Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: February 2018 Books 5 - 8 - Kelly Hunter, Kate Walker - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANY DOUBTS PIA had about Raphael’s promise were proved unnecessary over the next few weeks. Any momentary, crazy belief she might have had in his matter-of-fact statement that he wanted her despite his legendary will, shredded in the freezingly polite way he treated her.

Forget kissing. He didn’t even touch her unless it was for an audience. Even then, he barely held her arm with the tips of his fingers as if she would contaminate him. Even his accusations had felt more personal than this.

The news that Raphael Mastrantino was dating Giovanni Vito’s granddaughter swept through society faster than the heat wave that had descended on Milan.

If Pia had thought she’d garnered too much attention as Gio’s American granddaughter, it was nothing compared to the glances and whispers thrown her way as the woman who’d caught Raphael’s interest. His public possessiveness had fended off any other man’s interest, exactly as she’d intended.

Giovanni, while he said he was delighted with this turn of events, was strangely toned down.

Pia, however, hadn’t foreseen how torturous their little facade would be to her. Or that the more she saw of Raphael, the more she found a man worth admiring.

He was the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect boss, although a little distant, if all the things Pia had heard at an office party were to be believed. From Gio, she knew he was the perfect godson. As one woman had explained in lurid detail at another party, unaware that Pia stood behind her, he was a perfect lover.

No, scratch that, the woman had been aware that Pia was there and had taken a petty satisfaction in making sure Pia overheard.

In front of Milan and Gio and his family, he was the attentive boyfriend or lover or whatever the hell it was that they were pretending to be. Every day, he sent her flowers or candy or some other treat. When she’d asked if he’d bought her a subscription for a gift club for the next few years, he’d snarled something in Italian.

She’d had her answer, which festered. She was nothing but a painful chore for him, an item on his damned to-do list.

Between a huge deal VA was cooking with a manufacturing company in Japan and his time with Alyssa, he was hardly available anyway. Their pretense was barely a blip in his life. Whereas for Pia, every carefully orchestrated touch was torture. Every moment she spent in his company, she was caught between wanting to run away and desperately wanting more.

As if that wasn’t enough, Raphael came to see Gio most evenings. Sometimes, it was a quick chat under Gio’s watchful eye.

Sometimes, they dined outside with the spectacular view of the setting sun drawing pink and orange mirages on the lake. If there was enough light or if Gio petulantly demanded that he hadn’t seen enough of them together that week, Pia joined them. She brought out a piece of wood and worked on it quietly while listening to Raphael relay the news and politics of Vito Automobiles.

He spoke with a deep, confident voice, his Italian soothing to her ears. Even though she only understood a few phrases, Pia heard his passion for his work, his affection for Gio in the way he relayed tidbits about people they both knew.

She could just sit there and listen to his voice endlessly.

Pretending that all the hours she spent in his company gave her rights over him, while pretty much every woman snidely commented that it was the Vito Heiress that had snared him, grated like salt on a wound. As if she didn’t know that Raphael wouldn’t have looked at her twice if not for the fact that she was Gio’s granddaughter.

On one such scheduled outing, she’d persuaded Raphael to bring Alyssa along. She adored that little girl, and to her shame, Pia desperately needed a buffer—there was only so much one-on-one she could take with Raphael before she did something crazy.

Raphael had returned after a week-long trip and any hopes she’d had that she would be over him were dashed to tiny bits when she saw him striding up the pathway with a squirming Alyssa on his shoulder and his mouth stretched in carefree laughter.

They spent the next two hours with Alyssa at a gelateria in Menaggio, another one of the picturesque villages lining up Lake Como. Pia held a chubby, sticky and sleepy Alyssa in her arms while Raphael parked the car in front of his mother’s house.

When he asked to take her back, Pia shook her head, loving the feel and weight of the little girl. Despite her mother’s absence in her life, Alyssa was such a darling little girl that Pia couldn’t help but fall in love with her.

And every time she was with Raphael and Alyssa, Pia couldn’t fight the rightness of it. Couldn’t fight the longing that drowned her. As if she were the piece of the puzzle that he and the little girl were missing.

But it was ridiculous. Even if he asked her, she didn’t want to be with a man like Raphael, did she? Ruthless, rigid...

Raphael leveled the strangest look back at her.

“Show me the way,” Pia said in a husky voice. Only when she followed him down a quiet corridor did she realize that the house was empty and her only buffer was snoring slightly.

