‘The trouble with you, Rachel, is you insisted on trying the wrong tack on him then blew it. This time you do it the way we planned it, okay? So listen,’ instructed the man who got his highs hunting down and catching the rich and famous at their worst. ‘I’m going to grab the lovely Daniella’s attention. All you have to do is to move in on him the moment I move in on her. I can give you ten seconds at most, so don’t hang around and, for God’s sake, don’t let yourself think! This will be our last chance.’

Their last chance…

They’d reached the foyer by now and Mark’s instructions were playing across her tense chest muscles like sharp hammering throbs. Raffaelle Villani and his stepsister were already turning towards the main exit doors.

‘Hey—Miss Leeson!’ Mark called out. ‘Where’s your future husband tonight?’

Daniella Leeson paused, then turned on the delicate heels of her shoes, saw Mark with a camera already up at his face and switched on a false smile.

‘He’s…’

‘Get going,’ Mark muttered sideways at Rachel.

As if in a dream Rachel let Mark’s urgency take her over. Her legs felt like jelly as she moved in. Raffaelle Villani was only just turning to watch his stepsister pose for the hated paparazzi so he didn’t see Rachel coming at him from one side. Stepping right in front of him and without daring to think, she threw her arms up and clasped his face between her fingers, then stretched up on tiptoe and crushed her mouth against his.

She didn’t know which of them was the more shocked as heat hit her body like mega-watt high voltage. His grunt of surprise vibrated against her lips. Lights flashed, her skin burned, her fingertips tingled where they pressed against his warm satin tight skin.

Seconds. It took too many seconds for his brain to relay to Raffaelle what was happening and by then her mouth was fusing hot against his. His hands leapt up—it was automatic to close them around a small waist with the intention of pushing her away.

A camera flashed.

He pulled his mouth free, found himself staring down at the same blonde who’d approached earlier. ‘Madre de Dio. What do you think you are doing?’ he raked out.

The flash hit him again. She was staring up at him, all big blue apologetic eyes and smudged pink lipstick and her fingers had shifted from his face to the back of his neck.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered breathlessly. ‘But you left me with no other choice.’

She began to pull away. The camera was still flashing. Instead of aiding her withdrawal, Raffaelle tightened his grip on her waist and made her stay exactly where she was.

He was blindingly, blisteringly furious. ‘No choice about what?’ he bit down at her.

She wriggled against him in an effort to free herself. What happened next made her breath catch and he knew why it did. She was plastered against him like a second layer of skin and the extra physical pressure had brought their lower bodies into contact.

‘Dio,’ he cursed again.

‘Oh, God,’ Rachel echoed. ‘Y-you—you’re…’

‘I don’t need you to tell me what I already know!’ he raked out. ‘I just need an explanation as to what the hell you think you are trying to pull off with this!’

‘I…’

‘Okay kiddo, let’s go.’

Let’s go…Raffaelle lifted his eyes to the photographer, wondered why he hadn’t noticed the camera dangling round his neck before. Then answered his own question with a twist of his mouth. He had been too busy looking at her to notice him in any detail.

‘Some set-up,’ he gritted.

‘Please let me go now.’ She tugged at his iron grip on her waist.

‘Not even if you decide to faint,’ he incised, sparks flying from his eyes as he watched Daniella turn towards them and her eyes give a startled blink.

Indeed, he agreed with her surprised expression. The photographer was already shooting out of the door.

‘You,’ he raked at his attacker, ‘are coming with me to explain yourself.’

Without giving her a chance to protest, he reached up to yank her claws out of his neck, then let go of one hand and used the other to begin hauling her towards the exit.

‘Raffaelle—!’A bewildered Daniella called his name as she hurried after them.

Outside a cool breeze hit his angry face.

Just angry—? He was bloody blindingly livid. His instincts must be dulling for him to get caught out like this.

‘Please…’ the blonde pleaded.

‘Be silent,’ he snapped out and his hand tightened its grip on her wrist. He felt her wince; he didn’t care. Dino, his chauffeur, drew his limo up at the kerb and climbed out of the car.

