Millionaires: Rafaello's Mistress / Damiano's Return / Contract Baby

Throwing him an exasperated glance that implied that he was downright stupid not to appreciate the natural order of things, Glory closed her eyes and went to sleep, but not before she had said her prayers.

Just as Rafaello had promised, Glory woke to sunshine. She was alone in the bed and there was no telling dent in the pillow beside her own. She headed straight into the shower to wash out the sand still clinging to her hair. Wrapped in a towel, she emerged again to find that a maid was unpacking her case. Choosing a blue skirt and a white sun-top, she went back into the bathroom to get dressed.

The door she had left ajar was slowly pushed wider.

‘Breakfast?’ Rafaello stood on the threshold, heartbreakingly handsome in a black T-shirt and well-cut chinos.

‘I could eat a horse,’ Glory admitted, colour rising in her cheeks, her eyes not quite meeting his.

The table on the balcony beyond the bedroom was laid with an extravagant choice of breakfast dishes. Glory took a cushioned seat and reached for the jug of orange juice. In silence she then worked her way through a bowl of cereal.

Rafaello studied her with brilliant dark eyes that probed her evasive gaze. ‘We start fresh today.’

‘Do we?’ Honey-blonde head downbent, Glory sampled two of the cooked dishes on offer and the toast. Fresh? As though last night had never happened? Was he joking? An intimate ache new to her experience was sufficient reminder of the intimacy they had shared. However, she was infinitely more worried about the risk of pregnancy. While she had been in the shower, counting and recounting the days of her cycle had given her no comfort. Rafaello had made love to her at what was supposed to be the optimum time for a woman to conceive. An even greater concern was her own inexplicable, bone-deep conviction that what she most feared had already happened and that right now deep down inside her tiny cells of human life were engaged in frantic baby-making activity.

‘Glory …’ Rafaello reached out and ensnared her fingers before she could reach for another slice of toast. ‘Did you fast before you arrived? Or are you now eating for two?’

Slowly Glory raised her head, bright blue eyes stricken in her pale oval face. ‘Is that really your idea of a joke?’

Rafaello sighed. ‘I know the way your mind works, bella mia. You took one look at those icons on the bed last night and primitive superstition felled you right before my eyes—’

‘I do not have primitive superstitions!’ Glory snapped.

‘No? If there had been a church within walking distance you’d have been in it all night on your knees,’ Rafaello groaned in rueful amusement. ‘Are you listening to me? We did nothing wrong …’

Compressing her lips, Glory dropped her head.

‘And no dire punishment is about to come your way,’ Rafaello continued with unshakable conviction. ‘I doubt that there will be repercussions from a single encounter.’

‘Got a hotline to mother nature too, have you?’ Glory could not resist saying.

Thrusting back his chair, Rafaello reached for her hands and hauled her up into the circle of his arms. ‘You’re the most appalling pessimist. Do you remember that picnic we had years ago? You kept on saying that it was such a gorgeous day that it was sure to rain. I couldn’t quite grasp that connection—’

‘It did rain,’ Glory reminded him, recalling that midsummer afternoon five years before when everything between them had seemed almost frighteningly perfect. Within forty-eight hours they had parted. ‘It rained when we were on the way back to the car.’

‘So you took the edge off the whole occasion, fretting about something you couldn’t control?’ Rafaello pushed up her chin and stared down at her mutinous face with dark golden eyes that sought and held hers. ‘That’s a waste of time and energy. Whatever happens, I’ll look after you.’

In receipt of those particular words, Glory shivered. So she was superstitious, so she believed in ESP. She noticed that he was no longer assuring her that he would marry her, had naturally thought better of that rash statement. No doubt he was already grateful that she had not accepted his proposal. She was tempted to ask what ‘looking after’ would entail but suspected that she already knew the answer. When a guy also used terms like ‘repercussions’ and ‘dire punishment’ as euphemisms for pregnancy he was telling her far more about his own attitude than he realised. Very probably he would suggest that a termination would be the wisest solution. No way, not her baby, Glory thought fiercely.

But there was no denying that she did suffer from that innate belief that every wrong action was followed by a kind of retributive balancing act. Even so, it was plain crazy for her to be imagining that she might be pregnant within hours of making love, wasn’t it? Once again, Rafaello was right. Conception was not an event she could influence. What was the point of worrying herself to death at this stage?

‘Finish your breakfast,’ Rafaello advised. ‘It’s a treat to be with a woman who has a healthy appetite.’

An involuntary laugh tumbled from her. ‘I couldn’t manage another bite …’

‘Nor could I—’

‘You haven’t eaten,’ she protested.

‘I breakfasted while you were still asleep.’ The dark timbre of his voice had taken on a husky edge.

A lean hand splayed across her hipbone. She collided with his amazing eyes. Hot, sizzling gold. The wild flare of sensual awareness made her tense. Her mouth running dry, it was she who moved closer, charged by her own shameless yearning. She stared up into that lean, strong face, reacting to the explosive tension and the weakening surge of heat awakening deep in her pelvis.

A shimmering smile of satisfaction slashed his beautiful mouth and she trembled. Her face burned as he let his hands slowly mesh into the fall of her hair, tipping back her head, letting his thumbs caress her earlobes, making her shiver. ‘I could not have trusted myself in that bed with you last night,’ he confided.

‘No?’ Glory snatched in an audible breath, so entirely in thrall to the magnetic spell of his sensual power that she was lost.

‘You deserved a night of undisturbed rest, so I slept next door and I tossed and I turned and I had a cold shower around dawn.’

