Dress for me tonight.
RAPHAEL’S TEXT THAT very evening, just as she had been getting ready to leave with Gio, mere hours after they’d made their deal, stopped Pia in her tracks.
Dinner at his sister’s house. It was the perfect occasion to advertise their new relationship. She could just imagine the arrogant gleam in his eyes, the roguish curve of his mouth as if he were standing in front of her.
That’s how Gio caught her, standing in the hallway, looking at her phone, first baffled, then furious and then with a goofy smile on her face. Because the arrogant Italian would’ve known how much it would rile her to get that command from him.
And he couldn’t have orchestrated it any better if he had stood there and kissed her.
When Gio had inquired who had made her smile, Pia had instinctively ducked the phone behind her. Realizing Gio was exactly why she’d begun this, she’d reluctantly shown him the phone.
Her grandfather had stared at the phone for a long while. Which had caused her to wonder if she’d made a horrible mistake. When he had finally looked at her, Pia had expected a hundred questions, meddling, plans. Gio, she’d begun to realize, could be like a little boy sometimes—temperamental, impulsive.
But Gio had said nothing. Asked nothing.
She’d have thought he didn’t approve if he hadn’t uttered, “He is a good man, but hard. Do not let him break you like I broke Lucia, si?”
He’d been worried at her revelation, but on the drive to Raphael’s sister’s house, Pia had sensed Gio’s relief too. Almost as if he had known this would happen.
As if it was what he’d wanted.
The growing unease that she’d started something that had no exit strategy only deepened as Pia smiled at, shook hands with and exchanged air-kisses with a crowd of curious, but mostly friendly faces as soon as they arrived at his sister Teresa’s house—a posh Mediterranean-style villa with colorful ivy climbing decoratively up its white walls.
Golden sunlight washed over the villa. The early dinner was al fresco with people spread all over the house and the immense backyard with white tables spread around. A festive atmosphere reigned with kids chasing each other and people talking in groups. But the moment Gio and she had walked in, a hush fell over the smiling faces.
She tried not to cringe as attention focused on her. More than a few faces were familiar, even a couple of men who had attended her ball. Suddenly, her plan sounded ridiculous, even stupid.
She was going to pretend to be familiar with Raphael in front of all these people? Pretend like just the thought of being romantically involved with him didn’t make her feel plain and dull? Didn’t make her want to hide and do something wildly exciting at the same time.
And where was the dratted man anyway?
Pia met Raphael’s four sisters and their husbands, scores of his nieces and nephews—they were a fertile bunch, apparently—a host of his cousins and their spouses, two aunts, one uncle and finally his mother Portia Mastrantino.
That same distrust she’d seen in Raphael’s eyes showed in his mother’s eyes.
Noting the white shorts and skirts paired with spaghetti tops and the humidity that was making her hair wild, she was glad that she’d dressed in a plain cotton navy blue top and printed shorts with her favorite Toms wedges, whatever Raphael’s imperious command.
After more than an hour of blank smiling, Pia sneaked into the house, needing quiet.
Sitting on a chaise longue in cargo shorts and a navy blue T-shirt that exposed corded arms and hair-sprinkled wrists, Raphael looked utterly different and yet just as magnetic. Floor-to-ceiling glass dipped him in sunlight. His olive skin looked darker, his shoulders broader with the fabric stretched over his lean chest.
He was bouncing the most adorable little girl on his knee.
The little girl screamed and laughed as Raphael pretended to lose his grip on her while she slid down his long legs to the floor. Every time he caught her at the last second, she squealed, shuddered, scampered over to his knee, climbed over his chest and wrapped chubby arms around his neck and slobbered a wet kiss over his cheek.
Again and again, he pretended to lose her, she did it all over, planting another wet kiss over his other cheek. His dark eyes roared with laughter, love, eagerly awaiting the moment when she would kiss him.
A pulse of longing reverberated through Pia at the sight. Such cynicism when he addressed Pia and now for this girl, such affection.
Was she a niece? A cousin’s daughter?
Suddenly, the little girl hiccuped. Her chubby face scrunched tight. Holding her as if she were the most precious thing to him, Raphael asked for a glass of water. Three dark-haired voluptuous women rushed to his aid, all of them dressed in the latest designer clothes—thanks to Gio, Pia now had a useless font of information about couture.
The women hovered over Raphael anxiously, ready to do his bidding. To his credit, Raphael had eyes only for the little girl. He didn’t notice the adoring glances or how each woman found a way to sidle closer to him or touch him in some way.
Hot embarrassment poured through Pia. Followed by a thread of sheer possessiveness that rocked her.
Was that how she watched him too? With that barely hidden longing and her attraction plastered all over her face?
Worst of all was the sinking awareness that she was nowhere near the league of the women that hovered around him like bees around honey.
Something about Raphael, even as she disliked his cynicism, made her body sing, made her mind weave impossible fantasies.
She couldn’t forget that Raphael had agreed to their pretense for his own benefit. And not because he saw her as a woman worth his interest.
* * *
Feeling something prickling at the back of his neck, Raphael looked up amidst Alyssa’s slobbering kiss on his cheek.
