‘I hated it,’ she had muttered guiltily, appalled that he had picked up on that unsavoury rumour. ‘But everyone else had done stuff like that and I wanted to fit in... I wanted them to like me.’
After that affair, Raffaele had begun vetting her friends as well, recognising that his sister was too vulnerable to be left at the mercy of those ready to take advantage of her gullible nature to entertain themselves at her expense.
‘Presumably you have already discussed this idea with Vivi,’ Raffaele remarked curtly. ‘And she, of course, will be keen.’
‘Keen?’ Stam surprised him by laughing out loud. ‘Vivi hates you and she definitely doesn’t want to marry you! I’m afraid that persuading Vivi to the altar is your personal challenge.’
‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe that she isn’t involved in this proposition?’ Raffaele incised in disbelief.
‘Of course, she isn’t involved. Vivi doesn’t work off logic, she works off emotion. My...er...suggestion that she marry you made her very angry but I’m sure a high achiever of your calibre will know exactly how to transform her view of you,’ Stam completed with wry amusement brightening his snapping dark eyes. ‘If you want that dossier to stay private, you have to get Vivi to the church.’
‘That’s to be my penance, is it?’ Raffaele pronounced between gritted teeth.
‘If you like to think of it in those terms, do so. It’s immaterial to me. You give her a wedding ring but you keep your hands off her,’ Stam Fotakis warned him bluntly. ‘I want her back as untouched and unharmed as she is now. Is that understood?’
Dark colour edged the smooth planes of Raffaele’s high cheekbones, accentuating his taut bone structure. He could not credit the warning he was being given. ‘I have never touched an unwilling woman in my life,’ he countered with icy hauteur.
‘Well, you will find my granddaughter very unwilling,’ Stam forecast with satisfaction. ‘I dare say you’re accustomed to a different response from women...although you didn’t rise to the bait of my PA giving you a come-on in the lift.’
‘That was a set-up?’ Raffaele breathed in thundering disbelief, momentarily betrayed into speech.
‘I like to know the nature of the men I deal with and you passed the test. You’re not a womaniser,’ Stam retorted crisply. ‘I am very protective of Vivi.’
It was on the tip of Raffaele’s tongue to say that on the one occasion he had had Vivi in his arms, the very last thing she had been was unwilling, but he swallowed back that unwise admission, choosing instead to be grateful that there were, after all, some things that Vivi’s grandfather did not know.
And now, Raffaele reflected as he travelled back to his London town house in the comfort of his limo, he had to decide what to do next. It was ironic that he had always had the comfortable belief that being very, very rich protected you, he conceded, stunned into shock and an unfamiliar sense of powerlessness by the situation he found himself in. But wealth hadn’t, after all, protected Arianna from her misfortunes from conception, nor was it sufficient to hold at bay an old man determined to claim restitution for a sin that Raffaele had not actually committed.
He had not called Vivi a prostitute. For a start, she had been an escort rather than a prostitute and he knew the difference, having met women of both persuasions in even the most exclusive circles and learned how to detect and avoid them. That Vivi had almost slipped past his guard still infuriated him. The prostitution designation, however, had been manufactured by the press to provide an attention-grabbing headline.
Unfortunately, that truth would not remove that dangerous dossier on his sister from Stam Fotakis’s calculating and vengeful hands...
* * *
An upsetting memory was playing through Vivi’s mind as she put on her make-up for her date with her boyfriend, Jude. She had had a blazing row with her grandfather during his birthday party at her sister and brother-in-law’s home in Greece and she hadn’t let off steam by telling her sisters about it because she had known it would upset them when they preferred to play happy families.