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Raffaele strolled into the bedroom and watched Maya get dressed. She was no longer self-conscious around him, which he enjoyed. The vision of her willowy figure as she donned fine lingerie held him fast. She was still wearing the ring and he supposed that was something to be grateful for. He couldn’t concentrate, he acknowledged. He had put everything into place just as they had planned, just as they had agreed, and yet nothing felt right. How could it when he was accustomed to having Maya in his life? Accustomed for the first time ever to sharing everything with another person? That was a huge change in outlook for him. Familiarity did not always breed contempt, as he had once thought it unerringly did with him and women. Disturbingly aware of the teeming turmoil he had been suppressing deep in his mind for weeks, Raffaele turned his brain to a more current topic.
‘Has it occurred to you that Izzy’s husband could have settled your family’s financial problems for you?’
Much struck by the concept, Maya rested wide eyes on him. ‘Seriously?’
‘Oil-rich, future King of Zenara?’ Raffaele prompted gently. ‘If you had turned to Izzy for assistance you would never have met me and never have married me.’
‘But I didn’t know about Rafiq then, who he was, how rich he was or that they were getting married,’ Maya pointed out prosaically, but she was involuntarily shocked at the picture he had drawn. ‘I had no idea that she might ever be in a position to help. That possibility never even crossed my mind.’
At the same time the very suggestion that she might never have married Raffaele shook her rigid. He had shaken up her and her life, but she couldn’t have unwished him, couldn’t bear the possibility that she might never have known him. She tugged another pair of cropped jeans from a drawer and teamed them with a casual sleeveless top, sliding her feet into comfortable mules.
Before Izzy arrived, Maya questioned whether she should admit to being pregnant, lest something go wrong again. And then she scolded herself for that pessimistic thought and reminded herself that she could not live her life that way, always expecting the very worst things to happen to her. After all, Raffaele had happened and, while losing him would be bad, she could not regret learning to love him, could not regret anything they had shared and, least of all, the child they had conceived.
Izzy arrived in a welter of buzzing chatter. Maya barely got time to meet her brother-in-law, Rafiq, before Raffaele bore him off into his home office to give Maya and her twin some privacy. Izzy hugged her and bounced around the room, full of energy, the proud curve of her pregnant stomach already obvious.
‘Twins,’ Maya remarked in awe.
‘I know. I still can’t believe it!’ Izzy exclaimed with a grin. ‘Rafiq thinks I’m a living miracle, which is rather nice.’
‘I’m pregnant too,’ Maya whispered before she could lose her nerve again.
Izzy’s eyes rounded in surprise and delight and then she closed her arms around her taller sibling with unashamed affection. ‘Wow...that’s clever timing. I wasn’t expectingthatnews! My goodness, now we’ll be able to share stories every step of the way.’
‘I’m only just pregnant,’ Maya confided.
‘Rafiq told me that you and Raffaele had been having problems,’ Izzy murmured very quietly, her gaze troubled.
‘Oh, that’s in the past. Teething troubles,’ Maya hastened to assure her twin. ‘We probably rushed into getting married too quickly.’
‘It was very sudden but, let’s face it, when the connection is special, youknowpretty soon,’ Izzy burbled, her obvious anxiety ebbing at Maya’s light tone and smile. ‘I thought something was wrong and I was losing you.’
‘You’re never going to lose me,’ Maya assured her fondly. ‘I was thoughtless, trying to put up a front, that’s all.’
And the evening ebbed away, almost without Maya noticing as she and her sister caught up on all the news. Rafiq and Raffaele joined them for dinner but had to make their own conversation. It was indeed the early hours before Maya finally crept into bed, sliding in beside Raffaele and hooking an arm round him, although there was really no need for her to move that close in the huge bed.
‘Feeling happier?’ Raffaele asked, startling her because she had assumed he was already asleep and wouldn’t have slung that statement possessive arm round him had she known he was still awake.
‘Yes,’ Maya admitted freely. ‘Much happier.’
Her parents arrived early. Her mother, Lucia, was very nervous, and Maya tried to calm the older woman down about her approaching reunion with her once-disapproving parents. Her grandparents arrived an hour later and the surprise they brought with them was her grandfather’s niece, Aurora, a stunning blonde model, who had hitched a ride in their private jet because she had an assignment later that day in London.
‘I’m so sorry for intruding but I’ll only be staying for an hour or so. I did so want to take the opportunity to get to know your side of the family,’ Aurora told Maya, easing past her rather as if she weren’t there to concentrate her full attention on Raffaele. ‘Hi... I’m the marriageable Parisi female possibility whom, sadly, you never even got the chance to meet.’
Stunned to overhear that low-voiced, teasing self-introduction, Maya turned her head to catch Raffaele’s flashing smile of amusement. He liked bold, he liked brazen, he liked confident. A shaft of fierce jealousy pierced Maya and it was an effort to concentrate on her grandmother’s sobbing reconciliation with her daughter and step in with the occasional soothing sentence and reassuring hugs.
While that was taking place, Raffaele stood across the room chatting to Aurora, a tall, leggy figure clad in a white dress that was the perfect frame for her even more perfect figure.
‘She’s flirting with him,’ Izzy remarked in disbelief. ‘What’s she even doing here?’
‘Apparently she’s here to get to knowus,’ Maya said drily, relieved that her sibling hadn’t overheard Aurora’s opening sally to Raffaele because Izzy would’ve sought an explanation and the carefully drawn story of Maya’s marriage would have fallen apart.
‘Not making much effort, then, is she?’ Izzy commented. ‘Go over there and act like a wife. Warn her off.’
‘I trust Raffaele,’ Maya fielded stiffly.
But she didn’t and the polite lie roused colour in her cheeks. How could she trust a man who wasn’t in love with her? How could she trust a man whose right to freedom after she became pregnant had been written into their pre-nup? And there Aurora was, exactly the kind of glossy, self-assured woman whom Raffaele had specialised in before he married Maya. Maya watched Aurora toss her long, unnaturally pale blonde hair while treating Raffaele to flirtatious, covetous looks from her sultry brown eyes and she wanted to slap her and lock Raffaele in a cupboard where no other woman could get near him. Her mood swan-dived while her temper bubbled.
Maya’s parents and grandparents decided to move their reconciliation to the Campbells’ house. Lucia and Rory had to be home in time for Matt returning from school and the older couple were eager to meet their youngest grandchild. Izzy and Rafiq accompanied them and then planned to return to the hotel they had organised, Izzy explaining apologetically that she wanted to lie down and nap for a while. After a great deal more hair-tossing and giggling, Aurora departed as well, still as much a stranger to Maya and her immediate family as she had been on her arrival.
