Книга - The Italian Demands His Heirs

The Italian Demands His Heirs
LYNNE GRAHAM


A night in the Italian’s bed… Now she’s pregnant with his babies! To counter a media scandal, billionaire Raffaele di Mancini must marry fiery Vivi Mardas. But when she rejects his convenient proposal, he’s stunned. How can she deny their searing chemistry? Determined to convince Vivi to be his temporary bride, Raffaele’s not above using one night of seduction! But when Vivi discovers she’s carrying his twins, Rafaelle demands she meet him down the aisle—for real!







A night in the Italian’s bed...

Now she’s pregnant with his babies!

To counter a media scandal, billionaire Raffaele di Mancini must marry fiery Vivi Mardas. But when she rejects his convenient proposal, he’s stunned. How can she deny their searing chemistry? Determined to convince Vivi to be his temporary bride, Raffaele’s not above using one night of seduction! But when Vivi discovers she’s carrying his twins, Raffaele demands she meet him down the aisle—for real!

Lose yourself in this passionate marriage of convenience!


LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.


Also by Lynne Graham (#u019346ca-faa6-5dd2-a5a0-f27968f57915)

His Queen by Desert Decree

The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

Billionaires at the Altar miniseries

The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

The Italian Demands His Heirs

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).


The Italian Demands His Heirs

Lynne Graham






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ISBN: 978-1-474-08758-2

THE ITALIAN DEMANDS HIS HEIRS

© 2019 Lynne Graham

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover (#u48dda40e-93b8-509e-99aa-38a9fa677904)

Back Cover Text (#u33760e45-5fce-590e-ad53-8ac39ba21b95)

About the Author (#ua69d3fb6-b8f9-5cbe-9461-b14827f17ffb)

Booklist (#u1e1c835b-cde8-5788-9a0b-64b7bf488c40)

Title Page (#ufcd255a8-a087-57d8-a27b-524c569b430a)

Copyright (#uf51cec51-fd08-51b0-967e-8763278c7635)

CHAPTER ONE (#u80ab2fe3-df78-5e1b-b979-c8fc3dcc8d76)

CHAPTER TWO (#ua297b594-1f30-5261-a523-917ba875b1e2)

CHAPTER THREE (#u5e0a44ba-6f7c-556b-ad6b-dd9bf4d424a9)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#u019346ca-faa6-5dd2-a5a0-f27968f57915)


STAMBOULAS FOTAKIS WAS in a grim mood as he surveyed the dossier sited squarely in front of him on his desk. To the side of it sat the much thinner file containing an investigative report on his quarry, Raffaele di Mancini.

Raffaele di Mancini, his granddaughter Vivi’s bête noire, the man who had wronged her without reason.

Another good-looking bastard, he thought irritably, flipping the folder open to scan his victim’s perfectly chiselled profile, which would have done justice to any male supermodel. Obviously, his three granddaughters liked handsome men. Well, he had settled his eldest granddaughter Winnie’s problems, even if that hadn’t quite turned out as he had planned when she had elected to stay married to the father of her son.

Vivi, however...bright, hot-tempered Vivi...would be a much tougher nut to crack than the more biddable Winnie. He had had a huge argument with Vivi at his seventy-fifth birthday party, something of a novelty for a man who generally only met with fear and flattery. Being very rich and very influential, Stam was more accustomed to those who did exactly as he told them to do. But not Vivi, he reminisced fondly, Vivi who had no fear of him and spoke her mind without hesitation and, surprisingly, he respected her the more for her inner strength and conviction.

Fortunately for him, however, Vivi utterly loathed Raffaele di Mancini for the way he had wrecked her life. Two years earlier he had ruined her reputation to ensure that his flighty little sister came out of the same scandal whiter than white. Vivi had been accused, not only of being a prostitute, but also of having lured Arianna into stripping off for the camera and signing up as an escort with a sleazy business masquerading as a legitimate modelling agency. No, there was little chance of Vivi falling in love with Mancini, Stam conceded with an amused smile. But of the three potential husbands he had originally lined up to rescue his granddaughters’ reputations, Raffaele di Mancini was undeniably the most dangerous as well as being the biggest mystery.

Raffaele, billionaire banker and noted philanthropist, was the descendant of an extravagantly long and blue-blooded family line that could trace its beginnings back to the tenth century. By repute, he was a genius in the financial field and he led a remarkably discreet and conservative life, never ever seeking publicity. That made it all the harder for Stam to understand why Mancini had broken the discretion of a lifetime and labelled poor Vivi an escort on the back of the slenderest evidence. Had he somehow imagined it would shield his kid sister, Arianna, from being associated with the sleazy operation both young women had innocently become embroiled with?

But what did that matter now when the damage had been done? Stam ruminated. His problem was that Mancini was too clever by far to be entrapped by the usual ploys and too rich and virtuous to be bribed. That had meant that Stam was forced to stoop to a means of persuasion that he disliked intensely, particularly when that file revealed that Mancini had spent his adult life struggling to protect his wayward sister from her mistakes and their consequences. It was commendable that he had gone to so much trouble for a girl who was only a half-sister and the daughter of the drug-addled stepmother he could only have despised.

Mancini, however, deserved everything he had coming to him for what he had done to poor Vivi’s self-esteem, Stam reflected with harsh finality.

* * *

Raffaele di Mancini was uneasy.

And he didn’t know why, which nagged at him because he always trusted his gut. Yet there was nothing wrong in his world. His life ran with machine-like efficiency from the instant he arose at six in the morning to a perfectly cooked breakfast to the moment he retired to a bed made up with the very finest bed linen available.

All was quiet within his family circle as well. His younger sister, Arianna, for a long time a source of concern, was finally settled and on the brink of marrying a suitable man, with whom she was currently sharing a home in Florence. He had neither worries nor any thorny problems to tackle.

In London to speak at a banking conference, he had been surprised to be invited to a meeting with the notoriously reclusive Stamboulas Fotakis at his palatial and multi-storeyed London apartment. Fotakis was one of the richest men in the world but Raffaele had never met him and naturally he was curious to discover what had prompted such an invitation. He was also curious about the man himself, he acknowledged wryly. Over the years, reams had been written about Stam Fotakis and even if half of the stories could be discounted as nonsense, what remained was the stuff of legend.

Raffaele raked impatient fingers through his cropped black hair and checked his designer watch. Being kept waiting was a new experience for him. Raised to believe that good manners were integral to good business practice, Raffaele frowned, dark-as-charcoal eyes flaring with irritation. Clearly, Fotakis was running late but Raffaele was keen to get back to his town house and unwind after a very long day spent answering stupid questions and being sociable. Raffaele had a very low tolerance threshold for fools. Labelled a genius at school, he was impatient, extremely organised and only happy when following a precise schedule.