“I’ll get her into her pj’s,” she said to Raphael.

Again, that intense, almost searing look.

“You can trust me with her, Raphael,” she burst out, a tight knot in her throat. “I adore her.”

His mouth tightened, as if she’d threatened his very safety. “My mother should have been here. She knew I had plans tonight.”

“You don’t want me in Alyssa’s life,” she said, busying herself by looking through the drawers for clean pj’s. It wasn’t personal, she told herself. But it was a lie.

She wanted things personal between them. She wanted him to tell her private things, things he never confided in anyone. She wanted him to tell her what his ex had done that he didn’t trust any woman anymore.

She wanted their facade to be true. She wanted to be the woman that Raphael forsook any other woman for, that Raphael broke all his rules for.

“I get that. Believe me, I do. I think you’re a wonderful father. She won’t wake up. And you can go call your mom while I settle her down.”

Instead of reassuring him, her words made him look even more forbidding. With a short stiff nod, he walked out of the room.

By the time, Pia had cleaned up and changed Alyssa, the sun was beginning to set. Making a face, she pulled her damp T-shirt off her chest.

The moment she walked into the outer lounge, Raphael stood up. His gaze took in her wet T-shirt. He scowled. “You should have called me when she woke up.”

“She didn’t. I had some trouble working those monstrous taps at the tub and splashed myself.” It was the first time they had been alone since that episode at his sister’s house. Pia wiped her damp hands on her jeans, butterflies partying in her stomach. “Didn’t you have an engagement to get to? I can stay until your mother comes back.”

“Teresa will be here any minute. Then I will drop you off and continue to my engagement.”

Pia nodded, unease climbing up her spine. It was the way he said it. It was the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Who are you meeting?” she asked. She tried for nonchalance but wasn’t successful.

“It’s an old friend who’s in town. We have a standing engagement when she’s here. I completely forgot about it. But since she’s here—”

Pia’s heart sank to her toes. “She? It’s a woman?”

“Si.”

“Is she single?”

“Si.”

It was like getting blood out of stone.

“So this engagement is sort of a date?”

His silence told Pia everything she needed to know.

Walk away, a part of her screamed. Turn your back on this, on him, came another warning.

But dear God, she’d make herself crazy imagining all kinds of scenarios. “If it’s a date, won’t she talk about it later? You know, to someone who knows Gio? Wait, doesn’t she know that you...you’re supposed to be engaged?”

“I’m sure she’s heard the gossip now.”

“And yet, she called you?”

He pushed his hand through his hair roughly, his gaze never leaving hers. A sense of dread curled up in Pia’s stomach. What was he saying that she wasn’t understanding? God, how she loathed her lack of sophistication.

Instead of answering her, he dialed Emilio on his cell phone, ordered him to pick up Pia, and then hung up. “It’s getting late. You should be getting home.”

“I don’t get it. How can she want to go on a date if you’re in a relationship?”

With me, she left out the pathetic lie that she was beginning to wish was true.

“It’s not that kind of a date. Ava and I know each other from university. We’re friends and—”

“Lovers?” She had no idea how she’d been able to say it without choking.

Their gazes collided and held, a hundred unsaid words flying in between. Finally, he nodded.

Everything fell into place. “So you’re going there to just...” Heat climbed up her face. “You’re going there to have sex with her?” she forced herself to say, images of him kissing some faceless woman bombarding her.

“Ava and I go way back and I just... I need to be anything but your lover right now.”

Anger came to her rescue. The thought of Raphael with another woman made bile rise to her throat. “Are you that heartless?”

“Heartless?” A tightness crawled up his face, making him that arrogant stranger from the ball. “You’ve begun to believe your own lie, cara mia. I don’t remember promising you anything, much less my fidelity. You mean nothing to me, Pia. You need to remember that you and I wouldn’t have crossed paths if not for the fact that you’re his granddaughter. His precious princess. And the cost of touching you is...far too high for me.”

Each calculated word landed like a poisoned arrow. God, how could he hurt her like this? Why was she letting him?

She had had enough of this pathetic spectacle she was making of herself. Enough of wondering if he would ever look at her with something other than polite courtesy.

“Brutally honest, as ever. At least you’re reliable. But you know what? I can’t do this anymore. I—”

“You can’t do what?”

“I can’t pretend to be your bloody girlfriend. Frank was right. I’m not sophisticated enough for these kinds of... Find a way to call this thing off. Find a way to protect your bloody company from Giovanni’s meddling. But I’m done with this, with you.”

