Her sister looked nervous, stressed, not her usual cool, snippety self, Winnie acknowledged worriedly, crossing the room to pour her sister a drink and give her some Dutch courage. That was the joy of them all having spent the previous night in their grandfather’s grandiose split-level London apartment. Every room came equipped with more extras than an exclusive hotel.
‘It’s a figure-hugging dress,’ Winnie pointed out. ‘It’s supposed to be a good fit.’
‘But she had to have the seams let out yesterday because it was too tight over the bust in the final fitting.’ Zoe chuckled from across the room. ‘The designer was aghast. I mean, who puts on that much weight there of all places?’
‘Yes,’ Vivi muttered. ‘She was distinctly irritated behind the understanding smiles.’
Winnie thrust a glass of spirit into her sister’s hand. ‘Here, drown your sorrows,’ she advised. ‘Obviously you’ve been comfort-eating. You shouldn’t be letting all this get to you to that extent.’
‘It got to you as well,’ Vivi reminded her elder sibling.
‘Yes, but I had to stay on after the wedding because Eros still had Teddy. You’re not required to stay beyond the reception today,’ Winnie pointed out breezily.
Vivi paled and abstractedly tipped the glass to her lips and then remembered what she couldn’t forget for even as long as two minutes and she hurriedly set the glass down again, her nerves twisting in a climbing spiral of tension. Her boobs ached in the tight confines of the corseting beneath her dress. Never before had she sported such generous curves. All part of the process of change taking place in her body, the nurse at the swanky medical practice Raffaele had taken her to the day before had told her cheerfully. Vivi didn’t feel quite so cheerful about those changes, which were happening sooner than she had expected.
‘You know, that is a truly fabulous dress.’ Zoe sighed appreciatively, studying her sister’s lithe and slender silhouette in the off-the-shoulder gown fashioned from rich gold lace sprinkled with shimmering embroidery. ‘That colour against your hair is breathtaking. Quite the fashion statement too.’
‘Teamed with the tiara and the diamonds that Raffaele sent you yesterday, you look like a queen,’ Winnie murmured with an amused smile. ‘Very dignified, very elegant.’
‘Yeah,’ Vivi muttered, scrutinising the platinum and diamond tiara anchored in her upswept hair, not to mention the diamond necklace and the drop earrings. ‘I don’t know what Raffaele was thinking of offering me such expensive jewellery to wear. I don’t feel entitled to wear his family stuff.’
‘He has close relatives attending today,’ Winnie reminded her wryly. ‘He’s having to make this show look more real than it is for their benefit and I suppose the bride wearing the family heirlooms is part of that.’
Close relatives... Arianna would be attending for sure, Vivi reckoned absently. How would she behave? She couldn’t imagine Arianna being nasty and she herself was willing to let bygones be bygones this long after the scandal that had separated them.
‘This all feels real enough to me,’ Vivi confided in a brittle voice, her tension climbing even higher at the prospect of walking down the aisle to Raffaele on her grandfather’s arm in front of so many people, because she was only now appreciating that it was going to be a very big society wedding. She had paid no heed to the actual wedding arrangements. They had been left in her grandfather’s hands while she continued to act as though none of it were anything to do with her because she had still been desperately looking for an escape route. In any case, why would she have had preferences or opinions to express about a wedding that was a virtual fake?
Unfortunately, that false bravado had deserted her the night before while she and her sisters and Winnie’s husband had dined with their grandad. Stamboulas Fotakis had been downright ecstatic about the number of wedding invitations he had had to send out and the very high number of acceptances that had come in. He was equally delighted that so many titled society figures were keen to attend his granddaughter’s wedding and he had unashamedly rejoiced in the bridegroom’s pedigreed connections.
Listening to that uninhibited enthusiasm, Vivi had finally understood the older man’s eagerness to marry his grandchildren off to men of high social standing. Their grandfather was a self-made man from a very poor background and grand social connections clearly meant a great deal to him. Luckily for them all, however, no media outlet had yet connected the bride, Vivi Fox, with Vivi Mardas, once slated in the tabloids.
Winnie squeezed Vivi’s hand in a comforting gesture and then winced and frowned. ‘Your fingers are as cold as ice... Where did you put that drink? You need to warm up.’