A PA, a beautiful blonde, entered the reception room and ushered him into a lift, where she tried to strike up a conversation and flirt with him. Stiffening in exasperation at her hair-tossing, fluttering eyelashes and lingering glances, Raffaele behaved much like a man swatting off a fly. Women came on to him all the time and it often irritated him. It got in the way of normal dialogue and tainted the professional atmosphere of an office environment. If she had been working for Raffaele, he would have instantly sacked her for such a display.

Women had their place in his life, of course they did. Raffaele had a high sex drive, as with many other thirty-year-old men. But he was infinitely more discreet than most. He chose his lovers with care and none of his affairs lasted longer than a few weeks. There was even a good reason for that brief timescale. Raffaele had eventually worked out that the longer he spent with a woman, the more attached and ambitious and indiscreet she became. As he had no intention of getting married until he was in his forties and mature enough to make a wise choice, he enjoyed sex only as long as it came without strings.

Raffaele was shown into a wood-panelled office of almost Victorian magnificence. Another door opened and a small white-haired, bearded man appeared. He immediately lifted the fat file on the desk and extended it to Raffaele. ‘Mr di Mancini,’ Stam Fotakis murmured flatly.

‘Mr Fotakis.’ Somewhat disconcerted by the lack of social chit-chat even though he had very little time for such time-wasting pursuits, Raffaele accepted the file and took the seat his host indicated.

‘Give me your thoughts on that,’ Stam invited smoothly.

As Raffaele leafed ever more slowly through the incredibly detailed file with a rare sense of growing horror, he breathed in slow and deep to steady himself. Arianna’s every mistake seemed to be included in that file and there were one or two that not even Raffaele had known about. He swallowed hard on his shock at being presented with such a shady dossier on his little sister’s past activities.

‘What are you planning to do with this information?’ Raffaele enquired in as civil a tone as he could manage because he was angry, seriously angry, and that was an emotion he rarely experienced but instinctively knew had to be controlled.

His host surveyed him steadily. ‘That very much depends on you. It will be released to the tabloid press only if you disappoint me,’ he revealed quietly.

‘That is an unthinkable threat,’ Raffaele breathed tautly. ‘I cannot believe that my sister has ever done you any harm.’

‘Let me explain the connection,’ Stam urged him stonily. ‘It’s the tale of two young women, one born into rank and privilege and great wealth...your sister.’

‘And the other?’ Raffaele prompted impatiently.

‘Born into poor circumstances and raised without any advantages but nonetheless a hard-working, educated and respectable young woman...and my granddaughter.’

‘Your granddaughter,’ Raffaele repeated blankly, still trying to fathom at top speed what Stam Fotakis could possibly want from him to warrant such a threat.

‘Vivien Mardas, better known as Vivi,’ Stam supplied. ‘For a little while she was a friend of your sister’s.’

Raffaele went rigid, the link established and comprehension now possible. ‘I remember her,’ he said stiffly. ‘She is a member of your family?’

‘Yes,’ Stam said, equally stiffly. ‘And I am as protective of her as you are of your sister and determined to rectify any injustices she has suffered.’

Raffaele remained diplomatically silent, for a slow, deep anger was burning like hellfire inside him as he joined the dots and hit pay dirt. When he had known her, Vivi had definitely been unaware that she had a very rich and powerful grandfather. Evidently, having discovered that no doubt welcome reality, she had lied about the less presentable parts of her past in an effort to cover them up.

‘Injustices?’ he prompted flatly.

‘You ruined her reputation by referring to her as a prostitute. As that ludicrous designation and the story is still available online to anyone who cares to look her up, Vivi found it impossible to find a job commensurate with her abilities,’ Stam revealed. ‘She suffered a great deal for someone who was innocent of fault. Her friends dropped her, her name was bandied about. She was laughed at, despised and she was obliged to leave jobs until she was finally forced to legally take another surname to hide that embarrassing past. She is now known as Vivien Fox.’

Raffaele nodded, that little sob story of Vivi’s woes touching him not at all. Of course, he wasn’t an elderly man, keen to believe only the best of his grandchild, he reasoned without hesitation. He was cool, logical, innately critical and suspicious, particularly when it came to labelling a woman an innocent. He had yet to meet a genuinely innocent woman.

He remembered Vivi very well. Hair that glittered like copper wire in the sunlight but which felt like spun silk. A tall, beautiful redhead, who could look impossibly elegant in anything she wore, even jeans. Skin like translucent porcelain and eyes as brilliant a blue as the Italian summer sky. He also remembered how very close he had come to succumbing to her wiles, even though she didn’t fit his preferred expectations of a woman in any field. He had had a narrow escape there and he was still grateful for it and not one bit regretful for anything he had said that could have offended Stam Fotakis.

Unless his misfortune in offending Stam was to lead to his kid sister being harmed, he adjusted grudgingly. And harmed Arianna very definitely would be, if that dossier of her past foolishness was ever to be released to the press, because her fiancé’s family were very conventional, and he would come under a lot of pressure to ditch her. That would send Arianna reeling and straight back into the erratic behaviour she had left behind her after falling in love with Tomas.

‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Raffaele intoned levelly. ‘But I cannot believe that you genuinely want to injure another naive young woman like my sister. Arianna was born with problems.’

Stam lifted a silencing hand. ‘I know she was born addicted to drugs and suffers from poor impulse control. I know she’s not particularly bright and is far too trusting of strangers, but she’s not my responsibility, she’s yours,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘To make restitution, I want you to marry Vivi and give her your illustrious name.’

‘Marry her?’ Raffaele exclaimed in angry disbelief before he clenched his jaw shut and bit back any unwise comments as to the likelihood of Vivi’s much-vaunted innocence.

‘Only for the ceremony, suitably publicised to give her proper standing in society,’ Stam continued in the same mild tone, much as though he were discussing the weather. ‘I want nothing more. You will part on your wedding day and a divorce will duly follow. No financial settlement will be required on her behalf either. It is a modest request.’

‘Modest?’ Raffaele queried with incredulous emphasis.

‘Yes. I have no doubt that you think yourself very much above my granddaughter in terms of background and breeding,’ Stam conceded drily. ‘I won’t hold that against you. But you should be grateful that the temporary use of your good name is all that I require from you in return for that dossier, which would have a catastrophic effect on your sister’s marital plans.’

