Page 30 of A Baby Scandal in Italy

Through a blur of tears, she noticed something fluttering around the room. A butterfly with vivid orange wings must have flown in through the open window, and now it landed on the bouquet of roses Ivy was holding. At Gemma’s funeral an orange butterfly had fluttered around the church yard, even though it had been a bitterly cold winter’s day.

A sense of peace came over Ivy. She had loved her sister, and Rafa had loved his father and was desperate to protect his mother. They might not love each other, but their marriage was founded on their shared love for Bertie.

She turned her head and met Rafa’s enigmatic grey gaze. ‘Are you ready to proceed?’ he murmured. The butterfly opened its delicate wings and rose into the air. Ivy watched it flutter across the room and out of the window.

‘I am ready,’ she said steadily.

In the early-evening sunshine, the Castello Dei Sogni was almost pretty. The helicopter landed in the grounds, and Rafa clasped Ivy’s hand in his as they walked towards the castle where the wedding guests had assembled for the reception. Huge urns filled with colourful flowers stood on either side of the front door. Inside, the great hall had been transformed into a romantic idyll with arrangements of pink roses and silver cloths on the tables that had been set out for the wedding dinner.

Ivy did not know most of the guests, who were Rafa’s business associates, but she had met some of his friends and their wives who lived in the nearby town of L’Aquila. The stylist, Sophia, had become a good friend, and Anna brought Bertie down from the nursery. Ivy hugged his little body and love flooded her heart. Soon he would be Rafa’s and her son, and a Vieri, once the adoption was finalised.

Rafa had arranged for a photographer from a popular magazine to take exclusive pictures of the event. The proceeds from the edition carrying the wedding photos would be donated to a children’s charity. It was a clever move, for it meant that he controlled the media coverage.

Ivy duly posed beside Rafa while he held Bertie. She knew he hoped the pictures of them as a happy family would put an end to the speculation about their relationship. He’d told her that the board members and Vieri Azioni’s shareholders were pleased their chairman and CEO had given up his playboy lifestyle. As a damage limitation exercise, the marriage was a stroke of genius.

The wedding dinner was sublime, and a champagne toast was made to the happy couple, although the bride drank sparkling water. After the meal, the guests mingled on the terrace and were entertained with music played by a fifteen-piece orchestra.

‘Rafa is a lucky man to have such a charming bride.’ The voice was vaguely familiar, and Ivy turned to see the elderly man called Carlo who had spoken to her at the engagement party. It had been less than a month ago, but it felt like a lifetime since she had arrived in Rome hoping to meet Bertie’s father.

Now she was married to Rafa and tonight she would be his wife in every way. When he had bent his head to kiss her at the end of the marriage ceremony, she’d expected him to brush his lips lightly over hers. But, at the first touch of his mouth, passion had exploded between them that had shocked her with its intensity and she’d sensed it had stunned him too.

The memory of his hungry desire had pulsed hot and needy between her thighs for the rest of the day, and she felt a mixture of anticipation and slight nervousness as the clock ticked towards midnight and the end of the reception.

Ivy pulled her mind back to the present and smiled at Carlo. ‘You own a bank.’ She remembered that he had been in the boardroom when she’d accused Rafa of being Bertie’s father. The scandal had led Carlo to cancel an important business deal with Vieri Azioni.

‘I used to own Landini Bank,’ he told her. ‘But earlier this evening I joined Rafa in his study and signed the documents to complete the sale of the bank to Vieri Azioni. I won’t apologise for withdrawing from the deal when I doubted Rafa’s integrity. If a man becomes a father out of wedlock, it is my firm belief that he has a duty to honour the mother by giving her his name in marriage and legitimising his child. I told Rafa I would not sell my bank to him until he had proved he was worthy to own it.’

Carlo laughed. ‘The timing was tight. I am flying to Canada tomorrow to spend six months with my daughter. Rafa pulled off the wedding just in time.’

