The Italian's Defiant Mistress

Luca straightened up as he approached.

‘Well, well. The prodigal son returns.’ His voice was slippery with sarcasm, and Raphael raked a hand through his hair in an attempt to stop himself punching that bland, handsome face. ‘I would introduce you, but we’ve only just met and I haven’t found out this beauty’s name yet…’

Raphael’s reaction was instant. Giving Luca a smile that would have frozen the Mediterranean, he turned to the woman with a light inclination of his head, praying she wouldn’t give him away.

‘Cara? Is there anyone else you’d like to meet, or are you ready to go?’

He allowed himself a small moment of triumph as he watched the look of surprise and something that resembled anxiety spread across Luca’s face before turning his attention back to the girl.

Her eyes were the clear turquoise-green of old glass, and they glinted, catlike, in the light of the crystal chandeliers. Lust sliced through Raphael with the painless precision of a razor-blade as he registered the spreading darkness at their centre.

There was the smallest hesitation before she replied. Her accent was English, her voice low and breathless.

‘I’m all yours…darling.’

OK, for one night only Eve Middlemiss—BA hons and general clever clogs—was prepared to admit she’d been wrong.

There was such a thing as destiny. And he was standing right beside her.

They crossed the main reception area of the palazzo, his hand resting lightly in the small of her back, his thumb gently caressing the hollow at the base of her spine. Away from the main buzz of the party a few guests stood talking quietly in small groups, and uniformed staff hovered discreetly. Eve was dimly aware of their curious glances as she passed, but was almost beyond caring.

Almost. And then she remembered Ellie.

‘I have to get back…I really shouldn’t…’

As the words left her lips she knew they were completely unconvincing. She’d tried to adopt a firm, businesslike tone, but failed spectacularly. Something odd had happened to her voice, so that she sounded as if she was auditioning as a sex-line operator, and above the storm of hormone-fuelled emotions inside her a demonic alter-ego whispered, Forget Ellie just for one night. Do something for your own sake for a change.

He looked down at her. His face was completely expressionless.

‘You don’t, and you should. Believe me.’

His grip tightened on her waist, sending another shower of shooting stars down her spine and turning her stomach to water. She tried to laugh, but it came out as a gasp.

‘I don’t understand…I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing…’

His beautiful mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. ‘Do you think that isn’t obvious? That’s exactly why I had to get you out of the clutches of that…low-life.’

‘He seemed very charming.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive.’

He pulled her into a quiet gallery off the main hallway, dimly lit by lamps placed on tables along the length of its walls. Just inside the door he stopped and turned to her, his face shadowed. God, her stomach wasn’t the only thing he turned to water, she thought, feeling liquid heat seeping into the silk and lace of her tiny thong.

‘Shouldn’t I be allowed to decide that for myself?’ she whispered.

His hair was raven-dark, falling over his forehead and accentuating the hollows beneath cheekbones that looked as if they had been chiselled in marble. Despite the perfection of his features, he carried with him an aura of exhaustion and despair, and she had to curl her hands into fists to stop herself reaching out and touching him, trying to soothe away the tension in his jaw and the haunted look in his dark eyes.

‘I couldn’t risk you making the wrong decision.’

‘What makes you think I’d do that?’

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s happened before.’ Reaching out, he slipped a finger under the slender silk strap of her dress, which had slipped down her arm, and with infinite gentleness slid it back into place. In the silence Eve heard her own small whimper of longing as his fingers brushed her quivering skin.

Wrenching his hand away, he half turned, his haughty, aristocratic face a mask of reserve. Only the dark, glittering pools of his eyes betrayed his desire as he swung back to face her.

The moan that escaped him as his mouth found hers was the sound of a man surrendering control. His hands entwined themselves in the thick silk of her hair, pulling her to him, imprisoning her lips with his, so that her cries of naked desire were consumed in the furnace of his kiss. With savage urgency his tongue explored the velvet depths of her mouth, then, leaving her gasping her pleasure and desperation into the stillness of the empty room, moved downwards to her jaw, her neck, the perfumed, pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. Helplessly she felt her fingers sliding into his hair, willing him onward, downward, to where her nipples strained against the silk of her dress, yearning for the exquisite warmth of his mouth…

A discreet cough from the doorway stopped him in his tracks.

