Rafaello's Mistress

‘I love a challenge!’ Tania threw wide the door of her crammed wardrobe. ‘Trust me, Glory. Now that you’ve owned up to your desperation, I’ll be your best pal.’

Three-quarters of an hour later Glory studied her transformed appearance in her own room. A frilly pink top hugged her lush bosom, and she had had to squeeze into the stretchy short pink skirt with its racy split. Her stiletto-heeled shoes had only two tiny narrow satin bands studded with diamanté to hold in her feet. Above one ankle she now sported a fashionable henna transfer tattoo in an oriental design. Tattoos drive men wild Tania had assured her. Glory had wondered out loud whether some males might prefer greater subtlety. But Tania it had to be admitted, had far more experience, and had said that at heart men were one and all the same: they were just slaves to their hormones every time.

‘You’re gonna stop the traffic. Next time we go out together, you put on your combat trousers and boots again.’ Tania warned her, smoothing the shining mane of honey-blonde hair which hung halfway down Glory’s narrow back. ‘I couldn’t stick this amount of competition. I’d be so jealous, I’d never speak to you again.’

‘No problem. I don’t like looking like this…not that I’m not grateful,’ Glory added hurriedly as she pulled on her raincoat.

‘I hope he’s worth the effort—’

‘He probably thinks he is.’ Glory set off for the bus that would take her to the train.

Shortly after seven that evening, Glory finally reached the imposing gates of Montague Park and contemplated the mile-long driveway that stretched before her.

Chafed by the diamanté straps, her feet were already in agony. And, in truth, she did not actually want to arrive at her destination. Or that ghastly moment when she would have to tell Rafaello that he had won and that she would be his for as long as he wanted it that way. While she cringed for herself and grovelled, she would also have the added torment of knowing that he was enjoying every minute of her major climbdown.

Twenty minutes later she reached the grand front doors of the superb Georgian mansion and hit the bell.

The housekeeper, Maud Belper, gazed out at her in astonished recognition. ‘Glory?’

‘I’d be really grateful if you wouldn’t mention to my dad that you saw me here,’ Glory whispered guiltily, sidling in past the older woman, who had known her since childhood. ‘Is Mr Grazzini home?’

‘Would that be Mr Benito or Mr Rafaello?’ Maud enquired, deciding that two could play the mystery game of mutual ignorance.

‘Rafaello,’ Glory mumbled, her colour heightening.

‘Let me take your coat—’

Glory clutched her coat to her. ‘No…no, thanks. I’ve got a cold coming on and I’m feeling the chill.’

‘Mr Grazzini’s in the library.’

Glory nodded and listened to the housekeeper’s steps retreat at a tellingly slow pace.

Leaving her travel bag behind, she limped over to the library door on her poor, tortured feet and undid the belt on her raincoat. She felt like a flasher. Suppose Rafaello laughed? Suppose she did genuinely look as trashy and silly as she feared that she did? This is for Sam, she reminded herself, and on the spur of that she walked into the room, paused and discarded the coat in almost the same movement. He could only interpret her announced arrival and her vampish appearance in one way. And, if he took that hint, hopefully she wouldn’t have to grovel quite so much.

Talking on the phone over by the window, Rafaello froze as though Glory had burst in waving a hand grenade. He blinked. He looked again, kept on looking. Stunned dark golden eyes started afresh at the crown of her honey-blonde head, worked slowly down over her taut but beautiful face and back over the full pouting thrust of her breasts as delineated in skintight pink. There he seemed to pause to take a much needed break and he breathed in audibly before meeting the challenge of proceeding further in a downward direction.

Glory stood there like a martyr tied to the stake with a face hotter than any flames could have provoked. She could feel every ragged breath struggling past her convulsed throat as the tension rose. Staying still and silent was the hardest thing she had ever done. He had forced her to reduce herself to the level of a sex object desperate to sell herself to the highest bidder, and her pride was crushed.

Rafaello had trouble dragging his attention from the well-defined curve of her hips, but when he reached her legs he appeared to be even more challenged to keep his intent appraisal moving. Finally his scrutiny screamed to a halt above the slender ankle displaying the henna transfer tattoo.

Suddenly he flashed his smouldering eyes back up to her severely strained features. An aristocratic black brow was elevated. ‘What is this? A pantomime in which you star as the sex bomb?’

Glory had never been very confident that Rafaello would be a slave to his hormones as Tania had forecast, for Rafaello had a natural stubborn streak that rejoiced in never doing exactly what was expected of him. A ‘pantomime’? She shrivelled with embarrassment at his use of that particular word. His sardonic response annihilated her where she stood.

