Rafaello's Mistress

Panic assailed Glory, for she did not want to talk. He might not appreciate it but the die was already cast. Nothing could be resolved, nothing could be changed. Gliding up over his lean, hard, muscular body in the circle of his arms, she pressed herself close and found his mouth for herself. For a horrendous instant as he tautened in surprise at the blatant invitation she thought he might push her away. Then, just as suddenly, he reacted by pinning her beneath him and deepening that kiss with a driving hunger that shook her.

In the moonlight he threw up his head again and scanned her with fathomless dark eyes. ‘I want you but—’

Glory had no desire to hear what came after. Sinking desperate fingers into the black hair still damp from the shower, she drew him down to her again. A throaty groan escaped him but she was stronger when it came to the wiles of a temptress. She knew what he could not resist. She knew what drove him wild. Within minutes he was as much the prisoner of his own hunger as she was and way past rational speech.

There was none of the long, teasing rise to gradual excitement with which they had wiled away many a long afternoon. She had unleashed a storm of fierce passion that was well out of her control. He sank into her with delicious driving force, sent her out of her senses with pleasure, and every time she reached a peak it would all start again. A seemingly endless cycle of raw excitement and ecstatic satisfaction left her drained and rather shell-shocked around dawn, when he finally fell into a much-deserved sleep of exhaustion.

Glory lay beside him, questioning what had been different apart from the silence, and then it came to her: he had been saying goodbye to her. He knew it was over. He had decided that before he even came to bed, probably expecting her to be sound asleep. He wanted out. Only not because he was bored with her or because he no longer desired her. Earlier this evening things had got messy, and Rafaello did not like messy scenes. Perhaps it had finally dawned on him that, far from hating him, she loved him.

And, if he hadn’t already guessed just how deep her emotional involvement already went, what had just happened between them would have got the message home to him fast. She had thrown herself at him like a brazen hussy. Not in a subtle, seductive way either. She cringed for herself and then swithered feverishly between fear and uncertainty. Stress about being pregnant and her own insecurity could be making her oversensitive, she reasoned. Maybe she was just imagining that she somehow knew what he was thinking.

But later that same morning she seemed to receive her answer to that question. Fully dressed, Rafaello wakened her. In a lightweight jacket worn with a dark blue shirt and teamed with faultlessly tailored beige chinos, he looked so gorgeous, he took her breath away.

‘I have to go out,’ he told her flatly. ‘Jack Woodrow called me last week to ask for investment advice and I still haven’t taken care of it.’

The first week of her stay Rafaello had taken her over to dine at the Woodrows’ palatial villa. The prospect of being entertained by a genuine earl and his wife had made Glory feel quite sick with nerves. However, the scornful Fiona had been nowhere to be seen and the brunette’s parents, Lord and Lady Woodrow, had turned out to be a delightful and charming older couple. They had greeted Rafaello with fond affection and welcomed Glory to their summer home without the smallest sign of discomfiture.

Rafaello sent her a veiled glance, his tension pronounced in the hard angles of his strong profile. ‘Look, we’ll talk when I get back but you should pack. We’re flying back to London this afternoon.’

Well, she wasn’t hanging around for that denouement, Glory told herself steadily. She would save them both from an embarrassing final encounter followed by an even more painful three-hour flight back home. No doubt he would try to ditch her with courteous consideration. What had got into him five years earlier she would never know, for the callous indifference he had shown towards her feelings then had not been his style.

At her request, Rafaello’s manservant, Hilario, took her to the airport an hour later. But as soon as Hilario had departed again Glory got into a taxi and travelled back into town. She had seen several casual jobs advertised in cafés and bars. If Rafaello was leaving Corfu, why should she? Back in England, she no longer had either a home or a job. Furthermore, she had very little money. Nor could she face the prospect of returning to the gardener’s cottage on the Montague Park estate. Her pregnancy would distress and embarrass her father a great deal and gossip might even carry the news of her condition right back to Rafaello. No, she was on her own and it was time she got used to that idea again…

CHAPTER SEVEN

STANDING beneath the awning that shaded the empty tables in the narrow alleyway, Glory took the opportunity to

rub at the small of her back where the ache was worst. Late afternoon the bar attracted little passing trade, but no matter how quiet it was she was not allowed to sit down.

