Читать книгу The Scandalous Orsinis: Raffaele: Taming His Tempestuous Virgin - Сандра Мартон, Sandra Marton - Страница 13

IF YOU were an anthropologist doing field work, you might have put The Bar on a threatened-species list.

No rope at the door to keep out those who might offend the fashionistas. No VIP lists. No hot babes in spandex, no guys with more money than brains, no drinks with names that made a man laugh.

In fact, the place was so low-key that you had to know it existed before you could find it. Wood-paneled, dimly lit, it was located in an unremarkable Soho neighborhood. At least, it had been unremarkable when the Orsini brothers had discovered it years ago.

They’d been just starting out back then, three of them with unused degrees in finance and business in their pockets and one, Falco, with enough university credits for a couple of degrees but not enough concentration in any one area to matter. They’d all turned their backs on the white-collar world. Cesare, sneering, said it was to find themselves.

The truth was, they’d gone off to lose their connection to everything he represented.

Rafe and Nick had ended up in the military, one in the Marines, one in the Army, both fighting wars neither wanted to talk about. Falco was even more tight-lipped about his time in Special Forces. Dante had headed north to Alaska and the dangers of the oil fields on the North Slope. He and Falco were the only ones who’d returned with money in their pockets, Dante from his job, Falco from the high-stakes poker games he loved.

Dante, Nick and Rafe had quickly figured out that they wanted to build a future together. Falco wasn’t sure what he wanted.

They began getting together a couple of nights a week at a place called O’Hearn’s Bar. It was a neighborhood place, located just downstairs from Rafe’s one-room-with-what-passed-for-a-kitchen walkup. The beer was cold, the sandwiches were cheap, and nobody gave a damn who the brothers were.

Gradually the last booth on the left became known as theirs. It was where they met and discussed Life and Women and What To Do with Their Lives.

Eventually they figured out a way to combine their talents, temperaments and education. Rafe and Nick pooled their resources, played what was then a booming stock market, put the money into the new venture. Dante added his impressive oil field savings. Six months later Falco decided to throw in his luck with his brothers and put them over the top with the not-so-small fortune he’d made at poker.

Orsini Brothers was born.

Their corporate baby flourished. So did the neighborhood around O’Hearn’s. Tired old tenements, including the one where Rafe had lived, were gutted and reborn as pricey town houses. A factory building became a high-priced club. Bodegas became boutiques.

The Orsinis could tell that O’Hearn’s days were numbered.

“We’ve got to do something,” Falco had grumbled, so they did. They bought the place, and it became the smallest and least noticed part of the Orsini Brothers’ holdings.

They cleaned it up, but only a little. Had the planked oak floor refinished. Tore out the worn leather stools and banquettes and replaced them with new ones. Everything else—the scarred wood tables, the pressed-tin ceiling, the long zinc counter, the beers on draught, the overstuffed sandwiches and killer grilled-with-onions burgers—stayed the same.

To the brothers’ shock, O’Hearn’s Bar—by now, simply known as The Bar—became what people referred to as a “destination.” Still, only the bartenders knew who owned it, and that was exactly how the Orsinis wanted it.

That way they could avoid the reporters from the Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as the ones from the tabloids. It wasn’t easy to keep your privacy when you’d created a company worth billions—and your old man was still numero uno whenever some damned investigative reporter dredged up the M word.

So, The Bar was the logical place to get together every couple of Friday nights, or maybe after closing on Saturday night if a date had proved especially memorable. It was also where you went if you just wanted to talk.

Like today.

Falco and Nick, back from their business meetings overseas, were already there when Rafe arrived. Only Dante was missing. He was off somewhere in South America. Nobody knew where or why. Rafe figured it had something to do with that Sunday morning meeting with Cesare but decided it was Dante’s business to talk about it, not his.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything about what had happened at his Sunday morning meeting with his father… and if he wasn’t, what was he doing here? he thought, as he stepped from the sunlight into The Bar’s artificial gloom.

He’d phoned Nick and Falco on the spur of the moment. They’d both been at work, as he should have been, when he called. “Got time for a beer?” he’d said, and they’d said sure.

Now, seeing them, his gut knotted.

Why he’d suggested getting together was beyond him. He had a problem on his hands but he wasn’t about to lay it out for discussion. There was still time to turn around and walk away—but Nick looked up, spotted him and it was too late.

Nothing to do now but fake some casual conversation. Rafe fixed what he hoped was a smile on his face, sauntered over to their usual booth and slid in beside Falco.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

So much for casual conversation.