Fotakis knew it all, Raffaele acknowledged grittily, and, no matter how outrageous Stam’s demand that he marry Vivi, he knew he would have to consider it to protect Arianna’s future stability and security. Tomas was charmed by his sister’s giggly immaturity and impulsiveness where many men would have run a mile, and he didn’t want her only because she was an heiress either. Tomas, as sensible and stable as Arianna was not, was his sister’s perfect match and, what was more, Arianna loved him.

How could he stand by in silence while she lost all that over matters as trivial as a naked bathing episode in a famous fountain and being mistakenly arrested as a shoplifter? Unhappily, there were other murkier episodes involved and included in that file, he conceded grudgingly, such as the time she had spent the night with two men because her so-called friends had dared her to do so.

‘I hated it,’ she had muttered guiltily, appalled that he had picked up on that unsavoury rumour. ‘But everyone else had done stuff like that and I wanted to fit in... I wanted them to like me.’

After that affair, Raffaele had begun vetting her friends as well, recognising that his sister was too vulnerable to be left at the mercy of those ready to take advantage of her gullible nature to entertain themselves at her expense.

‘Presumably you have already discussed this idea with Vivi,’ Raffaele remarked curtly. ‘And she, of course, will be keen.’

‘Keen?’ Stam surprised him by laughing out loud. ‘Vivi hates you and she definitely doesn’t want to marry you! I’m afraid that persuading Vivi to the altar is your personal challenge.’

‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe that she isn’t involved in this proposition?’ Raffaele incised in disbelief.

‘Of course, she isn’t involved. Vivi doesn’t work off logic, she works off emotion. My...er...suggestion that she marry you made her very angry but I’m sure a high achiever of your calibre will know exactly how to transform her view of you,’ Stam completed with wry amusement brightening his snapping dark eyes. ‘If you want that dossier to stay private, you have to get Vivi to the church.’

‘That’s to be my penance, is it?’ Raffaele pronounced between gritted teeth.

‘If you like to think of it in those terms, do so. It’s immaterial to me. You give her a wedding ring but you keep your hands off her,’ Stam Fotakis warned him bluntly. ‘I want her back as untouched and unharmed as she is now. Is that understood?’

Dark colour edged the smooth planes of Raffaele’s high cheekbones, accentuating his taut bone structure. He could not credit the warning he was being given. ‘I have never touched an unwilling woman in my life,’ he countered with icy hauteur.

‘Well, you will find my granddaughter very unwilling,’ Stam forecast with satisfaction. ‘I dare say you’re accustomed to a different response from women...although you didn’t rise to the bait of my PA giving you a come-on in the lift.’

‘That was a set-up?’ Raffaele breathed in thundering disbelief, momentarily betrayed into speech.

‘I like to know the nature of the men I deal with and you passed the test. You’re not a womaniser,’ Stam retorted crisply. ‘I am very protective of Vivi.’

It was on the tip of Raffaele’s tongue to say that on the one occasion he had had Vivi in his arms, the very last thing she had been was unwilling, but he swallowed back that unwise admission, choosing instead to be grateful that there were, after all, some things that Vivi’s grandfather did not know.

And now, Raffaele reflected as he travelled back to his London town house in the comfort of his limo, he had to decide what to do next. It was ironic that he had always had the comfortable belief that being very, very rich protected you, he conceded, stunned into shock and an unfamiliar sense of powerlessness by the situation he found himself in. But wealth hadn’t, after all, protected Arianna from her misfortunes from conception, nor was it sufficient to hold at bay an old man determined to claim restitution for a sin that Raffaele had not actually committed.

He had not called Vivi a prostitute. For a start, she had been an escort rather than a prostitute and he knew the difference, having met women of both persuasions in even the most exclusive circles and learned how to detect and avoid them. That Vivi had almost slipped past his guard still infuriated him. The prostitution designation, however, had been manufactured by the press to provide an attention-grabbing headline.

Unfortunately, that truth would not remove that dangerous dossier on his sister from Stam Fotakis’s calculating and vengeful hands...

* * *

An upsetting memory was playing through Vivi’s mind as she put on her make-up for her date with her boyfriend, Jude. She had had a blazing row with her grandfather during his birthday party at her sister and brother-in-law’s home in Greece and she hadn’t let off steam by telling her sisters about it because she had known it would upset them when they preferred to play happy families.

‘Once Mancini marries you, you will never have cause to fear that scandal again because naturally the man who referred to you in those terms would scarcely be marrying you if you were a...er...woman of ill repute.’ Her grandfather selected the phrase with distaste. ‘Obviously, a rich, extremely successful man from his aristocratic background would never consider such a wife.’

‘I’d sooner marry a toad than Raffaele di Mancini!’ Vivi flung back at the older man in furious disbelief. ‘But the real truth is that I don’t want to marry anyone!’

‘Winnie is happy,’ he reminded her doggedly.

‘My sister’s a people pleaser and I’m not!’ Vivi countered with spirit. ‘I love her to death but what’s all right for her isn’t all right for me. When I get married, I want it to be real, not some phoney cobbled-together arrangement for the sake of appearances and status!’

‘I can’t believe you’d want to keep Mancini!’ Stam sniped, refusing to get the point or listen and hanging onto his mindset with the tenacity of a bulldog gnawing at a particularly tough bone.

Refusing to rise to that bait, Vivi tossed her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re such a miser that you couldn’t save my foster parents’ home for them without attaching unreasonable conditions to your generosity! We’re supposed to be family but you don’t behave like family are supposed to behave. But then what would I know about that, never really having had that experience?’ she muttered, falling into an awkward silence.

‘You are my family and I will always look after you,’ Stam intoned stubbornly.

‘Looking after me is not marrying me off...however briefly...to that Mancini rat! And how could you possibly persuade him to marry me anyway?’ she demanded suspiciously. ‘I suspect he would sooner go to his grave than agree to marry a woman he believes to have been a prostitute.’

In his old-fashioned way, Stam winced and sighed, ‘I have what you could call an irresistible proposition to lay before Mancini, which will persuade him.’

‘I don’t care if you’re offering him the moon as an inducement. Well, actually I do,’ Vivi admitted on a fresh gust of anger that made her almost violet eyes shimmer as bright as polar stars against her porcelain skin. ‘Having anything to do with him at all, never mind marrying him, would be humiliating!’

‘No,’ Stam had argued equally strongly. ‘This time around, all the power will be in your hands, Vivi. Don’t you want that experience? Don’t you want to see the man who insulted you forced to eat his own words?’

No, Vivi could live without revenge, she conceded as she emerged from the memory of that argument. As long as she never saw Raffaele di Mancini again in this lifetime, she would be happy. He was a reminder of too much that she wanted to forget and leave buried. She had become very fond of Arianna and, no doubt at Raffaele’s behest, Arianna had immediately dumped their friendship as well. And then there had been her seemingly growing relationship with Raffaele himself at the time. She closed off that train of thought angrily. Just a stupid kiss, just one stupid kiss, even a teenager would have known not to get unduly excited by something that trivial, she castigated herself.

