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‘I’ll give you the skirt and top I was planning to change into this evening if I got too warm,’ Zoe offered helpfully.
‘The skirt’ll be too short for me,’ Vivi framed, tears suddenly stinging her eyes in a shocking surge. ‘Oh, my goodness, what’s the matter with me? I’m crying!’
‘Pregnancy hormones...have you forgotten what Winnie was like? She could’ve wept the Thames dry while she was carrying Teddy! Emotionally, she was all over the place.’
Vivi resisted a ridiculous urge to throw herself down on the bed and sob over the jeans that didn’t fit and the skirt that would be too short and breathed in deeply to get a grip on herself instead. She couldn’t afford to be out of control around Raffaele and she didn’t want to make a fool of herself either. A few minutes later she had donned Zoe’s pencil skirt. She only just got the zip up, thanking heaven that her sister was a little curvier in shape. The lace top was a tad more revealing on her than it was on Zoe and a little too tight and short.
‘I look awful!’ she proclaimed. ‘I’m showing far too much skin.’
‘I doubt if Raffaele will complain,’ Zoe teased. ‘Your legs look fabulous.’
‘Well, it’s this or nudity.’ Vivi sighed, averting her eyes from the very slight hint of a curve on her once concave stomach. Her body shouldn’t be showing a change in shape so early, she thought irritably. Was she eating the wrong stuff? Was there a special pregnant lady diet she should be following? Was she bloating? That was probably all it was, she told herself soothingly. Didn’t she have enough to worry about with Raffaele having thrown down that demeaning gauntlet of a challenge?
Either you want me...or you don’t.
Talk about going back to basics! Of course, she wanted him on that most primitive level, and well did he know it! She had always wanted him that way. It wasn’t something she was proud of but there it was, an instant chemical attraction that had yet to dim. Of course, being around him more, maybe familiarity would breed contempt, she thought hopefully as she emerged from the lift into the busy hotel foyer.
Winnie bustled over to her. ‘Why are you wearing Zoe’s clothes?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Vivi said with a grimace. ‘Where’s Raffaele?’
‘In the bar with a very beautiful blonde called Elisa,’ Winnie responded with slightly raised brows. ‘Apparently she’s absolutely gasping to meet you and become your new best friend.’
‘Really?’ Vivi queried on a note of surprise.
‘Feels it’s her duty as Raffaele’s “friend”.’ Winnie made air quotes with a roll of her eyes. ‘To advise and support you.’
‘Support me?’ Vivi cut in.
‘Since you’re a fairly new arrival on Grandad’s social scene and Raffaele’s,’ her sister clarified.
‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ Vivi said dismissively, heading for the private bar attached to the function room, her cheeks colouring self-consciously because she was hyper-aware of her less than elegant appearance. What was cute and appropriate on Zoe’s tiny frame looked rather different on her own tall, skinny body, she thought ruefully. And a tall skinny body developing curves where nature had never intended curves promised to be a nightmare to dress.
None of those thoughts crossed Raffaele’s mind for a moment when he saw his bride walking towards him with the fluid grace of a dancer. She looked like a fantasy come to life, he thought with an almost adolescent knee-jerk reaction that shocked him. But there she was, gorgeous legs on display from her dainty ankles to her slender knees to her pale shapely thighs. The top hugged a swell of bosom that there seemed to be more of than he recalled, but reasoning over the why or the how of that was beyond Raffaele at that instant, fighting as he was not to display his arousal in his neat-fitting trousers. He gritted his teeth.
‘Vivi...come and meet Elisa,’ he urged, reaching for her hand to tug her closer.
Vivi shot him a glance, virtually allowing herself a five-second scrutiny, not allowing herself any longer and, bang, the effect of him hit her like a wave, drowning her in impressions she didn’t want. But there he was, the luxuriant blue-black hair he kept short glimmering below the lights, his bronzed classic profile lightened by a smile, his beautiful mouth sculpted and sensual, and she wanted to flatten him to the carpet and taste that mouth and everything else about him right then and there because he was stunning. And stunning being the only word she could come up with unnerved her even more. It took effort to recover from that volatile instant of abstracted erotic imagery and deal with the woman being introduced to her.
‘Elisa Andrelli.’ The beautiful blonde air-kissed her on both cheeks but only by dint of stretching up on tiptoe. ‘Dio mio...you are tall!’
