Mediterranean Mavericks

‘You cannot be so blind.’

It was the way he said it that made Rachel look sharply at him. It had been hard and sardonic—tones that repeated themselves in the expression on his face.

‘Explain that,’ she demanded.

‘I meant nothing.’ He went to turn away.

‘Yes, you did!’ She caught hold of his arm. ‘And I want to know what you meant!’

He swung back to her, face hard, eyes angry. ‘Did you never think to question if your brother’s cronies would know who his twin is? Of course they knew—’he answered his own question ‘—which is why they came after us and called out Elise’s name. They saw you looking like her and him making his quick escape, then they saw a very contrived yet really juicy scandal brewing involving Elise, Leo Savakis and Raffaelle Villani in a gripping sex triangle. I can forgive you your naïvety, cara, if you are as shocked as you appear to be, but I will not forgive your stupid brother for not thinking this thing through and foreseeing the obvious outcome if I had not intervened!’

Rachel pulled out a chair and sat down on it. He was ohso-sickeningly right. And the worst of it was that he seemed to have worked all of it out within seconds of her explaining it all last night.

‘Now ask yourself how long you think it will take the press to sleuth out exactly who you are,’ he persisted. ‘And your fifteen minutes of fame becomes a roller coaster ride to hell and back while they dig into your past, with Leo Savakis waiting in the wings for you to fall off the rails and accidentally reveal it is all just a big ugly cover-up for his wife’s transgressions.’

‘You don’t have to say any more,’ Rachel whispered. ‘I get the full picture.’

‘Do you?’ he rasped. ‘Well, add this into the mix. Start running scared now and I will blow the whole lie sky high and damn your sister’s marriage. I can take the heat of the repercussions if she cannot!’

He walked out of the room, leaving Rachel alone to stew on what he’d said. It didn’t take long. He was right and she had been running scared when she’d made that bid to leave here and go back to Devon. But that had nothing to do with the lies, though they were bad enough. Her reasons did not even have anything to do with their stupid delving into unprotected sex!

It was to do with him and what he did to her. What he made her feel. If he could affect her this badly in only one night, then she was going to be an emotional wreck by the time it came to the end.

If it came to an end, she then amended, recalling that marriage warning he’d made.

Raffaelle was pacing his study wondering what was the matter with him. Why had he bitten her head off like that?

Because she wanted to go home to collect some clothes and organise her life, or because she still persisted in defending her selfish family?

Or was it because she’d mentioned a man down there in Devon? A neighbour she had not bothered to mention before…?

He did not know. He did not think he wanted to know. Something was happening here that scared him witless each time he came close to looking at it.

He heard her moving about then and went to see what she was doing now. He found her in the living room with her bag in her hand.

‘I—can’t find my phone,’ she said and she looked pale and defensive again.

‘The battery was flat. I put it on the charger in my study. I’ll go and get it…’Then he paused. ‘Who do you want to call?’

Irritation ripped down his backbone because he knew it was none of his business who she wanted to call. By the expression on her face, she thought the same thing.

Still, she answered him. ‘I will have to ring round a few people if I am not allowed to leave here—’

‘No.’ Raffaelle shook his head. ‘We will do it your way, only we both go and we will use my car instead of the train.’

‘But—’

‘Ten minutes,’ he said gruffly, turning away again. ‘And don’t keep me waiting. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get back.’

He drove them in a silver Ferrari with the same reckless efficiency he’d driven the night before. But then, his driving had had to be nifty when they’d met with the paparazzi waiting outside for them to leave. They’d picked the car up from the basement car park but the moment they’d emerged on to the street they’d been spotted and all hell had broken loose as camera-toting reporters fell over themselves to get into their cars and give chase.

‘I don’t understand why they’re still hanging around,’ Rachel said after they’d lost their pursuers in a sequence of dizzying turns down narrow back streets. She hadn’t dared speak before then in case she broke his concentration and they ended up hitting a wall. ‘What do they think we are going to do? Get married on the apartment steps or something?’

‘They don’t know enough about you.’ He sounded so grim that Rachel felt a cold little shiver chase down her spine.

