The Italian Demands His Heirs

‘I think you’re forgetting about that redundancy list,’ Raffaele reminded her silkily, ready to use any weapon he had to force her into doing his bidding.

Vivi leapt out of her chair and called him a very rude word, colour streaming across her cheekbones, eyes violet-tinged again with sheer fury.

‘If not by birth, certainly by nature,’ Raffaele countered with hard amusement, thoroughly satisfied to have got a very telling reaction out of her. Temper, temper, he chanted inwardly because she had one hell of a temper.

On the other hand—and who would ever have guessed it? he marvelled—Vivi Fox cared about her work colleagues. She wasn’t quite the hard-nosed, solely mercenary beauty he had assumed, willing to use anything she had got to better herself in society. Of course, she didn’t need to be like that now, he reminded himself impatiently, not with a very rich grandfather behind her.

‘I hate you!’ she flung at him.

‘Dinner at eight tomorrow night. I want you to have time to think over this meeting. A car will pick you up,’ Raffaele stated, not batting an eyelash in receipt of her angry attack.

Vivi’s fingers turned into claws, biting into her palms. No man had ever filled her with such rage that she felt violent, only him. But she would not run the risk of calling Raffaele’s bluff. He was a banker, he was innately ruthless and if redundancies could make her dance to his tune he was unlikely to make an empty threat, she reflected wretchedly. How could she risk that happening? How could she challenge him when her fellow employees’ livelihoods could be at stake? For goodness’ sake, what on earth had Grandad offered him to make him so desperate to win her agreement?

‘Eight.’ She bit out the word as if it physically hurt her and in a way it did because giving even an inch to Raffaele di Mancini felt like a self-betrayal of pride and good judgement.

‘I shall look forward to it,’ Raffaele dared with purring satisfaction and if there had been anything within reach to throw at him, Vivi would’ve thrown it.

She went back down to the marketing department in the lift, her brain in a daze after all the emotions she had worked through. Hatred, rage and resentment assailed her in heady waves around Raffaele and it made it hard for her to think straight, to think smart, she recognised, finding another stick to beat herself with. If she was cooler, calmer, would she have found a way out? But how could she be cool and calm when he so enraged her?

Her memory went back to the day she had met Arianna with her high heel caught in a grating down the street from the modelling agency. She had only been a week into her first job there and heading out to grab lunch. She had stopped to help Arianna, who was comically trying to drag her shoe out of the grating while standing on one leg like a heron.

‘Oh, thanks...’ Arianna had said with a flashing friendly smile, a very pretty brunette, who had seemed much the same age as Vivi was.

Nothing had budged that shoe heel from the grating and, wearying of the struggle, Arianna had stepped out of the other one, swept it up, looked at it as if trying to judge what use one shoe would be and then tossed it down again in disgust. Barefoot, she had stepped onto the pavement and introduced herself and Vivi had dug into her capacious tote to offer the use of the shabby trainers she wore to travel into work. Arianna had been as grateful as if she had saved her life and had accompanied Vivi into the café where she was planning to buy a sandwich, confessing that she was hungry herself. And that was how her friendship with Arianna had begun, two young women getting to know each other and exchanging numbers over a snack. Their meeting had not been in any way engineered. Arianna had not been ‘targeted’ for her wealth, as her brother had implied to the press, because, although Arianna had been very fashionably dressed, Vivi had not recognised the designer style she herself had never been able to afford. She had noticed Arianna’s jewellery and had simply assumed it was good costume stuff, rather than the real thing.

Arianna had come into Vivi’s life at a time when she was rather lonely. How had she been lonely living with two sisters? Well, back then, Winnie had been heartbroken and pregnant by Eros and no company whatsoever. And love Zoe as Vivi did, Zoe was happier reading a book in her room than in actually going out to meet people. Arianna had been full of life and cheerfulness and Vivi had liked her, felt rather protective of her, too, once she realised that the other young woman was a year younger and seemingly rather naive about city life.

Arianna had confided her dream of becoming a model the evening they had first gone out together, when she had also flashed a gold credit card and taken Vivi to a very exclusive club. That was when a little tactful questioning had revealed that Arianna came from a different world and Vivi had become a little uncomfortable in her company then.

