I don’t listen to his commands when they conflict with what I want,’ she parried stubbornly as she buttered her toast, struggling not to think about what her refusal to comply might cost her foster parents.
Winnie had bitten the bullet and married Eros even though it was the last thing she had wanted at the time. Why should she rate her pride higher than Winnie had? Why couldn’t she play her part and fall into line for the sake of peace, as Winnie had? Perhaps it was because when she was young she had too often found herself bereft of choice. And now when she was told to do something she didn’t agree with she wanted to fight against it every step of the way.
‘And if I threaten to make redundancies at Hacketts Tech? And I should be frank, redundancies are required there. The business is overstaffed,’ he informed her coolly.
‘You’re threatening me...’
‘I’m threatening you,’ Raffaele agreed with a harsh edge to his accented drawl, his brilliant dark eyes veiled by a thick screen of lashes.
Vivi thought frantically about John and Liz and their need for a secure home where they could continue looking after troubled adolescents and helping them into adulthood. Yes, she certainly owed them a debt for the healing regime they had given her because being constantly angry, distrustful and fearful, as she had once been, only made the world an even more scary place. And what about her work colleagues? People had mortgages and rent to pay, loans to keep up, holidays booked, children to raise. The sudden loss of stable employment could devastate lives and that stress could surely destroy relationships as well. Raffaele was putting enormous power into her hands, power she hated him for giving her because to her mind his power to threaten redundancies deprived her of the power to say no to the wedding he and her grandfather were determined to stage.
‘So, if I was to say yes...what would happen?’ she pressed in a driven surge. ‘No redundancies?’
‘I could put a stay on them for the immediate future.’
‘A permanent stay,’ Vivi bargained, barely believing that she was finally agreeing to the fake wedding she had long resisted.
‘I can’t agree to permanent,’ Raffaele countered levelly. ‘The bottom line must be business and profit.’
‘Not for me, it’s not. For me, it’s people!’ Vivi argued with spirit.
‘I could put a stay on redundancies for the first year,’ Raffaele proffered.
‘Three years!’ Vivi suggested.
Raffaele frowned. ‘Too long. In that time, Hacketts Tech could go under,’ he warned her, filling her with consternation for she had not previously appreciated that the firm could already be struggling for survival.
‘Eighteen months, then...and the staff get plenty of warning of what’s coming,’ she bargained in desperation.
Raffaele angled back in his chair, brilliant dark eyes alight as a starry night sky. ‘Eighteen months with full disclosure,’ he negotiated. ‘And on the twenty-fifth we get married.’
‘Fake married,’ Vivi reminded him drily.
‘Unless you turn out to be pregnant, in which case all bets will be off,’ Raffaele murmured curtly. ‘Because that development would be a game-changer.’
‘That would be a nightmare,’ Vivi contradicted with a tiny lurch of fear because the prospect of pregnancy and motherhood unnerved her. ‘But it’s not likely to happen, is it?’
Raffaele lifted and dropped a shoulder with the lithe, fluid elegance that was so much a part of him. ‘I wouldn’t like to call it. It’s not a situation I’ve been in before. How soon will you know?’
Her face warming, Vivi engaged in some fast calculations and unselfconsciously counted on her fingers beneath Raffaele’s increasingly incredulous scrutiny, for maths had never been one of Vivi’s strengths. ‘In about ten days.’
‘We’ll visit a doctor together. I’ll arrange it and that way we’ll know exactly where we stand,’ Raffaele decreed.
‘That’s not necessary. There are tests that can be done at home.’
‘When it comes to accurate results I prefer to trust the medical profession,’ Raffaele overruled without hesitation.
Vivi breathed in so deep to contain her temper that she marvelled that she didn’t take flight like a balloon. She gritted her teeth and focused on her toast, even though it was turning to sawdust inside her dry mouth. How had she contrived to become intimate with a man who enraged her to such a degree? Every time he laid down the letter of the law according to Raffaele she wanted to punch him. Had people always listened respectfully to his commands and done as he told them to do? Had no living person ever contrived to punch a hole in that armour of arrogance he wore? Why did he always believe he was right?
But what did that matter when she had finally been forced to give her consent? Her conscience had made her agree to his terms, she acknowledged unhappily. He had blackmailed her without an ounce of shame or compassion. How could she possibly stand back in silence while people lost their jobs when he was giving her the power to minimise that blow as far as was possible? She wasn’t callous enough to shirk the responsibility he had put on her shoulders, she reflected ruefully.
Unfortunately, the repercussions of her decision to capitulate would spread like the ripples that followed a rock being thrown into a pool. Zoe would be caught up in the backwash and put under pressure to become the third and final bride. Her grandfather would be satisfied, although only to some extent, she conceded uneasily, recalling his censorious phone call earlier. Heat flushed her troubled face, warm pink chasing the pallor from her taut cheeks. It was a source of serious embarrassment to her to accept that Stamboulas Fotakis was equally aware of her miscalculation.
Miscalculation? Vivi questioned her use of that word on another tide of self-loathing because there had been nothing calculating in anything she had done. Indeed, reason and restraint had been blown out of the water by passion, a passion beyond anything she had ever expected to feel. A passion that in retrospect terrified her. She had tried to excuse herself by blaming it all on the champagne but she hadn’t drunk enough of it to use that justification and she knew it.
Raffaele watched Vivi like a hawk, seeing the fleeting expressions chase across her delicate features, curious as to what was skimming through that agile little brain of hers. He was also wondering why he wasn’t feeling triumphant that he seemed to have finally contrived to avert the threat aimed at destroying his sister’s happiness. Instead he simply felt angry, more coldly angry than he had ever guessed he could feel. He was livid with Stam Fotakis for his crude blackmailing tactics but even more incensed that Vivi had forced him to stoop to the same distasteful level for the first time in his life.
And what if she conceived his child? He released his breath in a slow hiss of determined denial at that possibility. What were the odds? He tried to picture a baby but the only one he could recall was Arianna shrieking through her baptism in the family chapel, a troubled little bundle wrapped in heirloom lace in her unrepentant mother’s arms while his father valiantly strove to behave as though it were normal to have a wife beside him strung out on drugs.
Raffaele had been eight years old then and that was the closest he had ever come to a baby. He should have been more responsible with Vivi. Lost in the grip of lust, however, he had been intolerably careless. At that point, he censored his brooding reflections and told