Pia stood at the center of the room, her eyes wide behind a pair of black-framed spectacles. Sunlight drew an outline of her lithe body in a simple T-shirt and shorts that bared her long, tanned legs. She’d braided her hair but was losing the fight against it. It fell in unruly curls around her face.
Among the women dressed in casual couture with designer handbags and diamonds dripping at their ears and wrists, she stood out like a wildflower amidst pricey, carefully cultivated crossbred prize orchids.
No makeup, no artifice.
Emotions chased across her face, the naked vulnerability in it rousing desire and a fierce protectiveness within him.
Pretending a liaison with her, however harmless she thought it, wouldn’t be without consequences. His conversation with her at his office, Gio’s Machiavellian maneuvering of them both toward what he deemed inevitable, every instinct Raphael possessed told him that it was a bad idea, screamed at him to keep his distance from her.
And yet, how could he leave her to the jackals Giovanni had unleashed on her? To Gio’s ridiculous schemes? The thought of any man, even Enzo, touching her, the thought of her bestowing her friendship, her loyalty, her affection on any other man—it was becoming unbearable.
Was she going to fare any better with him? The question had been haunting him since he’d agreed to her scheme.
“Pia?” he whispered softly.
She lifted those luminous eyes to his. A jolt of sensation hit his muscles at the artless want in her eyes. Her open desire for him made every male instinct in him rise to the surface.
Color washed up her cheeks and she blinked. “I was looking for you,” she finally said, pushing the glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “I don’t think we should—”
He could see Giovanni and his mother and a couple of other people walking into the huge room. “Come and meet my daughter, Alyssa.” He cut her off abruptly.
“Your daughter?” She looked like a deer caught in headlights, ready to flee any moment. “You have a daughter?”
His daughter slid off his legs, sauntered over to Pia, wrapped herself around Pia’s bare leg like a vine and looked up. The thought of Pia’s dislike for him translating itself to Alyssa made him cover the distance between them.
All her distress forgotten, Pia picked up Alyssa with a soft laugh. Raphael watched transfixed as she buried her face in Alyssa’s tummy with a sigh.
He could hear Gio in the background saying what a pretty picture the three of them made, the manipulative bastard! Could imagine his mother’s shock; could practically hear the wheels turning in her head; could hear the soft whispers spreading from mouth to mouth.
Raphael had never believed in fate or higher power. None of them had ever come to his aid. Always it had been his own decisions and actions that had made his path. Even after Giovanni had taken him under his wing, it was Raphael who’d pushed himself to set new goals, to reach new heights in his business.
And yet, as Alyssa twisted one of Pia’s curls around her chubby finger and tugged hard, sending a gush of pained tears to Pia’s eyes and laughter spilling from her mouth, it felt as if he was taking a step that couldn’t be undone.
He laughed at the way Pia cooed at the three-year-old in fractured Italian, begging her to let go of her hair; at the way she instantly dropped to her knees when Alyssa demanded to be set down and tugged Pia in that boisterous way of hers.
Amused, he watched as his daughter and Pia charmed each other for the next hour. He watched his daughter, who barely tolerated strangers, instinctively trust Pia, and he watched as Pia, who’d been so uncomfortable with the sophisticated crowd, fell for his girl.
Slowly, Alyssa began to sway where she stood. Pia gathered Alyssa—who didn’t let anyone except him or his mother put her to sleep—and she neatly cuddled into Pia’s chest, sucked her thumb into her mouth and promptly fell asleep.
“Don’t wake her up,” Pia hissed at him when he tried to untangle her hair from his daughter’s fist.
Only this woman could make him laugh just as much as she could turn him on with one look. “Unless you want her to rip out your—” his gaze fell to the thick honey-brown strands that were like rough silk between his fingers “—lovely hair, which would be a shame, I have to do this.” Firmly, he uncurled Alyssa’s fingers until Pia’s hair was free. “Believe me, she has ripped out my hair from the roots far too many times.”
“You don’t look like you’ve lost any,” she threw back, and then blushed when he grinned. He took Alyssa from her, gave her to his sister, who left with a wide-eyed glance at the both of them.
Having lost their buffer, Pia stepped back from him hurriedly. She frowned as she noted Gio and his mother in deep discussion outside the French windows. “You didn’t tell me you have a daughter.”
“Alyssa is no one’s business but mine,” he said before he could modulate his tone.
Hurt flashed in her eyes before she lifted her chin in defiance. “Is your ex-wife here too? I’m not really comfortable stepping in between—”
“Allegra is not a part of our lives anymore. She lost all her rights to Alyssa.”
“I wouldn’t have suggested this ridiculous charade if I’d known you had a daughter. I won’t be a part of anything that could harm that little girl. Maybe she’s too young to understand which woman her father is...has...”
He raised a brow.
She was the first woman who hadn’t immediately thought to use Alyssa like a ladder toward him. The first woman in his sphere who had considered his child’s interests before her own.
She was the first woman he’d ever met who always put someone else before her own needs—first her Nonni, Gio and now a little girl. Even his mother, who adored her grandchildren, sometimes used Alyssa to try to manipulate him.
