The Devil to Pay (10 page)

“How are things with you these days, Danny? I’ve missed you terribly.” Ignoring Rianna completely, Isabella leaned into his broad chest and traced an imaginary line up his throat to his jaw with a dangerous looking fingernail. “I’m making do, of course. Keeping myself busy and respectable as far as the outside world’s concerned, but being a well-behaved little wife can be
so
boring, you know. In fact I’m tempted to let rip and hit the San Remo festival, live in a teepee, have wild promiscuous sex, the publicity would be incredible—”

“Don’t even think about it, Isabella.” Daniel’s voice had become low and threatening. “Now go away. I’m busy.”

“So I see,” she sneered as she looked Rianna up and down with deliberate disdain. Her black eyes sent out a chilling challenge. “You certainly look the part,
bambina
. I’ll give you that. He only
does
little girls
these days, so much safer, you see, and he is a little spoilt for choice. Most irritating, but he’ll have to grow out of it someday.”

Isabella released Daniel’s forearm and thrust her left hand ungraciously beneath Rianna’s nose. A huge ruby ring and wedding band were impossible to ignore as they flashed in the midday sun. “You’ll never get anything like this out of him though, I’ll promise you that much. He doesn’t do
marriage either, if he can avoid it.”

Daniel made an irritated gesture to the hovering waiter who immediately understood. Lunch was over. He stood up just as Isabella was attempting to manoeuvre onto his lap and firmly took both her shoulders in his hands before pushing her away from him. “That will do,
puttana
,” he muttered. “Now go and annoy someone else.”

Isabella sniffed and her thickly glossed lips curled unpleasantly, but she had got the message. Their barbed conversation was
finito
.

Rianna felt the pressure of his hand on her shoulder as he steered her away from the bitter Italian taunts their unexpected visitor was still shouting and manoeuvred her into the bustling crowds along the harbour.

“I’m sorry about that. Isabella is related to me, so I have to be reasonably nice to her. Especially in public.” He shrugged irritably. “You can’t choose your family.”

Rianna would never admit she’d been completely intimidated by The Scarlet Queen, but she had left quite an impression on her as far as the way Italian women were expected to look. “She’s very beautiful.”

“Yes,” he replied gruffly. “She makes a small fortune from exclusive modelling shots when it suits her, trades on the family name. But she’s usually broke due to a number of expensive
hobbies,
shall we say?”

“And her husband?”

Daniel stared blankly ahead into the mass of people in front of them. “It’s not a particularly happy marriage. Their union should probably never have happened, a more unlikely match you couldn’t imagine. But then hindsight is a valuable thing.” He looked quickly from side to side, seeking some sort of clearing in the seething throng of well-heeled bodies. “If she’d been able to have children, things might be different, but you can’t always change things that are important to you. Not even with all the money in the world. I’m afraid to say, in the last year or so, being a nuisance and going around upsetting everyone seems to give her enormous pleasure.”

Rianna had been left feeling pretty wretched by the woman, but his comment about her not being able to have children sparked sympathy. She felt sorry Isabella’s grief had manifested itself in such a poisonous way. After all, who could predict how such a situation would affect a person and what it would drive them to do?

She’d always wondered if she’d have a family of her own one day. It seemed to be the natural course of events, the way life happened. But there were no guarantees. And then to her horror, she realised her brain was forming an image of Daniel, holding a newborn baby up to the sun with paternal triumph, smiling up at her, calling her
bella
, brushing her tiny lips gently with his... “She could have joined us. I wouldn’t have minded.”

Daniel’s eyes wrinkled at the corners with amusement. “Isabella join us? What? For lunch? I don’t think so. As a general rule she doesn’t do lunch. Or many meals at all, if it comes to it.”

“And you only
do
little girls?” Rianna blushed as her thoughtless outburst rung painfully in her ears. Her embarrassment was compounded by the withering look he gave her as he sighed and shook his head.