The bartender, who’d spotted Rafe the second he walked in, came over with an icy mug of ale. Rafe nodded his thanks. His brothers watched as he took a long swallow.

“Well,” he said brightly, “it’s good to see you guys.”

Nick looked at Falco. “At least he doesn’t look as bad as he sounded.”

And so much for getting through this unscathed. Rafe concentrated on his mug of beer.

Falco shrugged. “He looks worse.”

Okay. Enough. Rafe looked up.

“I am,” he said, “right here. No reason to talk as if I weren’t.”

“Sure.” Nick nodded agreeably. “No reason not to tell you, to your face, that Falco’s right. You look like caca.”

“Thank you.”

“You want compliments, you’re in the wrong place,” Falco said, but his usually hard expression softened. A bad sign, Rafe thought glumly. “So, you want to tell us what’s going on?”

Rafe thought of making another clever response, but what was the point? His brothers knew him too well to be fooled. Besides, he was the idiot who’d called this meeting and brought this on his own head.

“Nothing. It’s just been a long couple of days.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

Another shrug. Another swallow of beer. Then Rafe pressed the icy bottle against his temple, where a Chinese orchestra playing traditional Mandarin melodies had moved in to replace the departed trolls.

“I, ah, I have some things to sort out.”

“Such as?” Nick asked.

“Just… things.”

Nick looked at Falco. “Your turn.”

Falco scowled. Nobody could scowl quite like Falco.

“You want to tell us what’s happening? You don’t show up at the office—”

“I’m entitled to a day off,” Rafe said, trying not to sound defensive.

“You don’t show up,” Falco continued, “then you phone us and say you need to talk—”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s Monday, the market’s in the toilet and here we are, taking a break at your request. You really think we’re going to think it’s just so we could all say ‘hello, what’s new, how was your weekend?’”

“Hello,” Rafe said, “what’s new, how was your—” A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Okay. It’s true. I have a, uh, a slight problem.”

“Blonde or brunette?”

“That’s insulting, Nicolo. I mean, why jump to the conclusion that it’s a female problem?”

“Blonde or brunette,” Nick repeated, and Rafe sighed.

“Brunette.”

“What happened to the Valkyrie?”

“She’s history.”

“How come?”

Rafe narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to discuss the past or the current situation?”

“Don’t get testy,” Falco said mildly. “Okay. So, what is the current situation?”

Rafe stared at his brothers. The thing was, he did know why he’d phoned them. Who else would he turn to when he was in a mess straight up to his eyeballs? And, damn it, yes, this thing was a mess.

He was married. Married, him, a man who’d never even contemplated marriage, who’d run like hell anytime a woman so much as breathed the word. He was married to a stranger from a world so unlike his it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so unbelievable.

That was item one in the “current situation.”

Item two was that even though he was going to end the marriage as quickly as he could pull it off, that hadn’t kept him from, item three, damned near making it with Chiara on his kitchen counter, which led, inexorably, to item four, that she was almost certainly a virgin and having sex with her would, oh damn, item five, make ending the marriage more complicated, never mind item six, that he’d introduced her as his wife and she wasn’t, well, she was, legally, and—

“Rafe?”

And what a disaster of a scene that had been. His housekeeper had all but burst into congratulatory song. Not Chiara. She’d turned bright pink.

“I am not your wife,” she’d said, “and if you think that—that assaulting me makes it so, you are wrong!”

Then she’d fled.

He’d thought about trying to explain things to his housekeeper—who’d gone from looking at him through misty eyes to regarding him as if he’d turned into a serial killer right in front of her—given that up and gone after Chiara instead, but she’d locked her door and when he’d tried to talk to her—

“Raffaele!”

Rafe’s head came up. “Why’d you call me that?” he said, glaring at Nick.

“Because it’s your name. Because you’re a thousand miles away. Because one of us is nuts and the odds are excellent I’m looking at him. What’s the brunette’s name?”

Mrs. Orsini, Rafe thought wildly, and choked back what began as an insane cackle.

“This is amusing?”

“No,” Rafe said quickly, “believe me, it isn’t.”

“So, what’s the lady’s name?”

“Chiara.”

Falco raised an eyebrow. “Very nice. Very sexy.”

“She isn’t.”

“Nice? Or very sexy?”

“She’s not like that, is what I’m saying. She’s, ah, she’s different.”

“They’re always different,” Falco said, “until they get to feeling comfortable.” He made interlocking damp rings on the beat-up tabletop with his beer mug. “I take it this one isn’t feeling comfortable yet.”

