Читать книгу Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Heidi Rice - Страница 17

‘BREATHE IN!’ ZOE URGED.

‘I am breathing in!’ Vivi protested, fighting to get her breath back and giving up the struggle to flop back on the side of the bed, the striped cropped jeans she had planned to wear to leave the hotel still unzipped. ‘What on earth is the matter with them? They were a perfect fit a couple of weeks ago!’

‘That tight they’d be very uncomfortable to travel in,’ Zoe pointed out gently.

Vivi gritted her teeth. ‘I can’t have put on that much extra weight already,’ she argued. ‘I’m only a few weeks pregnant.’

‘Maybe you’re one of those women who’s going to blow up into a balloon straight away,’ Zoe muttered uncertainly. ‘You should ask Winnie. She knows more than me about being pregnant.’

‘A balloon?’ Vivi repeated, aghast. ‘Thanks a bundle for that image, sis!’

‘Well, how would I know what it’s like?’ Zoe pulled an apologetic face.

‘What on earth am I going to wear?’ Vivi snapped, standing up and peeling off the jeans in angry frustration. ‘All my stuff was packed and sent over to Raffaele’s town house, where I thought I’d be living, but it’s now probably on its way to the airport.’

‘I’ll give you the skirt and top I was planning to change into this evening if I got too warm,’ Zoe offered helpfully.

‘The skirt’ll be too short for me,’ Vivi framed, tears suddenly stinging her eyes in a shocking surge. ‘Oh, my goodness, what’s the matter with me? I’m crying!’

‘Pregnancy hormones...have you forgotten what Winnie was like? She could’ve wept the Thames dry while she was carrying Teddy! Emotionally, she was all over the place.’

Vivi resisted a ridiculous urge to throw herself down on the bed and sob over the jeans that didn’t fit and the skirt that would be too short and breathed in deeply to get a grip on herself instead. She couldn’t afford to be out of control around Raffaele and she didn’t want to make a fool of herself either. A few minutes later she had donned Zoe’s pencil skirt. She only just got the zip up, thanking heaven that her sister was a little curvier in shape. The lace top was a tad more revealing on her than it was on Zoe and a little too tight and short.

‘I look awful!’ she proclaimed. ‘I’m showing far too much skin.’

‘I doubt if Raffaele will complain,’ Zoe teased. ‘Your legs look fabulous.’

‘Well, it’s this or nudity.’ Vivi sighed, averting her eyes from the very slight hint of a curve on her once concave stomach. Her body shouldn’t be showing a change in shape so early, she thought irritably. Was she eating the wrong stuff? Was there a special pregnant lady diet she should be following? Was she bloating? That was probably all it was, she told herself soothingly. Didn’t she have enough to worry about with Raffaele having thrown down that demeaning gauntlet of a challenge?

Either you want me...or you don’t.

Talk about going back to basics! Of course, she wanted him on that most primitive level, and well did he know it! She had always wanted him that way. It wasn’t something she was proud of but there it was, an instant chemical attraction that had yet to dim. Of course, being around him more, maybe familiarity would breed contempt, she thought hopefully as she emerged from the lift into the busy hotel foyer.

Winnie bustled over to her. ‘Why are you wearing Zoe’s clothes?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Vivi said with a grimace. ‘Where’s Raffaele?’

‘In the bar with a very beautiful blonde called Elisa,’ Winnie responded with slightly raised brows. ‘Apparently she’s absolutely gasping to meet you and become your new best friend.’

‘Really?’ Vivi queried on a note of surprise.

‘Feels it’s her duty as Raffaele’s “friend”.’ Winnie made air quotes with a roll of her eyes. ‘To advise and support you.’

‘Support me?’ Vivi cut in.

‘Since you’re a fairly new arrival on Grandad’s social scene and Raffaele’s,’ her sister clarified.

‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ Vivi said dismissively, heading for the private bar attached to the function room, her cheeks colouring self-consciously because she was hyper-aware of her less than elegant appearance. What was cute and appropriate on Zoe’s tiny frame looked rather different on her own tall, skinny body, she thought ruefully. And a tall skinny body developing curves where nature had never intended curves promised to be a nightmare to dress.

None of those thoughts crossed Raffaele’s mind for a moment when he saw his bride walking towards him with the fluid grace of a dancer. She looked like a fantasy come to life, he thought with an almost adolescent knee-jerk reaction that shocked him. But there she was, gorgeous legs on display from her dainty ankles to her slender knees to her pale shapely thighs. The top hugged a swell of bosom that there seemed to be more of than he recalled, but reasoning over the why or the how of that was beyond Raffaele at that instant, fighting as he was not to display his arousal in his neat-fitting trousers. He gritted his teeth.

