The Italian's Future Bride(22)

'My heartbreaking rival,' he provided and moved at last, shifting away  from the door to pull out a chair at the table and sit down.



'In Italy.' Rachel moved to the sink and began toying with the mugs left  there to drain. 'I was working on a farm just outside Naples-w-work  experience,' she explained. 'He lived there. We met. Within a week I was  moving into his apartment … 'Wildly besotted with him and madly in love.  'He told me he loved me and, like a fool, I believed him. When it came  time for me to come back to England, he said thanks for the great time  and that was it.' She picked out two mugs at random. 'Do you want tea or  coffee?'



'Coffee-when was this?'



'Last summer.' Shifting back to the Aga, she put the mugs down and picked up the coffee jar, then suddenly put it down again.



It had been only last summer when Alonso had taught her a lesson about  Italian men she'd vowed never to forget. Yet here she was, involved with  another and threatening to make the same mistakes all over again.



'I need to-do a few things before I can leave here. Can you make your own coffee-?'



She had disappeared through a door before Raffaelle could say  anything-running scared again, he recognised as he sat there listening  to her footsteps running up a set of stairs.                       
       
           



       



Then, on an angry growl, he got up and went to stand by the window. One  part of him was telling him to go after her and insist she finish  telling him the whole miserable story about her Italian lover-herother  Italian lover, he grimly amended. Another part of him was wondering why  he was not just climbing into his car, which he could see standing  outside on the cobbles, and driving away from this … fiasco before the  whole thing leapt up again and bit him even harder!



Because ithad bitten him already, a voice in his head told him. She could already be carrying his child.



'Dio,' he breathed. He could not remember another time in his life when he had been so thoroughly stung by a woman.



And he did not need all of this hassle. He had many much more important  things he could be doing with his time than standing here wondering what  she was doing upstairs where he could hear her moving about just above  his head.



Leo Savakis was not really his problem-none of this was his damn  problem-except for the as-yet-unconfirmed child. He did not need to hang  around until they discovered the result of their mindless love-in. A  telephone call in a month would make more sense than hanging around her  like this.



Yet some deep inner core at work inside him was stopping him from getting the hell out of here.



Lust, he wanted to call it. A hot sexual attraction for a devious female  with cute curly blonde hair and the heart-shaped face of an innocent  but who made love like the most seasoned siren alive.



Hehad taught her how to be that person-that other Italian lover had  tutored her on how to give the best of pleasures to a man, had then  dumped her as if that was all she had been good for-a student of his  sexual expertise and a boost for his ego.



And then there was that thing withreal teeth which was biting at him. He  was used to being desired for himself. He was used to being the  favoured one women revolved around, waiting with bated breath to find  out which one of them he would choose.



Arrogant thinking? Conceited of him to know that he only had to crook a  finger to have them crawling with gratitude around his shoes?



Yes. He freely admitted it. His clenched chin went up.



With Rachel Carmichael he was learning very quickly what it felt like to  come in as second best in the heart and mind of a woman.



He did not like it. It gnawed at his pride and his sexual ego. And if he  needed to find an excuse for why he was still standing here instead of  driving away, then there it was.



There was no way that he was going to accept second best to any other  man. By the time this thing between them was over, his Italian rival was  destined to be nothing but a vague shadow in her distant memory.



She'd gone quiet.



Raffaelle looked up at the ceiling. What was she doing up there-lying on her bed pining for the heartbreaker?



Rachel was sitting on her bed with her cellphone lying in her palm displaying a text message from Elise.



Thank you for doing this for me. I will love you always. Leo is over the  moon about the baby. He's taking us to Florida on a long overdue  holiday. I could not be happier. He sends you his congratulations! Tell R  thanks for his understanding. Have a great time playing the rich man's  future bride!



What a wonderful game, Rachel thought bitterly. What a great way to waste several weeks of her life.



If she still had a rich future husband to play the game with, that was.  He could have come to his senses and made his escape while she was up  here moping-driven away in a cloud of dust and offended pride!



Getting up, she walked over to the window that overlooked the courtyard.  The silver Ferrari still sat there glinting in the shallow sunlight.  Relief was the first emotion she experienced-for Elise's sake, not her  own, she quickly told herself.



Then the bedroom door suddenly opened and she turned to see him standing  there, filling the gap like he had filled the other door downstairs and  her senses responded, reaching down like taunting fingers to touch all  too excitable pleasure points and she knew she was relieved he was still  here for no one else's sake but her own.



'Ciao,' he murmured huskily.



'Ciao,' she responded warily, searching his face for a sign that another  battle was about to begin and feeling the taunting brush of those  fingers again when she saw that anger had been replaced by lazy sensual  warmth.



'Need any help?' he asked lightly.



'Doing what?' Rachel frowned.



'Packing.' Walking forward, his gaze flicked curiously around a room  made up of countrified furniture complete with chintzy soft furnishings.  'I see no sign of it happening yet,' he observed. 'But then-' his eyes  came back to hers '-maybe you have other ideas for how we can spend the  rest of the afternoon-?'                       
       
           



       



It was like being tossed back into the pit of writhing snakes again.



Switch off the anger and let desire rush back in, she reasoned. 'I d-don't think-'



'Good idea-let's both not think.' He moved in closer. 'That small  flowery bed looks the perfect place to spend a few hours thinking of  nothing at all but this … '



But this-but this … His arms came around her and his mouth took over hers. No one needed to think about doing this, although-



'Why?' she whispered. 'Y-you should … '



'Be turned off you because you keep showing me different faces?'



His fingertips combed through the curls on her head as if to remind her  of one of those changes she had made once already today and-damn her,  but Rachel felt herself almost purring into his touch like a cat stroked  by its beloved master.



He saw it and, on a soft laugh, caught her full, softly rounded,  inviting mouth. It was one of those bewitching, tasty, compulsive kisses  that clung, tongue tip to tongue tip. She swayed closer and his hands  caught her waist to feel the slender arching of her spine for a few  seconds before he gently but firmly drew her back.



'You get to me, Rachel, you really get to me. Though God knows why you do, because I certainly don't.'



'Not your usual type?' She could not resist the dig because while he  frowned at her she was tingling in places that should not do that-the  nerve-endings along the length of her inner thighs and between her legs.



He shook his head. 'Not my usual anything,' he muttered. 'You answer  back, you disrespect, you lie and you cheat without batting an eye.'



'I don't cheat-!' she protested.



'Then what do you call the woman I first met last night with the long straight hair and the couture dress?'



A cheat. He was right.



'Well, this is the real me,' she said as she took a step back from him.  'The one with curls and jeans and-if you give me the chance-the one  constantly fighting with dirt beneath her chipped fingernails … 'She  looked down at her nails, frowning now because they looked so different  from what she was used to seeing: clean, well manicured and-pink. 'I am  not made to be afemme fatale , Raffaelle. I wasn't even that good at it  last night, only you didn't notice it because you were seeing what you'd  been conditioned to expect to see at a function like that.'



'You were damn good at what came afterwards,' he said brusquely. 'I'll  take a rain-check on thefemme fatale bit if I can have more of that.'



Her chin went up, blue eyes coolly challenging. 'And the cheating face  I'm supposed to show to the real world? Does it pop on and off according  to what you require from me?'