AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As the sheer shock value of meeting with Raffaele Manzini ebbed, realities began flocking back in to weigh her down. Just ashehad forecast, which sent another spear of fury rattling through her slim body. It was pointless to have become so angry when she was powerless, she recognised, ready to kick herself for being so impressionable. She had been traumatised by his shamelessly insouciant suggestion that she go to bed with him to have a baby to allowhimto acquire a company he wanted. Did he honestly believe that a wedding ring would take away the shock of that proposition? Could any guy be more cold-blooded?
Yet suddenly she was trapped in a corner with an offer of a rescue that had come out of left field at her when she had least expected it. He had spelt out what he would do for her family. He had been blunt. He would settleallthe debts, an almost unimaginable concept to Maya, who had been struggling for so long and for so many years to keep those debts at bay and protect her family. And then Raffaele Manzini came along, evidently wealthy enough to the point where money could be flung around wastefully because her family wasdeepin debt and it would take an enormous amount to settle what they owed.
Seemingly he could afford it. WhowasRaffaele Manzini? She looked him up on her phone and broke out in goosebumps when she found out. He wassorich he belonged to the tribe of the super-rich. What her family owed would barely be pocket change for him. In fact, in asking her to marry him he was scraping the bottom of the barrel because he was a man who appeared to inhabit an exclusive world featuring crowned heads and oil-rich billionaires. But then he was only asking her because her mother had been born a Parisi. Who she was, what she was, were immaterial facts to him because itwasn’tpersonal to him, it was simply business.
And he had put her in a quandary because she was clever enough to accept that he had given her the only choice she was likely to be given. It was a choice between marrying Raffaele Manzini and her family being made bankrupt and homeless. There was no compassion in him. He wanted what he wanted and to hell with who else got hurt in the process, she reasoned angrily, momentarily overpowered by the idea of having to deal with someone that far removed from her in moral outlook.
Women had had to do worse things in tight corners than marry and reproduce, she told herself fiercely. Oh, how she hated the reality thathehad foreseen that she would change her mind! How could she marry someone she didn’t even like or admire? How could she go to bed with him? Give him a child? In a rush she suppressed those reactions, which now felt embarrassingly weak andsentimental. Best not to think about those things, she told herself firmly, determined to reclaim her peace of mind and take a rational view of the situation. It would be much wiser to take it all one step at a time and handle events as they happened.
Raffaele Manzini was offering her family an escape route into a new way of life, a safer, more stable life such as they hadneverenjoyed before. After all, the crash of the very first business her father had started up was still following him with debts twenty years later. It would take so much stress off her parents; best of all it would protect her little brother, Matt, from the consequences of bankruptcy and homelessness. And Raffaele might think it was stupid for her to love her family as much as she did but what did that matter to her? There were no loving grandparents or any other relatives for her family to turn to in a crisis. Izzy, her twin, always tried to help but there wasn’t much more she could do. Therewasonly Maya and, like it or not, her familyneededher. And if she could give them that one perfect chance to start afresh with a clean sheet, wouldn’t that be the most wonderful gift for thewholefamily?
It wasn’t as though she didn’t like babies either. She adored babies but she couldn’t even imagine having a child with Raffaele Manzini.You’re not allowed to think about the mechanics of the production project, she reminded herself fiercely. Panic would plunge her back into emotional mode and that got her nowhere. Although hewasa cold-blooded, callous, four-letter word of a guy to have confronted her as he had, both in the club and in that office.
Don’t think about that either, she told herself firmly. If she had to say yes, it was more sensible not to dwell on any of it except in so far as she would have to protect herself in every way possible, she reasoned, tugging out a notebook and beginning to make rapid notes of certain non-negotiable demands she would have to make on her own behalf.
An hour after that Maya was walking back into Manzini Finance. Although she felt cool and in control, she knew it wouldn’t last once she was exposed tohimagain. He put her on edge, he outraged her, he continually hogged the drivers’ seat. Well, notthistime around, she decided, wearing a steely expression that none of her family would have recognised.
