her his answer before he shook his dark head.
‘The show must go on.’
‘But I don’t want to meet your friends!’ she protested.
‘Scared they might see through us?’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Can’t we just want to—be alone together—as real engaged couples prefer to be?’
‘You’re mistaking a new betrothal with a new marriage,’ he countered. ‘Honeymooners want to—be alone together. Newly betrothed couples want to get out there and—show off.’
‘But I don’t want to show off!’
A satin black eyebrow arched in enquiry. ‘You don’t think I am good enough to show off?’
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she snapped. What woman in her right mind would say he wasn’t fit to show off? ‘I just don’t think we are fit to be seen as an intimate couple within a group of your friends!’ Stuffing her hands into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders in self-defence, she went on, ‘I presumed we would do—safer things like go out to quiet restaurants or something.’
‘A restaurant it is.’ He smiled. ‘Eight o’clock. We will be meeting my stepsister and several other close friends of mine.’
Rachel’s stomach started rolling sickly. ‘Tonight?’ she squeezed out painfully.
‘Si,’ he confirmed.
‘W-why couldn’t you be friendless?’ she tossed out helplessly.
He just grinned. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, cara, but I am certainly not friendless.’
‘But your stepsister of all people. She knows we are fakes!’
His mood changed in a flicker. ‘Stop playing the scared innocent, Rachel, when we both know you are far from it,’ he clipped out. ‘This is what you signed up for to save your sister’s marriage. And lovers who fall on one other as often as we do are certainly not faking it!’
She pushed her hands through her hair. ‘You know what I meant.’
‘And you know what I mean when I say—get your act together,’ he instructed, ‘because we are going out in public tonight and I want the besotted lover by my side, not the farmer with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide!’
Rachel stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to imply?’
He threw out an impatient hand. ‘You compare yourself badly to your more glamorous sister,’ he provided. ‘You compare me with your ex-lover and hate the fact that I am Italian like him.’
‘I do not!’ she denied.
‘Was he good-looking?’ he demanded.
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Her eyes went wide in bewilderment.
‘Was he—?’ he persisted.
‘Yes!’
‘How old?’
‘My age—’
‘And what kind of car did he drive?’
She sucked in an angry breath. ‘A red Ferrari,’ she answered. ‘But that wasn’t—’
‘Great,’ he gritted. ‘Mine is silver. Is that a bad mark against me or one against him for being too flashy?’
‘You’re crazy,’ she breathed.
Maybe he was. At this precise moment Raffaelle did not know why he was so fired up about a man he probably would not give a second thought to in other circumstances.
‘Just go and get ready.’ He turned his back on her and strode into his study, wanting to toss his drink to the back of his angry throat but refusing to allow himself the gut soothing pleasure while she was standing there staring at him. ‘And I don’t like flashy, so don’t come out dressed in red!’ he could not stop himself from adding.
Then he shut the door—slammed the damn door!
Rachel shook all the way into the bedroom. She shook as she removed her coat and laid it aside. She had absolutely no idea what all of that had been about and she didn’t think that she wanted to know.
Did he hate her—was that it? she immediately questioned. Did he resent her being here so badly that he needed to take chunks out of her to get his own back on her for putting him in this situation in the first place?
Was he locked in his silly study praying that she wasn’t pregnant with his child?
And he did not want to see the farmer dressed in flashy red when she came out. Her lips gave a quiver. He preferred to see the sleek Elise look-alike because at least he could relate to her and pretend she was his type!
Rachel stripped off her clothes and walked into the bathroom, not sure if she wanted to throw things or cry her eyes out.
The tears almost won the moment she stepped beneath the shower spray and she would have let them if he had not chosen that moment to push open the bathroom door and stride fully naked into the shower.
‘No, don’t stiffen up,’ he said as she did exactly that. ‘I am here to make you feel better, not worse.’
He drew her back against him, angling both of them so the shower sprayed down her front, then dropped his lips to her ear. ‘I came to apologise for being bad-tempered out there.’
‘You mean it’s just hit you that you have to trail me in front of your friends having ripped my head off,’ Rachel said.
‘I had a bad day.’
He was tasting her earlobe now. Rachel jerked it away.
‘Accepting invitations you had no desire to accept.’
‘While thinking of you and that bed I had walked away from.’ He chased the earlobe again. ‘So I was bad tempered all day and came home more than ready to find you waiting for me. But you were not here; you were out enjoying yourself.’
‘Playing the farmer to my heart’s content.’
‘I like the farmer,’ he murmured lustily. ‘She is toned and sleek and very sexy. I am also jealous of the ex-lover …’
That shocking confession finally stopped her from trying to pull away from him.
‘Impressed by that?’ he mocked.
‘Yes,’ she answered honestly.
‘I thought you might be.’ His mouth bit gently into the sensitive crook between her shoulder and neck.
Rachel’s breathing feathered and she closed her eyes, giving herself up to this when she knew that she shouldn’t. Wanting him to want her for herself and not just because she was here for the