‘Signor di Lazaro? Signor Raphael di Lazaro? Scusi, but it’s your father. I’m afraid it’s urgent.’

And then he was gone, leaving her dazed, disorientated, and struck dumb with horror.

This man wasn’t her destiny. He was her nemesis.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS just a small scrap of paper, torn from the back of a pocket diary or notebook.

Lying in the darkness beneath crisp hotel sheets, Eve held it close to her body, absentmindedly sliding it through her finger and thumb so that she could feel the difference in texture along the torn edge and the slight stiffness where at some point coffee been spilled on it.

She didn’t need to switch the light on and look at it to know that the coffee stain was in the shape of a rather fat rabbit, or to read the numbers 592, which were the only remainders of the phone number that had once been written there. She had studied that scrap of paper in such minute detail so often over the last two years that she even knew that the smooth bit underneath her thumb right now was where the words Raphael di Lazaro were written. And just below and to the left of that, just by the rabbit’s ear, was where it said drugs.

The girl Ellie had shared a flat with in Florence—Catalina someone or other—had sent her things back to England following her death, and when Eve had finally been able to face going through them she had found this tucked into one of the pockets of Ellie’s jeans. The rest of the writing might have been consigned to eternal oblivion by the coffee, but Eve hardly needed to have it spelled out to her. These had to be the contact details of the person who had supplied Ellie with heroin. And that person was Raphael Di Lazaro.

By the time Eve had found the paper di Lazaro had already disappeared into darkest Columbia, and the Italian authorities had recorded a verdict of accidental death on Ellie and closed the case. But as far as Eve was concerned it wasn’t over. She had vowed to expose Raphael di Lazaro for what he was, no matter how long it took her to do it. Which was why, when Lou had called her at work two days ago, to report that a paparazzi contact had spotted him arriving back at Florence’s airport, she hadn’t hesitated in going along with Lou’s ridiculous plan. After all, strutting down a catwalk and pretending to be a fashion journalist were pretty insignificant hoops to jump through in order finally to come face to face with the man who was responsible for Ellie’s death.

Her fingers tightened around the piece of paper until it was scrunched up in the palm of her hand. She had certainly succeeded in doing that.

Big style.

Face to face, lip to lip, body to body…

Oh, sweet heaven…

She started violently as her mobile phone burst into noisy life on the bedside table, letting out a shrill explosion of sound whilst simultaneously vibrating madly and glowing fluorescent green in the darkness. Eve made a clumsy grab for it, knocking over a glass of water in the process, and accidentally switching it on just as she swore graphically.

‘Eve?’

Oh, God. It was Marissa Fox, editor of Glitterati, sounding terrifyingly brisk and efficient.

‘Sorry. I mean—yes. Sorry’

Mercifully, Marissa cut her off mid-stutter. ‘Look, Eve, I know the whole idea is that you’re shadowing Sienna, but can I be an awful bore and ask you to tear yourself away from her for an hour or so and pop down to cover the press conference this morning?’

Eve sat bolt upright in the hope it would make her sound more awake. ‘Press conference?’ she echoed faintly.

‘Yes, darling.’ There was a steely edge to Marissa’s voice that was more effective than any alarm clock. ‘Di Lazaro’s doctors are giving a press conference this morning on his prognosis. Not good, according to my sources.’

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, Eve felt the blood drain from her head.

Was Raphael hurt?

‘Eve? Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘You do know that Antonio di Lazaro suffered a heart attack as he was leaving the party last night, don’t you?’

‘Antonio?’ Relief flooded through her, followed by a wave of self-disgust. Why should she care whether Raphael was hurt or not? If someone else had got there first it would save her the bother of doing it herself. But deny her the satisfaction.

‘Right. Yes, sorry—of course I knew that he’d been taken ill,’ she lied hastily. ‘Everyone I spoke to sort of played it down. Is it serious?’

