One Night in... Milan

CHAPTER THREE

HE DID not move. He remained relaxed. His eyes told her absolutely nothing and his mouth held on to its smooth flat line.

So why did Rachel get the unnerving impression that he had already worked most of that out?

‘Elise has been out of the modelling scene for over five years now since—since she married Leo Savakis—’

‘And gave him a son.’

Rachel could only nod, pressing her lips together as she did so, because she knew without him adding that dry comment, how badly all of this reflected on Elise.

‘Leo is an …awesome guy,’ she continued. ‘He is the very hands-on head of the Savakis shipping empire as well as being a respected international lawyer, expert in British, Greek and American corporate law—’

‘Skip the CV. I know about Leo Savakis,’ he coolly cut in.

Of course he would know about Leo. Most people who moved in high business circles would have heard about her brother-in-law’s remarkable career.

‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ drawled this high mover—in the business world at least.

‘S-sometimes Elise feels—neglected.’

‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘So I am to get the sob story before you lurch into the ugly part.’

‘Don’t mock what you have never suffered, Mr Villani!’ Rachel flared up in her sister’s defence. ‘When you’ve gone from being the face on every glossy magazine to a stay-at-home wife and mother with no identity to call your own, then you might begin to understand!’

He didn’t even bother to respond to that heated outburst. ‘So she feels—neglected …’ he prompted instead.

‘And lonely.’ Once again Rachel steadied her breathing. ‘When Leo works abroad he prefers Elise to stay put in London or on his island in Greece. He says it’s all to do with security,’ she explained. ‘He’s made enemies in his line of work and … ‘

‘Naturally feels the need to protect his wife and his son.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Rachel flashed.

He raised a black satin eyebrow. ‘Are you working in defence of Mr Savakis here or his poor neglected wife?’

‘Both,’ Rachel declared loyally. ‘I like Leo …’

But she wouldn’t want him as a husband, she added silently. He was too overwhelmingly unreadable and dauntingly self-controlled. He adored Elise though, she was certain of it. It was just that …

‘He’s been virtually living in Chicago for the last twelve months, working on a high-profile case that only allows him back home for the occasional flying visit.’

‘Hence poor Elise feeling lonely and neglected—’

‘If you don’t stop being nasty about her, I’m going to leave!’

He shifted his shoulders against the black leather, then moved his legs, bending them out of their lazy sprawl so he could rest one ankle on the other knee. Rachel’s eyes were drawn to the lean bowl between his hipbones where the expensive black fabric of his trousers sat easily against—

Oh, please, someone help me! she thought despairingly and wanted to run away again.

He moved a hand next, lifting it up so he could stroke a long finger across the flat line of his lips. Above the stroking finger, his grey-green eyes feathered a ponderous look over her in a way that further fanned the sexual charge.

Did all Italian men have an ability to seduce just by using body language, or was it just her misfortune that they affected her like this?

Disturbed by the whole hectic physical war going on here, Rachel put some distance between them by walking across the room to stand staring out of one of the huge plate glass windows. London—the River Thames, Westminster and Tower Bridge—lay spanned out before her in a familiar night scene.

Behind her his silent study pin-pricked her spine.

He had not even bothered to challenge her threat to leave. It was as if he knew she was becoming more and more trapped here by the sexual pull and he was enjoying feeding it.

One of the friends she’d made during her stay in Naples had once claimed that Italian men could seduce you and make you feel wonderful about falling in love with them without so much as considering falling in love themselves. It was the Italian way. Apparently you were supposed to feel blessed that they’d bothered to notice you at all.

Because they were conceited and arrogant by nature, so confident in their prowess as mighty lovers, that the sugGesùon that they might not assuage your every sexual fantasy never entered their minds or their beds. Such an uncrushable self-belief was seductive in itself. Rachel had fallen for it with Alonso. Now here she was, feeling the pull again and with a much more dangerous beast than Alonso ever had been.

It was time to put it to death, she told herself.

Turning from the window, she looked back at him. ‘Leo knows about your affair with Elise,’ she announced.

And saw death happen to sexual promise as he flicked those eyes into sharp focus on her face.

‘He was sent photographs of the two of you together in a restaurant here in London, then later being very intimate on a dance floor,’ she pushed on.

His tight curse brought him to his feet.

‘Elise got upset—’

‘Naturally,’ he gritted.

Rachel bit down hard on her lower lip. ‘She denied everything, which was a bit stupid when Leo was standing there with the photographic evidence,’ she allowed. ‘F-fortunately the photos were dark and very grainy and she insisted that the blonde in them could be anyone.’