‘I hate this,’ she whispered. ‘I hated it when I used to get caught up in it with Elise. I don’t know how you people live your lives like this.’

‘We live in a celebrity-driven world,’ he answered levelly. ‘The masses are greedy for the intimate details of the rich and famous—or, for that matter, anyone who lives a high profile life. You have now joined the celebrity ranks, so get used to it, because this is only the beginning of it.’

The beginning of it…

After that Rachel did not speak another word. They reached the motorway and suddenly the powerful car came into its own, eating up the miles with the luxurious smoothness that promised to cut the journey time by half.

He stopped once at a motorway service station, led her into the café and bought sandwiches and coffee.

‘Eat,’ he instructed, when she stared at the unappetizing-looking sandwich he’d placed in front of her. ‘You look like death and you have eaten nothing since you threw yourself at me last night.’

And I look like death because I hardly had any sleep last night, she threw back at him without saying the words out loud. Because out loud meant opening a Pandora’s box full of what they’d been doing instead of sleeping.

The indifferent-tasting sandwich was washed down by indifferent-tasting coffee. Rachel was surprised he ate his sandwich or drank the coffee. They just didn’t look like the kind of food this man would usually put anywhere near his mouth.

When they hit the road again he wanted to talk. ‘Tell me how your family works,’ he invited.

So she explained how her mother had lost her husband to a long-term illness while the twins had still been very young. ‘A few years later she married my father and then had me.’

‘So what is the age difference between you and the twins?’

‘Six years,’ she replied.

‘And who did the farm originally belong to?’

‘My father. But he—we—never differentiated between Mark and Elise and myself. And it isn’t really a farm,’ she then added because she thought she better had do before they arrived there and he saw it. ‘It’s what we call a smallholding, with three acres of land, a house, a couple of greenhouses and a couple of barns.’

‘Another lie, cara?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘It’s run like a farm.’

‘And the…neighbour that helps you out when you need it—what does he do?’

‘Jack owns the land adjoining our land—and his is a farm,’ she stressed. ‘He’s been good to us since our parents died.’

‘Call it as it is,’ Raffaelle said. ‘He has been good to you.’

Rachel turned to look at him. ‘Why that tone?’ she demanded.

His grimace stopped her from becoming hooked on watching his face. ‘I don’t think I want to elaborate,’ he confessed.

‘Suits me,’ she said and, turning the collar up on her coat, she leant further into the seat and closed her eyes.

His low laugh played along her nerve endings. ‘You are prickly, Miss Carmichael.’

‘And you are loathsome, Signor.’

‘Because I don’t mind saying that I dislike the way your siblings use you?’

‘No. You are loathsome simply because you are.’

‘In bed?’

Rachel didn’t answer.

‘You prefer, perhaps, this Jack in bed as your lover because he is so good to you.’

He was fishing. Rachel decided to let him. ‘Maybe.’ She smiled.

‘But can he make you fall apart with pleasure there as I can, or does he bring the smell of farmer to your bed, which you must overcome before he can overcome you?’

‘As I said. You’re loathsome.’

‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘However, when I said that I don’t sleep around I meant it, whereas you seemingly did not.’

Rachel turned her head and flicked her eyes open to look at him. Once a liar always a liar, she thought heavily when she saw the grimness lashed to his lean profile.

And a tease could only be a tease when the recipient knew he was being teased. Sitting further up the seat with a sigh, she pushed a hand through her curls and opened her mouth to tell him exactly who and what Jack was—when her attention was caught by a giant blue motorway sign.

‘Oh, heck,’ she gasped. ‘We need to take this next turn-off!’

With a startled flash of his eyes and a few muttered curses, he flipped the car across several motorway lanes with one eye on the rear-view mirror judging the pace of the traffic behind them and the other eye judging the spare stretch road in front of them. By the time they sailed safely down the slip road Jack’s name had been washed right out of Rachel’s head by an intoxicating mix of nerve-fraying terror for her life and the exhilarating thrill of the whole smooth, slick power-driven manoeuvre.

‘Which way?’ he demanded.

