Vivi’s fingers turned into claws, biting into her palms. No man had ever filled her with such rage that she felt violent, only him. But she would not run the risk of calling Raffaele’s bluff. He was a banker, he was innately ruthless and if redundancies could make her dance to his tune he was unlikely to make an empty threat, she reflected wretchedly. How could she risk that happening? How could she challenge him when her fellow employees’ livelihoods could be at stake? For goodness’ sake, what on earth had Grandad offered him to make him so desperate to win her agreement?
‘Eight.’ She bit out the word as if it physically hurt her and in a way it did because giving even an inch to Raffaele di Mancini felt like a self-betrayal of pride and good judgement.
‘I shall look forward to it,’ Raffaele dared with purring satisfaction and if there had been anything within reach to throw at him, Vivi would’ve thrown it.
She went back down to the marketing department in the lift, her brain in a daze after all the emotions she had worked through. Hatred, rage and resentment assailed her in heady waves around Raffaele and it made it hard for her to think straight, to think smart, she recognised, finding another stick to beat herself with. If she was cooler, calmer, would she have found a way out? But how could she be cool and calm when he so enraged her?
Her memory went back to the day she had met Arianna with her high heel caught in a grating down the street from the modelling agency. She had only been a week into her first job there and heading out to grab lunch. She had stopped to help Arianna, who was comically trying to drag her shoe out of the grating while standing on one leg like a heron.
‘Oh, thanks...’ Arianna had said with a flashing friendly smile, a very pretty brunette, who had seemed much the same age as Vivi was.
Nothing had budged that shoe heel from the grating and, wearying of the struggle, Arianna had stepped out of the other one, swept it up, looked at it as if trying to judge what use one shoe would be and then tossed it down again in disgust. Barefoot, she had stepped onto the pavement and introduced herself and Vivi had dug into her capacious tote to offer the use of the shabby trainers she wore to travel into work. Arianna had been as grateful as if she had saved her life and had accompanied Vivi into the café where she was planning to buy a sandwich, confessing that she was hungry herself. And that was how her friendship with Arianna had begun, two young women getting to know each other and exchanging numbers over a snack. Their meeting had not been in any way engineered. Arianna had not been ‘targeted’ for her wealth, as her brother had implied to the press, because, although Arianna had been very fashionably dressed, Vivi had not recognised the designer style she herself had never been able to afford. She had noticed Arianna’s jewellery and had simply assumed it was good costume stuff, rather than the real thing.
Arianna had come into Vivi’s life at a time when she was rather lonely. How had she been lonely living with two sisters? Well, back then, Winnie had been heartbroken and pregnant by Eros and no company whatsoever. And love Zoe as Vivi did, Zoe was happier reading a book in her room than in actually going out to meet people. Arianna had been full of life and cheerfulness and Vivi had liked her, felt rather protective of her, too, once she realised that the other young woman was a year younger and seemingly rather naive about city life.
Arianna had confided her dream of becoming a model the evening they had first gone out together, when she had also flashed a gold credit card and taken Vivi to a very exclusive club. That was when a little tactful questioning had revealed that Arianna came from a different world and Vivi had become a little uncomfortable in her company then.
Having spoken to the resident photographer at the agency, however, Vivi had set up the appointment for Arianna to have a modelling portfolio prepared. The day after, Arianna had invited her to join her and her brother for dinner. Two nights after that, Raffaele had unexpectedly joined them at a club and swept them up to the VIP section, scolding his sister for not being there in the first place. There he had questioned Vivi about her background and occupation and she had said defensively, ‘I’m ordinary and I was trying to explain to Arianna that people like you and her don’t become best friends with someone like me but she doesn’t seem to get that. She just looked hurt.’
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t be friends,’ Raffaele had said, surprising her when she had already decided he had to be a snob with his blue-blooded background.
Of course, at that point, nothing had gone wrong, Vivi conceded wryly and it was very likely that Raffaele had viewed her friendship with his sister as harmless. Even so, it had been a mortifyingly happy time for her, she recalled with self-loathing.
Entranced by Raffaele, she had been convinced he was equally interested when he began dropping in on her outings with his sister. Their entire relationship, if it could even be called that, had taken place over only a couple of weeks. She had assumed he was holding back because he didn’t want to risk spoiling her friendship with Arianna. She had made so many forgiving assumptions, Vivi recalled, nauseated by the memory of how naive and trusting she had been, believing that he was a generally decent man but, for some reason, exceedingly cautious with women.
And then had come the night of the kiss at Arianna’s twentieth birthday party, when he had literally grabbed her out on the terrace where she had been getting some fresh air. He had come out there to lecture her for wandering off alone, as if she were another sister to be schooled and protected like Arianna, and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, he had ended up grabbing her instead with a lack of cool and control that had startled her, had startled them both, she rather suspected. Yet that single kiss, that he had afterwards apologised for and had treated as trivial, had, ironically, been the most stupendously sexy encounter she had ever shared with a man.
‘WHERE ON EARTH are you going dressed like that?’ Zoe exclaimed with a scandalised look as Vivi slid into her concealing trench coat in the small hall of the house they shared. Instantly, Vivi wished she had got into the coat before her sister could even glimpse what she was wearing and her face burned hot with mortification.
‘I’m dining with Raffaele. I told you that earlier,’ Vivi reminded the younger woman, who bore little resemblance to her, being both small and blonde in colouring.
‘Dressed like that?’ Zoe demanded in disbelief, still staring at the pelmet-length skirt revealing her sibling’s very long and shapely legs, the cropped top that showed off the diamond in her navel and the sky-high heels. ‘That’s the outfit you wore to that insane hen party you went to last winter.’
‘So?’ Vivi flung her hair back in challenge.
‘It’s very provocative,’ Zoe muttered as if Vivi might not have realised that.
‘No, it’s the perfect outfit to put on for a guy who thinks I’m a tart for hire,’ Vivi countered with a defiant lift of her chin.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Vivi!’ Zoe lamented loudly. ‘As he’s met Grandad, he’s got to know how wrong he was by now!’
‘No. This is Raffaele di Mancini, who never ever admits to being wrong about anything,’ Vivi traded with a lethal gleam of threat and resentment in her bright blue eyes.
‘I don’t see how dressing like that and giving him entirely the wrong impression is likely to change that,’ Zoe admitted ruefully.
‘I’m not trying to change anything,’ Vivi riposted. ‘I’m just giving him what he expects and deserves. And I like yanking his chain.’
‘If you’re going to be forced to go through with marrying him, you should be making peace with him,’ Zoe opined worriedly. ‘I was so hoping that our brother-in-law would find a way out of this mess for us...’
Vivi