Raffaelle strode towards it with his captive almost tripping up behind him on her flimsy sparkling spindle-heeled shoes. ‘Grab a cab and take Miss Leeson home,’ he instructed his driver.

‘But—Raffaelle—?’ his stepsister wailed in protest.

He ignored her. He ignored everyone, including the blonde who was still desperately trying to get free. Opening the front passenger door to the limo, he tried to propel her inside.

She dug her heels in. ‘I’m not—’

He picked her up and bodily put her into the car. When she tried to get out again, her mouth opening wide with the intention of screaming for help, he bent swiftly and smothered the sound with his mouth.

He didn’t take pleasure from hard angry kisses, he told himself, particularly when he’d just been hit on by a woman who deserved a slap not a kiss. However the kiss gave him a hell of a lot more satisfaction, especially when her muffled scream rolled around his mouth and sent his tongue chasing it.

She quivered. She tasted of champagne and pink lipstick.

By the time he yanked his mouth away again she’d sunk into trembling shock.

‘Now, listen to me,’ he incised as he locked the seat belt around her. ‘I don’t know how much your partner in crime was paying you to pull off that stunt, but in case you did not notice, he was not the only sleaze-gathering scum working the room back there. The pack has scented a story and is about to descend on us.’

On that hard warning he straightened, slammed the car door shut, then strode round to the other side while Rachel twisted her head to stare dazedly at the press pack gathering at the main hotel doors. By the time she’d absorbed all of that, Raffaelle Villani had folded himself into the driver’s seat next to her—a lean, dark, hard-muscled male with aggression bouncing off him.

His chauffeur had left the engine running. He snaked out a hand and threw the car into drive. They took off with a jerk just as the press pack tumbled over each other with their cameras flashing. Rachel watched as the whole debacle played out like a comic strip. Even his stepsister had her part to play. She was standing by the kerb staring after them while the chauffeur was politely trying to urge her into the back of a black cab.

Mark was nowhere.

Thanks, Mark, Rachel thought helplessly, visualising her darling half-brother rushing off to file his scoop without giving a second thought to what he had left her to face!

Rachel flicked a scared glance at the man sitting beside her, then shivered. If murder had a look to it then he was wearing it.

‘Please stop the car so I can get out,’ she begged and didn’t even care that she was begging.

He didn’t answer. Lips clamped together, he sent the car shooting out into the main stream of traffic. Several car horns blared in protest at his pushy arrogance. He ignored those too.

‘Look, I know you’re angry,’ she allowed shakily. ‘And I know that you have every right to be, but—’

‘Grazie.’

‘This is kidnap!’

‘So sue me,’ he gritted. ‘That could be fun.’

Fun—? Rachel trembled and shivered as she sat tensely beside him. None of this had been fun from the moment she’d allowed Elise and Mark to talk her into it. One minute she’d been perfectly content, hiding away in Devon nursing her broken heart, the next minute she’d found herself staying up here in London with her half-sister and being embroiled in her complicated love-life!

‘It w-wasn’t what you think—’

‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’

‘I am not being paid to—’

‘Hit on me?’ he offered when those very same words dried in her throat. ‘It is a relief to know I still have some natural pulling power then.’

He had loads of natural pulling power. That was his problem.

‘Are you always this obnoxious when you’ve been caught off your guard?’ she flared up on the back of pure agitation. ‘So I hit on you—what’s new there to a man like you? From what I hear, half the women in Europe have done it at some point in your blessed life—and not all of them because of your sex appeal!’

He sent her a glinting look. ‘Did I hear a hint of scorn in your tone then?’

‘Yes!’ she flicked out. ‘Men like you stroll through life as if you own it. You do what you want when you want to do it. You pick your women on looks alone and don’t give a care whether they have feelings you could actually wound!’

Something sharp hit his voice. ‘I wounded—you?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ The sarcasm was out before she could stop it.