So that was why Rafa had disappeared during the reception. Ivy told herself it was silly to feel hurt by the discovery that their rushed wedding had been so he could secure a business deal. He hadn’t explained why he’d organised the wedding at short notice, except to repeat that, once they were married, the news reporters would lose interest in them.

Rafa had such a forceful personality and he was used to having his own way. Was this how their marriage would be—him giving commands that he expected her to obey? Ivy’s chin came up. Her new husband was in for a surprise if he believed she would be a biddable wife.

By the time the reception had finished and the guests had departed, she felt brittle with tension and perilously close to tears. She escaped to her bedroom and found that her clothes had been moved by the staff into the rooms that she would share with Rafa from now on. The master suite comprised a sitting room and his and hers dressing rooms and bathrooms. The adjoining bedroom was dominated by a huge four-poster bed.

Thankfully, Rafa wasn’t there. She could not face him when her emotions were on a tightrope. Ivy dashed into her dressing room and searched through the chest of drawers for her pyjamas, thinking she would make up the bed in her old room and sleep there tonight.

‘Finally I’ve got you to myself.’ Rafa had entered the suite without Ivy hearing him, and he stood in the doorway of the dressing room. His voice was as deep as an ocean, and he did not try to hide his satisfaction that they were alone. He had dispensed with his jacket, waistcoat and tie, and his shirt was unbuttoned to halfway down his chest. In one hand he held a tumbler of whisky and his other hand rested on the door frame. He seemed to be relaxed, but his eyes were as sharp as rapiers when he studied her.

‘Don’t come any closer.’ She held out her hand as if to ward him off.

‘It’s understandable that you might feel nervous about making love for the first time,piccola,’ he murmured.

‘It’s not... I don’t.’ She knew from the Italian lessons she’d been having from Anna thatpiccolameant ‘little one’. Damn Rafa for sounding as if he cared when all the evidence showed that he didn’t. Tears brimmed. She hated that she was a cry-baby. She hated that he was so big, strong and diabolically gorgeous.

‘Is something the matter? I didn’t imagine that you were sending me bad vibes for the latter part of the evening,’ he said drily.

Ivy took a deep breath. ‘I know our marriage is a sensible arrangement. But I hoped there would be honesty and respect between us.’ Rafa’s brows lifted, but he said nothing, and she continued. ‘You should have told me that you had arranged our wedding so quickly because you wanted to do a deal to buy Landini Bank before Carlo Landini went abroad for six months. He told me you’d pulled the wedding off just in time. It would have been nice if you had informed me, that’s—that’s all I’m saying,’ she faltered when Rafa pushed off the door frame and came towards her.

He reminded her of a big cat, but if she was his prey she wasn’t going to wait around to be eaten. With the advantage of surprise, she darted past him, back into the bedroom. Belatedly she remembered that, as a professional basketball player, he’d been famous for his speed around the court. He overtook her before she was halfway across the room and spun her round so that her back was up against a post on the bed.

‘I did not arrange to make the deal with Landini at the wedding. I’d forgotten about buying the bank, to be honest.’ His eyes glittered. ‘I had other things on my mind. Carlo asked if he could come to the wedding reception, and I invited him, because despite our differences in the past I like and respect the guy. It was a total surprise when he took me aside this evening and asked if we could finalise the deal. He was keen to hand over responsibility of the bank before his trip to visit his daughter.’

He slid his hand beneath Ivy’s chin and tilted her face up to his. ‘I do respect you and I will always be honest with you. I expect you to do the same.’

The air simmered with sexual tension. Apart from his fingers gently stroking her jaw, he wasn’t touching her, but Ivy was so aware of him ithurt. She could feel the heat of his body and see the whorls of chest hairs where his shirt was open. He smelled divinely of his spicy aftershave and something earthier and intrinsically male.

‘Do you want to know why I organised the wedding in as short a time as possible?’ Beneath the bite of his anger was something raw that made Ivy tremble with excitement. ‘This is the reason,gattina.’ He angled his mouth over hers and kissed her with a fierce hunger that seared her down to her soul.

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