She was standing by the coffee machine, watching it fill a cup.
‘Here,’ he said, striding over to offer his empty cup. ‘I like it black.’ He moved away from her before she had a chance to react to him. ‘What do you like for breakfast—a fresh croissant? Cereal? Toast?’ he listed lightly. ‘There is some fresh orange juice in the fridge if you—’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she cut in. ‘Th-thank you,’ she added. ‘Just a caffeine shot then I will have to be going …’
‘Goings …’ He turned slowly to look at her.
‘Yes,’ She was clearly refusing to look at him, staring down at her watch instead. ‘I have a train to catch back to Devon and half the morning has gone already.’
‘We’ve been over this,’ Raffaelle reminded her. ‘You are staying right here with me.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ She nodded, setting the blonde curls bouncing as she concentrated on the job of swapping her filled cup for his empty one beneath the stream of coffee from the machine. ‘But I need to get some clothes if …’
‘I will buy you any clothes you will need.’
Rachel stiffened. ‘No, you will not! I have clothes back in Devon—and don’t you dare make such a derisory offer like that again!’
‘It was not derisory,’ he denied. ‘I was being practical.’
‘Well, I’m trying to be practical too, and I can’t just drop everything as if I don’t have another life. I need a couple of days to—organise things with the farm.’
‘You mean you actually run the farm yourself?’
More derision? Rachel stared at him but only saw honest disbelief in his face. ‘Efficiently,’ she stated coolly.
‘So who is looking after it while you are here?’
‘A—neighbour.’ She frowned as she said that, wondering why she had put her relationship with Jack in such odd terms. ‘But he has his own place to run, so I …’
Something altered in his demeanour, though Rachel wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
‘Use your phone to make your arrangements, as I have had to do,’ he said coolly.
‘God, you’re so insufferable,’ she gasped. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re Mr High-flyer. You can order people about by phone, but I can’t.’
Ignoring the high-flyer quip, Raffaelle walked towards her. ‘You think?’
‘I know.’ Rachel nodded backing into the corner of the kitchen units as he approached, then feeling well and truly trapped by the time he towered over her. ‘I’ve seen the way it works with Leo. W-when he needs something done he just throws his weight around by telephone.’
‘But you need to be hands-on to water your organic lettuce,’ he mocked.
‘You don’t need to be so derisive about it!’ she flashed in her own defence. ‘When this is all over with, Mr Villani, you might be unfortunate enough to have lost a deal or two because you weren’t paying proper attention, but I risk losing my whole livelihood!’
‘If you are carrying my child then this will never be over.’
Placed coolly into the argument, Rachel swallowed thickly. ‘Don’t start hitting me with the worst thing that could happen again,’ she shook out huskily.
He went to say something, then sighed and changed his mind. Tension stung—antagonism that wasn’t all to do with what they were arguing about.
‘You said it was family-run thing,’ he then prompted.
‘It is,’ she confirmed. Then she took a breath and altered that answer to, ‘It was a family run thing until my parents were killed five years ago in—in a road accident. Now the farm is split three ways between me, Mark and Elise.’
‘Which means that you do the work and they do nothing?’
‘I like the work, they don’t.’
‘Loyal little thing, aren’t you?’ he mocked her. ‘Has it not occurred to you yet that they are not very loyal to you—?’
Raffaelle wished the words back as soon as he’d said them. But it was too late. She’d already gone pale and she lost her cup so she could make a defensive fold of her arms across her front.
‘My family loyalty is none of your business,’ she muttered.
‘You think—?’ Anger with himself made his voice sound harsh. But since the anger was there now, he took a grip on her clenched left hand and prised it upwards. ‘This ring on your finger demands that I should have your complete loyalty now.’
‘It’s fake.’ She grabbed the hand back and thrust it beneath her arm again.
Things were starting to happen. Fights with women usually did end up as sexual battles and Raffaelle was beginning to feel the sexual pull. He reacted to it by snaking his hands around her slender nape and tilting her head back so he could claim her mouth.
She tasted of mint toothpaste and pink lipstick. He found he liked the combination. And she didn’t try to fight him, which he liked even more. By the time he raised his head again, her arms were no longer defensively crossed but clinging to his shirt.
‘This isn’t fake,’ he rumbled out deeply, still toying with the corner of her mouth. ‘So let’s forget about Devon and go back to bed. I don’t know why we got out of it in the first place.’
‘No.’ She gave a push at him and when he released her she scuttled sideways. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
‘You mean you’re running scared all of a sudden.’ He grabbed her hand to pull her out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. ‘If you are hoping to escape to a pharmacy in Devon,’ he said brusquely, ‘then first you should take a look at these …’
He brought her to a stop beside the dining table where a selection of the Sunday tabloids lay spread out.
Rachel froze, wondering how she had missed seeing them before. But she knew why she’d missed them; she’d been too busy drinking him in to notice anything else in the room.
In every photograph but one, she and he were standing outside the apartment block displaying the ring and looking convincingly loverlike and besotted. The only photograph that was different was in Mark’s paper, which bore the clever caption, ‘First public kiss for newly engaged lovers.’
‘My fifteen minutes of fame,’ she jibed tensely, looking at the sleek stranger in the photographs, who happened to be her. Raffaelle looked no different than his tall, dark, handsome self and how he’d managed to pull off that smile without making it look cynical was worthy of a headline all by itself.
‘This is set to last a lot longer than fifteen minutes, cara,’ he responded dryly.
‘Because
