‘Aren’t we all?’ drawled this high mover—in the business world at least.
‘S-sometimes Elise feels—neglected.’
‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘So I am to get the sob story before you lurch into the ugly part.’
‘Don’t mock what you have never suffered, Mr Villani!’ Rachel flared up in her sister’s defence. ‘When you’ve gone from being the face on every glossy magazine to a stay-at-home wife and mother with no identity to call your own, then you might begin to understand!’
He didn’t even bother to respond to that heated outburst. ‘So she feels—neglected …’ he prompted instead.
‘And lonely.’ Once again Rachel steadied her breathing. ‘When Leo works abroad he prefers Elise to stay put in London or on his island in Greece. He says it’s all to do with security,’ she explained. ‘He’s made enemies in his line of work and …’ ‘Naturally feels the need to protect his wife and his son.’ ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Rachel flashed.
He raised a black satin eyebrow. ‘Are you working in defence of Mr Savakis here or his poor neglected wife?’ ‘Both,’ Rachel declared loyally. ‘I like Leo …’ But she wouldn’t want him as a husband, she added silently. He was too overwhelmingly unreadable and dauntingly self-controlled. He adored Elise though, she was certain of it. It was just that …
‘He’s been virtually living in Chicago for the last twelve months, working on a high-profile case that only allows him back home for the occasional flying visit.’
‘Hence poor Elise feeling lonely and neglected—’ ‘If you don’t stop being nasty about her, I’m going to leave!’ He shifted his shoulders against the black leather, then moved his legs, bending them out of their lazy sprawl so he could rest one ankle on the other knee. Rachel’s eyes were drawn to the lean bowl between his hipbones where the expensive black fabric of his trousers sat easily against—
Oh, please, someone help me! she thought despairingly and wanted to run away again.
He moved a hand next, lifting it up so he could stroke a long finger across the flat line of his lips. Above the stroking finger, his grey-green eyes feathered a ponderous look over her in a way that further fanned the sexual charge.
Did all Italian men have an ability to seduce just by using body language, or was it just her misfortune that they affected her like this?
Disturbed by the whole hectic physical war going on here, Rachel put some distance between them by walking across the room to stand staring out of one of the huge plate glass windows. London—the River Thames, Westminster and Tower Bridge—lay spanned out before her in a familiar night scene.
Behind her his silent study pin-pricked her spine.
He had not even bothered to challenge her threat to leave. It was as if he knew she was becoming more and more trapped here by the sexual pull and he was enjoying feeding it.
One of the friends she’d made during her stay in Naples had once claimed that Italian men could seduce you and make you feel wonderful about falling in love with them without so much as considering falling in love themselves. It was the Italian way. Apparently you were supposed to feel blessed that they’d bothered to notice you at all.
Because they were conceited and arrogant by nature, so confident in their prowess as mighty lovers, that the suggestion that they might not assuage your every sexual fantasy never entered their minds or their beds. Such an uncrushable self-belief was seductive in itself. Rachel had fallen for it with Alonso. Now here she was, feeling the pull again and with a much more dangerous beast than Alonso ever had been.
It was time to put it to death, she told herself.
Turning from the window, she looked back at him. ‘Leo knows about your affair with Elise,’ she announced.
And saw death happen to sexual promise as he flicked those eyes into sharp focus on her face.
‘He was sent photographs of the two of you together in a restaurant here in London, then later being very intimate on a dance floor,’ she pushed on.
His tight curse brought him to his feet.
‘Elise got upset—’
‘Naturally,’ he gritted.
Rachel bit down hard on her lower lip. ‘She denied everything, which was a bit stupid when Leo was standing there with the photographic evidence,’ she allowed. ‘F-fortunately the photos were dark and very grainy and she insisted that the blonde in them could be anyone.’
‘She lied, in other words.’
‘Wouldn’t you have done in her place?’
His dark head went back. ‘If I was so miserable in my marriage that I needed to look elsewhere for—company, I would be man enough to say so before the event!’
‘Well, good for you, Mr Villani,’ Rachel commended. ‘It must be really great to be so sure of yourself that you know what you would do in any given situation! Well, Elise lied, she stressed. ‘And, right off the top of her head, she suggested that the woman in the photos could even be me. Leo wasn’t impressed—I don’t normally look or dress like this, you see—’
He flicked her a cynical look. ‘Another liar in the family, then.’
‘Yes,’ Rachel sighed, seeing no use in denying it. ‘I had been staying with Elise in London for a while to—to keep her company while Leo was away. She was so low and depressed I encouraged her to go out with an old f-friend from her modelling days and—and enjoy life a bit instead of moping around the house waiting for …’ She stopped, shutting the rest of that away where it belonged.
By his expression she knew he knew what she meant.
‘Anyway,’ she went on after a moment. ‘She took me up on the offer and really started to cheer up and be her old self! But I had no idea she was out there enjoying herself with another man …’
‘Oh, call it as it is, cara, we had the hots for each other.’
‘You don’t need to be so crude about it!’ she said heatedly.
‘What happened next?’ He was striding across the room towards the brandy bottle to replenish his empty glass and there was nothing languid in his movements now.
‘Elise told Leo that I had been seeing someone while I was staying with her …’
‘A someone who just happened to be me—?’ Brandy splashed into the glass.
Rachel watched it and mentally crossed her fingers and hoped he had the steady head for it. ‘She was fighting for her marriage.’
He swallowed the drink. ‘So did Savakis call you up to demand confirmation and you lied to him for your sister’s sake?’
‘Leo didn’t do anything.’ Ignoring his sarcasm, she kept strictly to the point. ‘Instead he chose to let the subject drop.’
‘Generous man,’ he drawled. ‘Or a sadly besotted one.’
The idea of Leo being either generous or besotted was so alien to Rachel that she had to stop and think about it and still couldn’t get either scenario to fit the Leo she knew.
‘Things have been—strained between the two of them ever since, and now …’ Rachel gathered herself in before she revealed the next bit. ‘Elise has just found out that she’s pregnant.’
Raffaelle responded to this with an abrupt stiffening of his long body. The glass clenched between his fingers, he turned a narrowed look on her face.
‘Do go on,’ he invited softly.
Rachel wished she didn’t have to go on but she knew that she did. ‘W-with the timing and—everything, there’s a big chance