Mediterranean Mavericks

Manoeuvring them both inside, he kicked the door shut with a foot before peeling her off his front. She staggered dizzily. He walked away down a spacious hallway, then disappeared through another door.

She wanted to faint. She wished she could faint. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. Every inch of her body was still alive and buzzing with excitement and a shrill ringing was filling her head.

The ringing stopped abruptly and she blinked. Then she heard his voice ripping out words in sharp Italian and realised the sound had been coming from a phone. She caught Elise’s name and reality came tumbling over her like a giant snowball, dousing every bit of heat.

It took real willpower to make her trembling legs walk her down that hallway. But she needed to know what he was saying and to whom he was saying it.

The door was flung wide open on its hinges and she stilled in the opening, staring starkly across a spacious living room with wall-to-wall glass on one side and an expanse of warm wood covering the floor softened by a big creamy-coloured rug. Everything in here was clean-lined and modern. He was standing beside one of several black leather sofas that were carefully placed about the room.

His back was to her. He had a land line telephone clamped to his ear and his hair was still mussed. Her fingers tingled to remind her who had done the mussing. As she continued to stand there, he lifted up a set of long fingers and mussed it up some more.

‘Daniella—’ he snapped out, then stopped and sighed.

Whatever his stepsister said to him then made his voice alter, the snap going out of it and low, dark, soothing Italian arriving in its place, aimed to apologise and reassure.

Me too, please, Rachel wanted to beg. Reassure me too that this is all just a big nightmare.

But it wasn’t and her heart was still beating too fast. The low dark flow of his voice seemed to resonate directly from deep inside his chest before reaching the rolling caress of his tongue.

Oh, God. She put a set of trembling fingers up to cover her eyes. Did all Italian men have deep, sexy voices, or was it just that she had been unlucky enough to meet the only two that could do this to her?

Then an impatient ‘Daniella,’ arrived again. ‘Take my advice and call Gino. Take your bad temper out on him, for I am in no mood to hear this.’

He had switched to English. Rachel dropped her hand in time to watch his shoulders give a tight shrug.

‘If Elise upstaged you then count your blessings that she was more interesting to the cameras than you and your behaviour were five minutes before!’

Elise…Rachel tensed as a sudden thought hit her. If Raffaelle’s stepsister had been fooled tonight into believing she was Elise, then maybe, between them, she and Mark had managed to pull this off!

Rafaelle’s voice returned to smooth Italian. Rachel listened intently for the sound of Elise’s name being spoken again but it did not happen. A few seconds later he was finishing the call.

Raffaelle put the phone down, then flexed his wide shoulders. He could feel her standing somewhere behind him but he did not want to turn around and find out where.

He did not want to look at her.

He did not know what the hell she was doing to him!

With an impatient yank he undid his bow tie, shifted his stance to angle his body towards the drinks cabinet, then plucked with hard fingers at the top button of his dress shirt as he strode across the room. His jacket came next. He lost it to the back of a sofa. The silence screamed across the gap separating them as he flipped open the cabinet doors and reached for the brandy bottle.

‘Drink—?’ he offered.

‘No thank you,’ she huskily declined.

Husky did it. He felt that low sensual voice reach right down inside him and give a hard tug on his loins.

‘Keeping a clear head?’ he mocked tightly.

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

Pouring a brandy for himself, he turned with the glass in his hand. She was standing in the doorway in her turquoise dress, with her arms held tensely to her sides. Her hands were gripping the black beaded bag she had tried to hit him with in the lift and her blue eyes were telling him that she was scared.

Some might say that she had asked for everything that was happening to her but Raffaelle was reluctantly prepared to admit that he had been behaving little better than a thug.

He took a sip of his drink, grimly aware that what had broken free in the lift was still busy inside him. He wanted her. He did not know why he wanted her. He’d been tempted by sirens far more adept at their craft than she was without feeling the slightest inclination to give in.

Yet he did—want to give in. In fact the want was now a low-down burning ache in his gut.

She wasn’t even what he would call beautiful. Not in the classic Elise-sleek-catwalk-fashion-sense, that was. There again, neither had Elise been catwalk-sleek by the time he’d met her. And this woman’s face did not possess the same striking bone structure that Elise had been endowed with. The eyes were the same blue but the nose was different—and the mouth.

The mouth…

Lifting the glass to his lips, Raffaelle half hid his eyes as he studied the mouth, wiped clear of pink lipstick now and still softly swollen from their kiss in the lift. Elise’s mouth was a wide classic bow shape whereas this mouth was shaped more evocatively like a heart and was frankly lush. And Elise was taller, though he would hazard a guess the lost inches would not show on a photograph as this one had stretched up and plastered herself against his front.