‘She lied, in other words.’

‘Wouldn’t you have done in her place?’

His dark head went back. ‘If I was so miserable in my marriage that I needed to look elsewhere for—company, I would be man enough to say so before the event!’

‘Well, good for you, Mr Villani,’ Rachel commended. ‘It must be really great to be so sure of yourself that you know what you would do in any given situation! Well, Elise lied,’ she stressed. ‘And, right off the top of her head, she suggested that the woman in the photos could even be me. Leo wasn’t impressed—I don’t normally look or dress like this, you see—’

He flicked her a cynical look. Another liar in the family, then.’

‘Yes,’ Rachel sighed, seeing no use in denying it. ‘I had been staying with Elise in London for a while to—to keep her company while Leo was away. She was so low and depressed I encouraged her to go out with an old f-friend from her modelling days and—and enjoy life a bit instead of moping around the house waiting for …’ She stopped, shutting the rest of that away where it belonged.

By his expression she knew he knew what she meant.

‘Anyway,’ she went on after a moment. ‘She took me up on the offer and really started to cheer up and be her old self! But I had no idea she was out there enjoying herself with another man … ‘

‘Oh, call it as it is, cara, we had the hots for each other.’

‘You don’t need to be so crude about it!’ she said heatedly.

‘What happened next?’ He was striding across the room towards the brandy bottle to replenish his empty glass and there was nothing languid in his movements now.

‘Elise told Leo that I had been seeing someone while I was staying with her …’

‘A someone who just happened to be me—?’ Brandy splashed into the glass.

Rachel watched it and mentally crossed her fingers and hoped he had the steady head for it. ‘She was fighting for her marriage.’

He swallowed the drink. ‘So did Savakis call you up to demand confirmation and you lied to him for your sister’s sake?’

‘Leo didn’t do anything.’ Ignoring his sarcasm, she kept strictly to the point. ‘Instead he chose to let the subject drop.’

‘Generous man,’ he drawled. ‘Or a sadly besotted one.’

The idea of Leo being either generous or besotted was so alien to Rachel that she had to stop and think about it and still couldn’t get either scenario to fit the Leo she knew.

‘Things have been—strained between the two of them ever since, and now …’ Rachel gathered herself in before she revealed the next bit. ‘Elise has just found out that she’s pregnant.’

Raffaelle responded to this with an abrupt stiffening of his long body. The glass clenched between his fingers, he turned a narrowed look on her face.

‘Do go on,’ he invited softly.

Rachel wished she didn’t have to go on but she knew that she did. ‘W-with the timing and—everything, there’s a big chance that Leo might not believe the baby is his.’

‘You mean he does not know about it yet?’

‘Not yet,’ Rachel murmured.

‘And is it his baby?’

‘Yes!’ she cried out. ‘Unless you are wondering if it might be your baby?’ she then could not resist hitting back.

‘I know it isn’t.’ His mouth was as hard now as his eyes were like ice.

Rachel shivered. ‘It’s Leo’s baby,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Conceived during one of his flying visits home. He’d only been there one night when he was telling Elise over the breakfast table that he was flying back to Chicago the next day. S-so she rebelled at his arrogant assumption that he could just fly in and—’ The rest was cut off and smothered. But once again she knew that he knew what she was getting at. ‘So Elise decided to punish him by telling him she had started her period and so was off limits … ‘

Because, as Elise had said, if Leo thought he could fly in just to ease his libido, then he could go back to Chicago and to libido hell!

‘Dio,’ Raffaelle muttered. ‘The sly machinations of a selfish woman never cease to impress me.’

‘Nor am I impressed by the casual attitude of a man on the hunt for sex!’

‘Was that remark aimed at me?’ he demanded.

‘Does it fit?’ Rachel lanced back. ‘Did you or did you not hit on my sister because you fancied your chances in her bed?’

Guilty as charged. His teeth came together. ‘I did not know that she was married,’ he declared stiffly.

‘And that’s your excuse?’ Rachel denounced. ‘Why didn’t you know she was married?’ she demanded. ‘She was a famous exmodel, for goodness’ sake! Her face used to be seen everywhere. Her marriage made the front pages of every glossy there is!’

‘Does she look like the famous model any more?’ he hit back. ‘You know she does not! She carries more weight now and her face has altered. And she did not exactly go out of her way to tell me who she was!’

‘What did she do then—pretend to be Catwoman, complete with rubber mask?’

Rachel saw him make a grab at his temper. ‘She used a different name,’ he said.

A different name—? That was one small detail Elise had left out of her account of her reckless rebellion against Leo.

‘What name—?’ She frowned at him.

