting room.
The first thing to hit Nina was the delicious smell of freshly made coffee; the next was the sight of her mother, standing staring out of the window, holding a cup and saucer in her hand. Louisa was wearing black today. Black wool suit and black silk shirt that looked very dramatic against the tense paleness showing on her face as she turned to look at them.
Marisia was sitting in one of the soft leather easy chairs. She was wearing black too, and also looked pale. She managed a brief glance upwards, then flushed and quickly looked down again.
‘This is an unexpected surprise,’ Rafael said lightly as he drew Nina forward. ‘The two of you must have been up with the birds to get here so early.’
‘We are sorry to have disturbed you,’ Louisa responded, with a contemptuous glance at the way they were dressed. ‘But it is one-thirty in the afternoon.’
‘So late?’ he quizzed. ‘We had not noticed. Did Gino frisk you for lethal weapons, by the way?
The taunt went home like its own lethal weapon. Louisa suddenly looked uncomfortable, and Marisia shot upright, seeming to only just notice their hastily donned bathrobes, dishevelled hair and bare feet. She blanched, then sent a pained, pale and pleading look towards Rafael.
‘We have intruded. I apologise,’ she said anxiously. ‘We should not have come—’
‘Speak for yourself, Marisia,’ Louisa said coolly. ‘And sit down again, before you fall down.’
It was a surprise to watch Marisia do exactly that, but it was the way she put a trembling hand to her lips that struck a chord in Nina that sent her forward to squat down in front of her cousin.
‘You’re feeling unwell, aren’t you?’ she said, recognising the signs, having experienced them for herself.
‘It was the sudden movement.’ Marisia wafted a hand over her mouth, then tried swallowing. ‘I will be all right in moment. I just need—’
‘To wait for the nausea to recede. I know,’ Nina put in. ‘Can we get you anything? A glass of water? Or would you like to lie down or—?’
‘Oh, please don’t be nice to me, Nina!’ Marisia protested painfully. ‘I did a terrible thing to you last night. I forgot about the baby you lost when I spoke out as I did. Rafael told me not to do it, but I thought—’
‘She thought she would be saved from my father’s wrath with all of us there,’ Louisa finished for her. ‘And ended up causing more trouble than she is actually worth—did you not, cara?’
‘You are a hard woman, Zia Louisa!’ Marisia cried.
‘If your mother was alive you would be confined to your room by now and not allowed to leave again for the next seven months!’
‘What do you know about being a mother?’ Nina snapped, shocking everyone by coming down on her cousin’s side. ‘You were never there for me!’
‘Well, I am here now,’ Louisa said, completely unfazed by the criticism. ‘Tell Nina the name of the man whose baby it is you are carrying, and let us get this over with.’
Rafael stiffened in readiness. Nina’s heart lodged like a brick in her throat.
Marisia swallowed thickly, ‘H-his name is not important,’ she said. ‘But I can tell you it is not Rafael.’
Nina sat back on her haunches. ‘But you said—’
‘I offered no name,’ Marisia insisted.
‘No.’ Louisa sighed suddenly. ‘I am afraid, cara, that was me.’
Bewildered, Nina stared from one face to the other. ‘I’m not following this…’
‘Then let me explain,’ her mother said, and came to put down her cup and saucer, then released another sigh and sat down herself.
‘You know I had seen them being very intense over a dinner table,’ she reminded Nina. ‘You also know that I followed them back here, and what I saw then.’
Rafael made himself comfortable on the arm of a chair and waited with interest for this to play itself out.
‘When Marisia said what she did last night I put two and two together and came up with—Rafael. You ran from the room and I wanted to kill someone. Rafael went after you and I told everyone that he was the father of Marisia’s child.’
‘I should have corrected her,’ Marisia put in. ‘But everyone was so busy shouting at each other that they seemed to have forgotten I was there, and I—preferred to keep it that way.’
‘Lovely child,’ Louisa derided her twin sister’s daughter. ‘What she means is that she took the coward’s way out and let Rafael take the heat.’
‘I did not think that Nonno would chase off to kill Rafael!’ Marisia said defensively. ‘We are supposed to live in the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake!’
‘He was defending your honour.’
