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

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СКАЧАТЬ Rafaello conceded with an amount of regretful humility she would never have believed a male of his unquenchable assurance could display.

      ‘Yes, you should’ve,’ Glory agreed, but she was quick to snake her arms round him again lest he think she was withholding forgiveness.

      ‘I’m just amazed,’ Rafaello admitted, surveying her with frowning fascination. ‘You’ve been knee-deep in predatory men all these years and you didn’t succumb to one of them. Yet you’re not a cold woman.’

      ‘You’re more persuasive than the rest,’ Glory confided shyly.

      ‘Evidently …’ Rafaello rolled over and sat up. ‘You’ve just blown a great big hole in my image of you as calculating.’

      ‘I guess …’ Glory was now feeling so buoyant she was vaguely surprised that she wasn’t floating round the ceiling. Flipping onto her side, she surveyed him. Dear heaven, just looking at him made her feel dreamy and silly. She wanted to ease back into physical contact with him but was afraid of seeming too clingy. She wanted to hug him again. She wanted to tell him he was wonderful … she wanted to tell him she loved him. Odd how she had wanted to tell him that before she had even admitted it to herself, she acknowledged in a daze. It was pretty naff, her still being so keen on him after five years apart, she reflected ruefully. It didn’t say much for her ability to move on, did it? But then, it was not something she planned to share with him.

      ‘Although I confess to being very grateful that you were sufficiently calculating to accept that we were going to end up in bed sooner rather than later,’ Rafaello was saying while he toyed with a straying blonde strand of her wildly tousled mane of hair.

      Glory’s brow furrowed. She wondered if she had missed a line of explanation somewhere. ‘Sorry … what do you mean?’

      Rafaello released a rueful sigh and tugged at her hair as to reprove her for her evident lack of concentration. ‘When I realised that the only contraception I had was in another room I was very relieved to discover that you were better organised than I was, cara.’

      Glory was now very still and when her voice emerged it was rather strained. ‘Better organised?’

      ‘On my last stay here, this room was being decorated and I used the one next door,’ he explained.

      Glory remembered his opening the drawer in the bedside cabinet. Having only briefly wondered what he was looking for, she now felt unbelievably stupid. Rafaello had been reaching for protection.

      ‘A virgin who takes care of contraception in advance is a very sensible woman.’

      To Glory, that statement seemed to hang there in the air between them like a giant rock about to fall on her. Her opinion of her own common sense dive-bombed. ‘But … but I didn’t take care of contraception,’ she admitted in a very small voice.

      ‘Run that by me again,’ Rafaello breathed, abandoning all play with her hair, his Italian accent screaming at her the way it always did when he was very tense.

      ‘I’m not taking any precautions or using anything,’ Glory clarified shakily.

      Rafaello’s hard jawline clenched. Narrowed dark eyes scanned her anxious upturned face and an expression of incredulous fury slowly fired his gaze. In a sudden movement that made her flinch, he sprang out of the bed. ‘But I asked you if it was OK to make love to you!’

      A silence, fragile as a sheet of glass about to smash, stretched.

      Her heart sinking, Glory gulped. ‘When I said yes, I thought you meant that question literally … I didn’t know you were asking whether or not it might be s-safe,’ she stammered, ready to curl up and die as she realised how foolish she had been. ‘I didn’t think—’

      ‘You didn’t think. So you’re trying to say that it was only a simple misunderstanding?’ Rafaello ground out, glittering dark golden eyes smouldering with furious condemnation, his accent thick as molasses. ‘Do you honestly think I’ll believe anything that unlikely?’

      ‘What else could it have been but a misunderstanding?’ Glory was sincerely taken aback by his attitude.

      ‘How about a textbook case of entrapment?’ Rafaello shot at her with lethal contempt, his hard cheekbones prominent beneath his bronzed skin, accentuating his ferocious tension.

      ‘Entrapment?’ she repeated without comprehension.

      ‘I really fell for it, didn’t I?’ Rafaello raked at her fiercely. ‘And, knowing my luck where you’re concerned, you’ll probably fall pregnant—’

      ‘I hope not …’ It was a stricken whisper.

      Shattered by his suspicions, Glory was frozen to the bed. How could he think that she would deliberately run the risk of unprotected sex? How could he believe that she would welcome an unplanned pregnancy? The mere prospect of such a development terrified Glory. She had an instant vision of unwed motherhood combined with horrendous poverty. One or two of her schoolfriends had taken that route within a couple of years of leaving school and had lived to regret the choice.

      ‘Do you really? If I’ve knocked you up I’ll be keeping you and the kid for the next twenty years at least!’ Rafaello informed her in outraged conclusion. ‘That’s a bloody high price to pay for your precious virginity. I need a shower!’

      As he strode into the connecting bathroom and the door slammed shut Glory felt gutted. Her happiness had been so short-lived that it now seemed like an illusion she had dreamt up. How could he imagine that she would sink that low? Was there no end to his distrust? What sort of an idiot had she been to think that she could so easily change his opinion of her? And wasn’t she now getting exactly what she deserved for her foolishness?

      Nothing was ever going to change. He was very rich. She was poor. There was no equality and there never would be. Without the equality, maybe respect and trust could not exist, she reasoned wretchedly. She was Glory Little, the gardener’s daughter, the gypsy’s daughter, the factory worker. He was Rafaello Grazzini, an extremely successful businessman and famed for his entrepreneurial skills.

      He was hurting her again. How could she be letting him do that to her a second time? Didn’t she ever learn? She had agreed to be his mistress. He had said he only wanted sex. She had given him what he wanted. End of story. What on earth had she been doing, clinging to him? A textbook case of entrapment? Glory shuddered, nausea stirring in her sensitive stomach. As if she was some greedy, scheming little tramp he had picked up off a street corner!

      She threw herself off the bed and viewed the tangled bed-sheets with shamefaced discomfiture. Well, retribution had come even faster than she had warned. ‘If you don’t value yourself, no man will,’ her mother had once told her harshly. So what had she expected to achieve when she had sold herself? Choking tears of regret clogging her aching throat, Glory knew she needed to get a grip on herself before she risked facing Rafaello again. But her dress was nowhere to be seen. Just as she was wondering if her dress lay beneath the bedspread heaped on the carpet, she heard the shower switch off and panic filled her.

      As her case was still downstairs, she raced over to the sleek built-in units that covered one wall and yanked open a door. Seeing a row of shirts hanging, she trailed one off a hanger and dug her arms into it at frantic speed. Within ten seconds she was out of the bedroom and hurrying down the stairs. Catching a glimpse of Rafaello’s manservant clearing a table СКАЧАТЬ