“Isabella can be very childish at times. She’s clearly having an especially bad day. It would please me greatly if we could pretend she hadn’t just happened. I was in danger of actually enjoying my lunch before she turned up and spoiled everything.
Si
?”

Rianna nodded her agreement. She’d be more than happy to consign the expensively-packaged vial of female poison to distant memory.

“Stay close, it’s busy,” Daniel instructed, his voice rising over the din of the crowds. “And Isabella was right about one thing: you really are little, aren’t you? I could lose you forever in this and you’d end up sold into the white slave trade.” He grinned down at her and then took her by the hand.

Pleasure radiated like fire throughout her body as her fingers folded into his and she felt as if she was being swept along by a strong current of water which she was powerless to resist. Her gaze fixed onto the sinuous length of his back as he twisted and turned through the cramped alleyways and crowds. She was glad he didn’t see the shiver of longing that unexpectedly ripped through her.

A sudden spark of red and green in the very corner of her eye caused Rianna to flinch as Daniel juddered to a halt. By a hair’s breadth they avoided a collision with a pushchair thrust unceremoniously into their path, but the laws of momentum meant Rianna ploughed straight into him.

Time stood still as he drew her into his chest, his arms encircling her waist as he whispered into her ear. “I don’t think that little stunt could have worked better if I’d planned it.”

He brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek and lowered his mouth to brush her lips with his. She closed her eyes, submitting to the sharp physical awareness that drove her to deepen the kiss still further.

She felt his body tense and her pulse began to race as he broke away and guided her into a side alley and the privacy of a doorway. Her excitement grew, and as she eased her breasts against him, he inhaled sharply before renewing the kiss.

“
Dio
! Why did this have to happen here?” Daniel groaned as she pushed her hips against his. “We need to get back home for this—”

“But we have work to do,” Rianna murmured, her eyelids lowering to stare at his mouth. Common sense evaporated in the dark doorway and her lips continued to tease his with tiny specks of contact. “You’re my boss and this shouldn’t be happening again.”

“I don’t believe that any more than you do.” He slid his hand underneath the hem of her t-shirt and stroked her stomach.

“It’s unprofessional,” she whispered with a playful bite to the edge of his jaw as his mouth sought the warm velvet hollow of her throat.

“I’ve already thought about that. I’m the boss. I make the rules and I’ve decided we are exempt from the normal codes of practice.” He traced circles around her navel with his fingers and his voice deepened into a husky whisper. “It’s inevitable and you can’t say you don’t want me too, because I can feel it, feel it right here.” He placed his hand between her breasts. “I’ve never met a woman like you. You’re intoxicating.”

“Daniel—” Rianna attempted to push him away, but he just gripped her more tightly. He pinned her against the doorway with his hips and she knew her nipples must be sharply visible beneath the soft fabric of her t-shirt. It was obvious he was intoxicating her, too. “We’ll get arrested at this rate.”

“I don’t care.”

She took a large gulp of air and somehow wriggled loose. The sudden coolness of the air on her face was sobering. “We have to stop this right now and get the hideous shopping over with.”

****

Disappearing into the seclusion of a lavish dressing room gave Rianna the opportunity to take stock and examine exactly what had come over her on the street outside. How had she allowed herself to slip so effortlessly into his arms again? What had possessed her to crush herself so wantonly against him? He was supposed to be off limits, wasn’t he?

She nervously surveyed the selection of lingerie selected for her and began to strip off. Her heart skittered against her ribs as she remembered the urgency of their embrace. The pounding heat between her legs meant she couldn’t even try to deny that Daniel turned her on in a way she had not imagined possible. Every inch of her skin seemed to be sensitised and tender, aching for his touch again, but harder this time and longer. Her now-naked body was crying out for his, to be on her, over her,
in
her. How was she going to resist him?

It could happen...