‘Vivi...come and meet Elisa,’ he urged, reaching for her hand to tug her closer.

Vivi shot him a glance, virtually allowing herself a five-second scrutiny, not allowing herself any longer and, bang, the effect of him hit her like a wave, drowning her in impressions she didn’t want. But there he was, the luxuriant blue-black hair he kept short glimmering below the lights, his bronzed classic profile lightened by a smile, his beautiful mouth sculpted and sensual, and she wanted to flatten him to the carpet and taste that mouth and everything else about him right then and there because he was stunning. And stunning being the only word she could come up with unnerved her even more. It took effort to recover from that volatile instant of abstracted erotic imagery and deal with the woman being introduced to her.

‘Elisa Andrelli.’ The beautiful blonde air-kissed her on both cheeks but only by dint of stretching up on tiptoe. ‘Dio mio...you are tall!’

‘Six feet in these heels,’ Vivi agreed with a helpless grin. ‘My sisters are both small. I loved it when I outgrew them, because Winnie was older but I could talk back to her more effectively when I could look down at her.’

‘Always a fighter,’ Raffaele remarked with amusement.

‘You’d better believe it.’ Vivi could feel the blonde’s critical appraisal moving over her outfit and inwardly she cringed before lifting her chin with determined indifference.

‘I know the best places to shop in Florence. I could advise you on what to wear for special occasions,’ Elisa told her earnestly.

Vivi smiled. ‘I don’t need advice in that line but thanks, all the same,’ she murmured with as much sincerity as she could fake.

Raffaele walked her away. ‘That wasn’t very generous of you. Elisa can come across as patronising, but she is well-intentioned.’

Resentment sent hot pink flying up into Vivi’s cheeks. She was beginning to realise that she was much more thin-skinned around Raffaele than she was around other people. A hint of criticism from him and her blood boiled. But she should’ve known he would recognise her insincerity, only she hadn’t expected him to chide her for it. ‘And who is Elisa?’

‘Our nearest neighbour. She has quite a sad history: she married her childhood sweetheart a few years ago and he died of leukaemia,’ Raffaele told her. ‘I think she’s quite lonely. She was part of a couple from her teens and missed out on making female friends. Young beautiful widows aren’t much in demand.’

‘How unfortunate,’ Vivi muttered, her face telegraphing her discomfiture as she resolved to make fewer snap judgements about the people she met. Suddenly she was very much aware that she had been willing to dislike another woman purely because she was attractive and appeared to know Raffaele well. Why was that? She was possessive of Raffaele, she acknowledged in dismay, as possessive as a dog guarding a bone.

Either you want me...or you don’t.

Her face burned, her sense of vulnerability tightening every nerve in her slim body because she wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake she had made before with Raffaele, contriving to get attached with very little encouragement and then left standing while he walked away. That demeaning image was stuck in her memory like a warning wake-up call. No, she didn’t want him and she wasn’t going to have anything more to do with him than she had to, she told herself angrily. She would act the wife in public if forced to do so but the play-acting would stop behind closed doors.

* * *

Raffaele studied his bride as she napped on his private jet. He stood up to drape a throw over her, wishing he had thought to mention the sleeping compartment where she would have been more comfortable. He needed to start thinking about such matters, he censured himself. Vivi was his wife, his responsibility, as was the child she carried. Bluish shadows were etched below her lowered lids and she looked pale. Of course, she always looked pale with that fair skin of hers but she was probably exhausted, and he hadn’t yet even got around to organising medical support for her in Florence. Sì, he would definitely have to step up his game in the caring stakes. Poised there, he resolved to spend more time looking after her than thinking about bedding her.

Vivi woke sleepily when her shoulder was gently shaken and she blinked up at Raffaele and muttered drowsily, ‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘Since we took off. We’ve landed.’

Vivi’s eyes widened and she stood up in haste, retrieving a shoe that had fallen off and smoothing down her rumpled clothing. ‘Where to next?’ she asked, trying not to sound weary of the journey when she had slept through most of it.

‘A helicopter will drop us at the palazzo in twenty minutes and then you can relax,’ Raffaele clarified smoothly.

‘What’s a palazzo?’ she enquired.

‘A large house. I was born at the Palazzo Mancini. It has always been my home,’ he explained, taking her elbow to escort her down the steps and off the plane as if she couldn’t be trusted to manage them safely on her own.

‘Grandad lives in a large house outside Athens,’ Vivi told him while thinking about the much humbler accommodation that had been hers from childhood until Stamboulas Fotakis had entered the sisters’ lives and tucked them into a very comfortable little town house he owned in London. ‘I have very little memory of my parents. I was very young when they died and Zoe was only a baby. Winnie remembers them, though.’