‘He was defending Nina’s honour,’ Marisia threw back. ‘He’s always preferred her to me—’
‘No, he hasn’t,’ Nina denied. ‘He adores you. You are his beautiful dark-haired princess while I am—’
‘His golden-haired angel sent from heaven for him to cherish…’
The two cousins looked at each other, then actually laughed—because it was so typical of him to play one off against the other.
‘Glad you find all of this amusing, but I am still the man on his hit list,’ Rafael put in.
The three women turned to look at him, their expressions telling him that they’d completely forgotten he was even there.
‘My apologies,’ he mocked, ‘for butting in with my problems.’
Then he sent Nina the kind of smile that told her how much he was going to enjoy his apology later.
She looked away quickly, her cheeks growing warm. ‘I hope you haven’t come to London without telling Nonno the truth,’ she said sharply.
‘Of course not,’ her mother snapped. ‘To give Marisia her due, she told the truth as soon as the lynch mob arrived back without Rafael’s head on a stick.’
‘Better late than too late, I suppose,’ Rafael murmured dryly.
‘If I thought that you could not hold your own against a seventy-year-old man and his two middle-aged sons I would say you were not worth saving,’ his mother-in-law said. ‘And don’t think that because I was wrong about what I saw that I have forgiven you for the way you have been neglecting my daughter when she needed—’
‘All right—let’s not start another war,’ Nina cut in quickly. ‘I told you yesterday, Mother, that my marriage is none of your business.’
‘Grazie, cara,’ Rafael said.
‘I did not mean to imply that what she said was wrong!’ she flashed at him.
‘You have come alive again,’ Louisa observed.
‘I was not dead, just grieving.’ Nina came to her feet. ‘How is Nonno feeling now that he knows the truth?’ She brought this discussion firmly back on track.
‘Devastated,’ Louisa said. ‘He has convinced himself that he has forfeited your love.’
‘But that’s silly.’ Nina frowned.
‘Tell him that, not me. You left Sicily, darling. He has translated that into you leaving him.’
‘Rafael…’ Nina spun anxiously to look at him. ‘I don’t want him to feel…’
He had straightened and taken her in his arms before she had a chance to finish the sentence. ‘We can deal with him later,’ he assured her, then a pair of warm lips brushed hers, and for a few glistening seconds Nina was not in the room.
‘Time for us to go, I think,’ Louisa said dryly, getting to her feet. Then she turned a wary look on her daughter. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Nina, but Marisia is coming to live with me here in London for a while—until she decides what it is she wants to do.’
‘With the baby?’ Nina turned her anxious look on her cousin next.
‘No,’ Marisia said, and the way her hands spread a protective cover over her abdomen said everything that needed to be said. ‘You were right, Rafael.’ She glanced at him. ‘I h
ave learned to love this baby. I just needed the extra time to realise it. I will bring it up alone, no matter what my family think or what sacrifices I will have to make.’
‘My offer still stands,’ he told her quietly.
What offer? Nina frowned at him. He ignored her questioning frown.
‘Thank you,’ Marisia murmured. ‘I will keep it in mind.’
‘What offer did you make to her?’ Nina demanded the moment they were alone again.
‘Marisia has discovered that she has a gift for picking out photogenic faces, so I offered to set her up with her own agency,’ he explained.
‘Right here in London?’
‘Or Paris—Milan.’ He shrugged.
‘Make it Milan,’ Nina said decisively. ‘It isn’t a city you visit that much.’
‘You really are a jealous witch,’ he drawled lazily.
‘She’s still in love with you—and don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about,’ she warned when he opened his mouth to speak. ‘Even sitting in that chair, feeling sick and worried for herself, she still had to keep throwing those coded glances at you!’
He laughed. It was infuriating.
The next thing she knew she was being scooped off her feet. A minute later she was naked and back in the tumbled bed, with an equally naked Rafael on top of her. What followed next was his idea of how she should apologise for not believing him…
Later—much later—he was in a lazy, playful mood, pressing light kisses in rows across the flat of her abdomen, ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Have we managed to make a baby yet, or do we need to try again?’
‘I don’t understand why you’ve changed you mind about children.’ Nina frowned. ‘I don’t mind, you know, if the idea really upsets you. I only needed you to explain it to me before I got pregnant. Not—’
