Читать книгу Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Heidi Rice - Страница 15

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE you told Liz about the wedding,’ Vivi admitted, sinking down on the home-made seat below the flowering cherry tree where she had once spent her most peaceful hours.

‘I can’t believe that you didn’t,’ Raffaele traded. ‘Were you hoping it would all just go away if you vanished?’

Vivi flushed miserably and set her teeth squarely together. She wasn’t proud of her behaviour but the whole situation had simply become overwhelming. Finding herself trapped between her grandfather’s demands and Raffaele’s, not to mention the demands of her own conscience and her sisters’ expectations, she had buried her head in the sand about the potential consequences and fled.

‘All the arrangements are still in place,’ Raffaele informed her quietly.

‘I can’t believe that you would still want to go ahead after what you said to me the last time I saw you!’ Vivi countered tartly.

‘I’m guilty of creating this situation by not maintaining a more businesslike relationship with you,’ Raffaele breathed in a driven undertone, a faint edge of dark colour accentuating his exotic cheekbones. ‘I blurred the lines between us, brought down the boundaries. What I said to you was offensive and my only excuse is that I became angry at the idea of you being with another man.’

‘I broke things off with Jude that night,’ Vivi muttered wearily, letting her luminous blue eyes linger on his strong dark face to appreciate his classic bone structure. ‘I told him that I’d met someone else and even though he was generous about it, it was a very uncomfortable couple of hours.’

Raffaele stared down at her where she sat, slender thighs outlined by tight denim, delicate breasts defined by her stretchy top. On edge, conscious of the thrumming pulse kicking off at his groin, he lifted his gaze up only to linger on the ripe full curve of her mouth instead and his brain, which usually lacked imagination, suddenly flashed up a fantasy image that sent an unbearable stab of hunger coursing through his lean, powerful body. He swung away and walked over to the low hedge that divided the garden from the field beyond.

‘This isn’t a working farm any more, is it?’ he remarked tightly, wondering what it was about her that aroused him to feats of fantasy he had always believed lay far beyond the reaches of his logical mind.

‘No. Liz’s grandparents were the last generation of farmers. The land was sold off before she was born. Her husband, John, is a plumber and he set up a business here. It went well and then he had a stroke and everything fell apart until he had recovered enough to work again,’ she told him ruefully, thinking that that was where her foster parents’ problems had begun—with ill health and the subsequent reduction of their income. Through no fault of their own they had fallen behind with their mortgage.

Vivi heaved a sigh and stared stonily down at her clasped hands. Tell him, her inner voice urged, tell him and get it over with! But why wasn’t he giving her the opening she had expected? What about the doctor’s appointment that had never taken place? Wasn’t he still concerned about the risk of conception? Or were women more inclined to worry about such things? Or, more probably, was his omission a sign that he had never really expected anything to come from their unwise encounter? After all, hadn’t he already expressed his regrets on that score? Declaring that it never should have happened? That they should have maintained a businesslike relationship? Her mind boggled at that concept. Businesslike? Really?

‘How did you find out where I was?’ she asked baldly.

‘I dug it out of Zoe,’ Raffaele admitted. ‘But she only told me to get rid of me.’

‘I hope you didn’t upset her!’ Vivi snapped.

‘No. She asked me if I thought I could bring you home and admitted that she missed you.’

‘And what did you say?’ Vivi pressed.

‘That I intended to try...what else?’ Raffaele shrugged a broad shoulder in graceful dismissal.

Vivi swallowed hard, mentally searching for the right words with which to make her announcement until it dawned on her that there were no right words, no magical way of making what he couldn’t possibly want to hear more palatable. ‘I might as well tell you and get it over with,’ she framed stiffly. ‘I’m pregnant.’

Raffaele swung back to her, dark eyes, shaded to the colour of melted caramel, widening, a faint frown line etching between his ebony brows as if he wasn’t quite sure he had heard her correctly.

‘I’m pregnant,’ Vivi said again, shattering the sudden silence that had fallen. ‘I waited until today to do the test because I wanted to be absolutely sure of the result.’

‘There is no room for error?’ Raffaele’s spectacular bone structure had pulled taut below his bronzed skin, the smooth planes of his hard cheekbones prominent.

‘None whatsoever,’ she whispered, intimidated by his lack of comment.

