The Italian's Future Bride (6 page)

 ‘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 afarmer ?’

 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 andcannot 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, MrVillani!’ 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 havingyour 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 tohim , 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 didtry to explain it all to you earlier—at the charity thing!’ she tried again—frantically. ‘Iinsisted 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—shehad 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.’