They’d stopped at a set of traffic lights and he turned in his seat. Instantly the sheer size and power of the man flooded over Rachel like a simmering hot shower. She could feel his eyes skimming her face and her body as he checked her out while flipping through his huge data bank of women, trying to pinpoint who she was. Any second now and he was going to make a connection he could have made hours ago if he’d been more observant.

Rachel felt the stinging temptation to lie, if only to really confuse him, but—‘No,’ she said finally.

Someone just like you did that to me, she added inside her head. Then she flicked him a hard resentful glance,’ heaved in a breath and saved him the bother of further taxing his no doubt phenomenal brain power.

‘Elise Castle,’ she breathed out.

CHAPTER TWO

THE name had its desired effect, Rachel noticed bitterly, as a long thick silence stretched between them and he didn’t say or do a single thing.

She held her breath again while she waited for him to recover and begin spitting out a barrage of angry questions—but still nothing came.

In the end she took the initiative and broke the silence. ‘The name means nothing to you?’ she gibed.

Other vehicle headlights swished past the car windows, lighting their faces momentarily. Illuminated, she saw only the cold steel of his eyes as they fixed hers like lashing daggers and he kept his silence. In the darkness her gaze dropped for some reason to the single line straightness of his mouth.

A mouth that already felt disconcertingly familiar. She could still taste it. Her tongue even made a passing swipe at her lips in response to the thought.

Headlights lit up the car’s interior again, dragging her attention back to his eyes. They’d narrowed and were watching her like a hawk waiting to pin its next victim. Rachel’s breathing fell into small jerky fits. Her heart was pounding. He was frighteningly exciting to look at, all well cared for male with just the right balance between sensational good looks and raw masculinity.

Her mouth had to part to aid her quick breathing. He dropped his gaze and the result was a tingling quiver across her lips that sent the tip of her tongue nervously chasing it. Sexual awareness was suddenly alive and cluttering the atmosphere. Rachel felt her breasts grow heavy, their tips pushing out with a terrible knowing sting. He flicked those eyes back to hers again and he knew—he knew!

Then the traffic lights decided to change, demanding that he set them moving. She watched as if mesmerised as his dark head shifted back into profile, watched his long-fingered hands as he flipped the car into a slick right turn. More seconds ticked by and her chest felt as if it was burning beneath the pressure she was placing on it by barely breathing at all now.

‘The name means plenty to me,’ he finally answered. ‘And you are not Elise.’

No, Rachel knew she wasn’t Elise. She was her younger, less pretty, more sensible half-sister.

More sensible—when? She then scoffed at that. Sensible women did not get themselves into situations like this. Sensible women steered clear of the complicated love lives of others—and especially of frighteningly sexy men like him!

Sensible women did not fall in love with handsome Italians with a rich repertoire of words of love and a killer seduction technique—yet she had done it.

She had to close her eyes as an image of Alonso suddenly appeared in front of her. Tall, dark, beautiful Alonso, who had been so warm and attentive and flatteringly possessive when they had been out together, and so excitingly intense and passionate when naked with her in bed. They’d spent six glorious weeks living together in his apartment overlooking Naples. He’d vowed he loved her. ‘I love you—ti’ amomia bella cara…’he’d murmured to her in his rich, dark, accented voice and she’d known without a doubt that she loved him.

Rachel shivered.

It was only when the time had come for her to return to England and he’d said, ‘We had a wonderful time, hmm, amore? It is a shame it now has to end,’ that she’d understood what a stupid, gullible, naïve fool she had been.

‘I said you are not Elise,’ this other Italian with the rich, dark accent prompted.

Rachel opened her eyes and let the real world back in. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But very few people will be able to tell that from behind…’

A bell of understanding suddenly clanged loud in Raffaelle’s head. Next to come was an action replay of the way this woman had thrown herself on him, followed by several camera flashes. Like a wild beast sniffing danger in the atmosphere, he picked up the scent of a deliberately constructed scandal involving him and the very married Elise.

