One Night In…

The tense shape of his top lip twisted. ‘Is this bumped into an English euphemism for recklessly planned to meet with him in broad daylight on a busy street?’

Refusing to take him up on his cold sarcasm, she replied, ‘No, it means bumped into by accident.’

‘And, having spent the afternoon in his company,’ Rafaelle said coldly, ‘how would you prefer to describe that to me?’

Rachel frowned. ‘But I didn’t spend the afternoon with him.’

Shifting out of his taut stance, he walked forward, a long-fingered hand sliding into his inner jacket pocket, then smoothly out again. He halted by the bed, placed a photograph down on it.

Rachel glanced at it briefly. So someone had seen them together. She looked back at him. ‘If you want to say something, Raffaelle,’ she challenged. ‘Then just come out and say it.’

‘You drank coffee with him.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded.

‘You then moved on to his apartment situated above the café.’

‘You have photographic evidence of that too?’

He sliced the air with a hand. ‘It stands to reason.’

‘Does it?’

‘Si—!'he bit out.

Suddenly all the rage he had been holding in all evening burst to the fore. He took a step towards her. Rachel took a step back. The raking flick of contempt in his eyes as she did so tensed up her trembling spine.

‘You can give me a better explanation as to where you did spend the rest of the afternoon before you returned here?’ he demanded.

Refusing to let his anger intimidate her, ‘Can you explain where you spent your afternoon?’ she hit back.

‘Scuzi—?’ He had the gall to look shocked!

‘And then you could go on to explain how you had the rank bad taste to bring your afternoon friend into my company at dinner tonight!’

‘Francesca is—’

‘An ex-lover of yours, I know.’ She said it for him. ‘With darling Daniella around, I do tend to find these things out.’

His angry face hardened. ‘We were discussing what you did with your afternoon, not what I did with mine.’

‘Well, let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that we both did the same thing!’ she threw back. ‘As least you were saved the embarrassment of watching me fawn all over Alonso at dinner, whereas I did not warrant that much respect!’

His wide shoulders clenched inside expensive suiting. ‘I did nothing with Francesca this afternoon but spend the time negotiating the price for that photograph! She owns the damn newspaper that bought it!’

‘So she deals with the dreaded paparazzi?’ Rachel’s blue eyes lit up with bitter scorn. ‘What lovely loyal people you and I surround ourselves with. Maybe we should introduce her to my brother and between them they could happily make a mockery out of both of us in two countries at the same time!’

‘None of which explains what you did with your ex-lover,’ he grated.

Her stomach was still churning and her heart was beating much too fast. ‘I drank coffee with him, then I walked away. End of subject,’ she said and turned back to the bathroom.

‘It is the end of nothing.’ His roughened voice raked over her as he grabbed her shoulder to spin her back round again, his face hard like granite. ‘I want to know the truth!’ he bit out.

Dizzy and nauseous, maybe she was not going to need to do any test, Rachel thought shakily. ‘I’ve just given you the truth.’

‘And your coffee took four hours to consume?’

Rachel made herself look up at him. ‘Your negotiations for the photograph took just as long?’ she challenged him right back. ‘Or was your time spent on a certain kind of negotiation?’

He went white, stiffened and let go of her. ‘You will not sink me down to your level, Rachel.’

‘My level?’ She stared at him.

‘Your propensity to lie, then, without blinking an eye.’

Well, her eyes certainly blinked now and she took an unsteady step backwards. ‘I have never lied to you, Raffaelle,’ she breathed out unevenly. ‘No—think about that,’ she insisted when he parted his hard lips to speak. ‘We have a relationship built on lies, yes,’ she acknowledged. ‘But I have never lied to you!’

The way his top lip curled really shook her. This, the whole thing they had going between them, suddenly showed itself up for what it really was—a relationship built on sex and disrespect, which had never stood a chance of being anything more than the tacky way it felt to her right now.

‘Scoff at me all you want,’ she invited. ‘But while you’re doing it remember that three months ago you wanted my sister. This month you decided that you might as well have me. Next month you will probably put Francesca back into your bed. The way you are going through them, Raffaelle, there won’t be a woman left in Europe you will be able to look at without experiencing déjà-vu!’