‘Well, you’ll find that out at the press conference, darling,’ Marissa replied acidly. ‘Ten o’clock at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital. I’d go myself, but miraculously I’ve managed to get an appointment in the hotel spa for a Seaweed Body Wrap and Triple Oxygen Facial. I’ll be cutting it fine for the perfume launch as it is.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Such a shame that Lou’s got this hideous shellfish allergy—she’s always rather good at the whole press conference circus. But I’m sure you can manage just as well—can’t you, darling?’

Eve groped for her glasses and pushed them on, almost swearing out loud again as she squinted at her watch in the gloom. Nine-twenty.

‘Press conference? Absolutely. No problem. I’ll be there.’ Stumbling out of bed, she made a huge effort to sound like the professional journalist that Lou had told Marissa she was. ‘So…is it a…big press conference?’ She pulled open the lavishly swagged curtains, wincing as bright sunlight highlighted the chaos in the room, and the fact that Sienna’s bed was the only thing that was still neat and unused. ‘Are we expecting…er…statements from just the medical team, or will the family be present as well?’

‘Family? Good heavens, darling, I shouldn’t think so. Antonio’s heart attack didn’t stop Luca partying till the early hours, so I doubt he’ll be in any state to face the press—which just leaves Raphael, and he’s utterly allergic to publicity in any form. He’s quite pathologically anti-journalists and paparazzi. Ah! Here’s breakfast. Do you know, darling, this is supposed to be Florence’s top hotel, and they don’t do wheatgrass juice! Can you believe it? Anyway, darling, must dash. Give my love to Sienna, won’t you? Hope you’re getting lots of juicy gossip for the interview—can’t wait to see the copy. I’ll catch up with you both at the launch. Ciao, darling!’

Head reeling, Eve exhaled slowly into the sudden silence, and for a moment considered throwing herself onto the bed and screaming very loudly into a pillow. It was tempting, but ultimately not very constructive. And right now she needed help.

Picking her way through the ankle-deep mulch of discarded designer clothing that was the only sign of Sienna’s occupancy in the room, Eve speed-dialled Lou.

Waiting for her to pick up, Eve felt her panic start to subside. Lou would know what to do—about the press conference and the case of the disappearing supermodel and yesterday’s embarrassing incident, where the guy she’d thought was the man of her dreams had actually turned out to be—oops, sorry—the dark figure who stalked her nightmares.

No. No. Noooo! Please, please don’t be…

Voicemail.

With a wail of anguish Eve threw her phone down and stood motionless for a moment in the middle of the room, as the panic returned and threatened to overwhelm her. Lou always said that when things went wrong all you had to do was imagine a way in which they could be worse. At that particular moment Eve couldn’t think of one.

But a minute later, examining her reflection in the enormous Hollywood-style bathroom mirror, she was spared the bother of trying.

Her face, above a skimpy T-shirt with a picture of Shakespeare on the front, was deathly pale, with last night’s mascara still smudged beneath her eyes. Her hair, cut yesterday for the fashion show into what the stylist had called ‘sexy tousled layers’ was now so sexily tousled that she looked as if she’d enjoyed a non-stop, all-night love-fest. All things considered, out of the two of them it was Shakespeare who looked the livelier. And the more attractive. And he’d been dead for nearly four hundred years.

She had just fifteen minutes to turn the day around and transform herself into a sleek, professional fashion journalist.

Fifteen minutes…and the entire cosmetic collection of one of the world’s hottest supermodels.

How hard could it be?

She might have left the hotel without her glasses, but it wasn’t hard to find the conference room at the Santa Mariá Nuova hospital. All she had to do was follow the click-clack of kitten heels and the wafts of expensive fragrance of a hundred fashionistas.

Finding a space beside a tarty-looking blonde from one of the less salubrious celebrity gossip magazines, Eve rummaged in her bag for the little tape recorder Lou had lent her and, unable to see properly without her glasses, took three attempts to insert a new tape.

The blonde girl threw her a sympathetic glance. ‘Tough night last night?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Me too. My hangover’s so bad I could do with joining di Lazaro in Intensive Care.’

Eve smiled. Thankfully she was spared the necessity of explaining that she was suffering the after-effects of intoxication of a different kind by the appearance of a woman, and two men in doctor’s coats on the platform at the front of the room. A searing flare of disappointment tore through her like a physical pain at the realisation that Raphael was not amongst them.

