LYNNE GRAHAM - Millionaires - Rafaello's Mistress / Damiano's Return / Contract Baby

Catching sight of the transfer design above her ankle, she wrinkled her nose and went into the imposing en suite with its marble-set sinks. Stripping off her tights, she ran some water and tried to wash off the fake tattoo. The transfer was more resistant than she had expected. As she frowned down at her leg it occurred to her that she should be more worried by her own behaviour than about how she looked to him .

Here she was, selling herself like a commodity for Sam’s sake. Well, not entirely for Sam’s sake, Glory adjusted guiltily. There was this dreadful enemy part of her which wanted Rafaello Grazzini any way she could get him. She was deeply ashamed of that truth but too essentially honest to deny it. He had driven her into an arrangement that was going to break her heart and smash her pride forever.

She was soft where feelings were concerned. She always had been. She got attached to people. She had never quite managed to detach herself from him. And why not? They had had six enchanted weeks together before everything went wrong, and during those weeks, he had treated her better than any man she had met before or since. She hadn’t had to fight for her life or deal with him getting into an all-male sulk at having his attentions refused. There had been a kind of teasing quality to his approaches, she recalled abstractedly. Only there had been nothing teasing about the manner in which Rafaello had arranged her on that desk downstairs …

Not knowing what was likely to happen next and hugely conscious that she did not want to experience intimacy for the first time on a desk in a very well-lit room, she had panicked. Really panicked, she conceded ruefully. Only true panic could possibly have snatched her from the intoxicating excitement of Rafaello’s mouth on hers. But it shocked her that after five years he could touch her again and make her want him like that. It scared her even more that, in her heart of hearts, she still could not credit that Rafaello would actually make her his mistress.

But why not? When Glory was sixteen, and she had first met Rafaello face-to-face, he had behaved more like a protective big brother. Still barefoot, she wandered back into the bedroom but her thoughts were miles away. Having a huge crush on Rafaello had not stopped Glory from wanting a boyfriend of her own because all her school friends had been dating by then. She had believed that nothing would ever come of her dreams about Rafaello Grazzini. After all, not only had she never even had the opportunity to speak to him, but she and Rafaello had also lived and moved in different worlds.

Unfortunately, Talitha Little had refused to allow her daughter to go out to bars or clubs or to start dating. Almost inevitably, in her last term at school Glory had rebelled and gone behind her mother’s back. Her best friend had set her up with one of her older brother’s mates and had invited her to stay over that night so that she could get dressed up and come home late. A whole crowd of them had gone to a local bar and Glory’s date, Tim, a smooth-talking twenty-five-year-old, had introduced her to alcohol.

‘Hey, look who’s here,’ her friend had whispered, nudging her in the ribs halfway through that evening. ‘Talk about slumming!’

Rafaello had been standing by the bar with a couple of other young men, their designer casuals marking them out as more than a cut above the majority of the clientele. Glory had not been able to take her eyes from him, for she had never seen him that close before. Indeed, most of her sightings of Rafaello had been when he drove past her in his sports car while she was walking home after getting off the school bus. Although he had been known to offer other people lifts on wet days, he had never once offered her one.

Even though she had been staring a hole in him, it had been a shock when Rafaello looked directly at her for the first time. She remembered going all red in the face but not being able to drag her gaze from the magnetic spell of his lustrous dark eyes.

‘I think you’re in with a chance there all right,’ her irrepressible friend had hissed. ‘It’s a shame you’re stuck with Tim.’

But Tim had gone to play darts at the other end of the crowded bar and Glory, emboldened by the unfamiliar effects of alcohol on her system, sat there with her entire attention shamelessly focused on Rafaello, flirting like mad with her eyes. She saw his companions noticing her and commenting and thrilled in her naïvety to the belief that if she was being discussed the commentary could only be an appreciative one. In that over-excited state, it was really not that big a surprise when, on her passage back from the cloakroom, Rafaello intercepted her.

‘Would you like to go for a drive in my Porsche?’ he murmured huskily.

Thrilled to death by that invitation, it could not be said that she played hard to get. ‘When?’

‘Now. Just follow me outside.’

And, just like that, she did. She had a little difficulty walking in a straight line across the car park.

‘Not the most loyal of girlfriends, are you?’ Rafaello remarked.

‘I only met him tonight,’ Glory hastened to inform him. ‘You recognised me, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, yes … you’re not easily missed.’

He unlocked the Porsche and settled her inside first with the kind of well-bred good manners that thrilled her. And while she was sitting there frantically trying to think of something witty to say, he drove her home .

‘What … why are you bringing me back here?’ Glory demanded, aghast at the sight of her parental home. ‘I’m supposed to be staying at my friend’s house tonight. I can’t go home dressed like this, not when I’ve been drinking either … I thought you were taking me for a drive!’

‘I just did—’

‘No, but I thought—’

‘You’re not capable of thinking anything right now. Your date was deliberately getting you drunk. You shouldn’t be drinking under age, particularly when you’re not mature enough for adult company—’

‘What are you talking about?’ Glory screeched at him in anguish.

‘You just walked out of that bar with me and got into my car. Don’t you realise how dangerous it is for a woman to behave like that? You don’t have the wit of a newborn baby. The safest place for you is home—’

‘My mother will kill me!’ she launched at him in complete panic.

‘I’ll have a word with her.’ Thrusting open the driver’s door, Rafaello cut short the dialogue.

Glory burst into floods of tears. He extracted her from his passenger seat only with difficulty. ‘I just couldn’t stand by watching that slimeball filling you up with booze,’ he breathed impatiently. ‘Surely you realise how he was planning to end the evening?’

‘You let me think that you —’

‘You’re out of bounds, Glory. You’re only sixteen.’

‘You were looking at me like you fancied me!’ she condemned tearfully.

‘Easiest way to get you out of there, and it wasn’t difficult … you’re a very beautiful girl—’

‘Do you think so?’ she asked him pathetically, and he laughed and her heart had gone crazy—but then her mother opened the front door.

Although Talitha Little had a hot temper, she had not said that much that night. The next morning over breakfast, while Glory was nursing a vicious hangover and being forced to explain herself, her mother had given her an odd little smile and had remarked that she was quite sure that Glory had learned her lesson well. Glory had spent the whole of that summer mulling over every word that Rafaello had said to her, and, appalled by the effect that alcohol had had on her usual caution, she had never touched it since then.

Emerging from those memories, Glory glanced at her watch and realised that she had already been upstairs for an hour. How could the same male who had protected her from her own juvenile stupidity be the same guy she was dealing with now? Was Benito Grazzini still with Rafaello? Glory crept out of the bedroom and crossed the landing to peer down into the hall. When the library door opened she backed away. She watched Rafaello and his father, a big barrel-chested man with silver hair, move to the front door together in silence. Benito Grazzini walked out and then abruptly turned to speak and to spread his hands in what looked curiously like an emotive appeal for understanding.