Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ up on tiptoe. ‘Dio mio...you are tall!’

      ‘Six feet in these heels,’ Vivi agreed with a helpless grin. ‘My sisters are both small. I loved it when I outgrew them, because Winnie was older but I could talk back to her more effectively when I could look down at her.’

      ‘Always a fighter,’ Raffaele remarked with amusement.

      ‘You’d better believe it.’ Vivi could feel the blonde’s critical appraisal moving over her outfit and inwardly she cringed before lifting her chin with determined indifference.

      ‘I know the best places to shop in Florence. I could advise you on what to wear for special occasions,’ Elisa told her earnestly.

      Vivi smiled. ‘I don’t need advice in that line but thanks, all the same,’ she murmured with as much sincerity as she could fake.

      Raffaele walked her away. ‘That wasn’t very generous of you. Elisa can come across as patronising, but she is well-intentioned.’

      Resentment sent hot pink flying up into Vivi’s cheeks. She was beginning to realise that she was much more thin-skinned around Raffaele than she was around other people. A hint of criticism from him and her blood boiled. But she should’ve known he would recognise her insincerity, only she hadn’t expected him to chide her for it. ‘And who is Elisa?’

      ‘Our nearest neighbour. She has quite a sad history: she married her childhood sweetheart a few years ago and he died of leukaemia,’ Raffaele told her. ‘I think she’s quite lonely. She was part of a couple from her teens and missed out on making female friends. Young beautiful widows aren’t much in demand.’

      ‘How unfortunate,’ Vivi muttered, her face telegraphing her discomfiture as she resolved to make fewer snap judgements about the people she met. Suddenly she was very much aware that she had been willing to dislike another woman purely because she was attractive and appeared to know Raffaele well. Why was that? She was possessive of Raffaele, she acknowledged in dismay, as possessive as a dog guarding a bone.

       Either you want me...or you don’t.

      Her face burned, her sense of vulnerability tightening every nerve in her slim body because she wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake she had made before with Raffaele, contriving to get attached with very little encouragement and then left standing while he walked away. That demeaning image was stuck in her memory like a warning wake-up call. No, she didn’t want him and she wasn’t going to have anything more to do with him than she had to, she told herself angrily. She would act the wife in public if forced to do so but the play-acting would stop behind closed doors.

      * * *

      Raffaele studied his bride as she napped on his private jet. He stood up to drape a throw over her, wishing he had thought to mention the sleeping compartment where she would have been more comfortable. He needed to start thinking about such matters, he censured himself. Vivi was his wife, his responsibility, as was the child she carried. Bluish shadows were etched below her lowered lids and she looked pale. Of course, she always looked pale with that fair skin of hers but she was probably exhausted, and he hadn’t yet even got around to organising medical support for her in Florence. Sì, he would definitely have to step up his game in the caring stakes. Poised there, he resolved to spend more time looking after her than thinking about bedding her.

      Vivi woke sleepily when her shoulder was gently shaken and she blinked up at Raffaele and muttered drowsily, ‘How long have I been asleep?’

      ‘Since we took off. We’ve landed.’

      Vivi’s eyes widened and she stood up in haste, retrieving a shoe that had fallen off and smoothing down her rumpled clothing. ‘Where to next?’ she asked, trying not to sound weary of the journey when she had slept through most of it.

      ‘A helicopter will drop us at the palazzo in twenty minutes and then you can relax,’ Raffaele clarified smoothly.

      ‘What’s a palazzo?’ she enquired.

      ‘A large house. I was born at the Palazzo Mancini. It has always been my home,’ he explained, taking her elbow to escort her down the steps and off the plane as if she couldn’t be trusted to manage them safely on her own.

      ‘Grandad lives in a large house outside Athens,’ Vivi told him while thinking about the much humbler accommodation that had been hers from childhood until Stamboulas Fotakis had entered the sisters’ lives and tucked them into a very comfortable little town house he owned in London. ‘I have very little memory of my parents. I was very young when they died and Zoe was only a baby. Winnie remembers them, though.’

      ‘That’s tough,’ Raffaele conceded, engaged in working out the logistics of loading her into the helicopter in her high heels. Deciding simply to go for the obvious, he swung round to lift her bodily off her feet and settle her on board.

      Thoroughly flustered by the arrival of a man in her life who could actually lift her as if she were a lightweight, Vivi settled down in the nearest seat and did up her belt. She didn’t like the lurch as the craft took off and even less did she enjoy the flight as queasiness afflicted her empty stomach and Raffaele, like some sort of glorified Italian tour guide, endeavoured to point out famous landmarks to her when the last thing she wanted to do was be forced to look out of the windows at the sights.

      ‘It’s the palazzo...the best view of it you can have,’ Raffaele persisted with all the sensitivity of a torturer as she fought mind over matter not to throw up. ‘You’re not looking...why are you not looking?’

      ‘Because I’m feeling sick, you dummy!’ Vivi hissed at him fierily.

      His disconcertion almost comically palpable, he grabbed a receptacle for her and guilt assailed her because she didn’t know why she was blaming him for her physical condition when she herself was equally responsible. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, hanging on for grim death to the receptacle and praying that she did not have to use it in front of him.

      Mercifully, only a few minutes later, the helicopter settled back on solid earth again and she emerged from the craft with a sigh of relief but still feeling dizzy and sick.

      ‘You should’ve told me you weren’t feeling well.’ Raffaele sighed, urging her towards the waiting car he had ordered when he himself usually walked.

      ‘It’s the first time it’s happened and you said it was a short flight so I didn’t want to make a fuss,’ she responded truthfully. ‘All the same, I shouldn’t have bitten your head off the way I did.’

      ‘I’m getting used to it,’ Raffaele incised lazily. ‘You often speak before you think...’

      In other words, she was the only real dummy in the relationship, Vivi interpreted, feeling sorry for herself. Only at that point did she begin to notice the sheer immensity of the building they were heading towards. It was a giant stone property that stretched across an entire hilltop with windows that had a blinding sparkle because there were so many of them. ‘This is your home?’

      ‘Sì,’ Raffaele said fondly. ‘The home of my family for centuries.’

      No wonder he had said Zoe could move in with them if she liked, Vivi thought weakly, overpowered by the grandeur of the statuary adorning the façade and the formal gardens the car was traversing. Her impressions didn’t improve when a stout little man in a formal suit, introduced СКАЧАТЬ