But Pia... Could Pia be truly different in this too?
“Do you always stammer when you talk about what men and women do?” he goaded.
“It can’t be good for her to know you and I...you and me...”
“My mother and my sister Teresa are the only ones who’re allowed to look after Alyssa,” he offered. He’d never explained his actions to anyone and yet the words fell from his mouth. “I need a woman for only one thing and I do that when I’m out of town.”
“You need a woman for only...” Her words trailed off, a flush dusting her cheeks. “That’s horrible and so...clinical. Are you saying you’ll never need a woman, even in the future, for anything else?”
“I’m saying exactly that. I don’t intend to marry ever again.”
“What about affection, companionship, y’know...”
“I’ve never met a woman who made me feel or want those things. Alyssa has me, and my mother and sisters for a woman’s influence.” He took a step toward her, more turned on by this ridiculous conversation than made sense. The infuriating woman took another step back. “My mother will understand that our relationship is not something I want discussed in front of Alyssa. She wasn’t even supposed to bring Alyssa today. But I bet she couldn’t pass up the chance to meet you.”
“When I met her...she...” Pia hesitated. When he just stared back at her, she finally said, “I could be wrong, but I think she...doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Why? She doesn’t even know me.”
“You’re the prime contender for Gio’s fortune.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Pia said laughingly. But the seriousness in Raphael’s gaze sobered her up. “How do I know you don’t feel the same? Do you see your piece of the pie getting smaller? Maybe you’re the one manipulating me?”
He laughed, as if the very idea was ridiculous.
The confidence he wore like a second skin—that didn’t come without bending life to one’s will. Giovanni had told her how Raphael had taken VA public, made gains they hadn’t seen in the last decade. He’d been ruthless about the changes he’d enforced, wasn’t the least bit sentimental about what needed to be done, but his execution was always effective, she’d been told by her grandfather, curiously with something like regret in his eyes.
More profits. Better stock prices. He had no friends he trusted, no one was indispensable to him. No weakness was allowed in himself or tolerated in others.
The shadow of his father’s suicide, Pia realized now, would forever cast a black shadow on Raphael’s life, and would never let him be anything but a man who loathed weakness.
“If you’re wealthy, then why would your mother worry?” she countered.
He shrugged, but Pia could see it bothered him by the tightness of his mouth. “She grew up in a very wealthy family and my father kept her in the same style. When we lost the house and our lifestyle, a lot of her friends and connections turned their backs on her. She took it very hard—wouldn’t leave her bedroom, refused to eat. She became a ghost.”
“It couldn’t have been harder on her than it had been on your father, could it?” Pia was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
She waited for a cutting comeback. He simply frowned.
“I’m sorry, that was unkind. It’s just that...your father was betrayed by people he trusted. People with whom he shared his fears and dreams and hopes. Your mother still had him and you and your sisters. What’s a fortune when you have family and friends who love you?”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
Pia shrugged, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. “I just... I can imagine what your father must have felt. What Frank did to me is minuscule by comparison, and yet I have days where I can’t trust my own judgment. Days when I can’t believe that everything he did was with a motive—pulling me from the dark cloud of Nonni’s death, persuading me to step out of the house for an evening.
“Gio didn’t help by doing what he did either. I can’t trust anyone—man or woman—when they say something nice to me. I can’t help but search for deeper motives. Perversely, it’s what makes me trust you.”
His frown only deepened. “What about me?”
“Your animosity, your suspicions. I can count on you to be brutally honest, even if I don’t like your assumptions. The reason why I...” like you. She cut herself off at the flare in his eyes. Words solidified the feeling in her chest. The last thing he needed was to learn that he was beginning to grow on her. “I don’t understand why your mother doesn’t like me still.”
“She lives in a permanently terrified state that I will take the same risks with my money that my father did and doom them all. She made sure I allocated lifelong separate funds for my sisters, for Alyssa and her.”
“Funds you cannot invest in your business?” Pia asked, shocked by the implications. It not only showed a distinct lack of faith in Raphael’s abilities as a businessman but also a callous obsession with wealth over her son’s feelings.
“Si. Over the last few years, she got used to hearing Gio’s continual claims that he will leave everything to me—which he did to annoy his ex-wives and their constant bickering for more settlements. It has turned into her insurance against my possible failure and downfall. Now you are a threat to that insurance.”
Was it any wonder he assumed she was out to fleece Gio with the mindset he already had?
To believe that one’s own mother saw one as nothing but a source of her income... Could Raphael see himself as anything but a provider? Had he even been allowed to grieve for his father before he’d had to take on the mantle of his family?
Because, despite everything, it was clear he cared about his family. She had called him ruthless, but not enough to stop shouldering the responsibility of his sisters and their families.
And he adored his daughter.
Suddenly, Pia saw Raphael more clearly than she ever wanted to. She didn’t want to see any depth to his hardness, any soft edges beyond his cynicism. She didn’t want to see Raphael as anything but an impossible fantasy and a reluctant ally.
She didn’t, couldn’t afford to see him as a man worth knowing.