A baby? Momentarily, Raffaele felt as though he had been gut-punched and he compressed his lips because he wasn’t ready to be a father. He had naively assumed it wouldn’t happen, that the same golden strand of luck that had eased his path since birth would hold true. And it hadn’t, which was a major shock to his system. Vivi was pregnant with his son or daughter, years before he had planned such an event would take place. The concept shook him badly because nobody was more conscious than him that a child was a permanent feature in one’s life, not something that could be shuffled aside while he focused on his goals and taken up again at a more convenient date. Even more pertinently, he had planned to handpick the future mother of his children, had even mentally prepared a brief checklist of the kind of woman he would choose because in his private life he was highly averse to risk. And Vivi screamed risk on every sane level...

‘Raffaele?’ Vivi almost whispered in the lingering silence.

But while Vivi emanated dangerous vibes, she also excited the hell out of him and, Dio mio, she was an incredible beauty, Raffaele savoured, studying her with shimmering dark golden eyes while pitching his careful checklist of desirable maternal and wifely attributes into a mental drawer to be buried deep and forgotten. Prima di agire pensaci...look before you leap had been one of his father’s favourite sayings and Raffaele was supremely aware that he had neither looked nor considered consequences in anything he had ever done with Vivi. And yet, bafflingly, everything with her always felt seductively, inexplicably natural.

‘At the very least, my child will have my name when you marry me the day after tomorrow,’ Raffaele breathed, kicking his brain back into gear to assume that that was one obstacle already cleared.

Vivi’s soft mouth opened and closed again and she bent her head, her brain buzzing with thoughts. ‘Is that really all you’ve got to say right now?’ she queried helplessly. ‘I haven’t got a recording device playing. You’re not in a court of law either. You can be honest about your feelings.’

Raffaele’s lush black lashes dipped low over his glittering gaze. ‘Honesty can be a much-overrated trait. I am shocked, but I am also very much of a practical nature. A child changes everything. Even you must acknowledge that.’

‘Even...me? Do you really think that I am that irresponsible?’

His shapely mouth quirked. ‘Perhaps not irresponsible but you do like to defy conventional expectations.’

A tiny bit of her hostility drained away. ‘Yes. My child will be as proud to have my name as yours but I don’t see how marriage—’

Raffaele shifted a fluid brown hand to cut in. ‘A child’s needs and rights are best protected within the law. We have to be married for our child to inherit my estate without challenge.’

Vivi frowned. ‘And that’s important to you?’

Raffaele gritted his teeth. ‘Some day it will be important to our child as well.’

Vivi studied him in near wonderment because he was so deadly serious. She told him that she was pregnant and Raffaele’s brain zeroed straight to matrimonial law and their child’s inheritance rights, leapfrogging over more immediately pressing matters. ‘Money isn’t everything,’ she said quietly.

‘It is a much more complex question than that and you know it,’ Raffaele parried. ‘Obviously we will go ahead and marry now because to do anything else would be foolish in the extreme.’

Vivi pondered that controversial statement and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. At that moment it seemed to her that every pressure that could be brought to bear on her to marry Raffaele was weighing her down and shredding her every argument. ‘I wasn’t expecting this attitude from you,’ she admitted in a rush. ‘I thought you would be furious.’

‘What right would I have to be furious?’ Raffaele incised. ‘We took the same risk together. Why would we waste our time now lamenting the outcome?’

His outlook was, as he had warned her, innately practical. Parting her lips uncertainly, Vivi said, ‘I could’ve considered a termination.’

‘Which I would undoubtedly never have known about. But you did not choose that path. Instead you are telling me openly and honestly and I am grateful for that,’ Raffaele intoned tautly. ‘This is something we must share.’

‘Yes,’ Vivi acknowledged, dropping her copper head, the slender column of her neck below her ponytail looking disconcertingly vulnerable to his wary gaze. ‘I couldn’t entertain a termination after getting to know and love my sister’s little boy, Teddy. I don’t think I could give a child up for adoption either. But I still can’t imagine becoming a mother...’

‘I would say the same about becoming a father, except that in many ways for the past decade I have acted as Arianna’s father,’ Raffaele admitted in a rueful undertone. ‘I was a twenty-year-old student when her mother died. Arianna was twelve and in boarding school. I’m ashamed to say that I initially tried to avoid the responsibility, leaving her to spend her holidays with schoolfriends and ignoring her need to have a settled home.’

