Rafaello's Mistress

Rafaello rested exasperated dark golden eyes on her. ‘I want to see you in white…OK? Your father’s a conventional man. I was planning to save the news that his first grandchild is on the way until he’s feeling rather more resilient. As he’s not even aware that we’ve been seeing each other, I should think the announcement that we’re getting hitched is quite enough for the moment.’

Slowly, grudgingly she nodded in receipt of that argument. ‘You have a point.’

‘I also want you to move into the Park itself once you feel you can leave your father to Maud’s devoted care,’ Rafaello delivered.

Glory glanced at him in dismay. ‘Not before the wedding—’

‘The cottage hasn’t been your home in five years, and if you can lure Sam under the same roof it might make breaking the ice between Sam and Benito easier when the time comes.’

‘When is that time coming?’

‘When and if Sam agrees, not before,’ Rafaello told her levelly. ‘My father would be over here right now if he thought Sam would be willing to meet him but he knows he has to be patient.’

And then what? But she turned her troubled thoughts back to her own problems. So, regardless of how Rafaello felt about her, she was still going to marry him, wasn’t she? Coward, you spineless coward, piped up the voice of her subconscious. What he had said to her in bed, about sex on their very first date being more her style than the candlelit dinner he had romanced her over, would haunt her forever more. She shuddered. That was what Rafaello really thought of her. A sexy wanton with few sensibilities and even fewer morals. All right for slaking his high sex drive on, all right as an incubator for the next Grazzini but not much use for anything else.

‘Well, it must give you a real kick to think that the mother of your child and your future wife is a greedy, gold-digging little tart,’ Glory said grittily.

Not unnaturally, she took Rafaello entirely by surprise with that out-of-the-blue attack. He stared at her, brilliant eyes dead-level and serious. ‘I don’t think that.’

‘No?’ Glory widened her bright blue gaze, steeling herself to go a step further. ‘Then you now accept that your precious father blackmailed me into leaving you five years ago—’

‘If I thought that, I’d probably kill him,’ Rafaello murmured without hesitation. ‘But I don’t think it or accept it, and as for the rest of it…’ A rather bleak laugh fell from his lips. ‘I know money’s not that important to you. I got that message in Corfu.’

Reminding her that he wanted to call in with her father before he headed for the airport, he left without fanfare and she sat there, staring at the space where he had been, thinking that no matter how much she loved him she would never, ever understand what went on in that dark, complex head of his. Why did the man who was about to marry her look almost regretful when he agreed that she was not mercenary? Why did he react to the word ‘love’ as if it was a term of abuse?

CHAPTER NINE

‘JOE thinks that finding out I’m an illegit Grazzini is on a par with winning the National Lottery!’ Sam said, tight-mouthed with discomfiture.

It was Glory’s first meeting with Sam since he had left London, and from the instant of his arrival she had been unsettled by her kid brother’s likeness to Rafaello. The more she studied Sam, the more amazed she became that she had never once noticed the resemblance between man and boy. That black hair, those dark, deep-set, dramatic eyes. Her mother had never been that dark. The sculpted cheekbones and the newly aggressive tilt of Sam’s jaw were pure Grazzini. How could she have been so blind to what was staring her in the face?

‘I mean, look at all this stuff!’ Sam spread a censorious and uneasy glance over their surroundings. They were in the rear sitting room at Montague Park, one of the less opulent rooms but still much too grand in her brother’s estimation. ‘Like I said to Rafaello, living like royalty is not about to go out of style with the Grazzinis around. Take that snuff box…sixty grand, and there’s homeless people starving on the streets!’

Glory could not feel that Rafaello, a capitalist to the backbone, could have much enjoyed that particular lecture. ‘You can knock what they’ve got and how they live but don’t forget that Grazzini money saved Dad’s life.’

‘Of course, I appreciate that.’ Sam kicked at the tassle fringing on a nearby chair before stuffing his equally restive hands into the pockets of his jeans and turning away. ‘But I can’t think of him as “Dad” any more. He said it would be OK to call him Archie if I wanted to—’

‘Oh…Sam!’ Glory was dismayed by the thought of how much that request must have hurt the older man. ‘He’s acted as your father for sixteen years. Isn’t that worth something?’

‘Yeah, but he’s never loved me like he loved you. No, don’t you argue about that because it’s true and you can hardly blame him for feeling that way,’ Sam warned her with sudden force, flipping back to face her, dark eyes full of a pain that saddened her. ‘I grew up knowing I wasn’t the son Archie Little wanted. Why do you think I play all that sport when I hate it? Only to be what he thought I should be. Have you any idea what it’s like having it dinned into you that five generations of Littles have been gardeners here?’

Glory swallowed back impulsive words in her father’s defence. Sam had to talk to someone and she was grateful that he was willing to discuss his feelings with her. Arguing with his every statement would only silence him.

Sam breathed in deep and then shrugged. ‘Do you know what my first thought was when Archie told me I wasn’t his kid?’

Glory shook her head.

‘Thank God I don’t have to be a gardener…can you believe I was that superficial?’

Glory was concealing her steadily growing shock at what she was hearing. The quiet and affectionate but always reserved eleven-year-old boy she had believed she knew so well five years earlier had turned into a young man she needed to get to know all over again.

‘I was a misfit. Even Mum…’ Sam muttered uncomfortably. ‘Always telling me only sissies want to sit drawing pictures all the time! Narrow people with narrow minds.’

Glory paled and bit her lip. ‘Sam…please don’t talk like that—’

‘You were bright enough to stay on at school and they made you leave and take a rubbish job because that was our place in life. Bottom of the pile and no room for ambition or imagination,’ Sam shot at her with angry resentment. ‘If you must know, it was a relief to find out I wasn’t a Little!’

‘Yes,’ Glory conceded because she could truly see it had been for him. Those Grazzini genes, those strong and assertive Grazzini genes had been buzzing about below Sam’s deceptively tranquil surface just waiting for the opportunity and the freedom to erupt. He was clever and he was deep and he had loathed that yoke of low expectations.