Comfortable? A muscle tightened in Rafe’s jaw. She was living in his apartment. Somehow he didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to admit anything. He wished to God he’d never started this conversation. In another few minutes his brothers would go from calling him nuts to figuring he needed to be committed.

“Okay,” Falco said, “I get it. You got involved on the rebound. Now you want out. You do, don’t you? Want out? I mean, that’s what this is all about?”

Rafe nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I don’t see the problem. Take the lady to dinner. You know, the it’s-been-great-but-it’s-over meal.”

“It isn’t like that. She wants out, too.”

Nick stared at him. “Well, then there isn’t any problem.”

“There is.” Rafe hesitated. “It’s… it’s complicated. I mean, we both want out. But—”

“But?”

“But, she’s, ah, she’s new to the city.”

“Buy her a guidebook,” Falco said coldly.

“And, ah, and I came on to her and that, ah, that kind of upset her.”

Falco and Nick grinned at each other. “So much for those smooth Orsini moves,” Nick said.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here. What I mean is… See, the lady in question is a little wary. Of men. Of sex. Of me.

And, uh, and now I’m wondering if I… if I—” He swallowed hard. “She won’t talk to me.”

This time nobody grinned. “She’s frigid?” Falco said, his eyebrows aiming for his hairline.

“No. Yes. I mean, maybe. I mean, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping her around very long.”

His brothers were looking at him strangely. He couldn’t blame them.

“Back to what Falco suggested,” Nick said. “Dinner. She won’t talk to you? No problem. Leave a message on her voice mail. Tell her to meet you somewhere for dinner. When she shows up, tell her things aren’t working. Give her a little gift, you know, not the little-blue-box-from-Tiffany’s kind of thing, but… What? Why are you shaking your head?”

“No phone. No voice mail.” Rafe cleared his throat. “She’s living in my apartment.”

The look of incredulity on his brothers’ faces said it all.

“She’s—”

“—living with you?”

“It’s temporary.”

“You sent the Valkyrie packing a couple of days ago and moved this Clara—”

“Chiara.”

“Clara, Chiara, whatever. You moved her in, what, five minutes later?”

Rafe gave one last thought to explaining, but how could he, when not even he could make sense out of everything he’d done? The only certainty was that he’d gotten himself into this mess and it was up to him to get himself out of it.

“Hey,” he said brightly, after a glance at his watch, “look at the time!”

“Rafe. Wait a minute—”

But he was already on his feet. “Great seeing you guys,” he said, and scrambled for the door.

Nick and Falco watched him go. Then they looked at each other.

“You got any idea what just happened?” Nick said.

Falco shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”

Nick nodded and signaled for another round of beer.

Rafe had taxied downtown.

His condo was on Fifth Avenue, in the midsixties. Any way you looked at it, it was a long walk home, but that was a good thing. Long walks usually helped clear his head.

Involving his brothers had not been a good idea. Not that he’d really involved them. He hadn’t told them much of anything, but what he had told them was not good.

Still, the confrontation, if you could call it that, had had one positive effect. It had made him face reality. He’d been dealing with this as if he were standing outside the problem, observing it. He wasn’t. What he was, he thought as he passed a group of suburban women in for some shopping and dressed more for a New Jersey mall than for the eclectic streets of Soho, what he was, was a man standing in a hole six feet deep, busy digging himself in deeper.

He’d married Chiara, yes, but given the same circumstances, he’d have done it again. What kind of man would turn his back on a desperate woman? And it wasn’t because of how she looked, those big violet eyes, that trembling mouth, or of how that mouth had felt under his, or of how she’d felt in his arms.

She’d needed help. He’d offered it. So, okay. The marrying part had been necessary.

What had been going on since then was not. The arguing. The accusations. What was the point? It was a done deal. And then, this morning… Proof of how crazy things had gotten. He couldn’t imagine why he’d tried to jump her bones.

To say she wasn’t his type was a laugh. She had a pretty face, yeah, but so did a million other women, and none of those million other women went around looking like little old ladies. None of them would ever look at him as if he were a mustachioed villain.

None of them was a wife he didn’t want. And none of them had hang-ups about sex.

Not that Chiara had seemed to have many of those this morning. That kiss. The way she’d clung to him. Moaned into his mouth. Arched her body against his, lifted herself to him…

Just what he needed. Turning himself on while he walked down a crowded street. Oh, yes, that was a great idea.