‘That’s tough,’ Raffaele conceded, engaged in working out the logistics of loading her into the helicopter in her high heels. Deciding simply to go for the obvious, he swung round to lift her bodily off her feet and settle her on board.

Thoroughly flustered by the arrival of a man in her life who could actually lift her as if she were a lightweight, Vivi settled down in the nearest seat and did up her belt. She didn’t like the lurch as the craft took off and even less did she enjoy the flight as queasiness afflicted her empty stomach and Raffaele, like some sort of glorified Italian tour guide, endeavoured to point out famous landmarks to her when the last thing she wanted to do was be forced to look out of the windows at the sights.

‘It’s the palazzo...the best view of it you can have,’ Raffaele persisted with all the sensitivity of a torturer as she fought mind over matter not to throw up. ‘You’re not looking...why are you not looking?’

‘Because I’m feeling sick, you dummy!’ Vivi hissed at him fierily.

His disconcertion almost comically palpable, he grabbed a receptacle for her and guilt assailed her because she didn’t know why she was blaming him for her physical condition when she herself was equally responsible. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, hanging on for grim death to the receptacle and praying that she did not have to use it in front of him.

Mercifully, only a few minutes later, the helicopter settled back on solid earth again and she emerged from the craft with a sigh of relief but still feeling dizzy and sick.

‘You should’ve told me you weren’t feeling well.’ Raffaele sighed, urging her towards the waiting car he had ordered when he himself usually walked.

‘It’s the first time it’s happened and you said it was a short flight so I didn’t want to make a fuss,’ she responded truthfully. ‘All the same, I shouldn’t have bitten your head off the way I did.’

‘I’m getting used to it,’ Raffaele incised lazily. ‘You often speak before you think...’

In other words, she was the only real dummy in the relationship, Vivi interpreted, feeling sorry for herself. Only at that point did she begin to notice the sheer immensity of the building they were heading towards. It was a giant stone property that stretched across an entire hilltop with windows that had a blinding sparkle because there were so many of them. ‘This is your home?’

‘Sì,’ Raffaele said fondly. ‘The home of my family for centuries.’

No wonder he had said Zoe could move in with them if she liked, Vivi thought weakly, overpowered by the grandeur of the statuary adorning the façade and the formal gardens the car was traversing. Her impressions didn’t improve when a stout little man in a formal suit, introduced to her as Amedeo, ushered them into a huge hall decorated with breathtaking frescoes and where a uniformed staff line-up awaited them. Vivi felt overpowered by the splendour of her surroundings, fearing that at any minute someone would call her an impostor and ask her to leave because she did not belong in such a place. She wasn’t fancy enough, she ruminated uncomfortably, certainly not fancy enough to have a personal maid and a social secretary working full-time to see to her needs, but nonetheless she was introduced to an example of each.

Certainly, however, it was an education to see the evident pomp and ceremony with which Raffaele lived and which he quite took for granted, she surmised. After all, if he had been born and bred to such a magnificent home and a very large staff, it was normal for him, but she was convinced that it would never, ever feel normal for her and that she would race back to her own life when their marriage ended with nothing but a sense of deep relief. No, she would have to have a rather difficult conversation with Raffaele concerning his startlingly unexpected suggestion that they spend the months of her pregnancy seeing if they could make a go of their marriage. Raffaele needed a wife to match his palazzo, not a one-time junior employee with a marketing degree, not a young woman who had merely fallen accidentally pregnant and whose sole claim to fame was a very rich, eccentric, controlling and argumentative grandfather.

‘Would you like to rest for a while?’ Raffaele enquired as if she were a very elderly lady.

‘No, I’d like a shower, a change of clothes and something to eat,’ Vivi confided as they walked upstairs at a stately pace. ‘You know, I’m not the slightest bit delicate, Raffaele... I’m just pregnant and a little more tired than normal.’

‘You felt sick,’ Raffaele broke in to remind her.

‘Par for the course,’ she parried carelessly, keen not to encourage him to view her as weak and in need of care and supervision.

‘I don’t know anything about pregnant women.’

‘Why would you?’ she traded as tall double doors were opened wide on a gigantic bedroom with a grand gilded four-poster bed on a platform as a centrepiece. ‘Good grief, this place is like a museum. Is this one of the sights?’

‘It’s my bedroom,’ Raffaele admitted, reckoning that he wasn’t quite getting the reaction he had hoped for from his new bride. ‘You’re not into history, are you?’