She had to see him again, she rationalised silently, gritting her teeth. What had happened last night had raised more questions than it had answered, and whichever way you looked at it she had a whole lot of unfinished business regarding Raphael di Lazaro.

Taking their places at a starched white table, the trio on the platform looked as if they were about to ask for the wine list. Eve recognised the woman from the retrospective as Alessandra Ferretti, Lazaro’s formidable and deeply attractive press officer. She took the centre seat, with a doctor on either side of her, and for a moment the three of them spoke quietly between themselves, before Ferretti checked her watch and leaned forward to speak into the microphone in a ridiculously husky voice.

‘Buongiorno.’

The army of reporters shifted expectantly, pens, cameras, tape recorders poised. But then a door at the back of the room opened, and everyone swung round to look at the latecomer.

Eve’s gasp was lost in an explosion of flashbulbs and a deafening machine-gun rattle of shutters as every photographer in the room instantly went for a shot of Raphael di Lazaro.

His dark hair fell forward over his face. Shadows of fatigue and twenty-four hours of stubble emphasised the high, slanting cheekbones and the sulky, sensual mouth. Even unshaven, and in last night’s rumpled dark suit and white shirt, he was still savagely, effortlessly attractive. His face, as he pulled out a chair and slumped into it, was perfectly expressionless, but, watching him rake back his hair with long, suntanned fingers, Eve thought that he looked infinitely weary.

Her insides turned liquid with a potent mixture of loathing and lust.

Alessandra Ferretti was introducing everyone, her sexy drawl making it sound as if she was matchmaking at a cocktail party.

‘Dr Christiano is Signor di Lazaro’s consultant, and Dr Cavalletti is head of the cardiac team who will be responsible for his care.’ She gestured to the white-coated men, then turned to Raphael and laid a slim brown hand on his arm. ‘Raphael di Lazaro returned from Columbia only yesterday, but he has been with his father throughout the night.’

A tiny shock pulsed through Eve that Alessandra should mention Columbia so casually, but it was quickly submerged by a wave of irritation at the proprietary way her hand still rested on Raphael’s arm.

‘What’s Antonio’s condition now?’ asked a reporter from one of the Italian broadsheets.

‘Agiato,’ replied the doctor on the right—Eve was ashamed to realise that she hadn’t been paying enough attention to remember which one it was. ‘He is in the best possible hands.’

‘What treatment will he be undergoing?’

The other doctor cleared his throat self-importantly and launched into an in-depth medical lecture that had all the English-speaking journalists utterly bewildered. At the end of the table Raphael was leaning back in his chair, distractedly drawing on a notepad, totally oblivious to the intense attention of the media and of every woman in the room.

He had the face of a tortured saint in some religious tableau, Eve decided miserably, unable to stop herself from staring at him, or responding to that same aura of desolation she had noticed last night. She had spent the last two years inventing slow and painful deaths for this man, and suddenly she found herself wanting to walk right up to him, hold his face in her hands and kiss away all the anger and pain that she saw there.

She shook her head irritably. Maybe she’d been right yesterday. Maybe she really was possessed.

‘What about the perfume launch? Is it still going ahead?’ a journalist from one of the British glossies was asking.

‘We feel that Antonio would want it to,’ Alessandra Ferretti said smoothly. ‘He has lavished much attention on its planning, and some of the biggest celebrities across the globe are coming to celebrate the launch of Golden, Lazaro’s most exciting perfume ever, in what promises to be a glittering event in every sense of the word.’ Product plug over, she arranged her face into a compassionate smile and resumed a hushed, respectful tone. ‘Antonio always puts Lazaro first. It is his life, and to do anything other than carry on with business as usual would be utterly disrespectful of all he has worked so hard to create.’

Her answer was followed by another cacophony of questions, most of them directed at Raphael. How long was it since he had seen his father? Had he come back from South America because he knew Antonio was ill? How had Antonio seemed earlier in the evening?

