Rafaello's Mistress

‘I have excellent taste—’

‘And you think it’s been stolen?’ Glory exclaimed. ‘I mean, have you searched? Are you sure?’

‘I would not have reported it to the police otherwise. It puts rather a different complexion on your touching portrayal of bored teenagers with nowhere to go and nothing to do, and I have every intention of pressing charges on the score of that theft.’

Her lips bloodlessly compressed and her knees wobbling, Glory sank down almost clumsily into the seat she had vacated mere minutes before. ‘No way would Sam have stolen anything—’

‘Someone did.’

Her head felt as if it was going round and round. The situation was even worse than she had realised. There had been around twenty teenagers at that impromptu party. Any one of them could have lifted something small without attracting attention. A tiny box worth sixty thousand pounds? She felt physically sick. Sam having let himself into the huge house to throw a party for his drunken friends had been serious enough…but theft as well?

‘Obviously you’re planning to press charges against Sam and you have no intention of changing your mind about dismissing my dad.’ Glory could see that she had no hope of dissuading him on either count now.

‘Did you think I would be so overwhelmed by your fabulous face and body that I would write it all off for old times’ sake?’ Rafaello murmured softly and smoothly but she felt his contempt right down into her bones and recoiled from it.

‘No…but I had to try to reason with you,’ she stressed shakily, looking up to encounter hard dark eyes with a shocking sense of betrayal. She could neither bear nor yet accept how low she had sunk in his estimation. ‘My father and my brother deserve to be in trouble for being stupid but you’re talking about wrecking their lives. Dad’s got no fancy gardening qualifications and he won’t get another job at his age. All because of this snuff box going missing? What do you need with a stupid box costing that much anyway?’

‘Beautiful things give me pleasure,’ Rafaello admitted without hesitation.

‘Is there anything I can say or do…?’ Glory demanded feverishly.

‘You’re asking me to advise you on how to change my mind?’ Rafaello slung her a sardonic appraisal and then he vented a husky laugh. ‘What have you got to offer me in return?’

‘Undying gratitude?’ Glory suggested without much hope.

‘Something for nothing is not my style. Perhaps you should appeal to my baser instincts. Let me think. What do I want that you can give me?’ Rafaello rested dark deep-set eyes that were shimmering with glints of awakening on her taut seated figure. ‘Only one thing. Sex.’

CHAPTER TWO

SEX? What sort of a crack was that to make? Glory released a nervous laugh. Eyes very wide and blue pinned to him, she muttered unevenly, ‘You don’t mean that…you don’t mean that like it sounds.’

‘Don’t I? I’m the guy you sold out for a derogatory five grand. You’ll never convince me that moral standards are a subject likely to keep you awake at night,’ Rafaello murmured in a hypnotically quiet undertone that rasped down her taut spine like sandpaper on silk. ‘So what about it, Glory?’

‘What about what?’ Glory snapped half an octave higher, still refusing to credit that he could actually mean what he was saying and springing restively upright again. She pushed back a straying strand of honey-blonde hair from her brow in a defensive movement. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

‘A joke? Far from it. You should be flattered.’ Lounging at his ease, Rafaello gazed steadily back at her. ‘I’m offering to whisk you off the factory floor and install you in my bed while at the same time allowing your useless male relatives off the hook. Now if that’s not generous, what is?’

‘You’re just saying this stuff to humiliate me because you don’t like me—’

‘Glory…I don’t need to like or respect you to want you under me, over me and any other way I can think of having you,’ Rafaello countered with level cool, his unapologetic bluntness in delineating that earthy reality shattering what few illusions she still retained.

‘How can you talk to me like this?’ Glory demanded half under her breath, her damp hands clenching into fists by her sides.

‘Don’t knock the lust factor when it can work to your advantage. Even dressed as you are now, you’re gorgeous.’ Rafaello ran brilliant dark golden eyes over the full swell of her breasts below the sweater, let his meaningful scrutiny of her charms slide to the pronounced curve of her hips below her tiny waist and then lower still.

She stood there with her face burning. She felt that unashamedly male appraisal like a flame of sexual contempt singeing her sensitive skin. But, worst of all, she was experiencing sensations she had almost forgotten she could feel. That enervating little tightening frisson of physical response low in her pelvis, the mortifying sensation of liquid heat between her clenching thighs.

‘I don’t want to hear any more!’ she gasped, spinning away from him, sucking in a stark breath, fighting to stop her body reacting to the erotic buzz in the atmosphere, to him.