Rachel spun away then, needing to head fast for the bathroom. But she didn’t make it that far. The room began to swim and she pushed a hand up to her head, swaying like a drunk on her spindly heels.

‘What—?’ she heard him rasp in a mad mix of concern and anger.

‘I don’t—f-feel well,’ she whispered, before everything started to blacken around the edges and his thick curses accompanied his strong arms which caught her as she started to sink to the ground.

Her own piece of déjà-vu followed, as she opened her eyes to find herself lying on the bed with him looming over her. The same look was there, the same closed expression.

A flickering clash of their eyes and she knew what he was thinking.

‘It might not be,’ she whispered across the hand she pressed against her lips.

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again—tight. Then he straightened up and she knew he was drawing himself in ready to deal with the worst.

‘I will call a doctor—’

The fatalist at work again, she recognised. ‘No,’ she shook out and, when he paused as he was turning away from her, Rachel heaved out a sigh and slowly sat up. ‘Y-you don’t need to call a doctor,’ she explained. ‘I h-have something …’ She waved a hand towards the bedside drawer.

Without saying a word, he walked over to the drawer and opened it. Long fingers withdrew the paper bag containing the only purchase she had made that afternoon.

Such a small purchase for something so important, Rachel thought bleakly as he withdrew what was inside the bag, then just stood looking down at it.

The mood was different now, still tense but thick and heavy. She looked at his profile and saw that the drawbridge had been brought down on his anger and what he was thinking.

‘When did you buy this?’

‘Today,’ she answered. ‘Th-this afternoon.’

‘I thought we agreed that you would not risk making intimate purchases like this,’ he said with super-controlled cool.

A strained little laugh left her throat. ‘There was no one I could trust enough to get them to do it for me and I … needed to know.’

‘Did you?’

The odd way he said that brought her head up. ‘Of course— don’t you want to know?’

He did not answer. There was something very peculiar about the way he was standing there, tense and grim.

‘If you’re concerned that I’ve given the paparazzi something else about us to feed on, then I was careful,’ she assured him. ‘In fact,’ she said, sliding her feet to the floor, ‘you wanted to know what I did with my afternoon. Well, wandering round the shops trying to fool any followers into leaving me alone before I dared to buy the test was it.’

He said nothing. Rachel wished she knew what was going on in his head. Hurt was beginning to prick at her nerve endings. Didn’t he think this situation was difficult enough without him standing there resembling a block of stone? Was he scared in case they discovered she was pregnant and that sense of honour he liked to believe he possessed would require him to marry her when he didn’t want to?

Standing up, she went to take the package from him. ‘I’ll go and find out if it’s—’

His fingers closed around it. ‘No,’ he said gruffly.

Rachel just stared at his hard profile.

‘We—need to talk first,’ he added.

‘Talk about what?’ she said curtly. ‘If I am pregnant we will deal with it like grown-ups. If I’m not pregnant, then I go home.’

‘What do you mean, we deal with it like grown-ups?’ At last he swung round to look at her. His face was pale and taut.

Rachel sighed. ‘If I am pregnant I’m not marrying you, Raffaelle,’ she informed him wearily.

‘Why not—?’

Why not—? If she dared to do it without risking setting her queasy stomach off again—Rachel would have laughed. ‘Because you don’t want to marry me?’ she threw at him. ‘Because I can take care of myself and a child! And because I refuse to tie myself to a man who just loves to believe the worst of me!’ She heaved in a breath. ‘Do you want more—?’

‘Yes,’ he gritted.

She blinked, not expecting that response.

‘Okay.’ She folded her arms across her shaking body and looked at him coldly. ‘You don’t trust me. You think I am a liar and a cheat. I give you perhaps a couple of months held in marital captivity before you start questioning if the baby could be some other man’s.’

‘I am not that twisted!’ he defended that last accusation.

She put in a shrug. ‘Trapped by a child on purpose, then.’

‘We’ve been through that. I don’t think that!’

‘You’ve got your old lover already lined up ready to take my place.’

