VITTORIO'S LOVER (Vittorio Series) (28 page)

“I’m glad to see you eating,” Raffaele said after she’d devoured half the pasta and a slice of bread. “
You have not been taking very good care of yourself,
carissima
, you are way too thin.”

“Isn’t t
hat what most men want, a stick chick that doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her?”

Raffaele nearly choked on the food he was chewing. “A stick chick?” he asked, after gulping down half a glass of wine.

“You know what I mean.  Heaven forbid if a woman has a little meat on her bones. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” she snapped. “I saw a picture of you and that...that
underwear
model in the society pages a few days after you dismissed me from your life. You made me believe you liked the way I looked, that you actually found me desirable, but after seeing Miss tall and leggy hanging off your arm, I feel stupid and naïve for not realizing you only said those things in the heat of the moment and didn’t really mean it.”

Dead silence followed
Jenesa’s emotional outburst. Her cheeks burned with the utter humiliation she’d just brought down on herself. Not only had she admitted it hurt to know he hadn’t meant those murmured words of adoration, but now he knew she’d scoured the society pages hoping to see his handsome face looking back at her. What a disaster that had been. Seeing Raffaele with another woman had torn her up inside, seeing him with the type of woman she could never be was like being mule-kicked when she was already down for the count.

“Is that why you stopped eating?” Raffaele said softly. “Because you saw that picture of me and
Arianna?”

Jenesa reached for her glass of wine and drained it before replying. Stalling for time or garnering a touch of Dutch courage? A little of both, she supposed.  “
I didn’t stop eating, at least not intentionally. I just…seemed to lose my appetite and never got it back.”

“
Until tonight,” Raffaele said pointedly. “For the record, I meant every word I said to you. I loved how soft and feminine your body was compared to mine. It was quite a turn on. Yes, Arianna is the type of woman I typically dated before, but we attended that charity event as friends and nothing more. I committed to it weeks before and I promise you, the mood I was in that night, Arianna was happy to get a ride home with someone else when I told her I was leaving early.”

Still stinging from the memory of
Arianna
clinging to Raffaele’s arm, Jenesa’s loose tongue got away from her again. “She seemed rather
attached
. You don’t honestly expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with her?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Maybe so, but you can’t tell me there haven’t been others. Oh, why am I even having this conversation with you?” Jenesa tossed her napkin down. “Why did you bring me here, Raffaele? What did you hope to accomplish?”

“I wanted to tell how wrong I was and apologize for not giving you the chance to explain. I’m not proud of the way I treated you. My only defense is that I felt hurt and betrayed when Luca told me he believed you and your sister were running a scam.”

“And you accepted it as gospel. You’d just gotten out of bed after making love to me, how could you turn me away as if I meant nothing to you? You didn’t even care enough to find out if I was pregnant!”

“When you didn’t contact my lawyer, I knew you weren’t.”

Raffaele’s glib answer made her angry. “What makes you think I would have bothered? Why would I want my child to know his father was a cold-hearted bastard that didn’t want anything to do with him? How do you know I didn’t decide it would be a huge mistake to bring a child into the world under those circumstances?”

Raffaele arched a brow. “Abortion? No. You
will never convince me that you are capable of harming your own child. Tell me,
cara
, were you disappointed to discover you weren’t carrying my baby?”

“Was I…?” Jenesa shot to her feet. “You arrogant, arrogant man!
You still think it was all part of some elaborate scheme to milk you for millions, don’t you? This conversation is over. I’m leaving, and don’t you dare try to stop me or contact me again.”

She
hadn’t taken more than a few steps before Raffaele was on her. His hand clamped down on her arm and whipped her around, pulling her up hard against his chest. It didn’t take long to figure out struggling was futile and that she wasn’t going anywhere until he decided to free her. Jenesa glared up at him, infuriated by the indulgent smile and the way it incited a riot of butterflies in her stomach.

“Let. Me. Go.” Jenesa ground out.

“Easy,
mio piccolo
, that is
not
what I was inferring. What I meant was that I think you were disappointed when you found out you weren’t pregnant; not because of any scheme to entrap me, but because you
liked
the idea of my baby growing inside of you.”  He lowered his head so they were cheek to cheek, his breath warm against her skin. “It drove me half mad, trying to block you from my mind and never quite succeeding. For the first few months I was edgy as hell waiting for that call from my attorney, and when it didn’t come…”

Jenesa closed her eyes
with a shiver of pure ecstasy as Raffaele gently nipped at her earlobe. “When…when it didn’t come, you p-probably popped a bottle of champagne.”

“I drank,” he admitted. “Drank until I was stumbling down drunk and passed out on the sofa in my study.
”

Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
What a stupid, stupid fool she was to think he might have cared. “You were that happy about it?”

“No…” Raffaele’s arms tightened around her
waist. “No, I was
not
happy. I was so sure I’d gotten you pregnant, so sure you would
have
to come back to me. When it finally sank in that I had failed, I went on a three day drinking binge.”

“Raffaele…what are you saying?” Jenesa drew her head back, more confused than ever. “Are you telling me you
wanted
me to be pregnant?”

His arms dropped to his sides.
“I think it’s time I told you everything.”