‘Six feet in these heels,’ Vivi agreed with a helpless grin. ‘My sisters are both small. I loved it when I outgrew them, because Winnie was older but I could talk back to her more effectively when I could look down at her.’
‘Always a fighter,’ Raffaele remarked with amusement.
‘You’d better believe it.’ Vivi could feel the blonde’s critical appraisal moving over her outfit and inwardly she cringed before lifting her chin with determined indifference.
‘I know the best places to shop in Florence. I could advise you on what to wear for special occasions,’ Elisa told her earnestly.
Vivi smiled. ‘I don’t need advice in that line but thanks, all the same,’ she murmured with as much sincerity as she could fake.
Raffaele walked her away. ‘That wasn’t very generous of you. Elisa can come across as patronising, but she is well-intentioned.’
Resentment sent hot pink flying up into Vivi’s cheeks. She was beginning to realise that she was much more thin-skinned around Raffaele than she was around other people. A hint of criticism from him and her blood boiled. But she should’ve known he would recognise her insincerity, only she hadn’t expected him to chide her for it. ‘And who is Elisa?’
‘Our nearest neighbour. She has quite a sad history: she married her childhood sweetheart a few years ago and he died of leukaemia,’ Raffaele told her. ‘I think she’s quite lonely. She was part of a couple from her teens and missed out on making female friends. Young beautiful widows aren’t much in demand.’
‘How unfortunate,’ Vivi muttered, her face telegraphing her discomfiture as she resolved to make fewer snap judgements about the people she met. Suddenly she was very much aware that she had been willing to dislike another woman purely because she was attractive and appeared to know Raffaele well. Why was that? She was possessive of Raffaele, she acknowledged in dismay, as possessive as a dog guarding a bone.
Either you want me...or you don’t.
Her face burned, her sense of vulnerability tightening every nerve in her slim body because she wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake she had made before with Raffaele, contriving to get attached with very little encouragement and then left standing while he walked away. That demeaning image was stuck in her memory like a warning wake-up call. No, she didn’t want him and she wasn’t going to have anything more to do with him than she had to, she told herself angrily. She would act the wife in public if forced to do so but the play-acting would stop behind closed doors.
* * *
Raffaele studied his bride as she napped on his private jet. He stood up to drape a throw over her, wishing he had thought to mention the sleeping compartment where she would have been more comfortable. He needed to start thinking about such matters, he censured himself. Vivi was his wife, his responsibility, as was the child she carried. Bluish shadows were etched below her lowered lids and she looked pale. Of course, she always looked pale with that fair
skin of hers but she was probably exhausted, and he hadn’t yet even got around to organising medical support for her in Florence. Sì, he would definitely have to step up his game in the caring stakes. Poised there, he resolved to spend more time looking after her than thinking about bedding her.
Vivi woke sleepily when her shoulder was gently shaken and she blinked up at Raffaele and muttered drowsily, ‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Since we took off. We’ve landed.’
Vivi’s eyes widened and she stood up in haste, retrieving a shoe that had fallen off and smoothing down her rumpled clothing. ‘Where to next?’ she asked, trying not to sound weary of the journey when she had slept through most of it.
‘A helicopter will drop us at the palazzo in twenty minutes and then you can relax,’ Raffaele clarified smoothly.
‘What’s a palazzo?’ she enquired.
‘A large house. I was born at the Palazzo Mancini. It has always been my home,’ he explained, taking her elbow to escort her down the steps and off the plane as if she couldn’t be trusted to manage them safely on her own.
‘Grandad lives in a large house outside Athens,’ Vivi told him while thinking about the much humbler accommodation that had been hers from childhood until Stamboulas Fotakis had entered the sisters’ lives and tucked them into a very comfortable little town house he owned in London. ‘I have very little memory of my parents. I was very young when they died and Zoe was only a baby. Winnie remembers them, though.’
‘That’s tough,’ Raffaele conceded, engaged in working out the logistics of loading her into the helicopter in her high heels. Deciding simply to go for the obvious, he swung round to lift her bodily off her feet and settle her on board.
Thoroughly flustered by the arrival of a man in her life who could actually lift her as if she were a lightweight, Vivi settled down in the nearest seat and did up her belt. She didn’t like the lurch as the craft took off and even less did she enjoy the flight as queasiness afflicted her empty stomach and Raffaele, like some sort of glorified Italian tour guide, endeavoured to point out famous landmarks to her when the last thing she wanted to do was be forced to look out of the windows at the sights.
