The Italian's Future Bride(25)

Did he hate her-was that it? she immediately questioned. Did he resent  her being here so badly that he needed to take chunks out of her to get  his own back on her for putting him in this situation in the first  place?



Was he locked in his silly studypraying that she wasn't pregnant with his child?



And he did not want to see the farmer dressed in flashy red when she  came out. Her lips gave a quiver. He preferred to see the sleek Elise  look-alike because at least he could relate to her andpretend she was  his type!



Rachel stripped off her clothes and walked into the bathroom, not sure if she wanted to throw things or cry her eyes out.



The tears almost won the moment she stepped beneath the shower spray and  she would have let them if he had not chosen that moment to push open  the bathroom door and stride fully naked into the shower.



'No, don't stiffen up,' he said as she did exactly that. 'I am here to make you feel better, not worse.'



He drew her back against him, angling both of them so the shower sprayed  down her front, then dropped his lips to her ear. 'I came to apologise  for being bad-tempered out there.'



'You mean it's just hit you that you have to trail me in front of your friends having ripped my head off,' Rachel said.



'I had a bad day.'



He was tasting her earlobe now. Rachel jerked it away.



'Accepting invitations you had no desire to accept.'



'While thinking of you and that bed I had walked away from.' He chased  the earlobe again. 'So I was bad tempered all day and came home more  than ready to find you waiting for me. But you were not here; you were  out enjoying yourself.'



'Playing the farmer to my heart's content.'



'I like the farmer,' he murmured lustily. 'She is toned and sleek and very sexy. I am also jealous of the ex-lover … '



That shocking confession finally stopped her from trying to pull away from him.



'Impressed by that?' he mocked.                       
       
           



       



'Yes,' she answered honestly.



'I thought you might be.' His mouth bit gently into the sensitive crook between her shoulder and neck.



Rachel's breathing feathered and she closed her eyes, giving herself up  to this when she knew that she shouldn't. Wanting him to want her for  herself and not just because she was here for the taking.



He found the soap and used it to paint every inch of her he could reach.  Soon she was lost in a scented steam-filled world that shut out  everything else.



Afterwards she felt lazy and languid and much too aware of him as her  irresistible lover as the two of them moved around between the bathroom,  bedroom and dressing room, preparing to go out.



Which had been the object of the exercise in the shower, she reminded  herself. Several times he stopped her passing him by just fusing his  mouth to hers in a slow clinging kiss and the lazily hooded way in which  he watched her shyly lower her eyes and move away quickly only  heightened an intimacy that was threatening to take her over completely  if she didn't watch out.



She was relieved when he finally left her alone so she could finish  getting ready without having him around as such a breathtaking  distraction. By the time she joined him in the living room Rachel truly  believed she had managed to get herself together-until he looked up from  the broadsheet newspaper he was reading while lounging on a sofa and  the whole whirlwind of awareness whipped into action again.



She'd chosen to wear a sleek short V-neck dress in dramatic matt black.  Elise had donated the dress, claiming that it did not suit her because  she didn't have the curves to fill it out.



Well, Rachel had the curves and, the way that Raffaelle was looking at  her, he had not missed a single one. Her hair was loose, its curls  carefully ironed out so the style was smooth and sleek. As he rose to  his feet her blue eyes followed him, defiant yet anxious-just in case  she did not look as good as she hoped she did.



But the look reassured her as he came towards her wearing the kind of  black lounge suit that yelled couturehomme . When an Italian male  dressed he never ever dressed badly, was Rachel's single dry-mouthed  heart pummelling observation.



'Beautiful,' he murmured as he reached her, sending pleasurable shivers  chasing up her spine as he bent to brush a caress on her cheek. 'But I  prefer the curls.'



'Different woman,' she answered with a small shrug.



His eyes narrowed, all the sensuality hardened out of his mouth. He said  nothing for several long seconds and Rachel knew she had just managed  to remind him of the real reason why they were together.



Maybe that was a good thing, she decided, as he helped her into the  little black satin evening jacket she had brought into the room with  her, still without saying anything else. They left the apartment and  travelled in the lift down to where Dino waited by the car with the rear  passenger door open. She slid in. The door clicked shut. Raffaelle  rounded the bonnet and slid in from the other side. His long body folded  with crease-free elegance into the seat beside her.



Lean, sleek, supremely sophisticated, she recognised. Crossing one  silk-covered knee over the other, she fixed her attention on the  partition which separated them from Dino.



Tension fizzed in the silence. Rachel found herself clinging to her  little black beaded purse. The car swished along London's busy streets,  recently drenched by a heavy downpour of rain. Everything outside the  car seemed to glitter and sparkle in the darkness, everything inside the  car was shadowed and oddly flat.



Raffaelle wished he knew what he was feeling right now, but he didn't.  It was crazy to have been so taken aback by her reminder of what this  was all about when they'd done little else but argue about it since  they'd first met.



But he had been taken aback by it, stunned by the gut-twisting reminder that none of this was real-thatshe wasn't real.



Not tonight anyway.



She was the sleek look-alike sister of Elise Castle-Savakis, pretending  to be a version of Rachel Carmichael that just did not exist. Even the  dress was Elise's, classy and stylish and very sexy on Rachel, but he  would be prepared to bet it was not of her own taste or choice.



He preferred the other Rachel with the curls and the spark of defiance in her blue eyes.



'Having second thoughts about risking me in there amongst your friends?' she asked suddenly.



Raffaelle blinked, realising that they'd come to a stop outside the  restaurant. By the atmosphere inside the car, they'd been here like this  for several seconds.



The restaurant was one of the best Italian restaurants in London. It was  a place where the rich set ate. It was his kind of place and his kind  of life, but neither were hers.                       
       
           



       



He turned his head to look at her. Barely an hour ago, she had been  coming all around him in a breathtaking pulse of intimacy that still  circulated in his blood. He looked at her silk-straight hair and her  beautiful pearly-white complexion, the heavily accentuated black-lashed  blue eyes and the sexy pink-coated mouth.



He could taste them. He could feel those soft pink-coated lips warm  against his own whether she was this Rachel or the other Rachel. And if  he was sitting here like this, wanting to know where the two Rachels  became one, then he'd found it in that mouth and what happened to her  when he claimed it.



'I won't embarrass you, if that's what's worrying you,' she stated,  fizzing inside with resentment at the analytical way he was looking her  over as if he was actually having to give some deep thought to the  sarcastic question she had tossed out.



'You sound very sure about that, little farmer girl,' he said huskily.



'Well, I'm not,' she admitted honestly. 'I suppose I should have said I willtry not to embarrass you.'



Easing his wide shoulders into the corner of the seat, his eyes  glittered over her tense face. 'Do you really believe I will care if you  do decide to embarrass me?' he asked curiously.



Rachel offered a shrug. 'I don't know you well enough to judge.'



'No, you don't … '



She didn't like the way he had said that, or the way he was looking at  her now. Her tension was zinging along just about every nerve ending she  had in her body and she wished he would just-



'Are we going to go in there or not?' she flicked out.



'In a minute,' he said smoothly, 'This conversation is just getting interesting … '



'No, it isn't.'



'Because it has nothing to do with whether you are going to embarrass  me,' he said ignoring her interruption. 'It is to do with you being  scared that I might embarrass you.'



Rachel stared at him. 'Why should you want to do that?'



'My thought exactly,' he said softly. 'Yet youare scared that I am going  to take you in there, then just leave you to sink or swim.'