‘Francesca was not lined up for anything other than to get that photograph,’ he sighed out.

‘Well, guess what?’ Rachel said. ‘I don’t believe you.’

Now that was a twist in the proceedings, she saw, as he stared at her down the length of his arrogant nose. She made a grab at the package.

This time he let go of it.

On a shivering breath she turned and walked into the bathroom, then closed and locked the door.

By the time she came out again, she was stunned, shaken, totally hollowed out from the inside.

Raffaelle was standing by the window, his body tense inside his well-cut jacket. When he heard the door open he spun round, then went perfectly still.

‘Well—?’ he said harshly.

Rachel pressed her pale lips together and gave a shake of her head.

Tension sizzled. ‘Is that a no, as in you are not pregnant?’ he demanded.

Hands ice-cold and trembling where she clutched them together in front of her, Rachel nodded.

He moved—one of those short, sharp jerks of the body. ‘You have to be pregnant,’ she thought she heard him mutter beneath his breath. ‘Why did you feel sick—why the fainting?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘W-women’s stuff,’ she mumbled dully. ‘It—it’s like that sometimes.’ She added a shrug. ‘The real thing should h-happen any day now …’

Silence fell, one of those horrible awkward, don’t-know-what-to-say-next kind of silences that grabbed at the air and choked it to death.

Rachel couldn’t stand it. She was in shock. She wasn’t really functioning properly on any level. She’d been so sure that the answer to the test would come out positive, and if she did not find herself something practical to do she knew she was going to embarrass both of them by bursting out crying with sheer disappointment!

With no control at all over her trembling legs, she walked like a drunk towards the dressing room. ‘I’ll pack,’ she whispered.

‘What the hell for—?’ he raked out.

‘Time to call it quits, I think.’ She even added a flicker of a wobbly smile.

‘No,’ he ground out roughly. ‘I—don’t want you to go.’

White as a sheet, Rachel shook her head. ‘It might as well be now than next week—next month—’

‘No,’ he repeated.

‘But there’s no reason left for me to stay now!’

His wide shoulders squared. ‘Am I not a good enough reason?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Have our weeks together meant so little to you that you could just decide to leave me like this—?’

Stunned by the harsh husky agony in his tone, Rachel was further shocked to see how pale he looked.

Tears burst to life. ‘Raffaelle …’ she murmured pleadingly. ‘You know we only—’

‘No,’ he cut in on her yet again. ‘Don’t say my name like that—don’t look at me like that.’

‘But there is no baby!’ She had to say it—had to!

‘To hell with babies,’ he bit out fiercely. ‘We can make babies any time! This is about you and me and what we want. And I want you to stay!’

Was he saying what she thought he was saying? She just stared at him, not daring to trust what her ears were telling her. ‘Francesca—’

‘Forget about Francesca,’ he said impatiently. ‘I am blind to Francesca. I am blind to any woman who is not you.’

She took a wary step towards him. ‘Are you saying that you want me to stay even without a baby—?’

He threw out an angry hand. ‘Why do you need me to keep on saying it?’ he thrust out. ‘I want you to stay … because I want you to stay!’

‘H-how long?’

‘Dio, woman,’ he breathed savagely. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ His silver-green eyes gave an aggressive flash. ‘For ever, okay? I want it all: the love, the ring, the marriage— the whole damn crazy package!’

‘Then why are you so angry about it?’ she cried out.

He squared his wide shoulders. Pale and tense, ‘It would not hurt you, Rachel, to give me some small encouragement to feel happy about loving you,’ he pushed out.

Then he turned his back to her and grabbed his nape with long angry fingers. Rachel hovered, wanting to go to him but still too scared to move.

Then, why are you scared? she asked herself. He had just said he loved her and she was standing here giving him every impression that she—

She closed the gap between them, running her arms around his waist and pressing herself in close to his rigid back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But I’ve loved you so much and for so long when I knew I didn’t have the right to feel like this!’

A sound ripped from his throat and he spun in her arms. His eyes were like twin black diamonds, still angry, possessive—real.