The dress was expensive—you didn’t live most of your life around fashion conscious females without being able to pick out haute couture when you saw it. But it did not fit her. It was too tight in places, like across those two white breasts that were in danger of falling out of it, and it hugged the rounded shape of her slender hips like a second skin.

‘Turn round,’ he instructed.

She tensed in objection.

‘I am looking for your likeness to Elise,’ he informed her levelly. ‘So humour me and turn around…’

She did. Raffaelle grimaced because he would have been prepared to swear that right now she would rather spit in his face than comply with anything he wanted her to do. The passionate kiss in the lift coming hard on the back of the way she’d looked at him in the car had made her so uptight and defensive he could almost taste her hostility towards him even as she stood there with her back to him.

And that was just another thing about her. Elise might have been a damn good liar but she had not possessed a single spark of passion or spirit. She’d been quiet and surprisingly shy for someone who had earned her living sashaying along catwalks and posing for glossy magazines.

But that was thinking with hindsight, because he had not known who Elise really was at the time. And he was looking in the wrong place if he expected to find the very married exmodel’s nature in a woman who was definitely not her.

The back view did it, though. The back view with the straight hair and the narrow shoulders and tight backside told him exactly why this woman believed she could get away with pretending to be Elise from that angle.

‘Had enough?’ She spun back to face him so she could fix him with an icy stare.

It made him want to grimace, because if she was allowing herself to believe that such an expression was going to hold him back she was sadly mistaken. Despite the frost, she’d switched him on and now, he discovered, he was not feeling inclined to switch himself off again.

In fact he was beginning to enjoy the sexual sting that was passing between them.

The way he was standing there with his glass in his hand and his eyes half hidden, he reminded Rachel of a long, lean jungle cat lazily planning the moment when it would pounce.

Still dangerous, in other words.

The loss of his jacket wasn’t helping. The bright white of his shirt only made his shoulders look wider and his torso longer and tougher, and the way his loosened bow tie lay in two strips of black either side of his open shirt collar kept on drawing her eyes to the triangle of golden skin at his throat.

Rachel’s throat went dry. Oh, please, she begged, will someone get me out of here—?

Because looking at him was recharging the sexual buzz. She could feel it moving through her blood in a slow and sluggishly threatening burn, scary yet exciting—like a war she was having to fight on two fronts.

‘Don’t you think it is time that you told me your name?’

Rachel tensed, her eyes flicking into focus on his face. Then a strained little laugh broke in her throat because it hadn’t occurred to her that he didn’t know who she was.

‘Rachel,’ she pushed out. ‘Rachel Carmichael.’

Something about him suddenly altered. For some unknown reason she felt as if the air circulating around him had gone as tense as a cracked whip. And the eyes—the eyes were not merely hooded now, they’d narrowed into sharp eyelash-framed slits.

‘Well, hello, Rachel Carmichael,’ he drawled in a very slow, lazy tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Now this has just become very interesting…’

‘Why has it?’ she asked warily.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down so we can talk about it?’

She had the impression that the jungle cat in him had just sharpened its teeth. Taut as a bow string and balanced right on the balls of her feet now, Rachel wondered if this would be a good time to try to make a run for it.

But the idea lasted for only a moment. He had not brought her up here to his apartment to let her get away before she had given him an explanation as to why she’d set him up tonight.

Making herself walk across the room took courage, especially when he watched her all the way as if she was performing some special provocative act designed purposely to keep his attention engaged.

Oh, God, did he have to look so sleekly at ease and so gorgeously interested?

Beginning to feel disturbingly hollow from the neck down, if she did not count the sparking sting making itself felt, Rachel picked one of the black sofas at random and sat down right on its edge.

The skirt to her dress immediately rode upwards to reveal more slender thigh than was decent with a peek of her stocking lace tops. Unclipping her fingers from the death grip they had on her bag she gave a tug at the dress’s hem, only to notice to her horror that its bodice wasn’t doing much to keep her modesty covered, either.

And still he stood there watching her every single move, deliberately, she suspected, building on the sexual tension that was fizzing in the air. Her heart was pounding. She refused to look up. She wanted to swallow but would not allow herself the luxury of trying to shift the anxious lump lodged in her throat.

Then he moved and she jerked up her head, unable to stop the wary response, only to feel almost dizzy with embarrassment when she saw how he was looking at her.

