Kate Hewitt - One Night in... Milan

She turned. He was still by the door and watching her. Not one small gram of anger had softened from his face. Her skin gave a fizz of alarm-cum-excitement because, even in anger, the way he was looking at her was stripping her bare to her quivering skin.

‘Why—?’ she breathed.

‘You wanted my co-operation and you have had it,’ he answered. ‘Now I want what I want, and you, Miss Carmichael, are about to pay your dues.’

He started closing the gap between them.

‘No.’ Rachel shook her head and began backing away. ‘I won’t let you do this.’

‘Oh come on, mi amore,’ he taunted coldly. ‘We are betrothed to be married. You wear my ring on your finger and my impeccably mannered family is going to try not to be shocked that my bride is wearing farmers’ boots to her wedding and straw to decorate her hair.’

‘Very funny,’ she muttered, looking about her for an escape.

‘They will tread daintily between organic lettuce and—’

‘Will you just stop this!’ His words might taunt but the rest was now getting scary. ‘Look,’ she said quickly. ‘I know you are angry—and I know that you have every right to be.’

‘Grazie.’

‘Oh, God,’ she choked as his hands closed around her waist and the shock of feeling them there again lit up her skin. ‘I’m sorry about everything, okay?’

His dark head began to lower. Rachel tried to arch away.

‘Your heart is racing.’

‘Because you’re frightening me!’

‘Or exciting you.’

No, frightening— -frightening me! Rachel repeated—though only inside her head where a strange tumbling darkness was gathering, closing around her like a cold mist that began to take her legs from beneath her and brought forth a string of soft tight curses as she began to go limp.

SHE came around to find she was lying on the bed and her head was pounding. Someone moved close by and she flicked open her eyes as Raffaelle Villani came to lean over her.

With a startled jerk she tried to get up but he pushed her back down again.

‘Be calm,’ he said grimly. ‘I do not ravish helpless females.’

Well, forgive me for not believing you, she wanted to say but, ‘W-what happened to me?’ she whispered instead.

‘You—fainted.’ His mouth tightened as he said that and his eyes were hooded; in fact his whole face was hidden behind a tightly controlled mask that did not make Rachel feel any safer. ‘You are also very cold.’

It was only as a soft cashmere throw landed across her that she realised she was shivering.

‘I should not have taken you outside to meet the press wearing only that dress.’

The press. It all came flooding back like a recurring nightmare and she closed her eyes again. ‘I can’t believe you actually did that,’ she whispered unsteadily.

Straightening up, ‘Mi dispiace,’ he offered stiffly. ‘I have no excuse for frightening you as badly as I did.’

‘I wasn’t talking about you playing the sex maniac!’ She sat up and this time he did not stop her. ‘I meant what you just did down there in front of all those reporters.’ She grabbed her dizzy forehead and stared up at him. ‘Have you no idea what it is you’ve done?’

‘I did what I had to do,’ he stated coldly.

‘Great,’ she choked. ‘You did what you had to do and managed to escalate this whole thing right out of control!’

‘It was out of control long before I became involved. You said as much yourself.’

So she had. ‘Well, we are now stuck with a fake betrothal, complete with a fake ring and all the other fake stuff that is going to come with it.’

‘But your sister’s marriage will be safe, which, of course, makes the subterfuge, sacrifice and lies worth it?’

The sarcasm was still alive if the frightening anger had lessened, Rachel heard, and went to get up.

‘Stay there,’ he commanded, turning to stride towards the door. ‘Give yourself chance to—warm up a little and—recover.’

Recover for what? Rachel wondered half hysterically. She was never going to recover from this awful night for as long as she lived!

Ignoring his command, she moved to sit on the edge of the bed, then sat trying to calm the sickly swimming sensation still taking place in her head.

‘I have to find a way to get out of here undetected so I can go home,’ she mumbled, more to herself than to him.

Still, he heard it and paused at the door. ‘Where is home when you are in London?’

Usually with Elise but, ‘With Mark, right now,’ she replied, then squinted a look at her watch. ‘He will be worrying where I am.’

‘Not so I noticed, cara,’ he drawled cynically. ‘Not that it matters,’ he then dismissed, ‘because from now on you will be living right here with me.’

‘I will not!’ she gasped out.

He had the door open now. ‘If my freedom to choose what I do with my life has been curtailed, then so has yours,’ he declared. ‘So, until we find a way out of this situation which does not involve my loss of face, you and I, Miss Carmichael, will in effect be stuck to each other with glue. So lie down again and get used to it.’

With that he walked out, leaving Rachel gaping at the empty space he’d last filled with his cold anger, which was just as bad as the hot anger from before!

‘But that’s just stupid—!’ she fired after him. ‘Betrothed people don’t have to live together!’

If he heard her he did not come back to argue and, after a second, Rachel slumped her shoulders where she sat, wondering dully if he didn’t have a point. Now the press wagon was rolling, nothing was going to stop it in the near future without someone—or all of them—losing face.

She closed her eyes, wishing her head would just stop spinning now so she could think.

She needed to ring Mark. The whole story had gone bottom upwards and she needed to warn him then get his take on what she should do next.

Ignoring the swimming room, she got up then just stood looking down at her feet. Her shoes had disappeared. Tugging the throw around her chilled shoulders, she began searching for them but they weren’t anywhere to be found.

He must have taken them with him. To stop her from making a bid for freedom? He had to be crazy if he thought her mad enough to run out there where the paparazzi waited—with or without her shoes!

She did find a bathroom, though, which she was sincerely glad about, since she had not been near one for hours and hours. It smelled of Raffaelle Villani: clean and tangy, with a hint of spice.

Nice, she thought as she washed her hands in the basin. The kind of expensive scents you expected to surround a super-elite male. Then she supposed she must also smell super-elite right now, bearing in mind that her body had been pampered by a whole range of expensive products Elise had provided along with the expensive hairstyle and dress.

She caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror then and was actually taken aback because she hardly recognised herself—that sleek blonde thing with dead straight hair and heavy make-up.

Well, she thought grimly as she viewed the thick licks of mascara that lengthened her eyelashes and made her eyes look bluer than they really were, everyone just loved to tell her that she had the potential to look almost as good as Elise if she’d only take time with her appearance. Now it seemed they’d achieved their dearest wish, only—

She was not and had never wanted to be Elise, had she? And that person she could see in the mirror was just someone pretending to be something she was not.

The fraud, in other words—the fake.