But then Vivi knew that she tended to be more vulnerable with men than other more experienced and emotionally secure women. Vivi had not known security until she was fourteen and living with her final set of foster parents, the kindly John and Liz, who had reunited the three sisters within their home. Before John and Liz, there had been a series of unsuitable foster homes where Vivi had been bullied, verbally abused and, on several occasions, sexually threatened.

Winnie, Vivi and Zoe had lost their parents in a car accident. At the age of twenty-three, Vivi barely remembered them. Their father, however, had been Stam’s youngest son, who had been estranged from him for years. Stam had not even known his grandchildren existed until they had contacted him as adults, seeking his financial help when their foster parents were facing the repossession of their home where they were still caring for troubled children. He had welcomed them into his life with great enthusiasm but had set outrageous terms for giving them his help, demanding that they all marry men of his choice to raise their status.

Vivi had still to make up her mind about what she thought of her grandfather. Was he, simply, an incredible snob? Or crazy? Or, more worryingly, the kind of personality who had to get revenge on anyone who wronged a member of his family? Well, Winnie and Vivi had been wronged but their youngest sister, Zoe, had only been wronged by unfortunate foster care. Vivi knew she had to stand up to her grandfather for Zoe’s sake because Zoe was frail and emotionally vulnerable, subject to extreme shyness and panic attacks. Zoe would never manage to fight with the older man; indeed Zoe was so self-effacing that the very idea of her confronting anyone struck the bolder Vivi as ridiculous.

For that reason, Vivi knew that she had to stand strong. She tried not to be bitter about the past, for bitterness achieved nothing. At present she and Zoe were living in a small, luxurious town house owned by their grandfather and offered to them rent-free. But the house felt empty without Winnie’s toddler son, Teddy, running about and Vivi was too distrustful of her grandfather to spend the money she wasn’t currently forking out on rent. Instead she was saving that money, waiting anxiously for the day when he might tire of her defiance and throw them back out into the cold.

That meant that she still couldn’t afford to get her awful hair straightened again, she thought ruefully, picking up a corkscrew copper curl and dropping it again with antipathy. It was the hair from hell and she had been born with it and she was only content with her appearance when she could transform it into a smooth straight fall. Right now it was rioting across her shoulders, round her face and down her back like a rag doll’s wig, she thought irritably. Not that Jude, her current boyfriend, seemed to mind.

But then Jude didn’t really seem to mind much about anything. She had met him at her gym where he worked as a martial arts teacher. He was blond and laid-back, and he had a good body but she had yet to experience a desire to see that body naked. Possibly their casual relationship came down to being mates more than anything else, she reflected ruefully. If she hadn’t met Raffaele and been immediately attracted to him, she would’ve believed that she was really not that bothered about sex. Men usually came and went in Vivi’s life without her ever particularly caring. Only Raffaele had hurt her and that had come along with a whole lot of other damage so she tried not to dwell on his rejection.

It was thanks to Raffaele that she had been forced to work in a succession of menial jobs before finally surrendering to the very effective changing of her surname. Only then had she contrived to shed the scandal that had seen her hounded out of two good jobs. And all because she had taken a first job straight after graduating with her marketing degree as a receptionist in a business that had ultimately turned out to be functioning as a modelling and an undercover escort agency, with many of the models working as escorts on the side. And as if that hadn’t proved bad enough a pop-up brothel had been operating in the back of the building as well, and it had been the police raid of that facility that had exploded the agency’s cover and led to her being captured on camera running down the street to escape the whole explosive mess. That photo and her name had been splashed over a notorious tabloid newspaper and in that photo she had looked ridiculously glamorous, because Arianna had cleared out her wardrobe and had given her a pile of her discarded but still gorgeous outfits to wear.

Her phone buzzed and she lifted it, hoping it wasn’t Jude calling to cancel because she had been looking forward to the film they were supposed to be seeing. Instead a voice she had hoped never to hear again sounded in her ears. That voice was deep and rich and accented with a positive purr. Even Raffaele’s voice dripped sex appeal, she had once thought, but right at that moment, with the phone clamped too tightly to her ear, she couldn’t think rationally at all because that he should actually dare to contact her had not only never occurred to her but it also plunged her deep into shock.

‘Vivi?’ he queried. ‘It’s Raffaele. We need to talk.’

Vivi rang off without speaking and immediately blocked his number. He might be willing to dance to her grandfather’s tune for the right price but she was not. Or was she? She thought of John and Liz’s predicament and the great debt she and her siblings owed to the couple for their kindness and care at a time when the girls had been young and vulnerable. And then she felt sick with uncertainty while she wondered how Raffaele had got her phone number. We need to talk. Raffaele di Mancini, born into an Italian dukedom even if he didn’t use his title, just had to be kidding! Only if he had a sense of humour he had never revealed it to her.

He was good at staring though, she recalled abstractedly, suddenly thrown back to their first meeting over the meal that Arianna had insisted on inviting her to. And all Arianna’s intimidating brother had seemed to do was stare at her, eyes as dark as jet between thick black lashes. Eyes that were set in an extravagantly handsome face, eyes that could unexpectedly warm to a melted golden caramel hue and send her heartbeat inexplicably racing.

Yes, there had been very little normal getting-to-know-you conversation over that family dinner with poor Arianna being left to pick up the slack and usually sharp Vivi finding her tongue inexplicably glued to the roof of her mouth for the first time in her life. And what had she done? While Arianna had blithely chattered, Vivi had stared back, fascinated by Raffaele in the strangest way, little arrows of heat darting through her as she’d noticed new and seemingly important things about him. The commanding angle of his black brows; the masculine strength of his jaw line; the olive-toned planes and hollows of his fabulous bone structure; the classic arch of his nose and the wildly sensual curve of his sculpted lips. She had noted his perfect manners, his elegant hands and the fluid movement of them. She had sat there like a schoolgirl ogling him, forgetting to eat, forgetting everything, seduced by the new energising excitement filtering through her bloodstream like a charge of adrenalin.

And much good it had done her, she recollected with self-loathing, emerging back into the less exciting present...

* * *

Across London, Raffaele cast down his phone and moved without hesitation on to Plan B. Vivi wouldn’t speak to him. Well, he had to admit that that was a surprise but he had to find a way to make her deal with him. If civil and calm didn’t work as an approach, he would take a leaf out of her grandfather’s book and try heavy duty persuasion. And if that didn’t work out either, he would work right through the alphabet in plans until he found the magic combination to make Vivi do what he needed her to do for Arianna’s benefit.