CHAPTER THREE
‘ITTOOKYOUa little longer to get up to speed than I expected,’ Raffaele drawled cuttingly, surveying Maya with the complacent look of a cat with a cornered mouse. ‘But here we are again.’
‘Yes, here we are,’ Maya agreed flat in tone, head held high, fingernails biting into her palms viciously because he hadn’t been able to resist needling her even though he had won and that told her a lot about Raffaele Manzini. Resistance inflamed him because he wasn’t accustomed to having to handle it, but he was going tohaveto learn because intelligence warned her that she and Raffaele were oil and water and would fight every step of the way.
‘Take a seat,’ he intoned smoothly.
‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Maya settled back into the seat she had vacated in her rage earlier. ‘I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t like you. I don’t like anything I’ve so far seen in you but, as you said, you’re the only game in town. If I want to help my family out of a crisis, I don’t have a choice.’
‘Oh, don’t come over all martyr on me, Maya, because it’s untrue,’ Raffaele sliced in icily, wondering if anyone had ever dared to tell him that they didn’t like him before, knowing they hadn’t while wondering why that single tiny opinion should sting. ‘If you do this, you do it by yourownchoice, not anyone else’s.’
Hatred lashed through Maya like a storm unfurling inside her chest and that quickly she wanted to assault him again, because it was as if she were Eve in the Garden of Eden and he wouldn’t even allow her a fig leaf to hide behind, no, not even the smallest excuse. ‘Right, I do it by my own choice,’ she gritted. ‘But there are conditions.’
‘I set the conditions.’
‘No, you can’t setallof them,’ Maya countered steadily. ‘I’m entitled to certain safeguards. The first is exclusivity. You stay out of other women’s beds while you’re with me.’
Raffaele’s head flung up and back in surprise, luxuriant tousled black hair tumbling back from his cliff-edge cheekbones, dark eyes awash with gold rebellion. ‘No.’
‘I am not sleeping with you while you also sleep with other women,’ Maya told him curtly. ‘That is non-negotiable. If you can’t commit to that, then we’ll have to use artificial insemination as our method of conception.’
For a split second, Raffaele could not credit that she had said that to him because, in response,hellnoflared straight through his every skin cell like an alarm bell, firing up his tension because he already knew that he wanted her. No, artificial insemination wasn’t an acceptable alternative for him...even though he felt as though itshould’vebeen? That he shouldn’t be so sexually invested in her in what was basically a business deal? So, he was human, after all, he reminded himself wryly.
‘That’s a yes to exclusivity but, once you’re pregnant, all bets are off,’ Raffaele conceded, choosing to be reasonable when he himself least felt like being reasonable because there was something about her that continually scratched him the wrong way and made him feel ridiculously like a rebellious teenager.
‘That will do...’ Almost imperceptibly, Maya’s slender body lost some of its tension.
‘Fidelity meansthatmuch to you?’ Raffaele shot at her in surprise. ‘I’ve never been faithful to anyone, but then I’ve never had anyone close enough to be faithful to.’
‘As far as I’m concerned fidelity is the bedrock of any relationship.’
‘I haven’thada relationship with a woman before,’ Raffaele clarified without the smallest hint of discomfiture in making that admission. ‘I have sexual affairs that rarely last longer than a couple of weeks.’
‘That kind of shallow is just a touch adolescent at your age,’ Maya remarked.
Raffaele was incredulous when he felt the hit of heat striking his cheekbones. He could not recall when anyone had last embarrassed him. His dark eyes flared bright as gold ingots with anger. ‘I’ve always preferred to steer clear of serious relationships,’ he told her.
‘I read your profile online. That was kind of obvious. Right, moving on,’ Maya continued with an air of efficiency that exasperated him. ‘Health screening. That has to be done.’
‘I don’t have unprotected sex.’
