Millionaires: Rafaello's Mistress / Damiano's Return / Contract Baby. LYNNE GRAHAM
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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.
Glory was shocked by the expression on the older man’s face. He looked ravaged, almost distraught. But Rafaello’s profile was taut and grim. He made no response. After a moment Benito let his hands fall back to his sides in an attitude of weary defeat. Shoulders bowed, the older man turned and walked slowly and heavily out to the waiting limo gleaming beneath the outside lights. Rafaello thrust the door shut again.
‘Rafaello?’ Glory called down, for she could not silence herself. ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
He froze in surprise and then threw back his dark head and looked up to where she stood at the head of the staircase. His lean, strong face was shuttered. ‘How long have you been up there?’
‘Only a minute. I saw your father leave. He seemed upset—’
Rafaello lifted a broad shoulder in a faint shrug of indifference, but he was unusually pale. His expressive mouth clenched hard and his dark eyes were cold. ‘Did he?’
As he mounted the stairs to draw level with her Glory coloured with discomfiture. Obviously he had had a disagreement with the older man. But then, two such powerful personalities might well have regular differences of opinion and she could hardly blame him for snubbing her: it was none of her business. Or was it? Was it possible that the argument might have related to her? Before she could think better of asking such a question, she said, ‘Did you tell your father that I was here? Is that what caused the trouble between you?’
‘Hardly,’ Rafaello drawled with detached and dismissive cool. ‘But my plans have changed. I know it’s getting late but I’m going to have you driven back to Birmingham. Something rather more important than my libido has cropped up and I need to deal with it now.’
Wholly unprepared for that announcement, Glory stiffened in astonishment. She turned away, her face burning with sudden mortification. One minute he wanted her, the next he didn’t, and she was being dismissed like a casual employee. Yet it was so foolish of her to be feeling like that in the circumstances. She ought to be delighted and relieved, she told herself. ‘I’ll get my bag.’
‘I’ll send a car to pick you up on Monday around noon. I’ll need your address—’
She hesitated but did not turn back. ‘Are you still planning to let Sam know tonight that he doesn’t have to worry about that theft charge any more?’
A tense and unexpected silence stretched and, with a frown, she turned her head to look