Raffaele had a rare sleepless night, spent remembering his dismay at his stepmother’s sudden death from an overdose when he was only twenty and still a student. Her passing, mere months after his father’s demise, had impacted heavily on Raffaele’s life. Without any warning or preparation, he had found himself responsible for a twelve-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old girl he had barely bothered to even get to know...his half-sister. Yet he had grown to love Arianna and care for her in a way he had never deemed possible, for he knew his own flaws and accepted that he was essentially cold and analytical in nature.

Lying awake in the dark hours, however, he had discovered that he couldn’t suddenly switch off that deep need to protect his vulnerable sister from the drug inheritance that had damaged her through no fault of her own. Arianna harmed herself, never anybody else. So, he would do whatever it took to protect her from the fallout of that unfortunate friendship with Vivi two years earlier...and Vivi?

Well, devious, sexy little Vivi was simply going to have to bite the bullet and pay her dues on Arianna’s behalf...




CHAPTER TWO (#u019346ca-faa6-5dd2-a5a0-f27968f57915)


‘THE RUMOUR IS that the business has been taken over,’ Vivi’s manager, Janice, declared nervously. ‘Hacketts Tech now belongs to a big consortium and you know what that means...don’t you?’

Unaccustomed to Janice being anxious, Vivi frowned. ‘No, I haven’t had that experience before.’

‘Well, I have...twice before,’ the older woman declared ruefully. ‘First, the new bosses tell you there’re going to be no big changes and then they start restructuring, bringing in their own staff and suddenly you’re out of a job!’

Vivi grimaced. ‘My goodness, I hope not. I like it here.’

She checked her emails and was surprised to find that she had an appointment at ten with someone from the top floor that she had never heard of. She ran the name against the staff list and couldn’t find it. Did that mean that Janice’s rumour was true and that the process was already starting? Telling herself not to jump to conclusions, she kept quiet about the email.

‘Miss Fox?’ The receptionist checked when Vivi arrived at the top floor, leaving her desk to show Vivi where to go.

‘Who is this person I’m to see?’ Vivi questioned helplessly.

‘The new owner of the business. I’m not supposed to mention his name. It’s all very hush-hush,’ the woman told her apologetically.

Registering that Janice’s rumour was true, Vivi raised her brows in silence while wondering why a junior member of the marketing team would qualify for an appointment with the new owner. Some particular query? Then why not call up Janice?

But as the door was knocked on deferentially and duly opened wide, all suddenly became clear as Raffaele di Mancini swung round from the view he had been contemplating from the window of the contemporary office.

‘Come in, Vivi,’ he instructed cool as ice.

Vivi was frozen with shock on the threshold, her slender body rigid with tension because Raffaele’s sudden appearance in her life in an environment where she could not tell him to go jump off a cliff was as disturbing as it was horrifying.

Evidently grasping that reality for himself, Raffaele crossed the room, tugged her over the threshold as if she were a small and hesitant child and closed the door behind her. ‘Now let’s talk like grown-ups,’ he advised, disconcerted by the changes in her.

The smooth swathe of copper hair he recalled had transformed into a gorgeous foaming mane of silky curls, rather like a woman in a pre-Raphaelite portrait, he found himself vaguely acknowledging. Add in the china pale complexion and the bright blue eyes above that full pink mouth and you had a woman whom he might despise, but whose attractions added up to a quite remarkable level of beauty. Of course, he had noticed that she was stunning before, that being a fact that no man would fail to note, he reasoned, impatient with the way in which his brain was suddenly shooting out random thoughts like a shotgun. There she stood in an undeniably plain straight black skirt and pale blue shirt that still highlighted the perfection of her tall, slender figure with its modest curves. She stood about five feet nine in height and Raffaele had liked that about her because he preferred taller women, being six feet four himself.

‘I’m not staying. I refuse to be manipulated like this!’ Vivi exclaimed, spinning round to head back to the door.

‘You walk out that door now, I start having redundancies listed,’ Raffaele informed her, reckoning that he was likely to learn a lot about Vivi Fox—formerly Mardas—and her character in the next few minutes.

White as snow at that unveiled threat, Vivi spun back. ‘You can’t do that... I mean, just because I don’t want to speak to you? That would be outrageous!’ she protested in disbelief.

‘As the new owner of Hacketts Tech, I can be as outrageous as I like. Any regrets that you didn’t simply agree to talk to me last night on the phone?’ Raffaele elevated an ebony brow, all sardonic and cool, and it made her want to punch him in the gut. ‘You see, I don’t play games when I’m challenged, I play hardball.’

Vivi was chilled by that warning but she refused to let him see that. ‘Like I don’t already know that?’ she quipped, a fine auburn brow lifting.

‘Evidently, you didn’t,’ Raffaele pointed out while spinning out a chair for her to occupy. ‘Now, please take a seat.’

‘I prefer to stand, since I’m not planning on staying long,’ Vivi asserted, staying where she was, determined to show no weakness.

‘Are you normally this contrary?’ Raffaele breathed in exasperation, fighting a ridiculous urge to lift her off her feet and simply plonk her down in the designated spot. ‘Or is it that you’re childish?’

Refusing to look directly at him, Vivi shrugged her unconcern although a faint hint of colour warmed her translucent cheeks. ‘You can make your own mind up about that, I’m sure.’

‘Why do you think I want to speak to you?’

‘Because, apparently, my grandfather has made what he terms an “irresistible proposition” to you in return for which he expects you to marry me...in name only,’ Vivi recited with precision.

For a split second, Raffaele toyed with the idea of telling her the truth: that he was being blackmailed. But then what would that mean to her? Why would she care what happened to Arianna, who had not seen her or spoken to her in two years? And even more cogently, did he really want to tell a woman he couldn’t trust just how vulnerable his kid sister was? What if she, in a spirit of retaliation, went to the press to expose Arianna’s secrets? What if she was just like her rancorous grandfather?

Vivi studied Raffaele closely from beneath her lashes, absolutely hating the fact that her heart was racing so fast it felt as though it were bouncing inside her chest. He unnerved her, he always had, she told herself soothingly. Who could help being intimidated by such a very large and powerful man? But for all that, he was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life and even that simple acknowledgement of what was right before her cut through her defences, ensuring that her every muscle went rigid with stress. What was it about him that smashed the composure she had no trouble maintaining with other men?