‘Not living in it, no,’ Vivi admitted truthfully, wondering why she was being brought into his bedroom and then scolding herself for not appreciating that it was perfectly natural for a member of staff to show a new bride into what was presumably supposed to be the marital bedroom.

‘You are free to do whatever you like with your own bedroom to make yourself more comfortable here,’ Raffaele told her, crossing the room to cast open a communicating door that opened onto another door, and opening that as well.

She was to have her own bedroom, of course she was, she registered, following him to step through the double doorways and see another big bedroom, which was mercifully not quite as much of a museum piece as his. The bed was shaped like a swan but the décor was lighter and brighter and less rich and ornate. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, because it was.

A quick smile flashed across Raffaele’s lean, startlingly handsome face, lightening his eyes to the gold of a sunset fringed by black lace and, just looking at him, she felt her breath trapped in her throat for an instant.

‘This room hasn’t been occupied since my stepmother died, so I had it refurnished and decorated for you.’

‘You really didn’t ever think of us staying in London,’ she acknowledged thoughtfully.

‘No, this is very much home for me and I hope that in time it can feel like your home as well,’ Raffaele asserted with impressive sincerity.

Impressive, Vivi tagged, because she couldn’t credit that he could possibly mean such a sentiment when it came to her. After all, she was the wife he had taken merely to make a fat profit and he had originally intended to leave the church without her by his side. According to Raffaele, her pregnancy had changed everything, but it hadn’t changed the essential facts, which were that he had never expected to stay married to her and that they were ill-suited as a couple, she reasoned briskly. All the wishing in the world couldn’t alter those inescapable facts.

In the aftermath of that reflection, she marvelled at the hollow sensation of emptiness and sadness filling her, reckoning that she was still tired and feeling intimidated by her opulent surroundings. ‘What time’s dinner?’ she enquired.

‘Eight but I’ve ordered a snack for you. It’ll be brought up soon.’

He had barely stepped back to his room when a knock on the door sounded and her maid, Sofi, appeared, holding a tray. Vivi tucked into the delicious omelette and salad and the lingering nausea ebbed. Sofi reappeared and eagerly showed her the built-in closets in the dressing room where her small collection of clothing huddled shamefacedly on opulent padded hangers and in scented drawers. Life at the palazzo, Vivi reckoned, was a complete other world, far removed from that of more ordinary folk. She sat down on the bed while thinking about that and somehow fell asleep again, waking with a start to see the light beyond the windows dimming and wondering what was wrong with her that she was feeling so incredibly tired all the time. And then she remembered...again and patted her tummy ruefully.

It was after seven and, recalling that dinner was at eight, she was galvanised into action, stripping where she stood to dive into the bathroom and straight into the shower. She would get her hair straightened again, she thought blissfully. She hadn’t had time before the wedding with so much else to stress about. Now she could return to being sleek, straight-haired Vivi, whom she much preferred. She might be pregnant but that didn’t mean she had to let her standards slip. She was unnerved to return to her bedroom, luckily wrapped in a towel, to find Sofi hovering expectantly to offer assistance. What with, Vivi wondered, until Sofi shyly confided in quite good English that she was trained to do different hairstyles and make-up.

Vivi sped into the dressing room and snatched her single long dress off a hanger, a gown bought for her first meeting with her grandad and hopefully formal enough to meet the palazzo standards. Sofi turned out to be a miracle with curly hair, leaving Vivi scrutinising her elegant reflection in surprise, for she had never been very good at putting her hair up and when she had, it had still always looked like an uncontrollable mop.

She picked her path delicately downstairs in her high heels and was ushered by Amedeo into a grand salon, where she took one glance of consternation at Raffaele and realised that she had got it wrong. He sported faded jeans and an open-necked white shirt. He looked fantastic but the difference between them sent colour surging into her cheeks. ‘This really says it all about us,’ she commented, indicating her long dress, her attempt at formality, with a dismissive hand. ‘You dressed down and I dressed up.’

‘What does it say about us?’ Raffaele pressed. ‘I simply assumed that after a long day in formal clothing you would prefer to relax...as do I.’

‘But you normally dress up for dinner, don’t you?’ Vivi cut in, determined to make her point even if it was beginning to feel like a petty point.

‘Sì,’ Raffaele conceded grudgingly.

Vivi lifted her chin, mortified colour lying in bright bars across her triangular face as she walked down to the foot of the room, keen to put as much space as possible between them. ‘You don’t need to dress down for my benefit, then,’ she sniped.

