The Italian's Future Bride(19)

'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 you're newsworthy.'



'Which is the only reason why you hit on me in the first place,' he  pointed out. 'This is what you wanted.' He waved a long finger at the  photograph her half-brother had taken. 'I must admit you look very like  your sister in that.'



The picture showed a clinch which looked like they'd been lovers for  ever. That wave of tingling intimacy shot down Rachel's front again and  she quickly shifted her eyes to the other more carefully staged  photographs, all of which were accompanied by catchy tag lines aimed to  turn them into tacky celebrity fodder.



'I did not want all the rest of this, though. That was your fault.'



'You cannot be so blind.'



It was the way he said it that made Rachel look sharply at him. It had  been hard and sardonic-tones that repeated themselves in the expression  on his face.



'Explain that,' she demanded.



'I meant nothing.' He went to turn away.



'Yes, you did!' She caught hold of his arm. 'And I want to know what you meant!'



He swung back to her, face hard, eyes angry. 'Did you never think to  question if your brother's cronies would know who his twin is? Of course  they knew-'he answered his own question '-which is why they came after  us and called out Elise's name. They saw you looking like her and him  making his quick escape, then they saw a very contrived yet really juicy  scandal brewing involving Elise, Leo Savakis and Raffaelle Villani in a  gripping sex triangle. I can forgive you your naïvety,cara , if you are  as shocked as you appear to be, but I will not forgive your stupid  brother for not thinking this thing through and foreseeing the obvious  outcome if I had not intervened!'



Rachel pulled out a chair and sat down on it. He was ohso-sickeningly  right. And the worst of it was that he seemed to have worked all of it  out within seconds of her explaining it all last night.



'Now ask yourself how long you think it will take the press to sleuth  out exactly who you are,' he persisted. 'And your fifteen minutes of  fame becomes a roller coaster ride to hell and back while they dig into  your past, with Leo Savakis waiting in the wings for you to fall off the  rails and accidentally reveal it is all just a big ugly cover-up for  his wife's transgressions.'



'You don't have to say any more,' Rachel whispered. 'I get the full picture.'



'Do you?' he rasped. 'Well, add this into the mix. Start running scared  now and I will blow the whole lie sky high and damn your sister's  marriage. I can take the heat of the repercussions if she cannot!'



He walked out of the room, leaving Rachel alone to stew on what he'd  said. It didn't take long. He was right and she had been running scared  when she'd made that bid to leave here and go back to Devon. But that  had nothing to do with the lies, though they were bad enough. Her  reasons did not even have anything to do with their stupid delving into  unprotected sex!



It was to do with him and what he did to her. What he made her feel. If  he could affect her this badly in only one night, then she was going to  be an emotional wreck by the time it came to the end.



If it came to an end, she then amended, recalling that marriage warning he'd made.



Raffaelle was pacing his study wondering what was the matter with him. Why had he bitten her head off like that?



Because she wanted to go home to collect some clothes and organise her  life, or because she still persisted in defending her selfish family?



Or was it because she'd mentioned a man down there in Devon? Aneighbour she had not bothered to mention before … ?



He did not know. He did not think hewanted to know. Something was  happening here that scared him witless each time he came close to  looking at it.                       
       
           



       



He heard her moving about then and went to see what she was doing now. He found her in the living room with her bag in her hand.



'I-can't find my phone,' she said and she looked pale and defensive again.



'The battery was flat. I put it on the charger in my study. I'll go and get it … 'Then he paused. 'Who do you want to call?'



Irritation ripped down his backbone because he knew it was none of his  business who she wanted to call. By the expression on her face, she  thought the same thing.



Still, she answered him. 'I will have to ring round a few people if I am not allowed to leave here-'



'No.' Raffaelle shook his head. 'We will do it your way, only we both go and we will use my car instead of the train.'



'But-'



'Ten minutes,' he said gruffly, turning away again. 'And don't keep me  waiting. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get back.'



He drove them in a silver Ferrari with the same reckless efficiency he'd  driven the night before. But then, his driving had had to be nifty when  they'd met with the paparazzi waiting outside for them to leave. They'd  picked the car up from the basement car park but the moment they'd  emerged on to the street they'd been spotted and all hell had broken  loose as camera-toting reporters fell over themselves to get into their  cars and give chase.



'I don't understand why they're still hanging around,' Rachel said after  they'd lost their pursuers in a sequence of dizzying turns down narrow  back streets. She hadn't dared speak before then in case she broke his  concentration and they ended up hitting a wall. 'What do they think we  are going to do? Get married on the apartment steps or something?'



'They don't know enough about you.' He sounded so grim that Rachel felt a cold little shiver chase down her spine.



'I hate this,' she whispered. 'I hated it when I used to get caught up  in it with Elise. I don't know how you people live your lives like  this.'



'We live in a celebrity-driven world,' he answered levelly. 'The masses  are greedy for the intimate details of the rich and famous-or, for that  matter, anyone who lives a high profile life. You have now joined the  celebrity ranks, so get used to it, because this is only the beginning  of it.'



The beginning of it …



After that Rachel did not speak another word. They reached the motorway  and suddenly the powerful car came into its own, eating up the miles  with the luxurious smoothness that promised to cut the journey time by  half.



He stopped once at a motorway service station, led her into the café and bought sandwiches and coffee.



'Eat,' he instructed, when she stared at the unappetizing-looking  sandwich he'd placed in front of her. 'You look like death and you have  eaten nothing since you threw yourself at me last night.'



And I look like death because I hardly had any sleep last night, she  threw back at him without saying the words out loud. Because out loud  meant opening a Pandora's box full of what they'd been doing instead of  sleeping.



The indifferent-tasting sandwich was washed down by indifferent-tasting  coffee. Rachel was surprised he ate his sandwich or drank the coffee.  They just didn't look like the kind of food this man would usually put  anywhere near his mouth.



When they hit the road again he wanted to talk. 'Tell me how your family works,' he invited.



So she explained how her mother had lost her husband to a long-term  illness while the twins had still been very young. 'A few years later  she married my father and then had me.'