Stepping painfully off one foot onto the other, striving to spread the agony of her complaining toes, Glory stooped. In a harried movement she snatched up her coat and dived back into its concealing folds. Once again she had made a total fool of herself, she reflected in choked mortification. Scorching tears lashed the backs of her eyes so hard she had to widen them and focus on a point over his shoulder to keep them from falling.

‘No, of course I am not talking to you,’ Rafaello breathed with chilling cool to the excusably confused and unfortunate person he had been speaking to on the phone when she first entered and whose invisible listening presence he had briefly forgotten. ‘I have a visitor. I’ll call you back.’

While he spoke Glory watched him. A powerful feeling of torment and tragedy was now assailing her already ragged nerves. Why had she torn off her raincoat in that utterly stupid way? She had been terrified that she would lose her nerve at the last moment. She had hoped to strike an impression of being cool, even rather amused and scornful, but fully in control of events. She had failed: he thought she looked ridiculous. But there he was, the very image of enviable cool and sophistication in a superbly tailored dark suit that was probably the ultimate in Italian style.

Rafaello cast aside the receiver. Dark, deep-set eyes hooded, he scanned Glory as she hugged her coat as if it was the only thing standing between her and total nudity. ‘I’m waiting for an explanation.’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Glory asked jaggedly, her throat closing over, her wide, over-bright eyes staring a hole into the middle distance. She had looked enough at him. That bold masculine face in profile, the shadow his lush black lashes cast on one high cheekbone, the arrogant nose, the wide, sexy mouth. Even half a view of him made her heart race and set butterflies dancing in her tummy.

‘OK…’ Rafaello drawled in the silken tone of a male taking up a challenge without hesitation. ‘Yesterday you raced back to my office and fell into my arms—’

‘I did not fall into your arms, I was grabbed—’ Glory squeezed out between gritted teeth.

Rafaello ignored that contradiction. ‘If I hadn’t called time I do believe we would’ve had sex in the lift—’

‘Speak for yourself!’ Glory launched at him in strong chagrin. ‘I don’t behave like that—’

‘Don’t you?’ Rafaello vented a derisive laugh. ‘When you burst in here I thought some maniac had decided to treat me to a strippergram!’

‘A…what?’ Glory gasped in dismay.

‘Dressed like that you look like a cheap little scrubber.’ Rafaello skimmed her a brooding scrutiny and his hard sensual mouth twisted. ‘Not my style; a definite turn-off.’

Veiling her stricken gaze, Glory dropped her head and gulped in sustaining air like a drowning swimmer. Hurt and humiliated by that blunt assessment, she had to bite back the impulsive words rising to her lips. She could not afford to antagonise Rafaello when her brother’s whole future rested in his hands. A taut silence stretched while she fought an almost overwhelming urge to tell him what he could do with his uninvited opinions. So she had got the outfit wrong. But then, what had he expected? Some classy designer number? Never had the gap between her world and his seemed as great as it did at that moment.

‘Since you’re lousy at getting to the point, isn’t it fortunate that I can work out exactly what you’re doing here?’ Rafaello remarked drily.

Prompted, Glory glanced up, her lovely face tense with strain. Brilliant dark eyes slammed into hers and she trembled, her mouth running dry. ‘I’m certain that Sam didn’t steal that snuff box, but I know things don’t look good for him and that it’ll be very hard to prove that he’s innocent. You did say that if you got the box back you might consider not pressing charges—’

‘Only I was talking about it being returned voluntarily,’ Rafaello contradicted with chilling cool. ‘Not found during a police search.’

Glory had not really had any hope that he would not make that distinction but she had felt that she ought to try out that angle. ‘All right…’ she breathed unevenly. ‘So if you can still get the charges dropped, well…I’ll do whatever you want.’

Rafaello strolled soundlessly over to the windows before swinging back round to look at her again, his lean, strong face intent. ‘I can have the theft charge withdrawn but how do I know that you’ll respect your side of the agreement?’

At the news that the charge of theft could still be withdrawn, a little colour eased back into Glory’s complexion. But she was strung so high with tension that even her knees had begun to wobble. ‘Whatever you think of me, I’m not a cheat or a liar.’

Rafaello scanned her with unreadable dark eyes. ‘My father certainly had no grounds for complaint after the bargain he struck with you. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it has been five years since you set foot on Grazzini land. You can’t have seen much of your father and your brother since then.’

Was that actually a hint of censure that she was hearing? Sam and Glory talked on the phone most weeks. For the first couple of years she had lived in Gloucester with her father’s sister and she had often seen her family. But when her aunt passed away, Glory had had to move further north to find employment, and inevitably the frequency of their meetings had declined. No longer could Glory feel that she was as close to her younger brother as she had once been. Acknowledging that truth, she felt hugely bitter at the damage that Benito Grazzini had cruelly inflicted on her small family circle.