‘Masochist?’

‘A necessity. The very thought of you makes me ache …’ Rafaello told her hoarsely, his breath fanning her cheek, his mouth taking hers in a hot, hungry surge of cruel brevity before he lifted his proud, dark head again. Linking his hands with hers, he drew her slowly back into the bedroom.

Glory was all of a quiver, shaken at how fast and how easily he could turn her from rational thought. It was as if her body had a fever that only he could assuage, but no longer did she try to deny that craving. She loved him and accepting that love had only made the wanting all the more powerful a force. She had been wrong, so wrong about its being a cold, callous arrangement, she told herself. Last night he had searched for her, shown his concern and his regret. That was enough, that was truly enough to silence her worst misgivings. Nobody got everything, she argued with herself. Lots of folk had to settle for less than what they had once hoped to receive.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Rafaello demanded as he drew her, unresisting, down onto the bed with him.

‘Nothing …’ Glory let her hands rise up over his warm, muscular torso in an exploratory foray that was her very first. He stretched like a lithe tiger being stroked, brilliant eyes narrowing in slight surprise. As he bent his head a secretive smile as old as the Sphinx curved her ripe mouth. However long it lasted, he would remember her always, she swore.

As if sharing that identical ambition, Rafaello ran his expert mouth down the extended length of her throat, and her entire body hummed on the gasp of response that he dragged from her. Even the feel of him, hard and ready through the barrier of their clothes, sent the flame inside her leaping higher and proceeded to make her melt. But settling for less, she decided on the peak of another tormenting assault on her sensitised skin, could well mean receiving more pleasure than she had ever dreamt possible …

Glory studied the exquisite silver and turquoise choker in the mirror and then her bright eyes widened to take in the whole of her reflection. She did not recognise that elegant, classy lady as herself.

In the space of three weeks, her appearance had been transformed. She had swallowed her pride and allowed Rafaello to buy her clothes. Why? She had very wounding memories of never, ever having had the right clothes when she was seeing him five years earlier. Telling herself then that such superficial things shouldn’t matter had been cold comfort when she stuck out like a sore thumb in company. Neither she nor her friends had owned the kind of outfits worn by the women who were part of Rafaello’s world: the casual but oh-so-smart separates, the fashionable but understated garments that none the less screamed their designer tags. She had been tortured by fears that her appearance and her visible inability to blend in was an embarrassment to him.

Now sheathed in a Versace dress, purchased from one of the designer outlets that Corfu town offered the rich who flocked to the island over the summer, she had no such fear. The sleek dress was a magical shade somewhere between green and blue and with every movement and change of light the wonderful fabric seemed to change colour. It made her feel like a million dollars and gave her confidence.

Her thick mane of hair had been tamed and styled to fall back from her face. While she was in that exclusive salon she had taken advantage of the opportunity to be made up and had watched and learned and bought everything that was used with the gold credit card Rafaello had given her. So now she knew all about highlighting her cheekbones and using a subtle glimmer of different shadows on her eyelids. What had amused her most was the discovery of just how much work was involved in attaining that sun-kissed and wholly deceptive natural look.

Silver drop earrings with turquoise inserts hung from her ears. A silver watch encircled her wrist. Now Rafaello was set on buying her an elaborate choker. He had tried to tempt her into gold and diamonds and she had just laughed. She loved silver, and when she left she could take the silver jewellery with her without feeling bad about it, for on his terms such items cost next to nothing even in the most expensive shops. But there would be precious memories bound up in her possession of every piece. Memories she would share with their child on some distant day in the future. Her lovely face shadowing at a reality she had only had confirmed beyond doubt the day before, Glory thought back to the daunting but telling exchange she had shared with Rafaello several days earlier …

That particular morning, she had wakened feeling off-colour. As her period had already been slightly overdue, the nausea she was experiencing had reawakened her fear that she might be pregnant but she had decided that there was no point in involving Rafaello in her worries before there was any actual proof. After all, she had heard friends say that even a change of climate or a different diet could interfere with a woman’s cycle.

However, when Rafaello had teasingly called her lazy for lying in bed so late, stress had provoked Glory into a snappish reply. ‘Look, I’m just not feeling that great … OK?’

‘Is it that time of the month?’ Rafaello had queried with a frown, his sudden tension pronounced.

By putting her on the spot like that before she knew how matters stood herself, he had disconcerted and embarrassed her. ‘Probably … yes …’ she had responded hurriedly, picking up on his tension and telling herself that in all likelihood she was worrying herself unnecessarily.

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’ Rafaello had commented with a brilliant smile that seemed to accentuate his relief with cruel efficiency. ‘At least you’re not pregnant, bella mia.’

Once he had made that assumption and once she had witnessed his relief, wild horses could not have dragged the real truth from her. Forty-eight hours afterwards she had made a covert visit to a doctor in town and had learned that she was indeed in the very early stages of pregnancy. In choosing not to tell Rafaello, she had made the right decision, she told herself bracingly. Neither marriage nor a termination was on the cards and no way would she put him through the hypocrisy of attempting a supportive role in a pregnancy which he had so patently not wanted to happen. That would hurt her too much. After all, what did she really have left but her pride?

‘Glory …?’ The laughter in Rafaello’s dark, deep drawl dragged her back to the present.

Pasting a determined and bright smile back onto her downcurved lips, Glory finally turned away from the shop mirror.

‘I gather you like it.’ Rafaello sent her a vibrant smile of amusement and she realised that, having interpreted her long silence as sheer appreciation, he had already paid for the choker.