He swung toward a shop window, found himself staring at a display of hammers and power tools while he fought for control. That was another thing. When had he ever had to struggle for self-control? Never. Not since he’d left the Marines. Now he fought for it all the time. Either he was furious at his wife or so turned on that he couldn’t see straight for wanting her and—

“And she isn’t your wife,” he said sharply.

A couple coming out of the store gave him a wary look.

“Sorry,” Rafe said, “sorry. I was just—”

He was just losing his mind. The couple moved quickly past him. He took some deep breaths, began walking again.

It was time to move on. She wanted a divorce. So did he. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket as he reached the corner. The light turned red. Time to separate the tourists from the natives. The tourists stayed on the curb. The New Yorkers, Rafe among them, kept going. A car horn bleeped. A voice shouted something. Rafe met the driver’s eyes, flashed a look that silenced him.

Rafe stepped onto the curb, brought up his contact list, selected Marilyn Sayers’s number. Her phone rang and rang. When it finally picked up, what he got was not her but her voice mail.

“Marilyn,” he said impatiently, “it’s Rafe Orsini. Pick up if you’re there. Or call me back, fast. It’s urgent.”

He’d hardly closed the phone when it rang. He glanced at the face plate, saw with relief that it was her.

“Marilyn. Thanks for getting back to me so fast. No, I’m okay. I’m just in a messy situation, is all. See—” She interrupted. He blinked. “You’re where?”

She was in Istanbul. Five thousand miles away. Something about the first vacation she and her husband had taken in years, blah-blah-blah, but Rafe didn’t give a damn. All that registered was that she’d be gone another week.

“A week?” He shook his head as he navigated a particularly crowded stretch of Sixth Avenue. “Impossible. I have a problem. A personal problem. And—Marilyn?”

The call broke up, then died. Rafe cursed, hit redial. Marilyn picked up and said they had a bad connection.

“Yeah. I know. Listen, this problem I have—”

She interrupted again, told him to get in touch with her partner. He’d handle things. Rafe shook his head, as if she could see him. Sayers’s partner was ninety if he was a day, a starchy old guy who wore a vest, carried a pocket watch and took ten years to shuffle across a room.

Explain to him how he’d come to have a wife who wasn’t a wife? Ask him to expedite things so they could get divorced quickly because if they spent another day together, he was liable to strip his wife-who-wasn’t-a-wife out of her ugly black clothes and bare all her soft, sweet flesh to his eyes and hands and mouth?

“No good,” he growled. “I need you, not your partner.”

It was useless. Sayers was sorry but—The line went dead. Rafe snarled and closed the phone with a vengeful snap.

Okay. What now? Easy. Get Chiara out from under his roof. A week’s wait was nothing, once he’d done that. Out of sight, out of mind.

He’d find her a place to live. It was an excellent idea, one that would bolster the fact that the marriage wasn’t a marriage at all. And how hard could it be to find someplace to stash her? The city was loaded with real estate agents. He just needed one who’d move his request to the top of the list.

Of course!

Rafe flipped the phone open, checked his contact list again, hit a button.

“Chilton Realtors.”

“Elaine Chilton, please.”

It was the perfect solution. Why deal with an agent he didn’t know when he had one at his fingertips? He’d met the Chilton woman somewhere. A party, a dinner. It didn’t matter. She’d tugged his phone from his hand after he’d taken a call, smiled prettily and programmed in her number.

“In case you ever need me,” she’d purred.

He hadn’t. He’d been involved with Ingrid at the time but he sure as hell needed her now.

“Hello?”

“Elaine? It’s Rafe Orsini.”

“Well, well, well,” she said in a throaty whisper, “how are you, Mr. Orsini?”

He said he was fine and then he cut to the chase, said he was interested in seeing her.

“It’s urgent,” he said.

She gave a sexy little laugh. “How nice!”

Rafe felt a second’s unease. Were they talking about the same thing?

“Where are you?” she asked.

He told her.

“Perfect. I have a rental a couple of blocks away.”

“What’s it like?”

Another little laugh. “I’m sure you’ll think it’s perfect.” She gave him the address, told him to meet her there in twenty minutes.

Rafe disconnected, his concerns gone. Perfect? Absolutely. He checked his watch, turned down Fifty-seventh Street.

Half an hour later, he was striding towards his condo, furious at fate, at life, at his own stupidity.

Elaine Chilton had been waiting for him, all right… on a pale pink sofa in a red silk teddy and black stilettos, and okay, maybe he hadn’t handled things exactly right. Maybe you didn’t look at a half-naked woman and say, “Oh sorry! See, what I meant was, I’m interested in finding an apartment for this woman who’s living with me.”