Eight weeks had passed since Glory had walked out of Rafaello’s villa to save face. She had soon lived to regret that impulsive decision, for nothing had gone quite as she had planned. Renting a room in Corfu town had proved to be much more expensive than she had naïvely expected and she had used up all the money she had before she had finally got a job as a waitress. Indeed she had only recently managed to save up enough to cover the purchase of an air ticket back to London.

In addition, now that the summer crowds of tourists were thinning, temporary bar staff were being laid off, so she was unlikely to have a job for much longer. When she finally flew back to England she would still be very short of cash. Staying on in Corfu had not been a good idea. Back home she would have had a better chance of finding employment while she did not look pregnant, she reflected ruefully. Now she could only get into trousers with elasticated waists and her once flat tummy was beginning to protrude, no matter how hard she tried to hold it in.

So why had she let Rafaello escape the consequences of their short-lived affair? In retrospect, her own behaviour seemed foolish and short-sighted. Recognising his tension that day when he had asked her whether she was feeling unwell because it was that time of the month, she had said yes out of an instinctive need to lessen his obvious concern. Unfortunately, her recognition of his relief in receipt of the premature reassurance had sealed her fate and left her with the pretence to maintain. But, naturally, Rafaello had been relieved, Glory told herself miserably. Sex was sex but babies were something else entirely to the average male. She had heard that some men actually got broody just like women did. However, it had seemed pretty obvious that nature had so far left Rafaello untouched by a craving for fatherhood.

But it would have been more sensible for her to have steeled herself and told him the truth: that she was expecting his child and that she intended to have her baby. Why had she felt so guilty about that decision? Even more to the point, why on earth did she miss Rafaello so unbearably? It was madness for her to be missing him when he had been on the brink of ditching her anyway. After just three weeks too. All that romantic holding of hands, all the compliments, the charm, the seemingly insatiable level of his desire for her…and what had all that been worth at the end of the day? Feeling her eyes prickle, Glory blinked back the tears that of late seemed to come all too easily to her. No doubt wiser women than she was had been fooled by men, but how many of them had been taken in twice over by the same guy?

Glory suppressed a groan as she thought of the effort she had made and the pride she had dumped just to look classy for him. She should have gone for really tarty clothes and embarrassed the hell out of him every chance she got. That was what he had deserved. But oh, no, Glory Little had acted like a bimbo right to the fall of the final curtain. Remembering how she had passed that last night in Rafaello’s bed made her shrink with mortification. Here she was, pregnant, poor, miserable and alone, and she had not even the consolation of knowing that she had told him where to get off!

Out of the corner of her eye she finally registered that one of the tables at the far end of the bar’s pitch had been taken. After two steps in that direction she recognised the angle of that arrogant dark head, the mysterious fluid arrangement of that lithe, lean body that, even seated, contrived to put out an impression of cool command and wealthy exclusivity. Her feet faltered and her heart leapt into what felt like the foot of her convulsing throat.

Rafaello removed his sunglasses. Lustrous, dark deep-set eyes zoomed in on her. His hard jawline clenched. Even wearing that grim and tense expression and clad in what appeared to be a formal business suit, he looked incredibly sleek and sexy.

A seriously debilitating wave of love and lust gripped Glory. She wanted him to smile. Why did he look so bleak? After all, what had she done? Taken herself off without fanfare? Hardly a hanging offence. Indeed, a lot of men would have been grateful to have been spared the inevitable messy and awkward scene of their parting. She tilted her chin but felt the hot betraying colour of awareness flood her cheeks.

‘Sit down,’ Rafaello suggested.

‘I can’t. I’m not allowed to,’ she said unevenly, wondering wildly if he had missed her too and if he had sought her out to tell her so. Gripped by so much desperate hope that she could no longer look him in the face, she added jerkily, ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘Either sit down or tell me where you’re staying and we’ll go there to talk,’ Rafaello countered tautly.

‘How did you find me?’

‘With the greatest of difficulty.’ Lines of strain girded his wide sensual mouth as she stole a glance at him from beneath her lashes. ‘But Sam was of some help—’

‘Sam?’ His reference to her kid brother in that line bewildered Glory.

‘Glory…I have news that you are likely to find distressing.’