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.