Sandra Marton - The Scandalous Orsinis

“Don’t get testy,” Falco said mildly. “Okay. So, what is the current situation?”

Rafe stared at his brothers. The thing was, he did know why he’d phoned them. Who else would he turn to when he was in a mess straight up to his eyeballs? And, damn it, yes, this thing was a mess.

He was married. Married, him, a man who’d never even contemplated marriage, who’d run like hell anytime a woman so much as breathed the word. He was married to a stranger from a world so unlike his it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so unbelievable.

That was item one in the “current situation.”

Item two was that even though he was going to end the marriage as quickly as he could pull it off, that hadn’t kept him from, item three, damned near making it with Chiara on his kitchen counter, which led, inexorably, to item four, that she was almost certainly a virgin and having sex with her would, oh damn, item five, make ending the marriage more complicated, never mind item six, that he’d introduced her as his wife and she wasn’t, well, she was, legally, and—

“Rafe?”

And what a disaster of a scene that had been. His housekeeper had all but burst into congratulatory song. Not Chiara. She’d turned bright pink.

“I am not your wife,” she’d said, “and if you think that—that assaulting me makes it so, you are wrong!”

Then she’d fled.

He’d thought about trying to explain things to his housekeeper—who’d gone from looking at him through misty eyes to regarding him as if he’d turned into a serial killer right in front of her—given that up and gone after Chiara instead, but she’d locked her door and when he’d tried to talk to her—

“Raffaele!”

Rafe’s head came up. “Why’d you call me that?” he said, glaring at Nick.

“Because it’s your name. Because you’re a thousand miles away. Because one of us is nuts and the odds are excellent I’m looking at him. What’s the brunette’s name?”

Mrs. Orsini , Rafe thought wildly, and choked back what began as an insane cackle.

“This is amusing?”

“No,” Rafe said quickly, “believe me, it isn’t.”

“So, what’s the lady’s name?”

“Chiara.”

Falco raised an eyebrow. “Very nice. Very sexy.”

“She isn’t.”

“Nice? Or very sexy?”

“She’s not like that, is what I’m saying. She’s, ah, she’s different.”

“They’re always different,” Falco said, “until they get to feeling comfortable.” He made interlocking damp rings on the beat-up tabletop with his beer mug. “I take it this one isn’t feeling comfortable yet.”

Comfortable? A muscle tightened in Rafe’s jaw. She was living in his apartment. Somehow he didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to admit anything. He wished to God he’d never started this conversation. In another few minutes his brothers would go from calling him nuts to figuring he needed to be committed.

“Okay,” Falco said, “I get it. You got involved on the rebound. Now you want out. You do, don’t you? Want out? I mean, that’s what this is all about?”

Rafe nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I don’t see the problem. Take the lady to dinner. You know, the it’s-been-great-but-it’s-over meal.”

“It isn’t like that. She wants out, too.”

Nick stared at him. “Well, then there isn’t any problem.”

“There is.” Rafe hesitated. “It’s… it’s complicated. I mean, we both want out. But—”

“But?”

“But, she’s, ah, she’s new to the city.”

“Buy her a guidebook,” Falco said coldly.

“And, ah, and I came on to her and that, ah, that kind of upset her.”

Falco and Nick grinned at each other. “So much for those smooth Orsini moves,” Nick said.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here. What I mean is… See, the lady in question is a little wary. Of men. Of sex. Of me.

And, uh, and now I’m wondering if I… if I—” He swallowed hard. “She won’t talk to me.”

This time nobody grinned. “She’s frigid?” Falco said, his eyebrows aiming for his hairline.

“No. Yes. I mean, maybe. I mean, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping her around very long.”

His brothers were looking at him strangely. He couldn’t blame them.

“Back to what Falco suggested,” Nick said. “Dinner. She won’t talk to you? No problem. Leave a message on her voice mail. Tell her to meet you somewhere for dinner. When she shows up, tell her things aren’t working. Give her a little gift, you know, not the little-blue-box-from-Tiffany’s kind of thing, but… What? Why are you shaking your head?”

“No phone. No voice mail.” Rafe cleared his throat. “She’s living in my apartment.”

The look of incredulity on his brothers’ faces said it all.

“She’s—”

“—living with you?”

“It’s temporary.”

“You sent the Valkyrie packing a couple of days ago and moved this Clara—”

“Chiara.”

“Clara, Chiara, whatever. You moved her in, what, five minutes later?”

Rafe gave one last thought to explaining, but how could he, when not even he could make sense out of everything he’d done? The only certainty was that he’d gotten himself into this mess and it was up to him to get himself out of it.

“Hey,” he said brightly, after a glance at his watch, “look at the time!”

“Rafe. Wait a minute—”

But he was already on his feet. “Great seeing you guys,” he said, and scrambled for the door.

Nick and Falco watched him go. Then they looked at each other.

“You got any idea what just happened?” Nick said.

Falco shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”

Nick nodded and signaled for another round of beer.

Rafe had taxied downtown.

His condo was on Fifth Avenue, in the midsixties. Any way you looked at it, it was a long walk home, but that was a good thing. Long walks usually helped clear his head.

Involving his brothers had not been a good idea. Not that he’d really involved them. He hadn’t told them much of anything, but what he had told them was not good.

Still, the confrontation, if you could call it that, had had one positive effect. It had made him face reality. He’d been dealing with this as if he were standing outside the problem, observing it. He wasn’t. What he was, he thought as he passed a group of suburban women in for some shopping and dressed more for a New Jersey mall than for the eclectic streets of Soho, what he was, was a man standing in a hole six feet deep, busy digging himself in deeper.

He’d married Chiara, yes, but given the same circumstances, he’d have done it again. What kind of man would turn his back on a desperate woman? And it wasn’t because of how she looked, those big violet eyes, that trembling mouth, or of how that mouth had felt under his, or of how she’d felt in his arms.

She’d needed help. He’d offered it. So, okay. The marrying part had been necessary.

What had been going on since then was not. The arguing. The accusations. What was the point? It was a done deal. And then, this morning… Proof of how crazy things had gotten. He couldn’t imagine why he’d tried to jump her bones.

To say she wasn’t his type was a laugh. She had a pretty face, yeah, but so did a million other women, and none of those million other women went around looking like little old ladies. None of them would ever look at him as if he were a mustachioed villain.

None of them was a wife he didn’t want. And none of them had hang-ups about sex.

Not that Chiara had seemed to have many of those this morning. That kiss. The way she’d clung to him. Moaned into his mouth. Arched her body against his, lifted herself to him…