The Italian's Future Bride

She waited a few seconds before going to pull the door open a small crack to make sure the woman had gone before she looked down to discover the suitcase she’d hastily packed before leaving Devon was now standing on the floor. Clinging to the black throw with one hand and still frowning, she used her other hand to lift the case inside the bedroom and shut the door again.

Last time she’d seen this, it had been lying open and spilling its contents on to the spare bed in Mark’s flat. So how had it ended up here instead?

Had Mark delivered it? Had he come here, then left again without bothering to see or speak to her to find out if she was okay?

Hurt thickened her throat as she heaved the case on to the rumpled bed and unzipped it. Inside it was everything she had brought up to London with her, plus all the extras that Elise had provided to help turn her into her look-alike.

There was also a piece of paper lying on the top of everything. Picking it up, she unfolded it to find it was a hastily scribbled note from Mark.

Did you have to send the chauffeur round to knock me up for your stuff at 6 o’ clock in the morning? I’d only just crawled into bed!

Elise called you last night after I told her the good news, but your phone was dead. She and Leo wanted to congratulate you on your coming nuptials, if you get my drift. Call her later today so she can play the ecstatic sister for Leo’s benefit.

I’m off to LA this afternoon for a few weeks. See you when I get back. Love M.

Mission accomplished, in other words, so it was back to normal life—for Mark anyway. No words of concern for how she was feeling. No sign of a rescue plan for her any time soon.

Rachel stared out at nothing

for a moment or two. Then, as a rueful grimace played its rather wobbly way across her mouth, she let the note fall on to the bed and turned her attention to selecting fresh clothes from the suitcase. At least she was now overloaded with expensive hair products and cosmetics, she consoled herself.

Dressed in a short bathrobe and fresh from his shower in one of the guest rooms, Raffaelle opened the bedroom door as the bathroom door shut with a quiet click.

He stood for a moment, viewing the evidence of her occupation, then walked over to the bed and picked up the note. His expression hardened as he read it. His eyes then drifted to the open suitcase, where it looked as if everything had been dumped in there at haste.

Did she feel deserted? She had to feel deserted because it was exactly what had happened to her.

Replacing the note where he’d found it, he turned then and strode across the bedroom to open the door which led into his dressing room. Ten minutes later he was dressed and letting himself out of the bedroom as quietly as he had come in while the running shower still sounded from the other side of the closed bathroom door.

CHAPTER SIX

IT TOOKnerve for Rachel to open the bedroom door and step into the hallway. She would rather be doing anything than facing Raffaelle Villani in the cold, harsh light of day.

Rubbing her hands up and down her arms in a nervous gesture as she walked, at least she looked more like herself, she tried to console herself. With Elise’s image stripped away and her hair shampooed and quickly blow-dried, she’d seen the real Rachel staring back at her from the mirror—the one who wore jeans and a long-sleeved black knit top. Her make-up was minimal and her hair had reverted to its natural style.

All she needed to do now was to convince herself that she was the real Rachel, because she certainly did not feel like her inside.

She intended to go and hunt down her bag and her cellphone before she did anything else, but she never got that far. The door next to the kitchen stood open and, having glanced through it, she then pulled to a heart-sinking halt.

Raffaelle was there, standing by a long dining table. He was wearing a soft loose-fitting smoked-grey T-shirt and a pair of charcoal trousers that hung easily around his hips. And, if she had ever wanted to know the difference between expensive man dressed in a formal dinner suit and expensive man dressed casually, then she was looking at him.

The aroma of fresh coffee would have sailed right by her if he had not used that moment to lift a cup to his mouth. She was held transfixed by his height again, by his sensual dark good looks, by his mouth sipping coffee and his long golden fingers holding the cup.

Sensation quivered right down her front as each and every sense unfurled and responded to the sight of those hands, that mouth, the long legs and wide shoulders—to her exciting new lover. Her breasts grew tight and tender in her bra cups, her tongue grew moist in her mouth, her breathing stopped completely as a tight tingling erupted low down. It was like falling into a deep, dark pit of forbidden pleasures. She didn’t want to feel like this but she could not break free from it.

Then he glanced up and caught her standing there staring at him. It was like being pinned to a wall by her guilty thoughts. Heat rushed up from her toes and through her body until it suffused her face to her hair roots while he just stood there with his cup suspended just below his sensual mouth.

The agony of mutual intimacy was nothing short of torture as she watched his eyes drop to the pair of simple flat black shoes adorning her feet, then begin a slow journey upwards, along well-faded denim that clung to her legs and her hips and the flatness of her stomach like a second skin.

His scrutiny paused right there and suddenly something else was adding to the turbulent mix. Rachel knew what he was thinking. She felt the muscles around her womb clench tightly as if it was acknowledging that it already belonged to him.

Maybe he saw the tightening because his eyes darkened. When he lifted them to clash with her eyes, the sheer power of what was passing between them put her into a prickling hot sweat.

He broke eye contact and she could feel her heart drumming against her ribs as he dropped his attention to her mouth, slightly parted and trembling, with its light coating of pink lipstick, then back to her eyes, looking out at him from a fixed hectic blue stare between quick flicks of mascara. Finally he let his eyes drift over her hair, where long and sleek straight had been replaced by a mop of silky loose curls that framed her still blushing face.

‘Where did the curls come from?’ he asked softly.

Forced into speech, Rachel had to moisten the inner surface of her lips. ‘They were always there, just hiding,’ she answered, lifting a self-conscious hand up to push the curls from her brow.