The Italian Demands His Heirs. LYNNE GRAHAM

their kindness and care at a time when the girls had been young and vulnerable. And then she felt sick with uncertainty while she wondered how Raffaele had got her phone number. We need to talk. Raffaele di Mancini, born into an Italian dukedom even if he didn’t use his title, just had to be kidding! Only if he had a sense of humour he had never revealed it to her.

      He was good at staring though, she recalled abstractedly, suddenly thrown back to their first meeting over the meal that Arianna had insisted on inviting her to. And all Arianna’s intimidating brother had seemed to do was stare at her, eyes as dark as jet between thick black lashes. Eyes that were set in an extravagantly handsome face, eyes that could unexpectedly warm to a melted golden caramel hue and send her heartbeat inexplicably racing.

      Yes, there had been very little normal getting-to-know-you conversation over that family dinner with poor Arianna being left to pick up the slack and usually sharp Vivi finding her tongue inexplicably glued to the roof of her mouth for the first time in her life. And what had she done? While Arianna had blithely chattered, Vivi had stared back, fascinated by Raffaele in the strangest way, little arrows of heat darting through her as she’d noticed new and seemingly important things about him. The commanding angle of his black brows; the masculine strength of his jaw line; the olive-toned planes and hollows of his fabulous bone structure; the classic arch of his nose and the wildly sensual curve of his sculpted lips. She had noted his perfect manners, his elegant hands and the fluid movement of them. She had sat there like a schoolgirl ogling him, forgetting to eat, forgetting everything, seduced by the new energising excitement filtering through her bloodstream like a charge of adrenalin.

      And much good it had done her, she recollected with self-loathing, emerging back into the less exciting present...

      * * *

      Across London, Raffaele cast down his phone and moved without hesitation on to Plan B. Vivi wouldn’t speak to him. Well, he had to admit that that was a surprise but he had to find a way to make her deal with him. If civil and calm didn’t work as an approach, he would take a leaf out of her grandfather’s book and try heavy duty persuasion. And if that didn’t work out either, he would work right through the alphabet in plans until he found the magic combination to make Vivi do what he needed her to do for Arianna’s benefit.

      Raffaele had a rare sleepless night, spent remembering his dismay at his stepmother’s sudden death from an overdose when he was only twenty and still a student. Her passing, mere months after his father’s demise, had impacted heavily on Raffaele’s life. Without any warning or preparation, he had found himself responsible for a twelve-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old girl he had barely bothered to even get to know...his half-sister. Yet he had grown to love Arianna and care for her in a way he had never deemed possible, for he knew his own flaws and accepted that he was essentially cold and analytical in nature.

      Lying awake in the dark hours, however, he had discovered that he couldn’t suddenly switch off that deep need to protect his vulnerable sister from the drug inheritance that had damaged her through no fault of her own. Arianna harmed herself, never anybody else. So, he would do whatever it took to protect her from the fallout of that unfortunate friendship with Vivi two years earlier...and Vivi?

      Well, devious, sexy little Vivi was simply going to have to bite the bullet and pay her dues on Arianna’s behalf...

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘THE RUMOUR IS that the business has been taken over,’ Vivi’s manager, Janice, declared nervously. ‘Hacketts Tech now belongs to a big consortium and you know what that means...don’t you?’

      Unaccustomed to Janice being anxious, Vivi frowned. ‘No, I haven’t had that experience before.’

      ‘Well, I have...twice before,’ the older woman declared ruefully. ‘First, the new bosses tell you there’re going to be no big changes and then they start restructuring, bringing in their own staff and suddenly you’re out of a job!’

      Vivi grimaced. ‘My goodness, I hope not. I like it here.’

      She checked her emails and was surprised to find that she had an appointment at ten with someone from the top floor that she had never heard of. She ran the name against the staff list and couldn’t find it. Did that mean that Janice’s rumour was true and that the process was already starting? Telling herself not to jump to conclusions, she kept quiet about the email.

      ‘Miss Fox?’ The receptionist checked when Vivi arrived at the top floor, leaving her desk to show Vivi where to go.

      ‘Who is this person I’m to see?’ Vivi questioned helplessly.

      ‘The new owner of the business. I’m not supposed to mention his name. It’s all very hush-hush,’ the woman told her apologetically.

      Registering that Janice’s rumour was true, Vivi raised her brows in silence while wondering why a junior member of the marketing team would qualify for an appointment with the new owner. Some particular query? Then why not call up Janice?

      But as the door was knocked on deferentially and duly opened wide, all suddenly became clear as Raffaele di Mancini swung round from the view he had been contemplating from the window of the contemporary office.

      ‘Come in, Vivi,’ he instructed cool as ice.

      Vivi was frozen with shock on the threshold, her slender body rigid with tension because Raffaele’s sudden appearance in her life in an environment where she could not tell him to go jump off a cliff was as disturbing as it was horrifying.

      Evidently grasping that reality for himself, Raffaele crossed the room, tugged her over the threshold as if she were a small and hesitant child and closed the door behind her. ‘Now let’s talk like grown-ups,’ he advised, disconcerted by the changes in her.

      The smooth swathe of copper hair he recalled had transformed into a gorgeous foaming mane of silky curls, rather like a woman in a pre-Raphaelite portrait, he found himself vaguely acknowledging. Add in the china pale complexion and the bright blue eyes above that full pink mouth and you had a woman whom he might despise, but whose attractions added up to a quite remarkable level of beauty. Of course, he had noticed that she was stunning before, that being a fact that no man would fail to note, he reasoned, impatient with the way in which his brain was suddenly shooting out random thoughts like a shotgun. There she stood in an undeniably plain straight black skirt and pale blue shirt that still highlighted the perfection of her tall, slender figure with its modest curves. She stood about five feet nine in height and Raffaele had liked that about her because he preferred taller women, being six feet four himself.

      ‘I’m not staying. I refuse to be manipulated like this!’ Vivi exclaimed, spinning round to head back to the door.

      ‘You walk out that door now, I start having redundancies listed,’ Raffaele informed her, reckoning that he was likely to learn a lot about Vivi Fox—formerly Mardas—and her character in the next few minutes.

      White as snow at that unveiled threat, Vivi spun back. ‘You can’t do that... I mean, just because I don’t want to speak to you? That would be outrageous!’ she protested in disbelief.

      ‘As the new owner of Hacketts Tech, I can be as outrageous as I like. Any regrets that you didn’t simply agree to talk to me last night on the phone?’ Raffaele elevated an ebony brow, all sardonic and cool, and it made her want to punch him in the gut. ‘You see, I don’t play games when I’m challenged, I play hardball.’

      Vivi was chilled by that warning but she refused to let him see that. ‘Like I don’t already know that?’ she quipped, a fine auburn brow lifting.

      ‘Evidently, you didn’t,’ Raffaele pointed out while spinning out a chair for her to occupy. ‘Now, please take a seat.’

      ‘I prefer to stand, since I’m not planning on staying long,’ Vivi asserted, staying where she was, determined to show no weakness.

      ‘Are