Having spoken to the resident photographer at the agency, however, Vivi had set up the appointment for Arianna to have a modelling portfolio prepared. The day after, Arianna had invited her to join her and her brother for dinner. Two nights after that, Raffaele had unexpectedly joined them at a club and swept them up to the VIP section, scolding his sister for not being there in the first place. There he had questioned Vivi about her background and occupation and she had said defensively, ‘I’m ordinary and I was trying to explain to Arianna that people like you and her don’t become best friends with someone like me but she doesn’t seem to get that. She just looked hurt.’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t be friends,’ Raffaele had said, surprising her when she had already decided he had to be a snob with his blue-blooded background.

Of course, at that point, nothing had gone wrong, Vivi conceded wryly and it was very likely that Raffaele had viewed her friendship with his sister as harmless. Even so, it had been a mortifyingly happy time for her, she recalled with self-loathing.

Entranced by Raffaele, she had been convinced he was equally interested when he began dropping in on her outings with his sister. Their entire relationship, if it could even be called that, had taken place over only a couple of weeks. She had assumed he was holding back because he didn’t want to risk spoiling her friendship with Arianna. She had made so many forgiving assumptions, Vivi recalled, nauseated by the memory of how naive and trusting she had been, believing that he was a generally decent man but, for some reason, exceedingly cautious with women.

And then had come the night of the kiss at Arianna’s twentieth birthday party, when he had literally grabbed her out on the terrace where she had been getting some fresh air. He had come out there to lecture her for wandering off alone, as if she were another sister to be schooled and protected like Arianna, and somehow, she didn’t quite know how, he had ended up grabbing her instead with a lack of cool and control that had startled her, had startled them both, she rather suspected. Yet that single kiss, that he had afterwards apologised for and had treated as trivial, had, ironically, been the most stupendously sexy encounter she had ever shared with a man.

CHAPTER THREE (#u019346ca-faa6-5dd2-a5a0-f27968f57915)

‘WHERE ON EARTH are you going dressed like that?’ Zoe exclaimed with a scandalised look as Vivi slid into her concealing trench coat in the small hall of the house they shared. Instantly, Vivi wished she had got into the coat before her sister could even glimpse what she was wearing and her face burned hot with mortification.

‘I’m dining with Raffaele. I told you that earlier,’ Vivi reminded the younger woman, who bore little resemblance to her, being both small and blonde in colouring.

‘Dressed like that?’ Zoe demanded in disbelief, still staring at the pelmet-length skirt revealing her sibling’s very long and shapely legs, the cropped top that showed off the diamond in her navel and the sky-high heels. ‘That’s the outfit you wore to that insane hen party you went to last winter.’

‘So?’ Vivi flung her hair back in challenge.

‘It’s very provocative,’ Zoe muttered as if Vivi might not have realised that.

‘No, it’s the perfect outfit to put on for a guy who thinks I’m a tart for hire,’ Vivi countered with a defiant lift of her chin.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Vivi!’ Zoe lamented loudly. ‘As he’s met Grandad, he’s got to know how wrong he was by now!’

‘No. This is Raffaele di Mancini, who never ever admits to being wrong about anything,’ Vivi traded with a lethal gleam of threat and resentment in her bright blue eyes.

‘I don’t see how dressing like that and giving him entirely the wrong impression is likely to change that,’ Zoe admitted ruefully.

‘I’m not trying to change anything,’ Vivi riposted. ‘I’m just giving him what he expects and deserves. And I like yanking his chain.’

‘If you’re going to be forced to go through with marrying him, you should be making peace with him,’ Zoe opined worriedly. ‘I was so hoping that our brother-in-law would find a way out of this mess for us...’

Vivi pursed her lips, thinking of her phone call to her sister, Winnie, before she got dressed. Only her grandfather or their foster parents could pay off the mortgage debt being held over their heads. John and Liz didn’t have the money and were too proud and independent to accept the money from anyone else. In popular parlance, it seemed that their goose was cooked as far as wriggling out of the agreement they had made with their grandfather was concerned. He had the sisters tied up tight without wriggle room and with the legal advisers he had on hand that was hardly surprising. Stamboulas Fotakis hadn’t become very rich by leaving anything to chance.

‘And what are you going to do about Jude?’ Zoe continued ruefully.

Vivi compressed her lips with sudden gravity. ‘End it. It wasn’t going any place anyway. I like him and I think he feels much the same as me.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s just something missing.’