Rachel blinked and told him in a tense breath-stifled voice while her senses fizzed and popped in places they shouldn’t. What was it about men and danger that struck directly at the female sexual psyche?

He glanced at her and saw her expression and sent her a wide slashing masculine grin that lit her up inside like a flaming torch.

‘Scared, cara?’ he quizzed.

‘You—you—’

‘Had it all under control,’ he smoothly provided. ‘Which, in Italian terms, makes the difference between a mere good lover and a fabulous lover.’

Rachel knew exactly what he meant, which was the hardest thing to take. If he stopped the car now she would be crawling all over him in a hot and seething sexually needy flood.

It was everything—the powerful car and the reckless man and the adrenalin rush still singing through her blood. She tried to breathe slowly and lost it completely when he reached across to her and gently stroked her cheek. Static fire whipped across her skin cells, she whispered something and turned her head. Their eyes clashed. For a short, short split second in time it was like falling into a vat of writhing, hissing, snapping snakes.

He looked away. The smile had gone but the atmosphere inside the car had heightened beyond anything real. Rachel sat on her hands to stop them reaching for him and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening while he drove on with a sudden grim concentration that only made everything worse.

She gave directions in short, sharp, breathless little bursts of speech that only helped to increase the tension. He said nothing but just reacted with slick control of the car. They were both sitting forward in their seats. They were both staring fixedly directly ahead. She knew where this was going to end up just as he knew it. And the agony of knowing was as tough as the agony of having to sit here and wait.

At last—finally they turned into the private lane which led to the farm. Winter fields barely waking up to early spring spread out on either side of them, neatly ploughed and ready to sow. The old farmhouse stood in front of them, its rustic brick walls warmed by a weak sun. Flanking either side of it stood the adjoining barns and behind the house they could just see the greenhouse’s glass glinting in the weak sunlight.

In front was the cobbled yard where Rachel’s muddy old Jeep stood tucked in against a barn wall. On the other side stood another car, a Range Rover, making Rachel’s heart sink, though whether that was due to disappointment, because she knew what was buzzing between the two of them was about to be indefinitely postponed, or relief for the same reason, she refused to examine.

Raffaelle brought the car to a stop in the dead centre of the courtyard, killed the engine, then climbed out without uttering a word. Rachel was slower in moving, unsure if her stinging legs would hold her up if she tried to stand on them.

He couldn’t know what was coming and she didn’t know how to tell him. One glance at his face across the top of the car and she was almost bowled over by the strict control he was holding over himself.

His eyes were not under control, though. They looked back at her with a possessive glitter that showered her with sexual promise.

She parted her paper-dry lips. ‘Raffaelle—’ she began anxiously.

‘Let’s go inside and find a bed,’ he said huskily.

She quivered and swallowed, then heaved in a tense breath in preparation to speak again. The front door to the house suddenly swung inwards, snatching her attention away from him.

He looked where she was looking, shoes scraping on worn cobbles as he turned then went perfectly still.

A man stood in the open doorway—a tall, well-built, swarthy-looking man wearing brown cords and a fleece coat. He was also a man easily in his fifth decade, with eyes like ice that he pinned on Raffaelle.

‘Jack,’ Rachel murmured, feeling trouble brewing even before she saw Raffaelle tense up when she said Jack’s name.

Damn, why hadn’t she thought about this before she’d teased Raffaelle about her relationship to Jack?

And, oh dear, but Jack did not look pleased at all.

She hurried forward. Raffaelle stood frozen as he watched her walk straight into the other man’s arms. He was trying to decide whether to go over there and punch the bastard for taking advantage of a vulnerable young woman left alone here to cope on her own. Or to reclaim what now belonged to him, then tell him to get the hell out.

In the end it was the other man who took the initiative.

‘Jack…’ Rachel burst into nervous speech as she reached him. ‘This is…’

‘I read the paper this morning, Rachel,’ he cut in, looking across the cobbles with a set of grey eyes that were as cold as Raffaelle’s own eyes.

