Rafaello's Mistress

ed slightly as, having undone his shirt collar, he proceeded to shrug with fluid grace out of the jacket of his suit. ‘Parade the bait and then go into pious denial when the victim bites—’

‘You are no woman’s victim, Rafaello Grazzini!’ Glory was infuriated by his line of argument. She had been desperate. She had believed that temptation was the only means of persuasion within her power. But whose fault was it that she had felt that she had to lower herself to that level? Who had spelt out those demeaning parameters? Who had made it brutally clear that in his opinion her looks were her only currency?

‘That’s right,’ Rafaello confirmed, his smouldering dark golden eyes holding hers full force. ‘Glad you’ve divined that fact. Do you recall how you tried to play me for a fool five years ago? Do you also remember how that ended? I wasn’t the one who fled in tears.’

‘You bastard…’ Glory framed in shaken outrage and pain. The very last thing she needed just then was the recollection of how devastated she had been at eighteen when he paraded her replacement, the merchant banker’s daughter, in front of her.

Rafaello discarded his jacket on the table alongside his tie. ‘I don’t let anyone call me that,’ he intoned in a lethal low-pitched drawl.

‘Well, I just got away with it!’ Glory slung in helpless triumph.

‘You’re not getting away with anything. It’s all going on an account to be rendered with your name at the top. Dio mio, you think I’m a fool?’

‘Look, I’m not going to waste time arguing with you.’ That unsettling reference to an account being rendered had chilled Glory to the marrow. ‘I’ll get a lift with Jon back to the airport.’

‘I said no.’

‘Oh, wow…’ Glory sounded out with syllabic thoroughness and all the scorn she could muster.

‘I warned you.’ Striding forward with an expression of calm intent stamped on his lean, strong face, Rafaello settled his hands to her waist and swept her off her feet.

In furious disbelief Glory swung back her arm and attempted to land a resounding slap on one hard male cheekbone but he ducked his head before it could connect. ‘How dare you do that when I want to hit you?’ she raged at him.

‘If you try to hit me again I might just dump you in the pool to cool off,’ Rafaello threatened with immovable cool as he hoisted her over his shoulder to prevent her flailing fists from doing any damage.

‘I can’t swim!’ Glory gasped in horror.

‘I’ll get into the water with you, then, but dip you I will,’ Rafaello swore, striding through the vast lounge into the hall.

‘I’ll call the police if you don’t put me down!’ Glory threatened in a rising screech.

‘What with? Alien antennae?’ Rafaello enquired.

Another voice entered the proceedings. ‘Rafaello…’ It was Jon Lyons’ quiet voice and he cleared his throat with pronounced hesitancy before continuing. ‘Do you really think you ought to be manhandling your guest like that?’

‘Don’t mess with what you don’t understand,’ Rafaello advised his executive assistant, galling amusement audible in his dark, deep drawl. ‘Glory and I go way back in time—’

‘No, we don’t!’ Glory braced her hands to his muscular back to raise her head, but she still couldn’t see Jon Lyons because he was standing out of view. So enraged was she by the ridiculous figure she had to be cutting that she was surprised that flames weren’t pouring from her mouth.

‘Glory was four years old when we first met. She was at a Christmas party for the estate workers’ children. She thumped a little boy who was chasing her with mistletoe. She was tiny but she attacked like a lion,’ Rafaello recounted, making Glory blink in bewilderment as she listened. ‘I hauled her off him before she got hurt and she was swinging her fists and screeching, “Let me at him!” She hasn’t changed much.’

‘You just made that whole story up.’ Glory had no memory whatsoever of the episode he had described, although she had certainly attended those festive parties as a child. ‘That never happened!’

Rafaello started to mount the stairs. ‘I didn’t notice you again until you were about thirteen, but don’t get excited at that news. It wasn’t you who first attracted my attention. It was the incessant car horns being sounded by admiring male drivers while you stood at the bus stop in the morning and I was driving past. Then, after you moved into the gardener’s cottage, I used to see you lurking in the rhododendrons beside the main drive, slapping on the paint before you could face the school bus.’

Glory was so stunned by that second even lengthier speech, her luscious mouth fell inelegantly wide.

‘I can see I was out of line interfering…’ From the hall below, Jon Lyons punctuated that retreat with a rueful laugh. ‘When you said way back you weren’t joking, Rafaello. It sounds like you two practically grew up together. I’ll see you next week.’

As the front door thudded shut downstairs and silence enclosed them again Glory balled both hands into furious fists and struck at Rafaello’s back again. ‘What were you doing sneaking through the bushes when I was putting on my lip gloss?’ she demanded for want of anything better to attack with at that moment.

‘When I was back from university I used to go out running in the morning. You were such a vain little creature. You used to sit endlessly combing your hair like a mermaid on a rock.’

‘You spied on me!’ Glory accused shakily. ‘I was not being vain!’

‘I avoided the main drive after I saw you there a couple of times. Spying on little schoolgirls wasn’t my style then or now.’

‘Mum wouldn’t let me style my hair or use make-up like my friends did, and I used to do myself up a bit before I went for the bus,’ she protested with fierce defensiveness. ‘I was not vain. Haven’t you ever heard of peer pressure? Put me down, Rafaello!’