With unsteady hands, Rianna lifted up a pale blue silk balconette bra and matching knickers and tried them on. Practicality, comfort and price were her guiding rules for underwear, but as she looked at herself in the full-length gilded mirror, she realised what she had been missing.

She’d been seriously worried about squeezing into designer labels. She can’t have simply imagined that young Italian women were as fat as breadsticks or as thin as their fancy cigarettes. She also feared that the higher the price of something went, the more excruciating the sizing system would become: medium, small and even smaller still.

However, when she ran her fingertips over the exquisite fabrics that sculpted her into smooth voluptuous curves, a smile parted her lips.

He would love this.

On their arrival at the appointment-only fashion house, Daniel had been settled down in a sort of “man zone” by a multitude of fawning assistants to watch Sky Italia football on a massive plasma TV. Rianna’s last glimpse of him was as he politely turned down a complimentary foot massage, but accepted a large Bellini cocktail from a svelte doe-eyed assistant. These people knew how to get the most out of their rich clients and, Rianna realised, the longer the sugar daddies were kept amused, the more Euros their wives and mistresses would spend.

Nevertheless, his distraction left her to choose and try on all the most gorgeous designs possible without worrying about keeping him waiting. Men hated shopping, didn’t they? There were no price tags on anything and she just knew that if there were, she would probably break out in a nervous rash just picking up a hair band. Still, this
was
all Daniel’s idea and there was no denying it, the stock was utterly gorgeous.

A honey-skinned blonde assistant tactfully packed her well-worn jeans and t-shirt into one of the fancy boxes stacked on the salon’s plush carpet floor. The girl had wrapped Rianna’s old garments in scented tissue paper and tied the whole lot up with a ream of silk ribbon. How the upper one percent lived!

Rianna sighed with guilty pleasure and turned to admire her reflection one last time. There was every chance she was staring into one of those miraculous mirrors that would even make a walrus look attractive, but there was no ignoring the image in the glass and her heart soared. She looked good.
Really good
.

Starting with a base of extraordinary underwear that pushed, pulled and cajoled in all the correct ways without the merest hint of discomfort was a revelation. A handmade red broderie camisole showed off her newly moulded cleavage and its deep neckline had the effect of lengthening her neck. A simply cut white silk jacket contrasted sharply and added a little glamour with a sparkle of gemstone buttons and underneath, scarlet Capri pants tapered perfectly to display her slim ankles. The butter-soft white pumps on her feet were trimmed with a silver buckle and Rianna felt as if she was walking on air. But maybe it wasn’t just the shoes were making her float a foot above the floor. The way Daniel’s eyes had widened as she stepped out left nothing to the imagination.

“
Bella,
” he murmured before slowly rising from the sofa to examine her close up. He extended one long tanned finger and placed it under her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “I would say it was money well spent if I didn’t just want to rip it all off you.”

Rianna frowned awkwardly as she noticed the way the young assistant’s face coloured with embarrassment. “Daniel!”

Totally unabashed, he slid both hands inside her jacket and cradled her ribcage, his thumbs stroking the sensitive area under the rounded swell of her breasts through the fabric. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You look amazing.”

Rianna blushed to her roots as Daniel went to hand over his platinum charge card with the ease only a very rich man could display. She was desperate to get out of the boutique now, away from the suppressed giggles, startled gasps and all the prying eyes. She had no doubt Daniel was used to the relentless glances of adoration that had been coming from every other woman in the shop, but she certainly wasn’t.

He had an incredible presence even if you didn’t know who he was. His looks and stature could stop traffic. He could have any woman he wanted and for some reason, he had chosen to play with her. And this
was
all a game for him. It simply had to be. A sexual game of cat and mouse to while away the boredom before the board meeting.

“Let’s go now, shall we?” Rianna hoped he didn’t notice the hint of desperation in her voice. “We need to get this stuff back and head for wherever you propose the board meeting will take place.”

“We could always reschedule for tomorrow.” He slipped his card back into his wallet. “Especially if you need a liedown after all that retail.”