AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Yes, I can see why you thought that...at the beginning,’ Vivi stressed tightly. ‘Were you ever planning to tell me the truth?’
Raffaele flinched, black lashes lowering over stunning dark eyes, his sculpted mouth compressing into a strong line. ‘Probably not,’ he conceded, disconcerting her with that unexpected admission. ‘I knew it would upset you and I didn’t want to upset you. You learning that I was blackmailed to the altar wasn’t going to materially change anything between us.’
‘I deserved the truth whether it would have upset me or not,’ Vivi pointed out. ‘It was unfair to keep me in the dark.’
‘Initially I agreed to marry you because of the dossier on Arianna,’ Raffaele framed tautly. ‘But long before we got to the church I had a whole host of other reasons for marrying you.’
‘Only one reason... I was pregnant,’ Vivi reminded him resolutely.
‘Reason two, I couldn’t keep my hands off you. Three, you light up my world in the weirdest way. Four, I screwed up two years ago with you and lost you and I wasn’t about to risk losing you again.’
Her smooth brow furrowed. A little colour was returning to her drawn cheeks. ‘Screwed up...how?’
‘I met the girl of my dreams and I was falling for you and then all that brothel stuff came out in the newspapers and I reacted violently. I assumed I’d been an idiot with you. I hadn’t been that attracted to anyone before and I felt foolish. I jumped to conclusions without examining the evidence. I walked away when I should’ve had the courage to trust my own instincts and stay.’
‘You were falling in love with me?’ Vivi almost whispered, so shaken was she by what she was hearing. ‘Two years ago?’
Raffaele jerked down his chin in a silent nod of confirmation and tears sprang to her eyes and overflowed. ‘That scandal cost us so much.’
‘Sì...’ Raffaele agreed, crouching down at her feet and seizing both of her hands in the strong grip of his. ‘Which is why I was perfectly happy for Stam’s blackmail to remain a dirty little secret for ever. What’s a little blackmail in the family circle when I get to be with the woman I love? And I do love you... I love you so much I don’t have the words to express it, amata mia.’
‘You love me?’ she mumbled unsteadily.
‘I’m afraid so. I’m absolutely devoted to you and I’m never letting you go,’ Raffaele asserted, rising upright and gently tugging on her hands to raise her too. ‘I was in trouble the minute I saw you again but I didn’t have to think about it because I was panicking about the dossier on Arianna. I knew I had a serious problem when I stole your virginity on a sofa, which is the very reverse of cool. All the same I knew it was love when I was happy that you were carrying my baby. I’ve never felt this way before. I didn’t think I even had it in me to feel emotions like this,’ he confessed with intense dark golden eyes locked to her appreciatively. ‘Together you and that love have turned my world upside down.’
‘Have we?’ she asked breathlessly, wrapping two possessive arms round him and holding him close, revelling in the heat and strength of him.
‘I’m much more flexible now. I’ve abandoned my clockwork routine that I used to hate having disrupted,’ he admitted with an irreverent grin. ‘I’m late getting into the bank in the morning because I stay home until my wife is awake and so I can make love to her again...you are not an early riser, cara mia. I leave the office early when I miss you. I’ve even come back for lunch a few times. I used to be a workaholic, a bit of a joyless character, to be frank. That’s why I told you that you light up my world, because it was the truth that it was rather dark and boring before you came into it.’
‘I just had no idea you felt this way about me,’ she whispered in a joyful daze.
‘Where have your wits been? I stick to you like white on rice. I rarely leave you alone. All I want is to make you happy...to make up for all the unhappy times you went through before I was around,’ he intoned with a raw emotional edge to that declaration. ‘I love you with the sort of intensity I didn’t believe I even possessed.’
‘I love you too...and two years ago I was falling for you as well,’ Vivi confided, suddenly feeling remarkably generous towards him. ‘When you walked away you hurt me and that’s why I tried to keep you at a distance this time around. I thought I needed to protect myself.’
Raffaele ran soothing fingertips down the side of her face. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you but, if it’s any consolation, I was hurt as well, which was why I reacted so badly back then. This time I didn’t want to risk anything going wrong, so I buried the blackmail story.’
‘You still should’ve told me,’ Vivi warned him. ‘A wife is supposed to be for good and bad times.’
‘I know. I told Stam he was a terrific matchmaker, which, ironically, infuriated him. I mean, Winnie and Eros are mad about each other. I could see that at our wedding. And now, here we are, another well-matched pair.’
