The Italian's Future Bride(31)

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'?