‘So, what changed?’

Raffaele looked pained. ‘She sent me a letter asking me why I didn’t like her because, according to her, if you like someone, you want to see that person. I was ashamed. I had always thought of her as my unpleasant stepmother’s child, not as my father’s daughter, not as my half-sister, and even with both our parents dead I had gone on looking at her in that light. She was lonely and unhappy at school and I was her only close relative. I had to man up fast but the lesson stayed with me. Wishing things could be different doesn’t change facts. It’s better to face trouble head-on.’

A glimmer of rueful amusement lightened Vivi’s eyes and her head lifted. ‘Is that what I am? Trouble?’

‘From the very first moment I saw you and wanted you,’ Raffaele confirmed without hesitation. ‘You were my sister’s friend and that alone should’ve restrained me.’

Faint colour warmed her pale cheeks. ‘Together we’re not very good at restraint.’

Raffaele gazed back at her, the pulse of desire thrumming through his lean, powerful frame, tensing his muscles and accelerating his heartbeat.

Her gaze colliding with those dark golden eyes, damp heat seemed to coat her entire skin surface, her nipples snapping taut, her mouth running dry. She tore her attention from him but still he lingered in her mind’s eye, sleek and dark and beautiful with a sensuality that burned and made her ache unbearably. She swallowed hard on that grudging acknowledgement and suppressed it even quicker because they had far more important questions to consider and she was mortified by her lack of mental discipline.

‘So, we let the wedding go ahead because I’m pregnant and you think it’s safer for our child to be born legitimate with regard to the law and all that sort of thing,’ she concluded in a weary surge.

‘And because I believe that you should have my support throughout your pregnancy.’

Vivi’s eyes opened wide and violet disbelief darkened them as she glanced back at him again. ‘Throughout? Look, I’m prepared to go through with the wedding but I don’t want anything to do with you beyond that!’

‘That’s no longer an achievable objective when you’re carrying my baby,’ Raffaele spelt out with finality.

‘Oh, yes, it is!’ Vivi argued vehemently. ‘I don’t need you for support while I’m pregnant.’

‘But I want to be there for you,’ Raffaele countered levelly.

‘Oh, stop being so pious!’ Vivi flashed back at him as she sprang to her feet in passionate annoyance. ‘Maybe you think you’re saying what I want to hear! Or maybe you think I couldn’t cope without you! Or maybe even you simply suffer from an over-developed conscience! But you don’t ever get to attach strings to me just because you knocked me up!’

Raffaele grimaced. ‘Don’t be crude.’

Vivi tossed her head, copper hair glinting like polished metal in the sunshine, her triangular face flushed and glowing with resentment as she hurriedly turned away from him. What a nightmare she would be storing up for the future if she allowed herself to become dependent on a guy who had no feelings for her other than those of obligation! If she wasn’t careful, she might start getting attached to him again, she thought fearfully. Heaven knew she could already hardly keep her hands off him and what more might result from such a powerful attraction? ‘You get to attach strings to the baby after it’s born, not to me.’

‘While you are carrying my child I have a duty of care towards you both,’ Raffaele contradicted drily. ‘A desire to be supportive is not attaching strings. I want you to agree to stay married to me and live with me until our child is born, at least.’

Vivi took an outraged step back from him. ‘Absolutely not! Are you crazy? Our agreement was that we go through with the ceremony and then go our separate ways!’

Raffaele groaned out loud in frustration. ‘And now we have something much more important to factor into that calculation...our baby,’ he reminded her. ‘Nothing is the same now. Our priorities have to change.’

‘Well, they have changed,’ Vivi proclaimed defensively, angry that he was unappreciative of the sacrifice she was already making and indeed was now demanding even more from her. Here she was struggling to hold him at arm’s length and minimise their interaction while he was demanding that she expose herself to much more. ‘Obviously I’m willing to agree to go ahead with the wedding without any further argument but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to sacrifice my freedom for the whole of my pregnancy.’

‘What vital freedom will you have if you live separately from me?’ Raffaele demanded. ‘Are you planning to continue drinking and dating while pregnant? Is that the freedom that you fear losing?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Raffaele, I haven’t even thought about stuff like that!’ Vivi fired back at him in exasperation. ‘I won’t be doing anything against medical guidelines, and right at this minute dating has about as much appeal for me as plunging into an ice pool! But on the other hand, living with you when you’re so arrogant and judgemental and domineering has even less appeal!’