He answered briefly, his voice harsh with tiredness. Eve kept her head down and her tape recorder raised to catch his answers, fearing that all it would be picking up was the frantic beating of her heart. Beside her, the tarty blonde was desperately trying to get noticed to ask a question.

‘Signor di Lazaro! Raphael!’

Suddenly he looked in her direction. Eve froze.

‘Where were you last night when Antonio was taken ill?’

‘At the retrospective.’

Eve didn’t dare breathe. If she kept her head down and stayed completely still perhaps he wouldn’t notice her. If only the damned girl beside her would shut up and let him move on to someone else. But she was still talking. A vaguely insinuating note had crept into her voice.

‘According to staff at the Palazzo Salarino, it took some considerable time to locate you. What were you doing?’

The silence that followed seemed to go on for ever. Slowly, and with a paralysing sense of dread, Eve dragged her eyes upwards from their intense study of the pattern on the carpet. And found herself looking straight into his.

It was like running at full speed into a wall of ice.

His expression was utterly blank as he held her in his dark gaze. Excruciating, yet indescribably erotic, like being intimately caressed while lying on a bed of nails. His voice, when he eventually replied, was very soft.

‘That, it suddenly appears, is a very good question.’

For a second Raphael thought that tiredness had got the better of him and he was hallucinating. But there was no mistaking those eyes, or the softly rounded lips that had filled his head with pleasure during the long hours he’d spent, halfway between sleeping and waking, in a chair at his father’s hospital bedside.

So she wasn’t a model. It was even worse than that.

She was a journalist.

His grip tightened on the pen in his hand as a wave of self-recrimination swept through him. Going too long without sleep had made him irrational and careless, but that was no excuse for his stupid behaviour last night. Thank goodness that the maître d’ had found him before things had gone any further, otherwise he might have been waking up to his name all over the front pages in headlines featuring the words ‘passion’, ‘playboy’, and probably ‘love-rat’.

He looked across to where she stood, head bent, her face partly hidden by a curtain of hair, the tip of her pen held between her softly parted lips, and felt his heart—along with other more basic parts of his anatomy—harden.

In his eyes journalists came a little below single-cell organisms in the evolutionary scale. Just because this girl had the wide-eyed innocence of a blonde Virgin Mary, it would be unwise to rule out the possibility that she might still attempt to concoct some kind of kiss-and-tell story. He would just have to track her down and make sure she didn’t.

She’d have her price. They all did. That was what was so disappointing.

‘Taxi! Taxi!’

Eve let out a shriek of outrage as yet another of Florence’s distinctive white cabs sped past her. That made five. She was beginning to wonder if she might just be invisible.

But of course she wasn’t. If she were she would have been spared public humiliation at the hands—or eyes—of Raphael Di Lazaro.

How dared he? she spluttered inwardly. How dared he look at her like that? As if she was some kind of inferior life-form from the Planet Vulgar, and way beneath his contempt?

‘Taxiii!’

If the street had not been crowded with intimidatingly glamorous Italian women, looking cool and inscrutable behind their designer sunglasses, Eve would almost certainly have sat down on the pavement and given in to tears. As it was, there was only one thing left to do.

Find chocolate.

The café nearby was small—just a handful of tables spilling out onto the pavement—but the enticing aroma of fresh coffee and hot pastries was irresistible. Taking her place in the queue of beautiful people at the counter, Eve wondered why everyone in Florence was so annoyingly good-looking. She had just arrived at the conclusion that Calvin Klein must be doing a casting session nearby, when, from the depths of her bag, she heard the tinny trill of her mobile.

Clamping her purse beneath one arm, she dug beneath the layers of old bus tickets, leaky Biros and odd gloves, triumphantly managing to unearth it before it stopped ringing.

‘Lou…!’

‘Hi, babe. You tried to call me. Everything OK?’

‘Where were you? I needed you!’

‘I was here. I’m just not answering my phone in case it’s Marissa. I’m supposed to be at death’s door, remember? The trouble is I got quite carried away with the story when I rang her to tell her, and now I can’t remember all the details. Anyway, never mind that. How’s it going?’

At the comfortingly familiar sound of Lou’s voice Eve felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes again. The need to offload was overwhelming.