He looked at her, then dared to laugh, though it wasn’t a very pleasant-sounding laugh. ‘Does—Rachel Carmichael mean much to you?’

Rachel suddenly needed to sit down again. Walking on trembling legs to the nearest sofa, she sank into its soft black leather and put the glass to her equally trembling mouth.

‘I see you recognise the name,’ he drawled hatefully.

‘Shut up!’ she whipped back; she was trying to think.

The devious witch, the calculating madam! She’d gone out there on the town stuffed full of rebellion, using her name as a cover-up, while insisting that Leo’s precious security guards remained at the house to guard her son!

‘No wonder Mark dragged me back here,’ she mumbled.

‘Who the hell is Mark?’ Raffaelle Villani rapped out.

‘My half-brother—the one with the camera,’ she enlightened.

‘You mean you are related to one of the paparazzi?’

Rachel shifted uncomfortably. ‘Mark and Elise are twins.’

He didn’t bother to say anything to that, but just stood there glaring into space. The atmosphere was pretty much too thick to breathe now and Rachel was wishing she was wearing armour plating because she had a horrible feeling she was going to need it soon.

‘From where?’ he demanded suddenly.

Looking up at him, she just blinked.

‘You said that your brother dragged you back,’ he enlightened her. ‘From where—?’

‘Oh—Devon,’ Rachel responded. ‘I work there on the family farm—organic,’ she added for no reason she could think of.

His raking scan of her was downright incredulous. ‘You … are a farmer?’

Her chin shot up. ‘What’s the matter with that, Mr Villani?’ she challenged. ‘Does it bruise your precious ego to know you’re about to be intimately linked to a poor farming girl instead of some rich chick with a three-hundred-year-old pedigree—?’

Silence clattered—no, it thundered down as both of them realised at the same time what it was she had just said.

‘“Intimately linked—?”’ he fed into that rumbling thunder.

Rachel bit down hard on her bottom lip to stop it from quivering. The thickened air in the room began to curdle—or was it the vodka she wasn’t used to drinking that was beginning to make her feel slightly sick?

‘Explain that,’ he raked out.

‘I w-will in a minute,’ she whispered. ‘I just need to—get my head together to …’ say what still had not been said.

Abandoning what was left of the glass of vodka and her bag to the floor at her feet, she made herself stand up again, preferring to meet what was about to come back at her from an upright position with her hands free rather than have him loom over her like a threatening thunderclap.

Why did he have to be so intimidatingly tall and big?

She found herself sending him a plea for understanding with her eyes as she lurched back into speech. ‘Elise provided this d-dress and the invitation to the charity thing tonight,’ she explained. ‘Then she was packed off to Chicago with her son this afternoon f-for a surprise visit to Leo, while Mark and I … ‘

‘Set up the sting on me?’

Pressing her lips together, she nodded, deciding not to object to the latest label he’d hung on them because it was the truth, and there was still more to come.

‘Tomorrow morning you and I will appear together in a Sunday tabloid—’

‘Saying what—?’ he bit out.

Oh, God, she groaned silently. ‘S-something like—Raffaelle Villani goes public with his latest w-woman …’

Having to really bite down hard on her bottom lip now, Rachel searched the hard angles of his face for a small sign that he wasn’t into murder—but she didn’t see it.

‘It was important to convince Leo that the woman in the photographs he has in his possession and the one who will appear in tomorrow’s paper are the same person and cannot be Elise if she is in Chicago with him!’

And that was the bottom line.

Suddenly he was a tall dark stranger standing there. A man so cold and so very still it was as if he had pulled on the same awesome cloak of implacability that Leo always wore.

The silence gnawed. So did the heightened tension which began sapping the defences that had kept Rachel going through all of this.

‘It should have ended there,’ she pushed into the taut atmosphere. ‘If you had behaved as predicted and let me get away from you, I would have disappeared back to Devon and tomorrow’s tabloid spread would have become Monday’s bin liner—over and forgotten about—and my sister’s marriage would have been safe!’

It was the way it worked, Mark had said. Raffaelle Villani would have no case to deny. He might bluster and demand a retraction from the paper but that would be all he could do. Elise’s name would not be mentioned by Mark and other than Leo receiving hard evidence that his wife was not the woman in the grainy photographs with Raffaelle Villani, everything else would just—go away.

But this man had not reacted as predicted. He’d grabbed and held on to her. And the pap-pack had caught their scent. Now she was stuck here in his apartment with the pack no doubt waiting outside ready to pounce on her the moment that she tried to leave.

And where was her darling quick thinking half-brother? Putting his twin’s needs first, as he always did.