Definitely a poor choice of words, he thought as he marched into his own apartment building, glowered at the hapless doorman and stepped into his elevator.

He probably deserved the names the Chilton babe had called him, if not the slap. At least he’d stopped himself from saying, “Okay, now that that’s out of the way, what about the rental?”

The car shot upward. Next step was to call a hotel. The Waldorf. The St. Regis. Not as homey as a furnished apartment but who cared? What counted was that Chiara would be there, he would be here. And as soon as Sayers was in her office, things would start to be okay.

The elevator door slid open. Rafe stepped out—and found Chiara, waiting for him as Elaine Chilton had been waiting.

Not quite.

No silk teddy. No stiletto heels. No pink sofa. Chiara was seated in his foyer in an Eames chair, back straight, knees all but locked, hands folded in her lap, dressed in yet another of those incredibly ugly black outfits.

Then, why did seeing her go through him like a surge of electricity?

“Raffaele.” She rose to her feet, hands still tightly clasped. “I am sorry.”

Her voice was small but her eyes were steady on his. She was that combination of vulnerability and defiance that got to him every time.

“I seem to say that to you a great deal but…” She licked her lips. He could no more have kept from following the quick swipe of her pink tongue than he could have kept from breathing. “But I overreacted. You were simply trying to save me from embarrassment in front of your housekeeper. I should have understood that.”

Rafe forced his gaze from her mouth. Not a good plan. He looked into her eyes, instead, and saw that they glittered with unshed tears.

“No,” he said, “it’s my fault. I’ve handled this all wrong. I know what you want and I—” Why was his voice so rough? He cleared his throat. “I’ve been in touch with my attorney.”

Chiara shook her head. Her hair was still loose. He’d set it free hours ago, when he’d kissed her. The wildness of her curls was in direct contrast to her black dress and sensible shoes.

“Please, let me finish. This is difficult for me but I must say it.” She drew a deep breath. “The… the kissing, Raffaele. It was inexcusable.”

“Yes.” He swiped his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about that, Chiara. I shouldn’t have—”

“My response, I mean. It was wrong. I have no explanation to offer. I can only say I regret it and—”

“Don’t,” he said quickly, his voice even rougher. “Don’t regret it, sweetheart. Please.”

“But I.” Color flooded her face. “I should not have kissed you back.”

“Chiara. That was a good thing. A healthy thing. Responding to a man’s kisses. To my kisses.”

“But I do not. I have never…”

Her voice faded. She looked away from him. She’d known this would be difficult, admitting that what happened whenever he touched her was as much her fault as his, but what she hadn’t expected was that seeing him would make her feel light-headed. Almost dizzy. Afraid to keep meeting his gaze because looking into his beautiful blue eyes made her want to… want to.

She felt a light touch on her hair. His hand, stroking the curls back from her temples. His fingers, threading into the strands. A moan rose in her throat. What was happening? She wanted to sigh his name, lift her face to his.

“No,” she said quickly, “no, it must not happen again. Those things I did—”

“You kissed me,” he said in a low voice. “And I kissed you. Kissing isn’t wrong, sweetheart.”

Somehow, his hand was cupping her chin. Somehow, her face was lifting to his.

And then his mouth was on hers.

He was kissing her, kissing her gently, and she was kissing him back. She caught his sweater in her hands, knotted the soft cotton in her fists and rose to him.

His arms swept around her. He gathered her against him and she framed his face with her hands, her lips soft and warm against his. She was making little sounds, moans of pleasure and desire, and he knew she was his for the taking.

He had only to lift her into his arms, carry her up the stairs to his bed. What he wanted, what he had wanted from the first time he’d kissed her, would become reality.

He would make love to her.

Take her innocence.

Take it, and be no better than bastards like her father and Giglio, men who would exploit this beautiful, brave woman instead of honoring and protecting her.

He kissed her one last time. Then he rested his forehead against hers.

“Chiara.” His voice sounded rusty; he cleared his throat.

“Sweetheart. I have a great idea. Let’s… let’s start over.”

“Start over?”

“Yes. You. Me. The situation we’re in… We don’t have to be enemies, Chiara. We can be friends.”

She looked baffled. Why wouldn’t she? It was probably the last thing she’d expected him to say. Hell, it was the last thing he’d expected to say. But it was right, and he knew it.

He would be her friend, not her lover, even if it killed him.

“I would like that,” she said softly. “To start over with you, Raffaele.”

Then she smiled, and he wondered how it was possible for everything good in the world to be captured in a woman’s smile.