‘But the more I contemplate the possibilities, the more I warm up to the idea, cara,’ Rafaello confided huskily. ‘Straightforward sex. An honest agreement, free of all those restrictive relationship complexities. I keep you…and you please me.’

‘You are not going to keep me and I am not going to bed with you, Rafaello Grazzini!’ Glory launched at him furiously. ‘I’m not a whore!’

‘You have…’ with offensive detachment, Rafaello shrugged back his shirt cuff to glance at the narrow gold watch on his strong wrist ‘…three and a half hours to make your mind up. If you’re not back here by two this afternoon, the offer is closed.’

Aghast at that level announcement, Glory stared at him with shaken bright blue eyes, finally accepting that he was serious. ‘Do you honestly think that I would trade my body—?’

‘To the highest bidder? Yes,’ Rafaello incised without hesitation. ‘Five years ago, I was very slow to catch on to what you really wanted from me. I didn’t give you any expensive gifts. Nor did it occur to me to put cold, hard cash on the table and pay the price for the intimacy I wanted—’

‘Stop it!’ Glory exclaimed in angry chagrined despair, whirling away from him again to conceal her pained mortification. ‘It wasn’t like that between us.’

‘You took money to stay out of my bed. Presumably you would’ve accepted a better offer to get into it!’

‘No, I wouldn’t have done!’ Inflamed by that assertion, Glory turned back to yell at him, her voice breaking with distress, ‘I loved you!’

‘Only you couldn’t love me to the value of five grand?’ Rafaello shot her a derisive appraisal and then his expressive mouth curled into a hard smile of chilling amusement. ‘You’ve got some nerve telling me that.’

‘I hate you…’ Glory bit out with a shudder of violent resentment at the humiliation he was inflicting on her. ‘I really hate you now.’

‘I can live with that…I can live with that fine.’ Arrogant dark head high, brilliant eyes level, Rafaello surveyed her as if she had thrown down a gauntlet and challenged him.

‘You won’t be asked to live with it!’ Glory shot at him tempestuously, stalking back to the chair to snatch up her bag. Her beautiful face was furiously flushed, her blue eyes bright as sapphires with anger. ‘Does it give you a cheap thrill to think that you have power over me?’

‘I don’t call writing off a debt of eighty grand cheap. As to the power—how do I feel about that? Pretty damned good, cara,’ Rafaello confided.

‘You don’t have power over me. You have no power unless I give it to you!’ Glory snapped back in so much rage she could hardly vocalise.

‘But you’d do anything for your father and your brother. Do you think I don’t know that? Where are the spineless cowards lurking, anyway?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Archie and Sam. I notice they’re conspicuous by their absence,’ Rafaello extended with perceptible scorn as he strolled to the door with fluid grace and held it open for her, demonstrating an inbred courtesy that set her teeth on edge even more. ‘But then, maybe it was your idea to come alone in their place—’

At that moment, Glory was past caring what he thought of her, for she only wanted to escape. ‘Maybe it was—’

‘Maybe you fancied your chances with me again—’

‘You really think you’re something, don’t you?’ she condemned between compressed lips.

‘At the very least, cleverer than you are. Either you should have brought the male back-up or sat weeping and whingeing until revulsion wore me down—’

‘I don’t weep or whinge!’

‘I wouldn’t want you if you did.’ Rafaello focused on Jon Lyons, who was standing down at the reception area at the far end of the corridor, trying not to look as if he was watching them. He skimmed his attention back to her with derisive dark eyes that sent a wave of colour flaming across her slanted cheekbones. ‘Five minutes here and you’ve got my executive assistant panting at your heels like a pet dog. Do him a favour. Give him the big freeze on the way out!’

‘Go to hell!’ she hissed and stalked away, shivering with rage and shame and bitterness.

For what could she do and what could she possibly say to defend herself? Rafaello thought she was greedy and unscrupulous. Whether she liked it or not, she had to accept that five years ago she had made a serious error of judgement and now she was paying the price for it. She had allowed her father to take that cheque for five thousand pounds and keep it. Archie Little had been in debt and desperate for money. After Glory had endured that demeaning interview with Rafaello’s father she hadn’t had enough fight left in her to resist her own parent’s demands and stand up for what was right. She had felt microscopic in size by the time Benito Grazzini had finished talking to her. He had left her with few illusions about the myth of social equality.