His cropped hair reflected the light above as dark as the black-as-sloes eyes welded to her in silence. He had perfect symmetrical bone structure, as perfect as a Michelangelo carving in marble. The bronzed tone of his skin, the high cheekbones, the straight nose and the faintly shadowed strong jaw enhancing that wide sensual mouth all played into the same striking effect he had had on her the first time she met him. But she had grown up since then, learned a lot since then, she reminded herself with angry urgency, studiously dragging her gaze from him again and choosing to settle down into the chair she had refused only minutes earlier because sitting made it easier not to look at him.

‘That “irresistible proposition”,’ Vivi repeated drily. ‘You’re rich. You really don’t need to be richer unless you’ve suffered a reverse in circumstances since we last met?’

Incredulous at the tilt of her chin in question, Raffaele gritted his perfect white teeth together because she was making him angry and he didn’t ‘do’ angry with anyone. Angry was out of control, angry was everything that Raffaele always guarded against and restrained and suppressed. ‘No, my circumstances are unchanged,’ he murmured flatly, struggling to combat the temper she brought out in him with her unstudied insolence.

Nobody spoke to Raffaele with scorn, nobody ever had before and nobody else would have dared. His lean brown hands coiled into controlled fists. He could suck it up for Arianna, he told himself urgently, he was too proud, it would probably do his character a world of good...but if he ever got the chance for payback he knew he would be grabbing at it with two very greedy hands because Vivi’s disrespectful attitude infuriated him.

‘You would really be prepared to marry me just to make a profit?’ Vivi pressed, finding that so hard to believe.

His dark eyes glittered as though someone had shot them through with diamonds and she blinked, dragging her attention back from him again, disturbed again by his effect on her concentration. ‘Why not?’ he asked drily.

Vivi clasped her hands together on her lap, in no way as cool as she wanted to be in his presence. He had disconcerted her because she would have sworn he was the last man alive to be seduced merely by money. But then what did she really know about Raffaele di Mancini? Hadn’t she foolishly believed that she was getting to know him and then been soundly disabused of that belief when he’d turned round and humiliated her, absolutely humiliated her, by giving way to the unforgivable conviction that she was a woman willing to sell her body for money? She really knew nothing about Raffaele. He was extremely rich but clearly desired to be even richer and, if that were the case, it meant that only she was preventing him from reaching that goal. And that dismayed her because it meant that both her grandfather and Raffaele were ranged against her as opponents, which was very much the same as sticking her between a rock and a hard place.

‘I don’t want to marry you,’ Vivi murmured in a very quiet voice as she stared at the wall to the left of him. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’

Frustration lanced through Raffaele at finding her as difficult as her grandfather had forecast. He had been so sure in his own head that she would snatch at the opportunity to become his wife, seduced by his social standing and a need for revenge. Instead she was sitting there in front of him like a stiff little marionette doll placed in a chair and refusing to react.

Raffaele took a new tack. ‘There’s nothing inherently shameful about having been an escort,’ he breathed tautly. ‘It’s how far you go in that role. If it was merely companionship you offered, there’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘Oh, come on!’ Vivi flashed back at him, animation brightening her formerly still and shuttered face, bright blue eyes taking on a violet hue as she glanced back at him less warily than before. ‘You know that you don’t really believe that, Raffaele. You believed that I was flogging my body for money to anyone who offered sufficient inducement and you acted accordingly and treated me like dirt!’ she condemned.

‘I did not treat you like dirt,’ Raffaele intoned grittily.

‘You blamed me for the risky decisions your sister made. I didn’t ask her to take off her clothes for that modelling portfolio she was so set on having done!’ she argued angrily, wishing that recollection still didn’t hurt enough to make her angry. ‘She did that all on her own. And when she was approached to do escort work because nobody at the agency knew that she was independently wealthy....how was that anything to do with me? I was only the receptionist on the front desk, a humble employee. I didn’t know what was going on at that place. I wasn’t one of the models doing escort work on the side!’

‘So you say,’ Raffaele responded between gritted teeth because he didn’t believe a word of what she was telling him. A receptionist? Did she think he was stupid? A receptionist with that beauty and that figure? Of course she had been one of the models and the receptionist job had merely been a safe cover story for his benefit, and Arianna’s. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that the average humble receptionist couldn’t afford the red-soled shoes she had been captured in print wearing the day the brothel had been raided, but in the circumstances it would be stupid to wind her up more. The newspaper concerned had made much of the very expensive designer apparel she had been wearing, implying that she was a very exclusive prostitute.

Vivi compressed her lips, totally aware that he didn’t believe her. He was such a snob, she thought sourly, so ready to credit nasty stuff about her simply because she had been downright poor in comparison to his sister and himself. What other reason could he have for being so suspicious? It wasn’t as if she had acted all alluring with him, was it? Vivi didn’t know how, didn’t have sufficient experience or the desire to act alluring with any man. She wasn’t even very good at flirting because generally the men she met were bolder and cruder than flirting required.

‘I’m not going to apologise for the fact that I dislike you,’ Vivi fired at him.

‘I don’t need you to like me to marry me in the kind of paper marriage your grandfather requires,’ Raffaele shot back in exasperation.

‘Well, there would be nothing in it for me,’ Vivi fielded, struggling not to think about her duty in John and Liz’s situation of unsettled debts. For yes, there would be something in it for her, she reflected guiltily. In fact, there would be more than one advantage to marrying him. It would help John and Liz, it would please her grandfather and leave her blessedly free to get on with the rest of her life as she saw fit with nobody to please but herself. It would release all her worries but...it would also put poor Zoe in the hot seat in her place and how could she allow that?

‘If I offered money, diamonds...’ Raffaele murmured silkily, seeking her weakness, for he was convinced there had to be one.

‘Stop right there!’ Vivi cut in angrily. ‘How could you bribe me into doing it? My grandfather would give me almost anything I wanted...’

Except the one thing she needed, which was John and Liz’s mortgage debt paid off, she completed inwardly.

Resentment darted through her at the reality that her grandfather was holding what was a ridiculously small amount of money on his terms over his granddaughters’ heads in an attempt to force them into doing his bidding. Winnie’s husband, Eros, might have been trying to find a way of getting around that fact and spiking her grandfather’s big guns but he had not, so far, contrived to do so. She needed to phone her sister, though, and check out the latest news on that front.

‘Then we would appear to have reached an impasse, for the moment,’ Raffaele tacked on because he refused to credit that he wouldn’t find a means to achieve her agreement. He never failed at anything he set out to do and saw this situation as no different. Given sufficient time and attention, he would solve the riddle of her reluctance and come up with the magic winning combination. One way or another, he told himself grimly, he would lock her down to protect Arianna.

‘We’ll have dinner tonight,’ he told her flatly.