‘I will have that drink now,’ she burst out, desperate for him to turn away so she could pull up the bodice of her dress without him watching.

One of those sleek black eyebrows arched in quizzing mockery at her abrupt change of mind about the drink. He knew what she was trying to do. It was scored into his eyes and his body language.

‘What would you like?’ he asked politely.

‘I don’t know—anything,’ she shook out.

He turned his back. Rachel feathered out a tense breath and hurriedly rearranged herself. In all her life she had never felt so out of sorts and out of place as she was feeling right now, sitting on this sofa, wearing this dress, with that man standing only a few feet away.

She was nobody’s luxury appendage—never had been. She’d always left that kind of thing to the more beautiful and capable Elise. Playing the role given to her tonight had been tough on her pride, from the moment she’d donned the whole image. And the only man she’d ever thrown herself at in her whole life before tonight had been Alonso, and, she recalled with a grimace, he’d been more or less crawling all over her by then anyway.

And Alonso hadn’t been rich. He’d just been a very junior car salesman with good lines in smart suits and a tiny apartment. He drove flashy cars but he didn’t own them, and he’d earned less money than she had earned picking fruit on a farm just outside Naples.

A glass appeared in front of her. Glancing up, she un-clipped one of her hands from her bag and took it with a mumbled, ‘Thanks,’ then sat staring at it wondering what the heck was in it?

‘Splash of vodka topped up with tonic,’ he provided the answer. ‘And it is not spiked with something lethal, if that is what the frown is about.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘Then you should,’ he intruded curtly. ‘You don’t know me, Rachel Carmichael. I might go in for drug-enhanced love-ins. How old are you, by the way?’

Rachel blinked. ‘Twenty-three. Why, what has my age got to do with anything?’

‘Just curious.’ He sat down right next to her sending her spine arching into a defensive stretch.

Raffaelle saw it happen and smiled. The air circulating around them was alive with an ever increasing sting of awareness. He could feel it. He knew that she could feel it. What he could not figure out was why it was there and what he was going to do about it.

Liar, the dry part of his brain fed back.

‘Okay…’ Relaxing into the sofa, he stretched out his long legs. ‘Now, start talking.’

Talking…Sending her tongue round her dry lips, Rachel looked down at the bag she was still clutching in one hand and made a small shift of her wrist so she could see the time on her watch.

It was just coming up to midnight. How long did Mark need to do his thing with his digital camera, write his accompanying piece, then file it with the newspaper via the Internet?

She looked at her bag with the comforting feel of her cellphone inside it, and wondered if she dared take it out and ring him to check?

Great idea, she then thought heavily. As if Raffaelle Villani was going to let her contact anyone until he had his explanation.

‘Sit back and relax,’ he invited.

What she did was stiffen up all the more. ‘I’m perfectly relaxed as I am, thank you.’

‘No, you are not. There is tension—here…’ A finger arrived in the naked taut hollow between her shoulders, sending her spine into another muscle splitting arch as if she’d been stung by an electric shock.

The sensation flung her, gasping to her feet. ‘That wasn’t—necessary,’ she protested.

‘You think not?’

‘No.’ Taking a few shaky steps away from him, she put the glass to her mouth and sipped while he watched her through half hidden eyes and a knowing smile on his lips.

‘We share chemistry, cara.’

Rachel laughed thickly. ‘That of kidnapper and victim.’

‘And who do you believe is the victim here—?’

Just like that, with one smooth question, he brought the whole madness which had made up this evening tumbling down to where it really belonged.

For which of them was the real victim? Certainly not her, she had to admit. He had every right to be angry. She had no right to be anything at all.

On the short sigh that quivered as it left her, Rachel finally took responsibility for her own misdemeanours. It was no use trying to pretend she was innocent when she wasn’t. Or to wish Raffaelle Villani a million miles away because he’d ruined all their plans when he had stopped her from getting away back there at the hotel.

He was right about the chemistry too. Just turning to look at his long, lean, relaxed sprawl, giving off all kinds of innate sexual messages, sent her insides into an instant tight spiral spin.

Then—okay, she told herself grimly, let’s keep this strictly to business, then maybe the—other—stuff will die a natural death.

On that stern piece of good common sense, she lifted her chin, pushed her eyes upwards to fix them on his face, then she steadied her breathing and plunged right in.

‘As I just told you, my name is Rachel Carmichael,’ she reminded him. ‘Elise is my half-sister. W-we had different fathers, hence the different surnames…’

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 suggestion 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.