She turned and angrily swiped at her cheeks. Damn it, she refused to cry in front of him. His pity would kill her.

But she got no more than a few steps before he slammed his palm on the door. She couldn’t turn. She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. “I don’t understand you at all. Foolishly, I thought I was beginning to. That you were more than the ruthless, ambitious businessman that everybody calls you. What you’re thinking, it’s horrible, clinical.”

The warmth of his body, the scent of him seeped into her back. One more step and she would be in his embrace. Oh, how she wanted to take that step, how she wanted to lose herself in him...

“You, this pretense, it’s driving me crazy, don’t you get it? I’m wound up so tight I can’t sleep. I can’t work. You’re—” But she cut him off before he could say the horrid words.

“I’m ruining your life—yes, I know,” she said loudly, tears knotting in her throat. “You think it’s easy for me? The whispers I hear, the snide innuendoes, that the only reason you’re with me is because of what Gio has. That Gio’s wealth compensates for what I lack.

“It’s like reliving the episode with Frank. Only, this time, I know the truth beforehand.”

“Damn it, I’ll knock the bastard’s teeth down if I see him ever.”

“Just tell me one thing. Were you lying the other day at your sister’s house? Were you just protecting me and my tender feelings? Was it the fact that you haven’t been with anyone recently that made you lose control? Tell me that being with another woman while you want me doesn’t bother you, and my rose-tinted glasses will come off.”

Raphael couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t say no. It didn’t matter that even the very idea of touching Ava felt like a betrayal of his own self.

Damn it, even his overnight trip to Venice, his meeting with an old friend, which should have progressed from the restaurant to her hotel room, it had taken all his wits just to get through the dinner.

All he could see in the woman who’d been a friend for years was the brittleness her two divorces had given her, the false warmth of her smile as she’d played footsie with Raphael’s leg under the table, the utter lack of connection between them.

Because of the infuriating woman and her outdated ideas about affection and companionship and respect, all his old connections began to look cheap and tawdry.

She was turning his life upside down.

He owed her nothing. He needed her to see the true him. He needed her to realize that he was no hero and definitely not hers.

And yet, the words wouldn’t rise to his lips.

All he could see were her big eyes that saw too much. Her lush lips. Her chest falling and rising. The raw honesty of her emotions was written across her face. So was the desire that she couldn’t hide every time she looked at him. And the ease with which she was fitting into his very life. Her adoration of his child...

The remembered taste of her was a siren’s call he couldn’t resist. Without warning, he suddenly kissed her. Hard and hungry with not a bit of his usual finesse. He devoured her mouth with bites and licks and nips until she was moaning and arching into his touch.

“This is what you want, Pia?” he said, pulling her skirt up. Sending his hand on a foray for silky skin, even as he plunged his tongue into her sweet mouth and swallowed her yes.

How he wanted her now, here. He wanted to thrust into her wet warmth and get rid of this madness.

What magic had she woven around him?

He cupped a barely covered buttock with one hand while his other met the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Mouths tangled, he pushed aside the silky thong she wore until he could find her core.

Sweat dampened his brow. A current of electric desire pooled in his groin as he found her soft folds.

Dio mio, she was ready for him. Silky and slick against his fingers.

He swallowed her soft gasp, pressed her against the door. Pulled her leg up until she was wide-open for him.

Without giving her a moment to breathe, he set a fast rhythm with his fingers. She sobbed, she moaned, she was like a spark plug touched by the fire.

Madness filling his blood, Raphael snaked his tongue around hers and increased the pressure of his strokes.

The moment he rubbed her swollen clit in concentric circles, she broke apart. Her spasms against his fingers sent his own blood rushing south. Her soft cries pelted against his skin.

He wanted to push her hair from her damp forehead. He wanted to take her in a soft kiss. He wanted to tell her she was incredibly beautiful, that her passion would bring any man to his knees.

He did nothing of the sort.

If anything, tonight only proved how wrong they were for each other. How dangerous she was to his control. How easily he could break her spirit.

He pushed away from her. Like the ruthless bastard that he was, he didn’t even try to hold her up when her knees shook beneath her. Her eyes were closed; her face was turned away.

But he didn’t miss the lone tear that tracked a path down her cheek.

“That is all I can give you, Pia. That is all I give any woman.”

He walked out of that room and the house and went outside to wait for Emilio.