Glancing around, Winnie spotted the glass that Vivi had abandoned and retrieved it to extend it to her again.
‘I can’t,’ Vivi muttered tightly.
‘I can think of only one reason why you wouldn’t take one little drink,’ Winnie said with a frown of bewilderment. ‘And that’s not possible.’
‘I’m afraid it is. I’m pregnant.’ Vivi almost whispered the confession, grateful to have finally got the announcement out.
‘You can’t be,’ Winnie assured her confidently.
Zoe was quicker on the uptake and more informed. ‘That night you spent at Raffaele’s house?’ she queried wide-eyed. ‘You actually slept with him? But you said you had had too much to drink.’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to admit that to you, was I?’ Vivi fielded, her cheeks a feverish pink as she lifted her head defiantly high.
‘Oh, my goodness, Vivi!’ Winnie collapsed down on the edge of the bed while staring at her copper-haired sibling with wide dismayed eyes. ‘You’re expecting a baby? Seriously?’
‘Yes,’ Vivi confirmed flatly. ‘And I won’t be coming home after the reception either. Raffaele is obsessed with his belief that it’s his duty to look after me while I’m pregnant, so I’ve agreed to stay with him until the baby is born.’
‘But you hate him,’ Zoe murmured in disbelief.
‘He has his moments,’ Vivi muttered repressively.
‘Obviously,’ Winnie pronounced witheringly. ‘When are you planning to share this particular piece of good news with Grandad?’
‘Be my guest and do it for me. I’ll only have a massive row with him, which is a bit pointless when, essentially, I will have kept to my side of the deal and gone through with the wedding he demanded,’ Vivi pointed out ruefully. ‘It’s all his fault anyway.’
‘And how do you make that out?’ Winnie prompted.
‘Well, if Grandad hadn’t forced me into seeing Raffaele again and spending time with him, this would never have happened,’ Vivi declared, struggling to justify her fall from grace any way she could.
‘Do you find Raffaele that irresistible?’
Winnie asked curiously.
Vivi shrugged, refusing to be drawn on that score, but her face was burning.
‘It says something in Raffaele’s favour that he’s willing to take responsibility for the baby and that he’s so keen to look after both of you,’ Zoe commented thoughtfully.
Vivi squared her slim shoulders. ‘I don’t need anyone looking after me.’
‘And yet somehow you’ve agreed to let him do it,’ Winnie remarked with a suggestive roll of her eyes just as a knock sounded on the door. ‘I think that’s our cue to leave for the church.’
* * *
The instant he heard the low buzz of comment spreading through the big church, Raffaele knew that the bride had arrived and he swung round to steal a look.
‘Porca miseria,’ he intoned in astonished appreciation because Vivi looked stunning in that gown. She had not even kept him waiting as he had expected, arriving bang on time, typically contriving that Vivi trademark of surprising him. She was a dazzling figure sheathed in gold lace that enhanced her porcelain skin and copper hair, while the legendary di Mancini diamonds glittered on her proud head and at her slender throat and delicate ears as befitted his bride. He seriously doubted, however, that any previous bride in his family history had enjoyed quite her level of beauty. His chest swelled with pride. No, nobody looking at Vivi’s exquisite face and shape would be surprised by his sudden impetuous marriage. Stronger men than him would’ve succumbed to such undeniable allure, Raffaele conceded, fighting the throb of arousal threatening at his groin.
His keen gaze mercilessly sliced away the sight of Stamboulas Fotakis beaming by the bride’s side and his handsome mouth compressed into a hard line. The old man would pay dearly for his mistake in having threatened Raffaele’s family. Raffaele had already fine-tuned the punishment and put it in place like bait, secure in the knowledge that Stam invariably went for a certain type of deal. Stam would not enjoy being burned and he would learn not to cross Raffaele again. Raffaele would’ve gone for an infinitely more ruthless penalty had it not occurred to him that Vivi’s child, his child, would be Stam’s great-grandchild, which now qualified the callous old codger as family. And today was also obviously the day when he would retrieve that dangerous dossier on Arianna and that threat would be suppressed for all time.