Raffaele resisted the urge to heave a sigh and wonder why he always, always got it wrong with Vivi. He tried to be sensitive and he embarrassed her. He tried to be caring and she got sick as a dog. ‘I’m getting tired of your defeatist, negative attitude,’ he intoned with complete honesty. ‘I appreciate that you’re in a situation not of your choosing, but I am as well and at least I’m trying to make the best of it.’

Caught utterly unprepared by that raw condemnation, Vivi coloured to the roots of her hair. ‘That’s not true,’ she said stiffly.

‘It is true. You misread everything I do. You hold spite. You judge me.’

‘For living like a prince in a palace?’ Vivi shot back at him defensively.

‘I was born here...this is my life. You expect me to apologise for it?’ Raffaele shouted down the length of the room at her, the sound of his raised voice cracking like a stinging whiplash through her because in her experience Raffaele never raised his voice and it thoroughly unnerved her. Out of the corner of her eye she noted Amedeo hurriedly retreating from the doorway and, if possible, she felt even more humiliated.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Vivi told him, throwing back her slight shoulders and stalking back towards the hall.

Raffaele planted himself in her path like an immoveable rock. ‘No, for once in your life, you’re going to listen to me.’

‘Like hell I am!’ Vivi snapped back at him like a spitting cat. ‘The day I listen to you while you talk down to me there’ll be two blue moons in the sky and a flying pig!’

‘Listen to me,’ Raffaele ground out wrathfully, struggling to get a hold on a temper that he never usually lost.

Vivi told him very rudely where he could go and what he could do with himself when he got there and raced past him at the speed of a lemming ready to throw herself off a cliff. She climbed the stairs even faster, sped into her bedroom and just stood there breathing fast. Behind her the door opened and she spun round, as rigid as a stick of rock.

‘We can do better than this,’ Raffaele breathed in a driven undertone. ‘I’m sorry that I shouted at you but sometimes you push me too far.’

‘I have a habit of doing that with you,’ Vivi muttered, somewhat mollified by the apology and relieved he no longer seemed angry. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Don’t you?’ Raffaele questioned, an eloquent ebony brow lifting, unimpressed. ‘You do it to keep me at a distance.’

Vivi was appalled that he could interpret her behaviour that easily, that he had picked up on her need to avoid any form of intimacy developing between them. ‘It’s safer that way,’ she mumbled in disconcertion.

‘Not now that we’re married with a baby on the way, it’s not!’ Raffaele countered scathingly. ‘There’s enough attraction between us to light a bonfire.’

Vivi stiffened even more. ‘Speak for yourself,’ she parried.

Raffaele had never met such a stubborn woman and he crossed the room to stand in front of her, only then noticing the tiny, almost imperceptible tremors shaking through her slender body; only then reading the anxiety in her wide eyes as the fear it genuinely was. ‘Vivi... I would never ever hurt or harm a hair on your head,’ he muttered shakily, so unnerved was he by the sight of a woman regarding him with fear.

‘It was just...er...when you shouted,’ she whispered, not sure she was even telling him the truth at that moment. ‘I’m sort of programmed to run when men shout because when I was a kid it usually got violent and if you didn’t get out of the way you got hurt!’

‘I swear I’ll never shout again,’ Raffaele framed, lifting a not quite steady hand to smooth soothing fingers down the side of her flawless face to her soft, full pink mouth. ‘Ever. I had no idea that was your experience.’

‘It’s not something you share freely,’ she admitted brokenly, all shaken up by both the conversation and the manner in which their argument had gone downstairs. He had accused her of holding spite and judging him, constantly throwing up barriers between them, and she felt overwhelmed by the awareness that Raffaele was correct on every count. He had read her, she conceded guiltily, and called her bluff, refusing to allow her to continue hiding behind such empty excuses, and that had proved an utterly unnerving experience for Vivi. That was what had really sent her fleeing into retreat, she acknowledged in mortification.

‘But if it’s a trigger, it’s something I should know about you,’ Raffaele breathed, a long forefinger tracing her full, soft lower lip, the ever-ready pulse at his groin throbbing with helpless arousal. ‘Believe me, Vivi...dannazione, I have many flaws but you will always be safe with me.’

And the rigidity went out of her taut length as if he had punched a release button and she smiled tentatively up at him. ‘Sorry about the drama...and Amedeo heard you shouting and he looked so shocked.’

Raffaele’s lean, darkly mesmerising features slashed into a reluctant grin. ‘He’s never heard me shout before. I’m very even-tempered.’

‘Until you met me...’

‘Until I met you, bella mia,’ Raffaele husked, lowering his proud dark head.

And she knew he was about to kiss her and she told herself to step away but inexplicably she stayed right where she was, heat curling up in her pelvis at even the thought of that much contact.