He caught on, which Rachel had known he would do. The smile died from his features, taking with it all the charm and leaving behind only a rueful kind of petulance.
Then it changed. A sudden well-remembered gleam hit his eyes. 'I don't suppose you would enjoy a little light diversion this afternoon with your old lover-for old time's sake before we part again?'
The business side done with, he was back to playing the sexy charmer. Rachel couldn't help it, she laughed. 'No, I would not!' she refused, still bubbling with amusement at his downright audacity.
His lazy smile reappeared and he reached across the table to gently brush her smiling mouth with his thumb. 'Shame,' he murmured. 'We were so good together once, hmm,carisima … '
Across the square on the shady side, a camera caught them for posterity as Rachel reached up to close her hand around his so that she could remove his touch from her mouth.
'One day,' she warned him seriously, 'some beautiful creature is going to come into your life and knock down your outrageous conceit.'
'But she will not be you?'
'No.' She'd tried to do that once and had failed, had survived the experience and had now moved on-though to what, she was not certain about.
Still, it was a good feeling to realise that she was completely free of Alonso. So maybe meeting up with him had not been a bad thing to happen in her life right now.
Getting to her feet, 'Ciao, Alonso,' she murmured softly, then simply turned and walked away from him.
He did not try to stop her. Maybe he'd read the look in her eyes and knew he had lost the power to make her feel anything for him.
Or, more likely, he simply did not care enough to want to stop her. Who knew? It was just a good feeling to know that she no longer cared.
The camera toting paparazzo had already gone, missing the moment that she'd walked away from her old love with no regrets. And, by the time she reached the main street again, Alonso had been pushed right out of her thoughts by more important things.
Buying a pregnancy testing kit took courage, she discovered. She was constantly glancing around her to check if anyone was watching her and she found herself wandering aimlessly around the shops, putting off the evil moment for as long as she could.
Which in the end turned out to be a foolish exercise because, having found the courage to buy the darn thing, she had been back at the apartment for barely two minutes when Raffaelle arrived home unexpectedly, forcing her to shove her purchase into a bedside drawer.
He was in a strange mood, cold and distant and sarcastic as hell when she tried to speak to him. She needed to tell him about her meeting with Alonso, but he just cut her off with a curt, 'Later,' then locked himself away in his study and did not come out again until it was almost time for them to leave for the restaurant where they were meeting his friends for dinner that evening.
His mood had not improved by the time he'd taken a shower and changed his business suit for a more casual version made of fine charcoal-coloured linen. Her simple black halter dress drew no comment-but then why should it when he'd seen her wearing it several times before?
But she was hurt by the sudden loss of his usual attention. Confessions about surprise meetings with old lovers just did not suit the kind of mood he surrounded them with as they left.
He did not look at her. He did not touch her. When she dared to open her mouth and ask what was wrong with him, he ignored the question by turning to say something to Dino who was driving them tonight.
What with his bad mood, the stress of knowing that the pregnancy test was still burning a hole in the bedside drawer, plus the memory of her meeting with Alonso sitting heavy on her conscience, the last person she needed to see as they walked into the restaurant foyer was his stepsister Daniella, who was standing beside a tall, dark, handsome man. The elusive Gino Rossi, Rachel assumed, by the way Daniella was tucked so intimately into his side.
Raffaelle made the introductions with brusque, cool formality that made both her and Gino Rossi's responses wary and brief. After a moment Raffaelle then turned away and centred his attention on the rest of his friends, determined to get through this damn evening before he decided what he was going to do about what he had witnessed today.
In the inside pocket of his jacket, a photograph of Rachel with her lover being cosy across a café table was trying its best to burn a hole into his chest. The fact that she had been too engrossed to notice the paparazzo who took it only fed his simmering rage. It was perhaps fortunate for him that he was close friends with the newspaper owner to whom the freelance reporter had offered to sell the photograph.
He was now assured that the picture of his betrothed being intimate with another man would not appear in the tabloids, but at a cost to his dignity as well as his wallet, plus an invitation to this evening's dinner party, along with a promised exclusive interview about his wonderful life to date.
A life that included details about the lying, cheating, two-timing blonde wearing his ring right now.
He allowed himself a glance at her, standing there looking paler than usual with an oddly fragile look to her slender stance. A frown cut a dark crease across his brow. Why fragile? Was her conscience pricking her? Did she possess one? Had she spent the afternoon comparing her old lover with her new lover?
Which of them had won the contest?
A curse rattled its way around his throat and he looked away again, wondering when the hell she had got to him so badly that he even considered that damn question?
Dio.Rachel was bad for him. She had been bad for him from the moment he'd set eyes on her. Her type, herkind, were poison to a guy like him and maybe it was time that he got himself the cure.
The owner of the newspaper arrived then, like the perfect answer to his thoughts. Tall, blonde, and beautiful, and dressed in rich, dark purple that moulded her long, slender curves, Francesca de Baggio was the kind of woman who answered most men's desires.
Raffaelle went to meet her. They embraced with murmured greetings to each other that showed the intimacy of lovers from eons ago. As his lips brushed her cheeks he smelled her sensuous perfume, felt the smoothness of her skin at her shoulders beneath his palms. As her red lips lingered at the corner of his mouth he waited for the expected tingle to light him up from the inside.
It did not happen.
'Ciao, mi amore,' she moved those red lips to whisper softly in his ear. 'The betrothed does not look happy. Have you beaten her soundly?'
Almond-shaped eyes that matched the colour of her dress gleamed up at him with a conspiratorial smile. Anger erupted inside him, fresh anger-newanger-leaping on a desire to jump to Rachel's defence.
'You know better than I do how a photograph can misrepresent the truth.'
The almond eyes widened and filled with amusement. How was it he had forgotten that Francesca was in the tabloid business because she loved the trouble it allowed her to cause?
'His name is Alonso Leopardi,' she informed him softly. 'He sells cars for a living and loves them as much as he loves women. He also rents an apartment above the café they were sitting at being so … cosy. Convenient, hmm?'
Raffaelle was hooked like a fish and he knew it. It was perhaps fortunate that Gino and Daniella came up to greet Francesca then, because it saved him from making a bloody fool of himself by letting Francesca see that she'd reeled him in.
Looking round for Rachel, he could see her nowhere. For a tight, thick, blood-curdling second he thought she must have walked out. For a blinding, sickening, sense-drowning moment he actually saw her in his head, making a run for it, grabbing a cab and heading for her heartbreaker in a white-faced urgent adrenalin rush of need.
A clammy sweat broke out all over him. He took a step away from the group of his friends now gathering around Francesca to welcome her into their fold.
Common sense was telling him not to be so stupid. Rachel would not just walk out on him-even if the way he had been behaving tonight was enough in itself to justify her walking out.
He saw her then, right over on the other side of the busy restaurant. She was just stepping into the ladies' room with her blonde head bowed slightly and a slender white hand pushed up against her mouth.
She'd looked pale all evening, he remembered. His mind flipped from hating her to worrying about her. How could he have forgotten the baby they could have made, which might be making its presence felt as she made a quick dash into the Ladies'?