The Last Heir of Monterrato

‘I think I need to point out one very important thing.’ Pushing back her shoulders, Lottie placed her hands firmly on her hips. ‘I have agreed to try for this baby, Rafael, not given you the right to control my life. You might do well to remember that.’

Dio! Rafael was having trouble remembering anything at the moment. She obviously had no idea, but standing in front of the window in that damned dressing gown Lottie was giving him a perfect silhouette of her body. He had tried not to notice, to look away, but the outline of her waist, the curve of her hips, her long, shapely legs, kept drawing him back. And now she had gone and thrust forward her breasts to taunt him still further.

‘You need to get some clothes on.’

He saw Lottie frown at him. At the gruffness of his voice. At the abrupt change of conversation. He knew he had to get away—away from the physical ache of sexual hunger that Lottie stirred in him.

Striding towards the door, he turned and gave her one last glance over his shoulder before marching back down the stairs.

He was heading for the study, but changed his mind. First he needed to do something physical—burn off some of the excess energy that was suddenly pumping through him. The next flight of stairs took him down to the basement, to the gymnasium and indoor pool. Flicking on the lights of the gym, he went over to the dumbbells, picked them up. The weight of them was comforting as he started to flex his muscles. A good workout—that was what he needed, to start getting his body back to the peak of fitness.

He stopped, one dumbbell suspended in the air. Fitness be damned. He snorted at his own deception. Who was he kidding? He needed a workout to rid himself of the image of Lottie and the immediate visceral effect that she had on him.

If he was going to have to put up with much of that temptation over the next two weeks he was going to be spending a lot of time in the gym.

* * *

Pressing down on the meat in the frying pan, Lottie watched as blood oozed out. She liked her steak charred to a cinder; Rafael liked his rare. Even trying to co-ordinate the food they ate seemed like a struggle.

These past few days at Villa Varenna had been awful, excruciating. Like actors in a play, she and Rafael had moved around this beautiful stage, moved around each other, oscillating between angry disagreement and unnatural politeness and restraint, their wariness of the situation, of the fragility of the arrangement, both painfully obvious and carefully concealed.

Three days in and counting. Lottie seriously wondered how they were going to survive two whole weeks. It wasn’t just the pregnancy issue—though Lord knew that filled her mind every waking minute, seeped into her dreams at night. Mentally she veered erratically between exhilaration and desperation, depending on which imagined outcome had gripped her in its talons at the time.

The hardest part was simply being around Rafael, sharing the same space as him, realising the way he could still make her feel—the way she knew deep down that she had always felt. The two years of separation, the countless lectures she had given herself, were all washed away on a tide of longing when she was presented with him again in the flesh.

The beautiful, haughty, honed and hard-edged flesh that was Rafael.

Over the hiss of the pan she could hear him moving about in the next room, then music coming through the sound system above her head. Opera. La Traviata—sad and Italian. What was he trying to do to her?

‘Ready yet?’ Rafael strode restlessly into the room, wearing black jeans and a loose black shirt with the sleeves rolled up in his casual, infuriatingly handsome way.

‘Nearly.’ Lottie flipped over her steak. ‘Can’t we have something a bit more cheerful?’ She indicted the music with a pained tilt of the head.

He disappeared again and there was a brief silence before Johnny Cash and his burning ring of fire started up.

‘I thought this would go with your steak.’ He was behind her now, looking over her shoulder. ‘Or what’s left of it. Is this one mine?’ He indicated the plate beside the hob.

‘Yes.’ She shifted her position to block his view. ‘It’s resting.’

‘Right.’ Reaching over her to pick up the plate, he viewed it suspiciously.

The ensuing silence was enough to make Lottie spin round with the fish slice in her hand. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, di certo—absolutely not. Shall I take the salad through?’

They had taken to eating at the small table by the bay window of the sitting room. The views of the lake were a useful distraction from the inadequacies of the food, not to mention the inadequacies of their conversation. None of the big issues had been broached by either of them since their disagreement in the studio yesterday, and the practicalities of what would happen if Lottie was actually pregnant were being avoided like a minefield in a war zone.