‘No—w-wait, I need to say this—’ she shivered out when she saw what was coming. ‘I knew that I had no right to fall in love with you after the way I had hit on you without giving a thought to the trouble I was going to cause! Then w-we thought we had made a baby so I used it as an excuse to stay and—’

‘We used it.’

‘But it just wasn’t fair of me to load you down with my foolish feelings when—No!’ she protested. ‘I’ve not—’

Finished …

What a waste of breath, Rachel thought as she fell into the kind of kiss that made words redundant.

By the time he lifted his head again, streaks of desire were burning into his cheekbones. ‘Any reason why we cannot continue this … discussion in bed?’ he said huskily.

What discussion? Rachel thought dryly as she wound her arms around his neck. ‘You want to … talk?’ she asked innocently.

His mouth twitched. ‘No.’

‘You perhaps want to say something about the way you unleashed your charms on another woman tonight?’

He tensed. ‘You want me to apologise—’

‘I want you to pay,’ Rachel told him. ‘At least you were saved from watching me act like that with Alonso.’

‘But I did see.’ He grimaced. ‘I watched the handsome bastard leap out of his car and take you in his arms. I watched him kiss you as if he had every right to do it, and I saw the adoring expression on your face as you looked up at him!’

‘It wasn’t adoring, it was shock!’ Rachel protested.

‘You let him kiss you.’

‘Italians are always kissing each other.’ She dismissed that accusation.

‘You let him drive you away in his flashy red car.’

‘It was either that or get caught in the street by a snooping reporter.’ Then she frowned. ‘Where were you when this was happening?’

His sigh was rueful. ‘Making a fool of myself over lunch with five important business associates, by just getting up and walking away,’ he confessed. ‘Then I got the call from Francesca and my day just continued downhill from there.’ He ran his fingers through her hair, his eyes hooded. ‘When you walked out of the restaurant I thought you were going to go to him.’

Rachel stared at him in blank disbelief. ‘Since when have you been so short on ego to think such a thing?’

‘Since I met you,’ he said. ‘You have a unique way of eating away at my ego.’

‘That’s such a lie,’ she denounced. ‘You’ve done nothing but bully me and want sex from me since we met!’

‘You hit on me, but not because you wanted me. And you taunted me with other lovers.’ He shrugged.

‘I’ve had one lover before you,’ she reminded him. ‘My one lined up against your many who have trailed themselves past me seems a pretty pathetic comparison to me.’

He touched his tongue to the corner of her sulky mouth. ‘I love you,’ he murmured. ‘Can we forget the others?’

Rachel sighed out a groan because he was right and harking on about old lovers had nothing to do with what they had here. ‘Just take me to bed and love me, Raffaelle,’ she begged.

He did not need asking twice. Their clothes fell away like rags for jumble. He pulled her against him, lips almost bruising in their intensity, his hands sliding possessively along her slender curves until he found the indentation of her waist, where he gripped and lifted her off the ground.

For a few clamouring seconds when her legs wrapped round him she thought he was going to do it standing right there with no preliminaries. Their mouths were straining and he was on fire, pumped up and ready for her. And she was pretty well much the same.

Then he turned and toppled them on to the duvet. What followed was the kind of fierce, fevered loving that staked absolute possession and claim. He gave her all of him and she took it greedily and gave back the same.

Afterwards they lay spread across the mattress, Rachel nothing more than a slender, soft, boneless creature lying beneath him, still lost in a wonderful, sensual world.

‘In all my life,’ Rafaelle murmured as he gently kissed her back down to earth again, ‘I have never known the power of what you can do to me.’

So, gravely serious, opening her eyes, Rachel smiled at him. ‘Hit on, trapped, taken over,’ she said approvingly.

His eyes began to glint. ‘Now you are asking for trouble,’ he warned and climbed over her to land lightly on his feet by the bed.

‘I didn’t mean it—!’ she cried out, sitting up jerkily.

He’d moved to the dressing table; now he was back by the bed. Stretching out beside her, he took hold of her left hand.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said, staring as the fake ring was removed from her finger.

The real one glittered and flashed as he slid it on to her finger. They lay there beside each other while he held up her hand. ‘Hit on, trapped and marked as mine for ever,’ he said turning her own words back on her with some very satisfied-sounding additions.

