The Italian's Future Bride

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention. ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’

‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.

She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—

‘Yes,’ she said.

But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’

Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you—tomorrow,’ was all she said.

‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’

And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.

‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’

‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’

The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.

Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale again and if her body language was speaking to him then it was telling him that she had just been tossed aside like a used bloody pawn.

Anger pumped at his chest. He wanted to kick something—her twin siblings, for instance.

‘What did you expect?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘A full rescue, complete with armour and swords? You are not the main player on this chessboard,cara —Elise is.’

‘I know that,’ she whispered and sank down on to the sofa.

He breathed out a sigh. ‘At least her unborn child will get to know its rightful father.’

He’d meant that to sound comforting but it had come out sounding harsh. She winced, pressing her lips together and dipping her head. Her hair slid forward, revealing the vulnerable curve of her slender white nape.

Raffaelle brought his teeth together, his tongue sitting behind them and tingling with a mixed-up desire to taste what he could see and the knowledge that it was at real risk of being bitten off if he did not take more care about what he said.

With a reluctance to let his mood soften, he pushed himself away from the door and walked towards her. She heard him coming and stiffened her spine. When he leant down with the intention of picking up her glass to offer it to her, she actually shuddered.

‘Please don’t start dragging me around again,’ she choked out.

Was that what he had been doing—?

Yes, that was what he had been doing, Raffaelle realised, and straightened up with a jerk. ‘I’m—sorry,’ he said.

‘Everyone is sorry.’ She laughed tensely. ‘Doesn’t help much though, does it?’

He couldn’t argue with that so he threw himself down on the sofa beside her and released another sigh. ‘Beginning to feel more like the real victim now,cara ?’ He could not seem to stop the taunts from coming. ‘It is a strange feeling, don’t you think—being kind of frustratingly helpless? If we then start to wonder how our present lovers are going to feel when the news hits the stands, the sense of frustration really begins to bite.’

‘You have a lover?’ Her chin shot up, her slender neck twisting to show him blue eyes stark with horror and the glittering evidence of held-in tears. His inner senses shifted, stirring awake from what had only been a very light slumber anyway.

‘Do you?’ he fed back.

‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I would have got involved in any of this if I had a lover who could be embarrassed by it?’

‘Whereas I was not allowed to make that choice,’ he pointed out. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ he finished coolly. ‘You are still less the victim here than I am, so—’

‘And you are justso loving being able to keep saying that to me!’ Rachel got to her feet, restless, tense without knowing why.

Then she did know and she turned on him. ‘So who is she—?’ she speared at him as if she had the right to ask such a question.