But it was a scandal he believed he had already diverted. As far as he was aware, the lovely Elise had seen the error of her ways after his last spiked conversation with her on the telephone before he’d broken all contact with her and made his quick exit from London back to Milan. The grapevine, via Daniella, said she had not been seen on the social circuit since.

So what was this devious creature up to? Why had she gone to so much trouble to make out for the camera that she was Elise?

‘Explain,’ he commanded.

Not this side of midnight, Rachel thought tensely and clamped her lips together. Having come this far, she was not about to scupper everything by getting Mark’s story pulled before going to print.

She’d already revealed more than she should have done.

‘Look…’ she heaved out instead. ‘You’re not an idiot, Mr Villani. You must know you’re asking for trouble taking me against my will like this—so just stop the car and let me out now.’

‘Not a chance in hell,’ he refused.

And the way he turned his head to slide his eyes up her legs had Rachel tugging jerkily at the short skirt of her dress. She knew that look. It was as old as the human race. She’d let him see her attraction to him; now he was looking over the goods on offer.

‘If you honestly think—!’

‘Changing your mind about the hit, cara?’ he taunted. ‘Wondering if you might have bitten off more than you can chew with me? Well, let me confirm that you have done.’ His voice hardened. ‘You made the hit. I bought it. Now you are going to play it my way.’

‘You’re crazy,’ she whispered.

Maybe he was, Raffaelle conceded. But no woman—no woman—played games with him and got away with it!

‘I’m getting out of this car—’ Rachel reached for the door handle. The automatic lock gave a clunk as it fell into place at the same time that he increased their speed.

True—true unfettered fear began to scream in her head as it finally began to sink in what a stupid, crazy, dangerous situation she had managed to get herself into here. What did she know about Raffaelle Villani, other than the details fed to her by Mark and Elise? How did she know he wasn’t some kind of mega-rich sex maniac prowling Europe unhindered because his money could buy his victims’ silence.

Just as he said, he had bought her…

Her skin began to creep, her fingers closing tightly around her small clutch bag so they felt the reassurance of her cellphone.

How much time did she need to call the police before he reacted?

She dared a quick glance at him, heart hammering, fingers tensely toying with the clasp on her bag. He didn’t look like a lunatic, just a very angry man—which he had every right to be, she was forced to admit.

‘Your partner in crime did not hang around to protect you,’ he taunted grimly next.

He had to mean Mark. ‘You don’t—’

‘Unless he is in one of the cars following behind us, that is…’

Cars—? Rachel twisted around to peer through the rear window.

‘There are three back there I can pick out as belonging to the paparazzi,’ she was told. ‘And there are most likely more of them following not far behind them.’

Twisting forward again, she stared at him. ‘But why should they want to follow us?’

‘You are not that naïve,’ he derided the question, flicking his eyes from the rear-view mirror and back to the road ahead. ‘Or you would not have chosen Raffaelle Villani to pull your life-wrecking stunt.’

Life wrecking—? ‘N-no.’ Rachel gave an urgent shake of her head. ‘You don’t understand. This was not—’

‘Not that it matters,’ he interrupted. ‘We are here now.’

As in where—? Even as Rachel thought the question, one of those shiny new apartment blocks that flanked the river loomed up close. With a spin of the wheel he sent the car sweeping on to its forecourt. He stopped it hard on its brakes and was already out of the car and striding around it to open her door.

Rachel didn’t move. She was trembling like mad and her heart was thundering. She didn’t look at him either, but just stared starkly ahead.

‘Do you get out yourself or do I have to lift you?’ he demanded.

Since she’d already learnt the hard way that he was perfectly willing to do the latter, swallowing tensely, Rachel took the more dignified choice, unfastened her seat belt and slid out of the car.

It was an odd sensation to find herself standing close to him. Nor did that sensation make any sense because she’d stood this close once already tonight and thrown herself right against him a second time, yet he hadn’t felt this tall or as powerfully built or as dangerous as he did right now.

She shivered, panicked and was about to make a run for it when car doors started slamming. The paparazzi had arrived right behind them and were already piling out of their cars.

Raffaelle bit out a curse, then he was wrapping her beneath the hook of a powerful arm.

