‘Raffaele?’ Vivi almost whispered in the lingering silence.
But while Vivi emanated dangerous vibes, she also excited the hell out of him and, Dio mio, she was an incredible beauty, Raffaele savoured, studying her with shimmering dark golden eyes while pitching his careful checklist of desirable maternal and wifely attributes into a mental drawer to be buried deep and forgotten. Prima di agire pensaci...look before you leap had been one of his father’s favourite sayings and Raffaele was supremely aware that he had neither looked nor considered consequences in anything he had ever done with Vivi. And yet, bafflingly, everything with her always felt seductively, inexplicably natural.
‘At the very least, my child will have my name when you marry me the day after tomorrow,’ Raffaele breathed, kicking his brain back into gear to assume that that was one obstacle already cleared.
Vivi’s soft mouth opened and closed again and she bent her head, her brain buzzing with thoughts. ‘Is that really all you’ve got to say right now?’ she queried helplessly. ‘I haven’t got a recording device playing. You’re not in a court of law either. You can be honest about your feelings.’
Raffaele’s lush black lashes dipped low over his glittering gaze. ‘Honesty can be a much-overrated trait. I am shocked, but I am also very much of a practical nature. A child changes everything. Even you must acknowledge that.’
‘Even...me? Do you really think that I am that irresponsible?’
His shapely mouth quirked. ‘Perhaps not irresponsible but you do like to defy conventional expectations.’
A tiny bit of her hostility drained away. ‘Yes. My child will be as proud to have my name as yours but I don’t see how marriage—’
Raffaele shifted a fluid brown hand to cut in. ‘A child’s needs and rights are best protected within the law. We have to be married for our child to inherit my estate without challenge.’
Vivi frowned. ‘And that’s important to you?’
Raffaele gritted his teeth. ‘Some day it will be important to our child as well.’
Vivi studied him in near wonderment because he was so deadly serious. She told him that she was pregnant and Raffaele’s brain zeroed straight to matrimonial law and their child’s inheritance rights, leapfrogging over more immediately pressing matters. ‘Money isn’t everything,’ she said quietly.
‘It is a much more complex question than that and you know it,’ Raffaele parried. ‘Obviously we will go ahead and marry now because to do anything else would be foolish in the extreme.’
Vivi pondered that controversial statement and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. At that moment it seemed to her that every pressure that could be brought to bear on her to marry Raffaele was weighing her down and shredding her every argument. ‘I wasn’t expecting this attitude from you,’ she admitted in a rush. ‘I thought you would be furious.’
‘What right would I have to be furious?’ Raffaele incised. ‘We took the same risk together. Why would we waste our time now lamenting the outcome?’
His outlook was, as he had warned her, innately practical. Parting her lips uncertainly, Vivi said, ‘I could’ve considered a termination.’
‘Which I would undoubtedly never have known about. But you did not choose that path. Instead you are telling me openly and honestly and I am grateful for that,’ Raffaele intoned tautly. ‘This is something we must share.’
‘Yes,’ Vivi acknowledged, dropping her copper head, the slender column of her neck below her ponytail looking disconcertingly vulnerable to his wary gaze. ‘I couldn’t entertain a termination after getting to know and love my sister’s little boy, Teddy. I don’t think I could give a child up for adoption either. But I still can’t imagine becoming a mother...’
‘I would say the same about becoming a father, except that in many ways for the past decade I have acted as Arianna’s father,’ Raffaele admitted in a rueful undertone. ‘I was a twenty-year-old student when her mother died. Arianna was twelve and in boarding school. I’m ashamed to say that I initially tried to avoid the responsibility, leaving her to spend her holidays with schoolfriends and ignoring her need to have a settled home.’
‘So, what changed?’
Raffaele looked pained. ‘She sent me a letter asking me why I didn’t like her because, according to her, if you like someone, you want to see that person. I was ashamed. I had always thought of her as my unpleasant stepmother’s child, not as my father’s daughter, not as my half-sister, and even with both our parents dead I had gone on looking at her in that light. She was lonely and unhappy at school and I was her only close relative. I had to man up fast but the lesson stayed with me. Wishing things could be different doesn’t change facts. It’s better to face trouble head-on.’
A glimmer of rueful amusement lightened Vivi’s eyes and her head lifted. ‘Is that what I am? Trouble?’
‘From the very first moment I saw you and wanted you,’ Raffaele confirmed without hesitation. ‘You were my sister’s friend and that alone should’ve restrained me.’
Faint colour warmed her pale cheeks. ‘Together we’re not very good at restraint.’
Raffaele gazed back at her, the pulse of desire thrumming through his lean, powerful frame, tensing his muscles and accelerating his heartbeat.
Her gaze colliding with those dark golden eyes, damp heat seemed to coat her entire skin surface, her nipples snapping taut, her mouth running dry. She tore her attention from him but still he lingered in her mind’s eye, sleek and dark and beautiful with a sensuality that burned and made her ache unbearably. She swallowed hard on that grudging acknowledgement and suppressed it even quicker because they had far more important questions to consider and she was mortified by her lack of mental discipline.
‘So, we let the wedding go ahead because I’m pregnant and you think it’s safer for our child to be born legitimate with regard to the law and all that sort of thing,’ she concluded in a weary surge.
‘And because I believe that you should have my support throughout your pregnancy.’
Vivi’s eyes opened wide and violet disbelief darkened them as she glanced back at him again. ‘Throughout? Look, I’m prepared to go through with the wedding but I don’t want anything to do with you beyond that!’
‘That’s no longer an achievable objective when you’re carrying my baby,’ Raffaele spelt out with finality.
‘Oh, yes, it is!’ Vivi argued vehemently. ‘I don’t need you for support while I’m pregnant.’
‘But I want to be there for you,’ Raffaele countered levelly.
‘Oh, stop being so pious!’ Vivi flashed back at him as she sprang to her feet in passionate annoyance. ‘Maybe you think you’re saying what I want to hear! Or maybe you think I couldn’t cope without you! Or maybe even you simply suffer from an over-developed conscience! But you don’t ever get to attach strings to me just because you knocked me up!’
Raffaele grimaced. ‘Don’t be crude.’
Vivi tossed her head, copper hair glinting like polished metal in the sunshine, her triangular face flushed and glowing with resentment as she hurriedly turned away from him. What a nightmare she would be storing up for the