A sound from behind her made her turn to find Raffaelle Villani propping up the living room doorway. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now, revealing tanned muscular forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to make her wonder where else on his body it might be.
Her stomach muscles quivered. Her mouth went dry. Fluttering down her eyelashes, ‘It’s nothing for you to panic about,’ she said huskily into the phone. ‘I—I’ve been explaining the—situation to R-Raffaelle.’ The name fell uneasily from her lips and she caught the way one of his eyebrows arched in mocking note of that. ‘He—he’s being very understanding about it as—as I told you and Elise he would be once he’d heard all the facts.’
There was a short silence. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
‘No—!’ Rachel pushed out. ‘It—it’s better that you stay away from here.’
‘Because I’m the press? Because between the two of you—you’ve come up with this crazy engagement announcement that is flying round Europe as we speak?’
That far, that quickly—? Rachel swallowed.
‘I’m your brother first, Rachel,’ Mark was saying angrily. ‘And if that bastard is—’
‘Well, it’s just a bit too late to remember that, Mark!’ she cut in. ‘After the way you left me standing tonight, I wish I didn’t have a brother!’
‘I thought you were right behind me until I reached my car.’ He had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘When I did think to look back, the rest of my cronies were piling out of the hotel and I couldn’t see you anywhere, so I assumed you’d disappeared in the other direction.’
‘And, happy with that very stupid idea, you just went home without me to post your scoop.’ Wasn’t that just typically Mark?
‘I had a deadline,’ he grunted.
I had a life, Rachel thought angrily. ‘Well, it’s too late to come at me with the brotherly concern now.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Rachel. So he’s okay with all of this, then?’
Straight from apology back to business, Rachel noticed. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He sucked in a breath. ‘So when are you coming back here?’
‘Coming back?’ She looked at Raffaelle Villani. He was standing there, waiting to hear her answer as much as Mark was.
And she knew suddenly that she was going nowhere. She owed it to this man to play the game the way he had decided it would be played.
‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention. ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’
‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.
She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—
‘Yes,’ she said.
But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’
Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you—tomorrow,’ was all she said.
‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’
And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.
‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’
‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’
The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.
Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale again and if her body language was speaking to him then it was telling him that she had just been tossed aside like a used bloody pawn.
Anger pumped at his chest. He wanted to kick something—her twin siblings, for instance.
‘What did you expect?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘A full rescue, complete with armour and swords? You are not the main player on this chessboard, cara—Elise is.’
‘I know that,’ she whispered and sank down on to the sofa.
He breathed out a sigh. ‘At least her unborn child will get to know its rightful father.’
He’d meant that to sound comforting but it had come out sounding harsh. She winced, pressing her lips together and dipping her head. Her hair slid forward, revealing the vulnerable curve of her slender white nape.
Raffaelle brought his teeth together, his tongue sitting behind them and tingling with a mixed-up desire to taste what he could see and the knowledge that it was at real risk of being bitten off if he did not take more care about what he said.
With a reluctance to let his mood soften, he pushed himself away from the door and walked towards her. She heard him coming and stiffened her spine. When he leant down with the intention of picking up her glass to offer it to her, she actually shuddered.
‘Please don’t start dragging me around again,’ she choked out.
Was that what he had been doing—?
Yes, that was what he had been doing, Raffaelle realised, and straightened up with a jerk. ‘I’m—sorry,’ he said.
‘Everyone is sorry.’ She laughed tensely. ‘Doesn’t help much though, does it?’
He couldn’t argue with that so he threw himself down on the sofa beside her and released another sigh. ‘Beginning to feel more like the real victim now, cara?’ He could not seem to stop the taunts from coming. ‘It is a strange feeling, don’t you think—being kind of frustratingly helpless? If we then start to wonder how our present lovers are going to feel when the news hits the stands, the sense of frustration really begins to bite.’
‘You have a lover?’ Her chin shot up, her slender neck twisting to show him blue eyes stark with horror and the glittering evidence of held-in tears. His inner senses shifted, stirring awake from what had only been a very light slumber anyway.
‘Do you?’ he fed back.
‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I would have got involved in any of this if I had a lover who could be embarrassed by it?’
‘Whereas I was not allowed to make that choice,’ he pointed out. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ he finished