Now Rachel hadn’t a clue as to where it was all going to go from here except—

It was time to beg, she recognised starkly. Time to appeal to one very cold and angry Raffaelle Villani for his understanding and co-operation, when deep down she knew they deserved neither.

She moved towards him. ‘Mr Villani,’ she murmured huskily, ‘please, just think about it. I was actually doing you a favour too tonight because if Leo—’

‘What the hell is—this?’

Rachel hadn’t realised she’d lifted a hand out towards him in appeal until his long fingers were suddenly clamped around her wrist.

‘W-what—?’ she said jerkily.

Grim mouth flattening, he lifted up her hand until her fingers dangled in front of her confused face. She had to blink twice to focus on the diamond-encrusted sapphire ring twinkling back at her.

‘Oh,’ she said and swallowed. She’d forgotten all about the ring.

‘You are betrothed—?’ he enquired with blistering thinness.

‘N-no.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘It—it’s nothing; the ring is a f-fake, just w-window-dressing.’

‘Window-dressing,’ he repeated.

‘Part of the look …’ She was beginning to squirm inside again. ‘Leo needed to see it if he was going to … ‘

‘Believe you were not his wife?’

She nodded, then swallowed again. ‘Elise’s engagement ring is a big single yellow diamond. Th-this one is so glaringly different that it …’

Her voice trailed away, the hiss of his breath making it do so because she knew he had caught on.

‘So, let me see if I have this clear,’ he said grimly. ‘You dressed yourself up to look like your half-sister—from behind, then you threw yourself at my neck, kissing me as if I am your …?’

He wanted her to say it. Her heart began thumping. He was going to make her confess the final full duplicity.

‘L-lover,’ she breathed.

‘Betrothedlover?’ His voice was getting softer by the second.

Rachel licked her lips and nodded.

‘And I was not supposed to issue an instant denial about this?’

‘Th-there’s a letter going to be h-hand-delivered here to you tomorrow along with the relevant newspaper,’ she told him shakily. ‘The letter will explain everything we have talked about and point out to you that to expose the photograph as a lie will leave you open to questions about wh-whose baby it is Elise is carrying.’

‘Madre de Dio,’ he breathed. ‘You are truly devious.’

He was right and she was, but—‘This is serious, Mr Villani!’ she cried out. ‘You don’t know Leo! He’s one hell of a strict Greek! He’s also an absolute killer expert on law! If he decides that his wife has been cheating on him with you and could be having your baby … for all your wealth and power, he will drag you to the courtroom and through the gutters along with Elise!’

He threw her hand away. ‘I never touched her—!’ he bit out angrily.

‘Even this very trusting sister can’t believe that!’

Her denunciation bounced off the walls and the sheets of plate glass while the air sizzled with his undiluted rage.

‘One kiss, Mr Villani,’ Rachel stressed urgently. ‘One small kiss stolen from the wife of Leo Savakis and he will never forgive her, and you will find yourself stuck with the worst kind of enemy there is!’

He just turned and walked off, striding across the expanse of wood flooring and out through the door.

Rachel followed, quivering, shaken to the roots because it was only now, when faced with what this all meant to him, that she was beginning to realise how none of them had given much thought to how unfairly they were treating him in all of this.

She hurried after him. ‘I’m so sorry …’

The husky quaver of her apology fell on stony ground. It had been such a useless thing to say anyway, so she didn’t blame him for the filthy comment he threw back at her, as one of his arms flew out with an angry hand attached to it, which hit open another door to allow him to keep walking without altering his angry stride.

Rachel found herself coming to a trembling halt in yet another doorway. This one opened on to a shiny black and white kitchen and he was standing by a huge black mirror fronted fridge. One of the doors was swinging open, but by the way he was just staring Rachel received the pained impression that he didn’t know what it was he was staring into.

‘Please believe me when I say I did try to explain it all to you earlier—at the charity thing!’ she tried again—frantically. ‘I insisted to Mark that we should at least attempt to get your understanding and cooperation but …’ she sucked in a breath ‘ …you wouldn’t give me the chance to speak and then the whole thing j-just ran out of control!’

He slammed the fridge door shut and turned to face her. If her trembling legs would have let her, Rachel knew she would be running by now.

But—look at him, she told herself helplessly as he began striding towards her. He was so gloriously magnificent in his anger, his face muscles stretched tight across his amazing bone structure and his torso pumped up like a warrior about to begin a slaying-fest.

He reached for her.