Raffaele, unaccustomed to criticism and prepared from the teenage years to see himself as a very eligible partner, released his breath in a controlled hiss. ‘What will you do when you don’t feel well? Surely there will be such times? Who will you lean on then? Who will look after you?’

Vivi gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t need looking after and I don’t lean on people for support!’ she fielded with distaste and a proud toss of her head.

Raffaele stood poised and cool and resolute, impervious to the wash of her angry denial of vulnerability. ‘But you may need to over the next few months and surely it is better to lean on me than on others?’

Vivi paled at that unwelcome point, thinking of how under par Winnie had been in the initial months of her pregnancy while simultaneously recognising in dismay how her grandad might react to news of her condition. Disapproving as he had been of her sister being a single parent, he would not be pleased even though Vivi would be legally married before her child was born. Furthermore, the idea of having to approach the older man for any form of help, financial or otherwise, during her pregnancy was equally off-putting and would decimate her pride. She would have to put her money where her mouth was, as the saying went, and manage on her own. Accepting Raffaele’s support might be an unpalatable concept but as he was as responsible for the child she carried as she was, it would hurt her pride less.

Raffaele scrutinised her tense stance and wondered if anyone had ever resisted him to such a degree. It annoyed the hell out of him that she refused to see common sense, that she was determined to deny the obvious benefits of remaining his wife while she was pregnant. Shouldn’t she want that security and support? Her slight frame was drooping a little and it crossed his mind that she was not only tired but also very slender.

Healthily slender? It seemed to him that she had lost weight. Had she been worrying too much to take time out to care for herself? Of course, she had been worrying, he told himself impatiently. Hadn’t he threatened redundancies at her place of work? He had put a lot of pressure on her quite deliberately. Was it any wonder that she should now struggle to see him as a potentially supportive partner with whom she could share her pregnancy?

‘You don’t trust me,’ Raffaele murmured grimly.

‘Oh, don’t be offended!’ Vivi urged with an embarrassed gesture of dismissal. ‘I don’t trust anyone but my sisters and John and Liz. It’s safer that way and you don’t get disappointed or...hurt.’

Raffaele reached for her knotted fists and slowly smoothed out the tension in her thin fingers. ‘I will not disappoint or hurt you. I will look after you to the best of my ability and once the baby is born you will have your freedom back.’

Vivi glanced up involuntarily and collided with dark golden eyes. Her colour heightened, a knot tightening in her throat. She swallowed convulsively, her eyes prickling. His hands over hers were soothing but he was her enemy and she would be foolish to forget that for a second. Nor could he possibly appreciate that if she lost control of her feelings for him again he was very likely to hurt her. ‘I feel like bursting into tears,’ she confided chokily. ‘And I don’t know why. Think it might be pregnancy hormones or something.’

‘Maybe so. I’ll feel better once you’ve had a doctor check you over,’ Raffaele admitted tautly.

‘I’m so tired,’ she whispered unevenly. ‘I’m so tired I could go to sleep standing up.’

‘Stress,’ Raffaele framed, hoping she didn’t choose that moment to remind him that he had put her under that stress. ‘I have to fight for what’s right, bella mia.’

‘But I don’t agree with you,’ she muttered ruefully.

‘You never agree with anything I say,’ Raffaele countered with sardonic amusement. ‘But right now, all I want to do is whisk you home to London and ensure that you consult a doctor. Is that acceptable?’

Just at that moment the image of her own comfortable bed had immense appeal and she nodded grudgingly, uncertain that she wanted to see a doctor as yet but reckoning that it couldn’t do any actual harm to be clued up on what lay ahead, even if her sister’s experiences had already warned her of most of the physical pitfalls.

‘And while we’re with your foster mother, we’ll work out some way of getting her and your foster father to London for the wedding,’ Raffaele concluded with assurance.

‘It won’t work. They’ve got too many responsibilities on the home front with the kids.’

‘Somehow we’ll make it work,’ Raffaele proclaimed with immoveable assurance.

And Vivi wondered what it said about her that even when Raffaele was endeavouring to be decent, she wanted to slap him. She bit her tongue, compressed her lips and said nothing and reckoned that that was possibly the best way of dealing with him.