                                                       ***

Jenesa sorely regretted gorging herself at dinner. Her stomach was churning all that rich Alfredo sauce into an acid based volcano that felt as if it was going to erupt any second. Raffaele hadn’t answered her question. Instead, he gathered the bottle of wine and glasses and led her back to the room they’d been in before and refilled their glasses before sitting beside her on the loveseat. She didn’t like the way his troubled eyes averted hers, or the death grip he had on his glass. Clearly, he didn’t expect her to take it well and wasn’t looking forward to telling her, although he must have felt compelled to do so.

“Luca never received any of the messages you left with
his assistant. She’s been with him for quite some time and is used to playing guard dog when one of his former lovers doesn’t know when to let go. He didn’t hear the messages you left on his machine either because he was away that day and asked me to return any important calls. I erased it without listening to the whole message. If I had, I would have known it was your sister Luca had allegedly slept with. 

I
didn’t tell him because I was afraid he would fly off the handle and make matters worse. I decided the best way to handle the situation was to cut you off at the pass, escort you from the party before you caused any trouble, and then employ whatever method was necessary to get rid of you for good. It seemed like a stroke of luck when you mistook me for Luca.”

“
And when I made it clear I wasn’t after your money, you changed tactics and
employed
the method of seduction.”

“Yes.”

No denials, no sugar coating the truth. It hurt to hear, but at least she knew there would be no more secrets between them.

“I didn’t plan on…taking it as far as it went,” Raffaele said
gravely. “I just wanted to get you away from there and talk you into an amicable parting so Caroline never found out about Luca’s infidelity. And then I made the mistake of kissing you.”

Mistake
.  How ironic that she’d thought the same thing at the time.

“
I wanted you,
cara
,
but how could I make love to you when I knew it was possible you were carrying my brother’s child? I struggled with my conscious, but the attraction between us was so strong I had to force myself to focus on doing what was right.”

“It was the same for me,” Jenesa told him.
“No man has ever made me feel the way you do, but I knew I couldn’t act it on because of Jillian. I agreed to go with you because I wanted to find out if you were the type of man who would own up to his responsibilities if it turned out she was pregnant. When you told me you weren’t in love with Caroline, I was elated, but it was pretty short lived when I reminded myself why I was there to begin with. I was in the midst of giving myself a stern talking to when I overheard a couple as they passed by the alcove. It was Luca and Caroline.”

Raffaele’s hand jer
ked, sloshing wine onto the carpet. Swearing under his breath, he set the glass down and turned to Jenesa. “You knew? Before we left the party, you
knew
I wasn’t Luca?”

“Yes. I’m ashamed to say I was
also prepared to employ whatever method was necessary to learn more about Luca through you. And I wanted to find out what you were up to. At least, that’s what I told myself, but the truth is…” she drew in a steadying breath. “The truth is I wanted you to make love to me because of the way you made me feel. I was even willing to overlook the fact you didn’t have a problem taking me to bed when you believed I’d slept with your brother.”

Raffaele shook his head remorsefully. “
When you kissed me at the office, it was like pouring gas onto a burning fire. I wanted you so badly that I convinced myself it was all right to sleep with you. It was a heat-of-the-moment oversight to make love without protection the first time. When I realized what I’d done, I started hatching the insane plan I told you about on the island. I thought if I convinced you that I had masqueraded as Luca and it turned out you were pregnant, you wouldn’t have any reason to doubt the baby was mine.”

Jenesa gaped at him in disbelief. “
Would you have gone through with it? Would you really have married me just to keep anyone from knowing Luca was unfaithful to Caroline and conceived a child?”

“
As much as I’d like you to believe it was a noble gesture on my part, my motives at that point were primarily driven by my feelings for you. Not that I acknowledged it at the time, but I would have done anything to keep you in my life.”

“
Because the sex was good or because you wanted a real relationship?”

Raffaele’s smile was grim. “I’m not even sure I know what a real relationship is. I only know you
are the first woman I’ve ever cared enough about to explore the possibility that there is more to it than great sex.”

“
In other words, you’re not really sure
how
you feel about me.”

“I know I don’t want to lose you. I
know I can’t stop thinking about you and don’t want to be with other women. What we shared was special, and somewhere along the line it went beyond the secrets and lies and bound us together on a level I have never experienced before. Jenesa…I know I don’t deserve another chance, but I’m asking anyway because being without you is driving me insane. Can we do that? Can we start over?”

It would be so easy to say yes. They could start again, pretend the
days and nights they’d shared together on the island had never happened. But that meant hiding her true feelings. It meant waiting and wondering if or when he would ever say the words she longed to hear. She’d spent the past six months huddled beneath a dark cloud of depression because her heart refused to let go of the belief that Raffaele had fallen in love with her, while her head told her that a man in love did not order you out of his life and declare he never wanted to see you again. 

His actions tonight proved he felt something more than
a strong physical attraction, but was it love? What drove a man to cut you so completely from his life when, by his own admission, every waking minute was consumed with thoughts of you?  And what reason would Raffaele have to hijack her tonight unless it was because he couldn’t bear the thought of her being with another man? If it wasn’t love, then why was he looking at her as if his life hinged on whether she answered yes or no?

Slowly, deliberately, Jenesa shook her head.
“It’s too late for that, Raffaele. We can’t go back now when so much has happened. You have no idea what I’ve been through in the aftermath of our…affair.”

“It was
not
an affair,” Raffaele shot back.

“You’re right, it was far too brief and mean
ingless to earn that distinction.” 

Raffaele skewered her with an
angry scowl. “After everything I’ve told you, how can you believe it was meaningless to me?”