She quivered. ‘Y-you—’

He shut her up with his hard hot mouth to mouth that totally blacked out her brain. When he let her up for air again she was dizzy and disorientated, in no fit state to find herself being dragged by the hand down the hallway then out of the door to the lift.

His free hand stabbed the call button. Bright balls of panic spun in her head. He was going to throw her out. He was going to hand her to the wolves out there and—

‘Please don’t do this,’ she begged him on the very—very edge of tears now.

He pulled her into the lift. They rode down with him standing there in front of her, with her wrist still his prisoner and the rest of her pinned against the lift wall by the steely glitter in his eyes.

‘Think about it,’ she begged unsteadily. ‘You don’t want to—’

He swooped and cut the words off the ruthless way, with another open mouthed onslaught that lost her the will to even stand.

But she had to stand. She had to follow where he pulled as they left the lift and crossed the foyer with a curious security guard looking on. Then a hard hand pushed open the main doors and Rachel lost the next few seconds beneath the glare of flashing flickering lights and the pandemonium of questions that burst out.

His arm was around her shoulders now, hugging her to him and keeping her upright.

‘Smile,’ he hissed and she smiled like an alien.

Then the words came, those low, smooth accented tones dryly confirming that no, as they could see, she was not Elise. She was in fact Elise’s beautiful half-sister, Rachel Carmichael.

Then he let drop the big one, by calmly inviting their congratulations because they had just become engaged to be married.

The fake ring was displayed on her finger for the pack to snap to their greedy hearts’ content.

How long had they known each other? Where had they met?

He answered all the questions with the relaxed humour of one who had all the answers, since he was merely duplicating facts from his short affair with Elise.

Breathing took on a shallow necessity aimed to maintain the fragile beat of her heart. The rest was a haze, a fog of nothing in which she must have performed well because no one suggested she was about to pass out or, worse, that she looked more like a horrified prisoner being hauled to the gallows than a happily betrothed future bride.

‘Now you have what you came for would it be possible that you can do us a favour and leave us in peace?’

So lightly requested, so full of lazy charm. The pack laughed. He turned her within the iron grip of his arm. Silence hit with a deafening force as the doors closed with them back inside.

‘Congratulations, Mr Villani, Miss Carmichael,’ the eavesdropping security guard said with a grin.

If the man holding her clamped to his side said anything in response then Rachel didn’t hear it. She was too busy trying to decide if she was dizzy with relief because he hadn’t thrown her out there to face the paparazzi alone, or if she was dizzy with fear over what was still to come.

They travelled back up in the lift. She was in shock. She had been totally incapacitated by a man locked into his own agenda. An agenda that involved him seizing control of a situation they—she had taken away from him.

His apartment door closed behind them. Rachel shivered. And still the ordeal did not end there. The arm propelled her down the hall and in through another door. It closed with a quiet deathly click and only then did she manage to find the strength to break free.

She had moved three shaky steps before it hit her that this was a bedroom. A very male bedroom with very masculine items scattered around it and a very large bed standing out like a threat, with its very dark plum-coloured linen upon which it was too easy to imprint the solid frame of a dark-haired honey-skinned man.

She turned. He was still by the door and watching her. Not one small gram of anger had softened from his face. Her skin gave a fizz of alarm-cum-excitement because, even in anger, the way he was looking at her was stripping her bare to her quivering skin.

‘Why—?’ she breathed.

‘You wanted my co-operation and you have had it,’ he answered. ‘Now I want what I want, and you, Miss Carmichael, are about to pay your dues.’

He started closing the gap between them.

‘No.’ Rachel shook her head and began backing away. ‘I won’t let you do this.’

‘Oh come on, mi amore,’ he taunted coldly. ‘We are betrothed to be married. You wear my ring on your finger and my impeccably mannered family is going to try not to be shocked that my bride is wearing farmers’ boots to her wedding and straw to decorate her hair.’

‘Very funny,’ she muttered, looking about her for an escape.

‘They will tread daintily between organic lettuce and—’

‘Will you just stop this!’ His words might taunt but the rest was now getting scary. ‘Look,’ she said quickly. ‘I know you are angry—and I know that you have every right to be.’

‘Grazie.’

‘Oh, God,’ she choked as his hands closed around her waist and the shock of feeling them there again lit up her skin. ‘I’m sorry about everything, okay?’

His dark head began to lower. Rachel tried to arch away.

‘Your heart is racing.’

‘Because you’re frightening me!’

‘Or exciting you.’

No, frightening—-frightening me! Rachel repeated—though only inside her head where a strange tumbling darkness was gathering, closing around her like a cold mist that began to take her legs from beneath her and brought forth a string of soft tight curses as she began to go limp.