‘But we’re not well matched on paper!’ Vivi protested. ‘I still don’t know how we work.’
‘It’s our special magic, amata mia, and I, for one, am very grateful for it.’ Raffaele claimed her anxious mouth with a passionate kiss that left her breathless and her desire to understand the mystery of their happiness receded along with it. ‘Talk later?’
‘Is this you trying to bargain again?’
‘It’s called negotiation,’ Raffaele assured her loftily with amusement dancing in his gorgeous eyes. ‘And I will have you know that I am very, very good at it.’
Vivi laughed and yanked his tie to draw him down to her on the bed, where she had arranged herself invitingly. ‘I’m good at other stuff...’
‘I know,’ Raffaele agreed fondly as she dragged off his jacket, disposed of his tie and embarked impatiently on his shirt buttons, love and desire combining to drive her on with wild impatience. ‘I love the way you strip me whenever you take the notion. I’m all yours.’
Vivi gave him plenty to love in the following hour, matching his passion with every fibre of her own, and excitement flamed over them because all worry had been forgotten and their intimacy had a sweeter edge after the truths they had shared. Afterwards, lying in his arms, thinking of all the many signs of love he had shown her and she had stubbornly refused to recognise, Vivi finally trusted enough to let happiness bubble through her and she contemplated her starry future.
EPILOGUE
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER, Vivi sat with her sister, Winnie, while she fed her second child, a little sister for Teddy called Cassia. Cassia was adorable with her dark curls but not quite as adorable, in Vivi’s opinion, as her own much-adored twins, now aged one, very lively little boys crawling about the floor and getting involved in all sorts of mischief.
Matteo and Andrea had been born a little earlier than their due date, and by Caesarean section, but had been perfectly healthy, if a little heavy for their mother’s slender frame. The pregnancy had been more testing than the delivery and had entailed bed rest in the third trimester when Vivi had developed crippling back and hip pain. That aside, Vivi was really enjoying motherhood and was giving Arianna, already going through her first pregnancy after her wedding the previous year, all the support she could. Slowly but surely her previous friendship with Raffaele’s younger sister had revived, although she was probably closer to their near neighbour, Elisa.
Her sisters were regular visitors and possibly the biggest surprise of the past year had been Zoe’s transformation into a woman to be reckoned with. Certainly, Vivi thought fondly, none of them could have forecast that development, but it was a very welcome one because their youngest sibling was no longer a source of anxiety and concern for either Winnie or Vivi.
In addition, much of the resentment their grandfather had fostered by insisting they marry men of his choosing had since drained away, vastly improving their relationship with the older man. Vivi, however, was still pretty cool towards Stam Fotakis becaus
e, although she had magically contrived to forgive Raffaele for those threatened redundancies because she knew he had been desperate to save Arianna from that dossier being made public, she was less forgiving of the way Raffaele had been treated by her grandfather. Eros had won an island and knowledge of his son’s existence in marrying Winnie, Raffaele had simply been brutally blackmailed.
The older man was, however, still invited to all the main family get-togethers the sisters enjoyed because he did have one saving grace in that he totally loved his great-grandchildren and relished being a part of their lives. He could always be depended on to turn up with loads of age-inappropriate presents for the little ones in the family circle. Vivi’s twins were the proud possessors of a fabulous train set that they wouldn’t be allowed to play with until they were much older. But Stam did now try to fit in and behave like a family member and Vivi liked him the better on that score. Winnie was closest to the older man and Zoe had no quarrel with him whatsoever because in the end, as events had transpired, he had not had the chance to pressure Zoe into doing anything he wished.
Vivi was incredibly busy in her role as wife and mother. Her dressing room was now packed with clothes for wearing to regular social events and on the domestic front, since the one-day-a-week opening of the palazzo had grown into an enterprise and that was entirely her department, she was even busier. She loved having help constantly on hand with her sons because that freed her to organise the tourist arrangements at the palazzo. She had also been invited to play a role in a children’s charity that Raffaele’s mother had once been involved with. As Vivi loved to be challenged, the busier she was, the happier she was.
Winnie settled her infant daughter into one of the cots in the interlinking rooms that acted as a nursery suite at the palazzo and, smiling at the nanny hovering to look after the three children, accompanied Vivi downstairs.
‘Do you think Zoe will make it this weekend?’ Winnie asked hopefully.
‘We’ll have to wait and see. You know how pressured her schedule is,’ Vivi murmured, her steps quickening on the stairs as she saw Raffaele stride into the hall and smile up at her.