He put her to one side so he could walk forwards. Rachel could feel the suspicion coming off him in waves. Jack knew her better than most people, so if anyone was going to smell a rat about her surprise engagement then it would be him.

‘I n-need to explain.’ She dashed after him.

‘Mr Villani,’ Jack greeted coolly.

Nerves jumping all over her now, Rachel rushed into speech yet again. ‘Raffaelle, this is Jack Fellows.’ Her anxious blue eyes pleaded with him to understand. ‘He’s my—’

‘Guardian,’ Jack himself put in. ‘Until she is twenty-five, that is.’

‘Well, that is a new name for it,’ Raffaelle drawled.

‘Jack is also my uncle,’ she said heavily. ‘M-my mother’s brother…’

‘And the one who looks out for her interests,’ Jack coldly put in. ‘So, if you are the same Italian who broke Rachel’s heart last year, then you had better come up with a good reason for doing it or Rachel will not receive my blessing for this engagement.’

Oh, dear God. Rachel wished the ground would open up and swallow her. It just had not occurred to her that Jack would make such a mistake!

Now Raffaelle was looking at her as if she was one of the devil’s children and she couldn’t blame him. It had to feel as if each time he turned around he was being forced to answer new charges that someone in her family planted at his feet!

‘Raffaelle is not Alonso,’ she muttered to Jack in a driven undertone.

‘Was that his name?’ Her uncle looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t recall you actually ever mentioning it.’

That was because she hadn’t. She’d just come back here from her trip to Italy looking and behaving like a woman with a broken heart.

Her uncle turned back to Raffaelle. ‘My sincere apologies for the mistake, Mr Villani,’ he said and offered him his hand.

But it was too late for Rachel as far as Raffaelle was concerned. She sensed his anger hiding beneath the surface of his smile as he took Jack’s proffered hand.

Then he switched the charm on. By the time he had finished explaining who he was and what he was, and trawled out the same story about how and where he’d met Rachel, he had her uncle eating out of his hand. It was like watching an action reply of the way he had handled the press the night before. And all Rachel could do was smile benignly once more and be impressed by his performance, while knowing retribution was close at hand.

He coolly assured Jack that he was no fortune hunter out to marry his niece for her share in the family pile. He assured him dryly that no, not all Italian men were so cavalier with the vulnerable female heart.

And of course he was madly in love with Rachel—what man would not be? His arm snaked out to hook her around her shoulders so he could draw her in close to his side.

I’m going to kill you the minute I get you alone, that heavy arm promised. And Rachel believed it—totally.

Then he apologised to Jack that the news of their betrothal had broken in the papers before he’d had a chance to come here and officially request Jack’s blessing.

It was his finest moment, Rachel acknowledged from her subservient place at his side. Jack was old-fashioned, with traditional values. She could see from her uncle’s expression that in Raffaelle he thought he was meeting a man after his own heart.

Jack had to rush off then but he offered them dinner to celebrate.

Smooth as silk, Raffaelle thanked him but regrettably had to decline. Apparently he had to be back in London this evening—to attend an irritating business dinner.

Whether there was a business dinner, Rachel did not know. But, of course, her uncle understood. Busy men and all that.

And Raffaelle’s ultimate coup was to gain Jack’s instant agreement that everything here would be taken care of while Rachel was away, because of course Raffaelle wanted her with him.

‘Just be happy, darling,’ Jack said to her, then he kissed her cheek, shook Raffaelle by the hand and left them, driving away while they stood and watched him—with Raffaelle’s arm still exhibiting its possession across her shoulders in a grip like a vice.

Happy was the last thing she was feeling by the time her uncle’s car disappeared out of sight. The moment he turned them to face the house Rachel tried to break free from him but his grip only tightened as he walked them across the cobbles.

The front door opened directly into the farmhouse-style kitchen, heated by the old Aga against the wall. Coming in here should have felt comfortingly familiar to Rachel but it didn’t. The door closed. The arm dropped from her shoulders. Moving like a skittish kitten, she took a few steps away from him then spun around.

‘I…’

‘If you are about to utter yet another lie to me—’he cut right across her ‘—then let me advise you to keep silent!’

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