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 at him again.
‘Yes,’ Rafaello breathed with a grim look etched on his lean, dark features. ‘Yes, you can bet on that as a sure-fire event.’
‘Fine.’ Without another word, Glory went back into his bedroom, grabbed up her travel bag and locked herself in the bathroom. Tears of hurt bewilderment stung her eyes as she took off the top and skirt, which she now thoroughly loathed. Something had happened, something serious that had upset him. But he had not the faintest intention of telling her what that something was or of sharing his feelings.
She put on jeans, a T-shirt and comfortable canvas shoes. She thought that he might have followed her into the bedroom to wait for her to emerge and then talk to her again but he had not. She wrote her address on the notepad by the phone. When she went downstairs again she found him standing by the superb marble fireplace in the gracious drawing-room, staring down with brooding intensity into the low-burning fire.
‘I’m ready.’
‘The car’s outside. Don’t go all female and huffy on me, cara,’ Rafaello urged, shooting her a bleak glance from beneath his lush dark lashes. ‘Tonight is just a case of bad timing—’
‘Huffy? Why would I be huffy?’ Glory demanded with stinging chagrin. ‘All I’m hoping is that you use this weekend to think better of the idea of taking on an unwilling mistress!’
Rafaello focused dark golden eyes on her with sizzling effect. ‘Unwilling? We’ll find out in Corfu, won’t we…?’
Three days later a Toyota Landcruiser whisked Glory away from the island airport.
She had flown out to Corfu cocooned in the incredible luxury of Rafaello’s private jet and had been surprised to find that he was not on board. However, his aircrew had treated her like royalty and, although she had told herself that she was far too sensible to be impressed by rampant materialism, she had been impressed to death. His jet had been a far cry from the cramped and uncomfortable package holiday flight to Spain which she had endured with Sam a couple of years earlier. Served with a lunch that would have passed muster in a top-flight hotel, she had been offered a selection of recent films to watch and the latest copies of a dozen glossy magazines.
The Landcruiser branched off the busy main thoroughfare and eventually onto a rough road that climbed ever upward between groves of gnarled silver-green olive trees. They passed through quaint little hill villages on roads too narrow for two vehicles to pass at one and the same time. As they headed back down towards the coast on the other side of the island a series of tortuous bends and truly terrifying gradients slowed their journey even more. In all, it was an hour and a half and early evening before the car paused before a set of tall electronic gates that purred back for their entrance and drove up an avenue shaded by tall, graceful cypresses that cast long dark shadows like arrows.
The big villa was ultra-modern in design and pitched to take advantage of the sheltered seclusion of the lush green hillside and the fabulous sea views. A mag
nificent house in an even more magnificent setting, Glory conceded without much surprise as she climbed out of the car. But then, only the very best would satisfy a Grazzini. In the clear light in which every colour seemed sharper and brighter than it did back in England, the view of the brilliant blue Ionian Sea washing the golden strand only a hundred yards below her would have taken her breath away had not nervous tension already done that for her.
A middle-aged man in an old-fashioned steward’s white jacket ushered her into a marble-tiled foyer and showed her into a superb galleried reception room that opened out onto a wooden viewing deck.
‘Signor Grazzini will be with you soon, Miss Little,’ the manservant informed her. ‘Tea or coffee? Perhaps an aperitif before dinner?’
‘Where is Signor Grazzini?’ Glory enquired tautly, beginning to feel offensively like a parcel forever waiting to be picked up.
The older man looked uncomfortable.
‘That’s OK. I’ll go and find him for myself.’ Glory stalked back out to the hall, put her hands on her hips and yelled full volume, ‘Rafaello?’
Within fifteen seconds one of the doors off the spacious, airy hall jerked wide and Rafaello appeared. Clad in a lightweight pale cream suit, exquisitely tailored to his big, powerful frame, he looked nothing short of spectacular. He scanned her taut figure, taking in the patterned blue cotton shirt dress she wore and the plait in which she had restrained her hair.
‘You wanted me here. I’m here!’ Glory pointed out in the rushing silence, folding her arms in an effort to conceal the reality that she was trembling. For a crazy moment she had wanted to fling herself at him, and she had been shaken by that insane prompting.
‘What a novel way to get attention…’ a cut-glass English voice remarked.
Glory stiffened in dismay as a willowy brunette beauty with the exotic elegance of a supermodel strolled forward to stand by Rafaello’s side. Resting one possessive hand on his sleeve and throwing him a covert glance in the age-old communication of one lover to another, she spelt out their intimacy in non-verbal ways that any woman would have understood. ‘Really, I must try bellowing at the top of my voice when I next find that my host is not immediately available. So simple and effective.’ The brunette completed her cutting little speech with saccharine-sweet scorn.
‘Glory…this is Fiona Woodrow,’ Rafaello told her with unblemished composure.
The brunette extended a languid hand. Her face having flamed and then paled to leave her as white as paper, Glory ignored that empty gesture. Hypocrisy was not one of her talents.
A door opened somewhere behind her. ‘Jon…’ Rafaello drawled in the calmest of tones. ‘If you have the time, could you ensure that Glory gets a long cool drink?’