Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

he murmured flatly, struggling to combat the temper she brought out in him with her unstudied insolence.

      Nobody spoke to Raffaele with scorn, nobody ever had before and nobody else would have dared. His lean brown hands coiled into controlled fists. He could suck it up for Arianna, he told himself urgently, he was too proud, it would probably do his character a world of good...but if he ever got the chance for payback he knew he would be grabbing at it with two very greedy hands because Vivi’s disrespectful attitude infuriated him.

      ‘You would really be prepared to marry me just to make a profit?’ Vivi pressed, finding that so hard to believe.

      His dark eyes glittered as though someone had shot them through with diamonds and she blinked, dragging her attention back from him again, disturbed again by his effect on her concentration. ‘Why not?’ he asked drily.

      Vivi clasped her hands together on her lap, in no way as cool as she wanted to be in his presence. He had disconcerted her because she would have sworn he was the last man alive to be seduced merely by money. But then what did she really know about Raffaele di Mancini? Hadn’t she foolishly believed that she was getting to know him and then been soundly disabused of that belief when he’d turned round and humiliated her, absolutely humiliated her, by giving way to the unforgivable conviction that she was a woman willing to sell her body for money? She really knew nothing about Raffaele. He was extremely rich but clearly desired to be even richer and, if that were the case, it meant that only she was preventing him from reaching that goal. And that dismayed her because it meant that both her grandfather and Raffaele were ranged against her as opponents, which was very much the same as sticking her between a rock and a hard place.

      ‘I don’t want to marry you,’ Vivi murmured in a very quiet voice as she stared at the wall to the left of him. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’

      Frustration lanced through Raffaele at finding her as difficult as her grandfather had forecast. He had been so sure in his own head that she would snatch at the opportunity to become his wife, seduced by his social standing and a need for revenge. Instead she was sitting there in front of him like a stiff little marionette doll placed in a chair and refusing to react.

      Raffaele took a new tack. ‘There’s nothing inherently shameful about having been an escort,’ he breathed tautly. ‘It’s how far you go in that role. If it was merely companionship you offered, there’s nothing wrong with it.’

      ‘Oh, come on!’ Vivi flashed back at him, animation brightening her formerly still and shuttered face, bright blue eyes taking on a violet hue as she glanced back at him less warily than before. ‘You know that you don’t really believe that, Raffaele. You believed that I was flogging my body for money to anyone who offered sufficient inducement and you acted accordingly and treated me like dirt!’ she condemned.

      ‘I did not treat you like dirt,’ Raffaele intoned grittily.

      ‘You blamed me for the risky decisions your sister made. I didn’t ask her to take off her clothes for that modelling portfolio she was so set on having done!’ she argued angrily, wishing that recollection still didn’t hurt enough to make her angry. ‘She did that all on her own. And when she was approached to do escort work because nobody at the agency knew that she was independently wealthy....how was that anything to do with me? I was only the receptionist on the front desk, a humble employee. I didn’t know what was going on at that place. I wasn’t one of the models doing escort work on the side!’

      ‘So you say,’ Raffaele responded between gritted teeth because he didn’t believe a word of what she was telling him. A receptionist? Did she think he was stupid? A receptionist with that beauty and that figure? Of course she had been one of the models and the receptionist job had merely been a safe cover story for his benefit, and Arianna’s. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that the average humble receptionist couldn’t afford the red-soled shoes she had been captured in print wearing the day the brothel had been raided, but in the circumstances it would be stupid to wind her up more. The newspaper concerned had made much of the very expensive designer apparel she had been wearing, implying that she was a very exclusive prostitute.

      Vivi compressed her lips, totally aware that he didn’t believe her. He was such a snob, she thought sourly, so ready to credit nasty stuff about her simply because she had been downright poor in comparison to his sister and himself. What other reason could he have for being so suspicious? It wasn’t as if she had acted all alluring with him, was it? Vivi didn’t know how, didn’t have sufficient experience or the desire to act alluring with any man. She wasn’t even very good at flirting because generally the men she met were bolder and cruder than flirting required.

      ‘I’m not going to apologise for the fact that I dislike you,’ Vivi fired at him.

      ‘I don’t need you to like me to marry me in the kind of paper marriage your grandfather requires,’ Raffaele shot back in exasperation.

      ‘Well, there would be nothing in it for me,’ Vivi fielded, struggling not to think about her duty in John and Liz’s situation of unsettled debts. For yes, there would be something in it for her, she reflected guiltily. In fact, there would be more than one advantage to marrying him. It would help John and Liz, it would please her grandfather and leave her blessedly free to get on with the rest of her life as she saw fit with nobody to please but herself. It would release all her worries but...it would also put poor Zoe in the hot seat in her place and how could she allow that?

      ‘If I offered money, diamonds...’ Raffaele murmured silkily, seeking her weakness, for he was convinced there had to be one.

      ‘Stop right there!’ Vivi cut in angrily. ‘How could you bribe me into doing it? My grandfather would give me almost anything I wanted...’

      Except the one thing she needed, which was John and Liz’s mortgage debt paid off, she completed inwardly.

      Resentment darted through her at the reality that her grandfather was holding what was a ridiculously small amount of money on his terms over his granddaughters’ heads in an attempt to force them into doing his bidding. Winnie’s husband, Eros, might have been trying to find a way of getting around that fact and spiking her grandfather’s big guns but he had not, so far, contrived to do so. She needed to phone her sister, though, and check out the latest news on that front.

      ‘Then we would appear to have reached an impasse, for the moment,’ Raffaele tacked on because he refused to credit that he wouldn’t find a means to achieve her agreement. He never failed at anything he set out to do and saw this situation as no different. Given sufficient time and attention, he would solve the riddle of her reluctance and come up with the magic winning combination. One way or another, he told himself grimly, he would lock her down to protect Arianna.

      ‘We’ll have dinner tonight,’ he told her flatly.

      Vivi tossed her head back, curling ringlets of copper dancing back from her triangular face, bright dark blue eyes defiant. ‘No, we won’t.’

      ‘Tomorrow night, then.’

      The soft full pink lips he couldn’t take his eyes off tightened into a surprisingly hard line. ‘No.’

      ‘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