Vivi tossed her head back, curling ringlets of copper dancing back from her triangular face, bright dark blue eyes defiant. ‘No, we won’t.’

‘Tomorrow night, then.’

The soft full pink lips he couldn’t take his eyes off tightened into a surprisingly hard line. ‘No.’

‘I think you’re forgetting about that redundancy list,’ Raffaele reminded her silkily, ready to use any weapon he had to force her into doing his bidding.

Vivi leapt out of her chair and called him a very rude word, colour streaming across her cheekbones, eyes violet-tinged again with sheer fury.

‘If not by birth, certainly by nature,’ Raffaele countered with hard amusement, thoroughly satisfied to have got a very telling reaction out of her. Temper, temper, he chanted inwardly because she had one hell of a temper.

On the other hand—and who would ever have guessed it? he marvelled—Vivi Fox cared about her work colleagues. She wasn’t quite the hard-nosed, solely mercenary beauty he had assumed, willing to use anything she had got to better herself in society. Of course, she didn’t need to be like that now, he reminded himself impatiently, not with a very rich grandfather behind her.

‘I hate you!’ she flung at him.

‘Dinner at eight tomorrow night. I want you to have time to think over this meeting. A car will pick you up,’ Raffaele stated, not batting an eyelash in receipt of her angry attack.

Vivi’s fingers turned into claws, biting into her palms. No man had ever filled her with such rage that she felt violent, only him. But she would not run the risk of calling Raffaele’s bluff. He was a banker, he was innately ruthless and if redundancies could make her dance to his tune he was unlikely to make an empty threat, she reflected wretchedly. How could she risk that happening? How could she challenge him when her fellow employees’ livelihoods could be at stake? For goodness’ sake, what on earth had Grandad offered him to make him so desperate to win her agreement?

‘Eight.’ She bit out the word as if it physically hurt her and in a way it did because giving even an inch to Raffaele di Mancini felt like a self-betrayal of pride and good judgement.

‘I shall look forward to it,’ Raffaele dared with purring satisfaction and if there had been anything within reach to throw at him, Vivi would’ve thrown it.

She went back down to the marketing department in the lift, her brain in a daze after all the emotions she had worked through. Hatred, rage and resentment assailed her in heady waves around Raffaele and it made it hard for her to think straight, to think smart, she recognised, finding another stick to beat herself with. If she was cooler, calmer, would she have found a way out? But how could she be cool and calm when he so enraged her?

Her memory went back to the day she had met Arianna with her high heel caught in a grating down the street from the modelling agency. She had only been a week into her first job there and heading out to grab lunch. She had stopped to help Arianna, who was comically trying to drag her shoe out of the grating while standing on one leg like a heron.

‘Oh, thanks...’ Arianna had said with a flashing friendly smile, a very pretty brunette, who had seemed much the same age as Vivi was.

Nothing had budged that shoe heel from the grating and, wearying of the struggle, Arianna had stepped out of the other one, swept it up, looked at it as if trying to judge what use one shoe would be and then tossed it down again in disgust. Barefoot, she had stepped onto the pavement and introduced herself and Vivi had dug into her capacious tote to offer the use of the shabby trainers she wore to travel into work. Arianna had been as grateful as if she had saved her life and had accompanied Vivi into the café where she was planning to buy a sandwich, confessing that she was hungry herself. And that was how her friendship with Arianna had begun, two young women getting to know each other and exchanging numbers over a snack. Their meeting had not been in any way engineered. Arianna had not been ‘targeted’ for her wealth, as her brother had implied to the press, because, although Arianna had been very fashionably dressed, Vivi had not recognised the designer style she herself had never been able to afford. She had noticed Arianna’s jewellery and had simply assumed it was good costume stuff, rather than the real thing.

Arianna had come into Vivi’s life at a time when she was rather lonely. How had she been lonely living with two sisters? Well, back then, Winnie had been heartbroken and pregnant by Eros and no company whatsoever. And love Zoe as Vivi did, Zoe was happier reading a book in her room than in actually going out to meet people. Arianna had been full of life and cheerfulness and Vivi had liked her, felt rather protective of her, too, once she realised that the other young woman was a year younger and seemingly rather naive about city life.

Arianna had confided her dream of becoming a model the evening they had first gone out together, when she had also flashed a gold credit card and taken Vivi to a very exclusive club. That was when a little tactful questioning had revealed that Arianna came from a different world and Vivi had become a little uncomfortable in her company then.

Having spoken to the resident photographer at the agency, however, Vivi had set up the appointment for Arianna to have a modelling portfolio prepared. The day after, Arianna had invited her to join her and her brother for dinner. Two nights after that, Raffaele had unexpectedly joined them at a club and swept them up to the VIP section, scolding his sister for not being there in the first place. There he had questioned Vivi about her background and occupation and she had said defensively, ‘I’m ordinary and I was trying to explain to Arianna that people like you and her don’t become best friends with someone like me but she doesn’t seem to get that. She just looked hurt.’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t be friends,’ Raffaele had said, surprising her when she had already decided he had to be a snob with his blue-blooded background.

Of course, at that point, nothing had gone wrong, Vivi conceded wryly and it was very likely that Raffaele had viewed her friendship with his sister as harmless. Even so, it had been a mortifyingly happy time for her, she recalled with self-loathing.

Entranced by Raffaele, she had been convinced he was equally interested when he began dropping in on her outings with his sister. Their entire relationship, if it could even be called that, had taken place over only a couple of weeks. She had assumed he was holding back because he didn’t want to risk spoiling her friendship with Arianna. She had made so many forgiving assumptions, Vivi recalled, nauseated by the memory of how naive and trusting she had been, believing that he was a generally decent man but, for some reason, exceedingly cautious with women.

And then had come the night of the kiss at Arianna’s twentieth birthday party, when he had literally grabbed her out on the terrace where she had been getting some fresh air. He had come out there to lecture her for wandering off alone, as if she were another sister to be schooled and protected like Arianna, and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, he had ended up grabbing her instead with a lack of cool and control that had startled her, had startled them both, she rather suspected. Yet that single kiss, that he had afterwards apologised for and had treated as trivial, had, ironically, been the most stupendously sexy encounter she had ever shared with a man.




CHAPTER THREE (#u019346ca-faa6-5dd2-a5a0-f27968f57915)


‘WHERE ON EARTH are you going dressed like that?’ Zoe exclaimed with a scandalised look as Vivi slid into her concealing trench coat in the small hall of the house they shared. Instantly, Vivi wished she had got into the coat before her sister could even glimpse what she was wearing and her face burned hot with mortification.

‘I’m dining with Raffaele. I told you that earlier,’ Vivi reminded the younger woman, who bore little resemblance to her, being both small and blonde in colouring.