Cameras flashed. ‘Look this way, Elise—!’ one of them called out to her.

But she was already being ushered through a pair of doors.

‘Keep them out,’ Raffaelle instructed the security man manning the foyer.

Before Rachel knew what was happening, he’d marched her into a lift and the doors were closing the two of them inside.

It had happened so fast—all of it—everything! And she’d never felt so afraid in her entire life. Her head was whirling and her legs had gone hollow. The panic had not subsided and it sent the heels of her shoes screeching shrilly beneath her as she spun round, then she lifted an arm and hit out at him with her bag.

He fielded the blow like a man swatting a fly away. ‘Calm down,’ he gritted.

But Rachel didn’t want to calm down. Hair flying about her slender neck as she struggled with him, ‘Let me go—let me go!’ she choked out.

Then she threw back her head and opened her mouth to scream.

Only it didn’t arrive. Nothing happened. The scream remained just a thick lump pulsing in the base of her throat. And he didn’t attempt to smother it like he had done outside the hotel but just stood there looking down at her while she stared up at him.

It was crazy—the whole evening had been crazy, but this was the craziest part because it felt as if they’d both suddenly been frozen in time.

The panic receded. She forgot to breathe. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t breathing either and he was frowning as if he too couldn’t understand what was going on.

Gorgeous frown, she found herself thinking. Gorgeous black silk-hooded eyes. In fact he was, she saw as if for the first time, altogether totally breathtaking to look at. His facial bone structure was striking—the high forehead and good cheekbones, the long narrow nose and perfectly symmetrical chin.

And his eyes weren’t really grey, but an unusual mixture of green flecked with silver. His skin was amazing, a tightly wrapped casing of honey-gold her fingers remembered with a tense little twitch. The satin-black eyebrows, those luxuriously long eyelashes that were hovering just above the cheekbones, and the mouth…

Don’t look at his mouth, she told herself tautly, but she didn’t just look, she stared at it. Slender, smooth, slightly parted. The tip of her tongue snaked out to wipe away the now familiar tingle she felt take over her own lips.

He breathed. The warmth of his breath brushed her face, scented with the heady fruits of a rich dark wine. She tried a tense swallow, looked back into his eyes and saw what was coming. He was going to kiss her. Not to stop her screaming or even in anger, but because—

Oh, God, she wanted him to!

He muttered something in Italian. She released the strangest-sounding groan. In the next second he’d captured her mouth and they were kissing—really kissing. Not stolen, fought-for, punishing or smothering kisses, but like two greedy, hungry lovers with a swift, hot, urgent necessity.

Their tongues flickered and slid in a wild, erotic dance of hungry heat. Without caring she was doing it, Rachel lifted her arms up over Raffaelle’s shoulders and arched closer until she could feel every inch of him pressing against her, from his hard-packed chest to powerful thighs.

He was so pumped up and solid, his hands moving on a restless journey over the silk dress covering her slender body to the bare flesh of her shoulders, then back down to her small waist again. She became aware that she was purring like a well stroked kitten. He breathed something harsh, then picked her up with his hands and started walking without breaking the kiss.

Her hands were in his hair now, raking his scalp and scrunching its smooth style, the swollen globes of her breasts nudging at him high on his chest.

This should not be happening. This should not be happening! a shrill voice screamed inside her head.

The panic returned; Rachel yanked her head back at the same moment that he did the same thing.

Like two people who did not know what the hell was happening to them, they stared at each other again, her eyes wide dark pools of shocked horror and confusion, his blackened by stunned disbelief. Her mouth was burning, her lips still parted and pulsing and swollen as she panted for breath.

He put her down so abruptly she almost toppled off the thin heels of her shoes, her fingers trailing around his shirt collar then down the front of his jacket where they clung, because they had to, to his black satin lapels.

Anger burned now. A thick, dark, intense anger that pulsed from every hard inch of him as he used a key to open a door. Rachel had not noticed that they’d left the lift, never mind crossed another foyer to reach the door!

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.

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