Then the fake ring spun in the air as he tossed it carelessly away.

‘Did I tell you I love you?’ Rachel said softly.

He rose above her, eyes dark and slumberous in his golden face. ‘Tell me again,’ he commanded.

‘Love you,’ she obliged and sealed it this time with a warm clinging kiss.

‘And you will be my wife?’

Warm, dark, golden, gorgeous—she placed a finger on the thoroughly kissed fullness of his lower lip, loving the very possessive sound of my wife.

‘Tomorrow.’ She nodded gravely.

‘Even though you get Daniella as a stepsister-in-law?’

‘You get worse from me,’ Rachel said. ‘You get a fully paid-up member of the paparazzi as your brother-in-law.’

‘Stung again—’ he sighed ‘—you are going to have to work very hard to make it worth my while.’

The kiss she laid on his mouth worked very hard to make it worth his while.

‘By the way,’ she murmured a long time later, flickering innocent blue eyes up to look at him, ‘you forgot to use any protection …’

The Italian’s Chosen Wife

About the Author

KATE HEWITT discovered her first Mills & Boon® romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since.

She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long—fortunately, they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.

She has written plays, short stories, and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling, and learning to knit.

After marrying the man of her dreams—her older brother’s childhood friend—she lived in England for six years and now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children, and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Kate loves to hear from readers—you can contact her through her website, www.kate-hewitt.com.

To Cliff,

For believing in me and showing

it in so many ways.

—K

PROLOGUE

‘I WISH that was on the menu.’

Alessandro di Agnio’s lips thinned in distaste at his companion’s expression. He leaned back in his chair, his cool gaze flicking over the waitress chatting in Italian at the nearby table. Her hand rested on her hip, and he could hear the warm gurgle of her laughter from where he sat. There was, he noticed, a tomato sauce stain on her blouse. Her hair was falling from its pins, and she ran a careless hand through it.

His eyes narrowed. ‘I believe we’re here for the food.’

Next to him, his potential client Richard Harrison chuckled. ‘Relax, di Agnio. It’s just an expression.’

Alessandro smiled, his expression now calm, urbane, in place. He took a sip of iced water. ‘She’s quite pretty, in her own way. Now, to the business at hand…?’ He raised his eyebrows, still smiling, although his eyes were cold and the expression on his face was at best remote.

Richard leaned back in his chair, his own expression that of a mouse intent on teasing a cat. His lower lip stuck out in a boyish pout. ‘You know, I didn’t come all the way to Spoleto just to talk to you. I thought we were going to have some fun.’

‘Of course. You know what they say about all work and no play.’ Alessandro shrugged lightly, although his eyes were still hard.

‘Then how about a little play?’ Richard asked, his tone turning petulant. ‘I’ve heard so much about your playboy reputation. A few years ago there wasn’t a tabloid in this country without your picture splashed across its pages! Coming here, I was expecting a little something more than lunch at a second-rate trattoria.’

Alessandro smiled again, this time a mere stretching of his lips. He didn’t need to be reminded of tabloids. Yet he also knew how much Di Agnio Enterprises would benefit from Richard Harrison’s business.

‘I didn’t realise my reputation stretched so far,’ he said after a pause, his voice flat. ‘Of course you need only choose your pleasure. Dinner? Dancing?’

‘Her.’ Richard pointed to the waitress—still chatting, Alessandro noticed, and obviously not an industrious worker. He heard another peal of laughter, warm and inviting. She leaned forward, hair tumbling into her face, one hand swiping it away as she murmured provocatively. Everything about her told him she was relaxed, carefree, available. Easy.

He’d known women like that. Knew what they wanted, what they expected. Of him.

The customer she was talking to had to be seventy years old at least. And he was eating it up. Probably wanted to eat her up, as well.

‘Her?’ Alessandro repeated. Icy disbelief laced his words. ‘I don’t pick women like sweets in a shop.’ Not any more. He injected a faint, dry note of humour into his voice as he added, ‘I didn’t think my reputation was quite that notorious.’