‘Dressed like that?’ Zoe demanded in disbelief, still staring at the pelmet-length skirt revealing her sibling’s very long and shapely legs, the cropped top that showed off the diamond in her navel and the sky-high heels. ‘That’s the outfit you wore to that insane hen party you went to last winter.’

‘So?’ Vivi flung her hair back in challenge.

‘It’s very provocative,’ Zoe muttered as if Vivi might not have realised that.

‘No, it’s the perfect outfit to put on for a guy who thinks I’m a tart for hire,’ Vivi countered with a defiant lift of her chin.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Vivi!’ Zoe lamented loudly. ‘As he’s met Grandad, he’s got to know how wrong he was by now!’

‘No. This is Raffaele di Mancini, who never ever admits to being wrong about anything,’ Vivi traded with a lethal gleam of threat and resentment in her bright blue eyes.

‘I don’t see how dressing like that and giving him entirely the wrong impression is likely to change that,’ Zoe admitted ruefully.

‘I’m not trying to change anything,’ Vivi riposted. ‘I’m just giving him what he expects and deserves. And I like yanking his chain.’

‘If you’re going to be forced to go through with marrying him, you should be making peace with him,’ Zoe opined worriedly. ‘I was so hoping that our brother-in-law would find a way out of this mess for us...’

Vivi pursed her lips, thinking of her phone call to her sister, Winnie, before she got dressed. Only her grandfather or their foster parents could pay off the mortgage debt being held over their heads. John and Liz didn’t have the money and were too proud and independent to accept the money from anyone else. In popular parlance, it seemed that their goose was cooked as far as wriggling out of the agreement they had made with their grandfather was concerned. He had the sisters tied up tight without wriggle room and with the legal advisers he had on hand that was hardly surprising. Stamboulas Fotakis hadn’t become very rich by leaving anything to chance.

‘And what are you going to do about Jude?’ Zoe continued ruefully.

Vivi compressed her lips with sudden gravity. ‘End it. It wasn’t going any place anyway. I like him and I think he feels much the same as me.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s just something missing.’

A limo picked her up to ferry her out to dinner and she sat in that opulent leather-upholstered interior checking out the bar appointments and the television before topping up her lipstick. While enjoying that luxury, she was filled with gleeful anticipation at the prospect of Raffaele’s likely reaction to being cursed to dine in public with a woman dressed as she was. Raffaele was very old-school and she was convinced they would be meeting at some very exclusive but stodgy and traditional location.

But in that assumption she was swiftly proved wrong for the limo drew up outside a familiar building: the town house that was Raffaele’s very imposing London home, which was about twenty times larger than the house she and her sister occupied. Raffaele’s, of course, sat off a dignified residential square with a private park in the centre. To Vivi’s annoyance, nervous perspiration dampened her body because she hadn’t realised she would be anywhere alone with him. Nor was sporting her current outfit in the privacy of his home likely to be the embarrassment for him that she had envisaged.

Raffaele’s day had, for some unknown reason, gone excessively slowly for him. Instead of racing past in its usual whirl of urgent appointments, updates and important meetings it had crawled at a snail’s pace, irritating him, and he awaited Vivi’s arrival with mixed feelings. Tonight, he would get everything sorted out, he reasoned, striving to feel satisfaction over that obvious reality. Tonight, he would do whatever it took to get Vivi to the altar for Arianna’s benefit. So, why the hell was he on edge and counting down the hours?

It was not as if Vivi were any great challenge, he told himself grimly. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman with a reasonable education, quick of wit and temper. No big deal, he told himself even as a weird little voice whispered in the back of his brain...and she wants you.

Madre di Dio...why the hell had his mind gone in that direction? Lots of women had wanted Raffaele and he accepted that a good ninety per cent of those same women wouldn’t have wanted him without the wealth that came with him. That was a fact of life but it was also a fact of life that he had discovered a sexual chemistry with Vivi that had threatened to burn him alive, proving more seductive, more powerful and more dangerous than anything he had ever previously experienced with a woman.

Two years back it had unnerved him just a little to register that a young woman he had believed at the time to be relatively inexperienced could have that effect on him without utilising any obvious wiles. Afterwards, when he had realised how he had been duped, he had been both relieved and enraged and walking away fast hadn’t satisfied his need for retaliation. She had played him for a fool with those shy little upward glances, that breathy little giggle that could turn into an oddly entrancing snort, the violet eyes that roamed over him and lingered with what he had interpreted as rather naive sexual curiosity.

But none of that had been real, he reminded himself stubbornly. It had all been an act of innocence designed to draw him in, and he would’ve fallen for that act if she hadn’t then been exposed for the greedy little schemer she undoubtedly was. Or had been, he adjusted, allowing that the belated discovery that her grandfather was one of the richest men in the world had to have altered her outlook. One thing was certain, Vivi no longer needed to target rich men to improve her lot in life.

He should’ve known better even when he first met Vivi and believed her to be the ordinary girl she pretended to be, he reflected broodingly. His own family history should, after all, have taught him a harsh enough lesson. His parents had been very happily married, giving him an idyllic childhood in his early years. And then his mother had died suddenly from an aneurysm and his father had been distraught and painfully lonely.

That was when Arianna’s mother, Sofia, had sneaked past his once shrewd father’s defences. Matteo di Mancini hadn’t recognised her for the mercenary degenerate woman she was. All the peace had been sucked out of Raffaele’s childhood home with Sofia’s tempestuous arrival. His father had married her in a hurry without getting to know her properly and, instead of acknowledging his mistake and divorcing her, he had tried to make the best of a bad bargain. The stress of that deeply unhappy second marriage had most probably led to the older man’s premature death from a heart attack.

Grim in the wake of those timely reflections, Raffaele was poised by the fireplace in the formal drawing room when he heard the sounds of Vivi’s arrival...the click of high heels on the limestone floor and the quiet murmur of his elderly butler, Willard, as he took her coat. The door opened and Vivi paused in the doorway and that first glimpse literally took his breath away.

Two years back she had never worn revealing clothes around him and now, all of a sudden and when he least expected such a display from her, she was virtually half naked. Working out the reasons behind that sudden change in approach was beyond Raffaele’s very masculine reaction to the sight of her at that moment. He was mesmerised. Long, long perfect legs showed to advantage in a very short skirt. A diamond twinkled exotically in her pierced navel, the smooth white skin of her midriff and tiny waist exposed while her small but pert breasts, round as ripe apples, pushed against the figure-hugging fabric of her top. Instantly, Raffaele went as hard as a rock but that, at least, kicked his brain back into gear.





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