‘I should clear off down to the cottage and see my own family,’ Glory proffered in an eager rush at the prospect of escape.
‘No.’ It was one word said with quiet force but it stilled her in her tracks.
‘I don’t want to bump into your father, Rafaello.’ She almost told him that one Grazzini at a time was quite sufficient for her.
‘You’ll be quite safe in my bedroom. Benito hasn’t tucked me in at night since I was five years old,’ Rafaello informed her with sardonic bite. ‘But, for what it’s worth, I don’t feel any need to hide you. Join us. He’s going to know about us sooner or later anyway.’
Benito Grazzini would be astonished and angry to find her under his son’s roof, and Glory had not the slightest desire to meet the forceful older man again. However, Rafaello’s invitation shook her. ‘That doesn’t mean I want to be around when he finds out—’
‘Coward,’ Rafaello mocked, leaning down to capture her tense lips and extract a hungry kiss.
‘I’ll be more comfortable upstairs,’ Glory protested, her reddened mouth tingling from the effect of that sensual collision and her feet inexplicably welded to the spot.
Rafaello gave her a wolfish grin. ‘So will I be…’
The reminder of the true situation between them made her flush and head in haste for the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
GLORY picked up her bag where she had left it sitting in the big, elegant hall. Pausing only to slip off the diamanté sandals which had scored deep welts across her toes, Glory headed for the grand staircase as quietly and quickly as she could.
But luck was not on Glory’s side. Maud Belper appeared from behind the green baize door below the stairs that led to the kitchen quarters. ‘You’re staying here, then?’
Hot, guilty, embarrassed pink from throat to brow, Glory gave a reluctant nod of confirmation.
‘Your father’s a mild man, Glory. It takes a lot to upset him but I honestly think he would lose his head with Mr Rafaello over this.’
Glory stilled and tried to act dignified. ‘I’m a grown woman, not a kid.’
‘It wouldn’t be about that, love.’ The grey-haired older woman frowned, her rounded good-natured face troubled. ‘I ought to be minding my own business and I’m no tittle-tattle. But I just feel I should warn you that you’re getting into a situation you don’t really understand.’
Having made that far from reassuring and deeply mysterious statement, the housekeeper went back through the green baize door without another word. Glory hastened on up the stairs in craven flight. What on earth was Maud Belper talking about? What situation? And why, when she was about to let herself down a bucketful with Rafaello, did there have to be a talkative witness lecturing on the sidelines?
Glory hurtled in through the first door off the main landing, thrust the door shut behind her and fumbled for the light. Then she understood why Rafaello had such a big office. It was only what he was used to, she decided, scanning the huge bedroom with inquisitive eyes. A bed the size of a football pitch sat dead-centre. Skittish as a race-horse, she averted her attention from it and studied the remainder of the elegant furniture. It was a very beautiful room. The pastel rug on the floor, the subdued wallpaper and the long curtains did not match, yet somehow the overall effect was subtle and very classy, she acknowledged. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in a tall dressing mirror, and stiffened in dismay.
Unsubtle, too bold, Glory decided as she scrutinised her own reflection with newly critical eyes. She wondered how a skirt and top that had looked so pretty and feminine on Tania could look so very different on her. Of course, Tania was a brunette and a little less curvy. It had stabbed Glory to the heart when Rafaello told her that she looked cheap but she could see now that, whether she liked it or not, he had been right.
Catching sight of the transfer design above her ankle, she wrinkled her nose and went into the imposing en suite with its marble-set sinks. Stripping off her tights, she ran some water and tried to wash off the fake tattoo. The transfer was more resistant than she had expected. As she frowned down at her leg it occurred to her that she should be more worried by her own behaviour than about how she looked to him.
Here she was, selling herself like a commodity for Sam’s sake. Well, not entirely for Sam’s sake, Glory adjusted guiltily. There was this dreadful enemy part of her which wanted Rafaello Grazzini any way she could get him. She was deeply ashamed of that truth but too essentially honest to deny it. He had driven her into an arrangement that was going to break her heart and smash her pride forever.
She was soft where feelings were concerned. She always had been. She got attached to people. She had never quite managed to detach herself from him. And why not? They had had six enchanted weeks together before everything went wrong, and during those weeks, he had treated her better than any man she had met before or since. She hadn’t had to fight for her life or deal with him getting into an all-male sulk at having his attentions refused. There had been a kind of teasing quality to his approaches, she recalled abstractedly. Only there had been nothing teasing about the manner in which Rafaello had arranged her on that desk downstairs…
Not knowing what was likely to happen next and hugely conscious that she did not want to experience intimacy for the first time on a desk in a very well-lit room, she had panicked. Really panicked, she conceded ruefully. Only true panic could possibly have snatched her from the intoxicating excitement of Rafaello’s mouth on hers. But it shocked her that after five years he could touch her again and make her want him like that. It scared her even more that, in her heart of hearts, she still could not credit that Rafaello would actually make her his mistress.
But why not? When Glory was sixteen, and she had first met Rafaello face-to-face, he had behaved more like a protective big brother. Still barefoot, she wandered back into the bedroom but her thoughts were miles away. Having a huge crush on Rafaello had not stopped Glory from wanting a boyfriend of her own because all her school friends had been dating by then. She had believed that nothing would ever come of her dreams about Rafaello Grazzini. After all, not only had she never even had the opportunity to speak to him, but she and Rafaello had also lived and moved in different worlds.
Unfortunately, Talitha Little had refused to allow her daughter to go out to bars or clubs or to start dating. Almost inevitably, in her last term at school Glory had rebelled and gone behind her mother’s back. Her best friend had set her up with one of her older brother’s mates and had invited her to stay over that night so that she could get dressed up and come home late. A whole crowd of them had gone to a local bar and Glory’s date, Tim, a smooth-talking twenty-five-year-old, had introduced her to alcohol.
‘Hey, look who’s here,’ her friend had whispered, nudging her in the ribs halfway through that evening. ‘Talk about slumming!’
Rafaello had been standing by the bar with a couple of other young men, their designer casuals marking them out as more than a cut above the majority of the clientele. Glory had not been able to take her eyes from him, for she had never seen him that close before. Indeed, most of her sightings of Rafaello had been when he drove past her in his sports car while she was walking home after getting off the school bus. Although he had been known to offer other people lifts on wet days, he had never once offered her one.
Even though she had been staring a hole in him, it had been a shock when Rafaello looked directly at her for the first time. She remembered going all red in the face but not being able to drag her gaze from the magnetic spell of his lustrous dark eyes.
‘I think you’re in with a chance there all right,’ her irrepressible friend had hissed. ‘It’s a shame you’re stuck with Tim.’
But Tim had gone to play darts at the other end of the crowded bar and Glory, emboldened by the unfamiliar effects of alcohol on her system, sat there with her entire attention shamelessly focused on Rafaello, flirting like mad with her eyes. She saw his companions noticing her and commenting and thrilled in her naïvety to the belief that if she was being discussed the commentary could only be an appreciative one. In that over-excited state, it was really not that big a surprise when, on her passage back from the cloakroom, Rafaello intercepted her.