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But what did that matter when she had finally been forced to give her consent? Her conscience had made her agree to his terms, she acknowledged unhappily. He had blackmailed her without an ounce of shame or compassion. How could she possibly stand back in silence while people lost their jobs when he was giving her the power to minimise that blow as far as was possible? She wasn’t callous enough to shirk the responsibility he had put on her shoulders, she reflected ruefully.
Unfortunately, the repercussions of her decision to capitulate would spread like the ripples that followed a rock being thrown into a pool. Zoe would be caught up in the backwash and put under pressure to become the third and final bride. Her grandfather would be satisfied, although only to some extent, she conceded uneasily, recalling his censorious phone call earlier. Heat flushed her troubled face, warm pink chasing the pallor from her taut cheeks. It was a source of serious embarrassment to her to accept that Stamboulas Fotakis was equally aware of her miscalculation.
Miscalculation? Vivi questioned her use of that word on another tide of self-loathing because there had been nothing calculating in anything she had done. Indeed, reason and restraint had been blown out of the water by passion, a passion beyond anything she had ever expected to feel. A passion that in retrospect terrified her. She had tried to excuse herself by blaming it all on the champagne but she hadn’t drunk enough of it to use that justification and she knew it.
Raffaele watched Vivi like a hawk, seeing the fleeting expressions chase across her delicate features, curious as to what was skimming through that agile little brain of hers. He was also wondering why he wasn’t feeling triumphant that he seemed to have finally contrived to avert the threat aimed at destroying his sister’s happiness. Instead he simply felt angry, more coldly angry than he had ever guessed he could feel. He was livid with Stam Fotakis for his crude blackmailing tactics but even more incensed that Vivi had forced him to stoop to the same distasteful level for the first time in his life.
And what if she conceived his child? He released his breath in a slow hiss of determined denial at that possibility. What were the odds? He tried to picture a baby but the only one he could recall was Arianna shrieking through her baptism in the family chapel, a troubled little bundle wrapped in heirloom lace in her unrepentant mother’s arms while his father valiantly strove to behave as though it were normal to have a wife beside him strung out on drugs.
Raffaele had been eight years old then and that was the closest he had ever come to a baby. He should have been more responsible with Vivi. Lost in the grip of lust, however, he had been intolerably careless. At that point, he censored his brooding reflections and told himself off for assuming the worst. Fate had made him very lucky in business. Why shouldn’t he be equally lucky in his private life?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SHE’S OUT?’ RAFFAELE queried, despising the emphasis he laid on that telling word and the almost frightened look that froze the tiny doll-like blonde in front of him.
‘Didn’t she mention it?’ Zoe Mardas pressed, her discomfiture unhidden.
Raffaele didn’t bother to admit that he hadn’t spoken to Vivi since the day she’d agreed to marry him. He was fairly sure that she had blocked his number on her phone. She had left him no option other than to arrive on her doorstep. And he had to speak to her before the wedding because it was impossible for him to keep that wedding a secret, which meant that all his relatives would be attending and caught up in the same charade with him.
‘Do you know where she is?’ Raffaele persisted, recognising that Vivi’s kid sister was a soft touch. ‘I could speak to her there.’
Zoe flushed and stepped off one foot onto the other like a cat being forced over hot coals. ‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t be suitable.’
Raffaele frowned, his lean bronzed features darkening. ‘Why wouldn’t it be suitable?’
‘Because she’s with her boyfriend,’ Zoe whispered shakily, her eyes locking to him with unhidden anxiety as if she expected that admission to turn him into a raging beast.
‘Her boyfriend,’ Raffaele repeated without any expression at all, trusting neither his voice nor his face in receipt of that news. ‘Then I’ll wait,’ he announced with assurance.
‘Oh...er... I don’t think she’ll be expecting that,’ Zoe muttered uneasily.
Which was exactly why Raffaele was determined to do it. He strode into the reception room Zoe indicated and turned round to give the young woman a reassuring smile. ‘Just forget I’m here.’
‘Would you like coffee...or anything?’ his reluctant hostess almost whispered, clearly wishing he would vanish but too scared of her own shadow to argue with him.
‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine,’ Raffaele declared, taking a stance by the window to gaze down into the street below, marvelling that the fiery Vivi could have such a little mouse of a sibling. How much easier would his challenge have been with such a woman?
Oddly enough though, he registered in surprise, he respected Vivi’s sheer fearlessness and her need to rise to every fresh challenge. She was no easy touch. Even so, a boyfriend she had not chosen to mention and with only two weeks to go before the wedding, evidently, she was still seeing the boyfriend. How was he supposed to feel about that? Just over a week ago she had been a virgin, uninvolved in a sexual relationship with anyone. But then she had given herself to Raffaele and, as far as he was concerned, that changed everything. After that encounter with him, had she then chosen to practise what she had learned and become intimate with her boyfriend as well? Why else had she kept quiet about the man’s existence?
But if she had slept with the boyfriend as well, what was it to him? A knot of hard black rage twisted deep inside Raffaele at the very idea of her with another man. Some sort of weird possessiveness had ensnared him once he’d realised he was Vivi’s first lover, he decided in exasperation, because for the first time ever he was feeling territorial over a woman. That acknowledgement made his teeth grit because he wasn’t and never had been that kind of guy. Sex had always been easy come, easy go with him and he moved on to the next woman without a backward glance. He didn’t like ties and he didn’t attach ties or expectations to the women who discreetly shared his bed. But he had not and would not have touched another woman since that night with Vivi because he recognised that, however little he liked it, he and Vivi were currently in a relationship and it would be wrong for him to have sex with anyone else. But, evidently, Vivi did not make the same moral distinction.
She had not been honest with him and that infuriated him. She had also closed down all communication with him. Having set about forcing a meeting, he was only now discovering that she was seeing another man and had carefully kept that a secret. Of course, he didn’t trust her. How could he? The dark rage in Raffaele climbed closer to the surface.
Vivi received the warning text from Zoe midway through what was proving to be a very trying evening with Jude. Fresh from a week abroad competing in a martial arts tournament and having won a medal, Jude had been in the mood to celebrate over drinks. As soon as she could, Vivi had given him the story she had decided was best in the circumstances, admitting that she had met someone else while he was away. Jude had, seemingly, taken the news well but had blocked her every polite attempt to cut the evening short, pointing out that they could still surely be friends. Guilt had made her acquiesce while the prospect of having to deal with Raffaele once she finally got home made Vivi break out in a cold sweat.
Since that breakfast with him when she’d caved into the inevitability of marrying him, she had steered clear of both Raffaele and her grandfather. At her grandfather’s expense she had gone out and purchased a wildly expensive wedding gown complete with all the required accessories. She would play her part in the wedding and that would be that. Tearing herself up about Raffaele or the actual wedding was foolish when she didn’t have a choice. Winnie had echoed that view, reasoning that making too much of
the necessity was pointless while also commenting at the same time that Raffaele’s use of blackmail was complete overkill.
Thinking with bitter contempt of just how far Raffaele was prepared to go to make a killer profit, Vivi stalked into the lounge of her home. Raffaele stood very tall in the window embrasure. He settled shimmering dark golden eyes on her and gooseflesh prickled at the nape of her neck. He had a dark five o’clock shadow that merely enhanced the wide, sensual shape of his beautiful mouth. She remembered the crash and burn effect of that mouth on hers and nervous perspiration dampened the valley between her breasts.
‘Where were you?’ he demanded succinctly, scanning her lithe, long-legged appearance in jeans, a casual top and knee-high boots.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Vivi declared, tilting her chin. ‘I agreed to marry you. I didn’t agree to keep you informed of my every move!’
Raffaele flung his wide shoulders back and lifted his arrogant dark head high, ebony brows set level, lean, strong face grim. ‘You didn’t mention that you had a boyfriend either!’
Zoe must’ve told him about Jude, Vivi realised in dismay, wishing that her sister had included that revealing information in her text message. But Vivi dismissed her unease and tossed her head, copper curls bouncing across her cheeks and her shoulders. ‘Well, what does that have to do with you?’ she enquired shortly.
‘We’re getting married in two weeks.’
