‘And what are you going to do about Jude?’ Zoe continued ruefully.
Vivi compressed her lips with sudden gravity. ‘End it. It wasn’t going any place anyway. I like him and I think he feels much the same as me.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s just something missing.’
A limo picked her up to ferry her out to dinner and she sat in that opulent leather-upholstered interior checking out the bar appointments and the television before topping up her lipstick. While enjoying that luxury, she was filled with gleeful anticipation at the prospect of Raffaele’s likely reaction to being cursed to dine in public with a woman dressed as she was. Raffaele was very old-school and she was convinced they would be meeting at some very exclusive but stodgy and traditional location.
But in that assumption she was swiftly proved wrong for the limo drew up outside a familiar building: the town house that was Raffaele’s very imposing London home, which was about twenty times larger than the house she and her sister occupied. Raffaele’s, of course, sat off a dignified residential square with a private park in the centre. To Vivi’s annoyance, nervous perspiration dampened her body because she hadn’t realised she would be anywhere alone with him. Nor was sporting her current outfit in the privacy of his home likely to be the embarrassment for him that she had envisaged.
Raffaele’s day had, for some unknown reason, gone excessively slowly for him. Instead of racing past in its usual whirl of urgent appointments, updates and important meetings it had crawled at a snail’s pace, irritating him, and he awaited Vivi’s arrival with mixed feelings. Tonight, he would get everything sorted out, he reasoned, striving to feel satisfaction over that obvious reality. Tonight, he would do whatever it took to get Vivi to the altar for Arianna’s benefit. So, why the hell was he on edge and counting down the hours?
It was not as if Vivi were any great challenge, he told himself grimly. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman with a reasonable education, quick of wit and temper. No big deal, he told himself even as a weird little voice whispered in the back of his brain...and she wants you.
Madre di Dio...why the hell had his mind gone in that direction? Lots of women had wanted Raffaele and he accepted that a good ninety per cent of those same women wouldn’t have wanted him without the wealth that came with him. That was a fact of life but it was also a fact of life that he had discovered a sexual chemistry with Vivi that had threatened to burn him alive, proving more seductive, more powerful and more dangerous than anything he had ever previously experienced with a woman.
Two years back it had unnerved him just a little to register that a young woman he had believed at the time to be relatively inexperienced could have that effect on him without utilising any obvious wiles. Afterwards, when he had realised how he had been duped, he had been both relieved and enraged and walking away fast hadn’t satisfied his need for retaliation. She had played him for a fool with those shy little upward glances, that breathy little giggle that could turn into an oddly entrancing snort, the violet eyes that roamed over him and lingered with what he had interpreted as rather naive sexual curiosity.
But none of that had been real, he reminded himself stubbornly. It had all been an act of innocence designed to draw him in, and he would’ve fallen for that act if she hadn’t then been exposed for the greedy little schemer she undoubtedly was. Or had been, he adjusted, allowing that the belated discovery that her grandfather was one of the richest men in the world had to have altered her outlook. One thing was certain, Vivi no longer needed to target rich men to improve her lot in life.
He should’ve known better even when he first met Vivi and believed her to be the ordinary girl she pretended to be, he reflected broodingly. His own family history should, after all, have taught him a harsh enough lesson. His parents had been very happily married, giving him an idyllic childhood in his early years. And then his mother had died suddenly from an aneurysm and his father had been distraught and painfully lonely.
That was when Arianna’s mother, Sofia, had sneaked past his once shrewd father’s defences. Matteo di Mancini hadn’t recognised her for the mercenary degenerate woman she was. All the peace had been sucked out of Raffaele’s childhood home with Sofia’s tempestuous arrival. His father had married her in a hurry without getting to know her properly and, instead of acknowledging his mistake and divorcing her, he had tried to make the best of a bad bargain. The stress of that deeply unhappy second marriage had most probably led to the older man’s premature death from a heart attack.
Grim in the wake of those timely reflections, Raffaele was poised by the fireplace in the formal drawing room when he heard the sounds of Vivi’s arrival...the click of high heels on the limestone floor and the quiet murmur of his elderly butler, Willard, as he took her coat. The door opened and Vivi paused in the doorway and that first glimpse literally took his breath away.
Two years back she had never worn revealing clothes around him and now, all of a sudden and when he least expected such a display from her, she was virtually half naked. Working out the reasons behind that sudden change in approach was beyond Raffaele’s very masculine reaction to the sight of her at that moment. He was mesmerised. Long, long perfect legs showed to advantage in a very short skirt. A diamond twinkled exotically in her pierced navel, the smooth white skin of her midriff and tiny waist exposed while her small but pert breasts, round as ripe apples, pushed against the figure-hugging fabric of her top. Instantly, Raffaele went as hard as a rock but that, at least, kicked his brain back into gear.
‘Good evening,’ Vivi breathed a tad shakily, because Raffaele staring at her as he was had always disconcerted her. ‘I thought I’d give you a treat.’
But then there had never been a man who disturbed her as much as Raffaele did without even trying. He could lift a well-bred brow or angle up his chin or even widen his eyes slightly as he looked at her and immediately plunge her into discomfiture and the fear that she had done something wrong. She could feel her face colouring up in a horrible blush, because all of a sudden she was feeling horribly self-conscious and underdressed. What had seemed funny and apt back in her bedroom now felt more like self-inflicted humiliation.
‘A treat?’ Raffaele repeated, brilliant dark eyes still locked to her, roving over the magnificent fall of her copper curls, the even more striking contrast of her hair against her translucent skin and the bright blue eyes below her winged auburn brows.
‘Yes. I thought you deserved to get the woman you believe me to be,’ she confided. ‘Only I expected us to be dining out somewhere and I hoped to embarrass you with this get-up.’
‘I’m not embarrassed,’ Raffaele murmured, dry-mouthed. On fire with lust, intrigued by her nerve but decidedly not embarrassed.
Vivi shrugged a slim shoulder. ‘Why would you be in your own home?’ she countered ruefully, her disappointment at that truth so obvious to him that he almost laughed.
‘It’s a shame I don’t have a stripper pole,’ Raffaele breathed tautly, struggling to keep his wholly inappropriate amusement concealed.
Vivi tossed her head, a string of coiling curls cascading against her cheeks before rearranging themselves across her slight shoulders. He remembered running his fingers through that hair when it was smooth and straight without a hint of curl and the pulse tingling at his groin went even crazier.
‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a stripper pole,’ Vivi admitted regretfully.
‘We’ll have champagne...’ Raffaele informed his butler.
‘Champagne? Are we celebrating something?’ Vivi queried.
Raffaele rested eyes that were the colour of burnt toffee on her piquant face. ‘Our