A limo picked her up to ferry her out to dinner and she sat in that opulent leather-upholstered interior checking out the bar appointments and the television before topping up her lipstick. While enjoying that luxury, she was filled with gleeful anticipation at the prospect of Raffaele’s likely reaction to being cursed to dine in public with a woman dressed as she was. Raffaele was very old-school and she was convinced they would be meeting at some very exclusive but stodgy and traditional location.

But in that assumption she was swiftly proved wrong for the limo drew up outside a familiar building: the town house that was Raffaele’s very imposing London home, which was about twenty times larger than the house she and her sister occupied. Raffaele’s, of course, sat off a dignified residential square with a private park in the centre. To Vivi’s annoyance, nervous perspiration dampened her body because she hadn’t realised she would be anywhere alone with him. Nor was sporting her current outfit in the privacy of his home likely to be the embarrassment for him that she had envisaged.

Raffaele’s day had, for some unknown reason, gone excessively slowly for him. Instead of racing past in its usual whirl of urgent appointments, updates and important meetings it had crawled at a snail’s pace, irritating him, and he awaited Vivi’s arrival with mixed feelings. Tonight, he would get everything sorted out, he reasoned, striving to feel satisfaction over that obvious reality. Tonight, he would do whatever it took to get Vivi to the altar for Arianna’s benefit. So, why the hell was he on edge and counting down the hours?

It was not as if Vivi were any great challenge, he told himself grimly. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman with a reasonable education, quick of wit and temper. No big deal, he told himself even as a weird little voice whispered in the back of his brain...and she wants you.

Madre di Dio...why the hell had his mind gone in that direction? Lots of women had wanted Raffaele and he accepted that a good ninety per cent of those same women wouldn’t have wanted him without the wealth that came with him. That was a fact of life but it was also a fact of life that he had discovered a sexual chemistry with Vivi that had threatened to burn him alive, proving more seductive, more powerful and more dangerous than anything he had ever previously experienced with a woman.

Two years back it had unnerved him just a little to register that a young woman he had believed at the time to be relatively inexperienced could have that effect on him without utilising any obvious wiles. Afterwards, when he had realised how he had been duped, he had been both relieved and enraged and walking away fast hadn’t satisfied his need for retaliation. She had played him for a fool with those shy little upward glances, that breathy little giggle that could turn into an oddly entrancing snort, the violet eyes that roamed over him and lingered with what he had interpreted as rather naive sexual curiosity.

But none of that had been real, he reminded himself stubbornly. It had all been an act of innocence designed to draw him in, and he would’ve fallen for that act if she hadn’t then been exposed for the greedy little schemer she undoubtedly was. Or had been, he adjusted, allowing that the belated discovery that her grandfather was one of the richest men in the world had to have altered her outlook. One thing was certain, Vivi no longer needed to target rich men to improve her lot in life.

He should’ve known better even when he first met Vivi and believed her to be the ordinary girl she pretended to be, he reflected broodingly. His own family history should, after all, have taught him a harsh enough lesson. His parents had been very happily married, giving him an idyllic childhood in his early years. And then his mother had died suddenly from an aneurysm and his father had been distraught and painfully lonely.

That was when Arianna’s mother, Sofia, had sneaked past his once shrewd father’s defences. Matteo di Mancini hadn’t recognised her for the mercenary degenerate woman she was. All the peace had been sucked out of Raffaele’s childhood home with Sofia’s tempestuous arrival. His father had married her in a hurry without getting to know her properly and, instead of acknowledging his mistake and divorcing her, he had tried to make the best of a bad bargain. The stress of that deeply unhappy second marriage had most probably led to the older man’s premature death from a heart attack.

Grim in the wake of those timely reflections, Raffaele was poised by the fireplace in the formal drawing room when he heard the sounds of Vivi’s arrival...the click of high heels on the limestone floor and the quiet murmur of his elderly butler, Willard, as he took her coat. The door opened and Vivi paused in the doorway and that first glimpse literally took his breath away.

Two years back she had never worn revealing clothes around him and now, all of a sudden and when he least expected such a display from her, she was virtually half naked. Working out the reasons behind that sudden change in approach was beyond Raffaele’s very masculine reaction to the sight of her at that moment. He was mesmerised. Long, long perfect legs showed to advantage in a very short skirt. A diamond twinkled exotically in her pierced navel, the smooth white skin of her midriff and tiny waist exposed while her small but pert breasts, round as ripe apples, pushed against the figure-hugging fabric of her top. Instantly, Raffaele went as hard as a rock but that, at least, kicked his brain back into gear.