Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice
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СКАЧАТЬ statement and then freezing to logically consider the facts, not to mention her grandfather’s warning. A warning to which he had not paid the slightest heed, he acknowledged sickly, because he had discounted the older man’s view of his grandchild where it conflicted with his own convictions. To have his convictions suddenly proved utterly wrong when he least expected it wasn’t an experience that Raffaele had had very often in life and it absolutely knocked him sideways.

      ‘Yes, no big deal,’ Vivi dismissed hurriedly, scrambling off the sofa to gather up her clothing and pull it on at speed, while simultaneously attempting to shrug a careless shoulder.

      ‘It was a very big deal if you were still a virgin at your age,’ Raffaele contradicted without hesitation.

      ‘I was just never that into...er...sex,’ Vivi muttered in a quelling tone. ‘And don’t ask me why I’m different with you because I don’t know the answer to that.’

      ‘It’s called chemistry,’ Raffaele breathed, still struggling to get a handle on the sheer shock value of Vivi, with her diamond-studded navel and Perspex heels, being a complete innocent. ‘It affected my judgement as well.’

      Vivi shrugged again. ‘What’s done is done.’

      She sounded very young and very sure of that and Raffaele suppressed a groan, suddenly feeling very much older than his thirty years as he zipped his trousers. ‘It may not be because in the grip of that chemistry I made a rash decision. Assuming that you would be on birth control and because I had nothing conveniently available, I omitted to use contraception.’

      ‘But I’m not on birth control.’ She gasped and one hand flew up to her mouth to cover it in a show of anxiety. ‘And that means—’

      ‘That whatever happens, I’m with you every step of the way. When I make a mistake I own up and do what I can to rectify it,’ Raffaele delivered grimly as he pulled on his shirt.

      Vivi wasn’t enamoured of being labelled a mistake. ‘There’s nothing you can do to rectify this mistake.’

      Raffaele’s wide sensual mouth quirked. ‘There’s no point agonising right now over something we can’t change either. Thankfully we’re not frightened teenagers.’

      ‘Yes...er...that’s true,’ Vivi conceded grudgingly. ‘But I just can’t believe you took that risk with me.’

      ‘In the aftermath...’ Raffaele rested brilliant dark eyes on her flushed little face, against which her bright blue eyes were even more striking than usual ‘...neither can I. I chose to assume that it wouldn’t be a risk, which was irrational.’

      ‘Didn’t think you did irrational stuff,’ Vivi broke in helplessly.

      ‘Don’t mock,’ Raffaele urged. ‘It’s as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. Why are you putting your shoes on?’

      Vivi lifted her head, eyes widening. ‘To go home?’

      Raffaele frowned. ‘You’re not going home—you’re staying the night.’

      Her blue eyes opened very wide as she gazed rather blankly back at him from the sofa where she sat. ‘Zoe will be expecting me home.’

      ‘So, phone her,’ Raffaele advised, pushing his advantage where he saw it because their encounter had off-balanced her and he didn’t want her taking refuge again behind her usually aggressive façade.

      Put on the spot, Vivi hesitated and then she dug out her phone. Their intimacy on the sofa had seemed a touch too casual and juvenile to her taste while staying the night struck her as more adult and acceptable. She had slept with Raffaele di Mancini and shock waves were still racing through her at that awareness. She didn’t know how it had happened and that unnerved her but she didn’t want to decide it was a mistake either. Much better to accept it as just another one of life’s experiences, she told herself firmly. Why should she make a fuss or feel guilty about something as normal and everyday as sex?

      ‘I won’t be home until tomorrow,’ she told her sister. ‘I’ve had too much champagne...far too much champagne,’ she repeated, thinking about that with a brow that pleated because as a rule she didn’t drink.

      ‘You were drinking champagne with Mancini?’ Zoe exclaimed in disbelief.

      ‘It was lovely champagne,’ Vivi said ruefully before she rang off and glanced across at Raffaele, whose shirt was still hanging open on his broad bronzed chest, revealing the slabs of lean muscle roping his abdomen. ‘I don’t usually drink much. I think I was drunk.’

      ‘No, you weren’t!’ Raffaele contradicted with vigour. ‘I don’t have sex with drunken women. Stop looking for excuses. Just accept it for what it was.’

      But she didn’t know what it was, which was the real problem. It was not as though she had stayed a virgin for a specific reason. When she had been younger and less cynical she had, admittedly, dreamt of falling in love before she had sex for the first time, but even then she had been in no hurry after a foster parent had once tried to touch her inappropriately, an experience that had laid a seedy veil over any sexual thoughts for Vivi. Furthermore, she hadn’t fallen in love, and even though love had happened for her older sister, Winnie had had to walk a long stony road to finally find her happy ending.

      Vivi had stopped dreaming of love once she’d registered that loving a man often came with pain and disappointment. Indeed, loving meant being vulnerable and, if Vivi could help it, she never ever allowed herself to be as vulnerable as she had been as a child. Back then she had often been at the mercy of adults who insisted that they knew what was best for her even though they so obviously didn’t, because she would always end up in yet another unhappy living situation. Trusting anyone beyond her sisters was a challenge for her.

      ‘What was it, then?’ Vivi persisted.

      ‘Non importa...no matter,’ Raffaele overruled with determination as he bent and simply scooped her up off the sofa to carry her to the door, having decided that that particular conversation was only likely to lead them into even murkier waters.

      ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Vivi demanded.

      ‘Taking you upstairs to a shower and a proper bed,’ Raffaele confided.

      That programme sounded remarkably attractive to Vivi at that moment. She let him carry her upstairs, marvelling at the new intimacy between them. Of course that was the sex, she assumed. Some comfort that would be if she conceived a child, she reasoned worriedly. Winnie had had an unplanned pregnancy. As a result, Vivi was all too aware of the discomforts of pregnancy and the burden of a baby’s constant demands and she most definitely didn’t want to follow in her sister’s footsteps.

      But in assuming that sex had made Raffaele more demonstrative, Vivi could not have been more wrong. Vivi had just proven every one of Raffaele’s convictions about her to be mistaken and he was reeling from the discovery that he was not as infallible a judge of character as he had believed himself to be.

      It had finally dawned on him that Vivi could simply have been a receptionist at that agency and the ordinary, if beautiful, young woman she had purported to be, polished up to a deceptively exclusive level by his sister’s cast-off clothing. And if that was true, it meant he had misjudged her on every front. That was a bitter pill for him to swallow.

      ‘I still hate you, you know,’ СКАЧАТЬ