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As she played with him, trying to ignore the pounding music, her mind went round and round, thinking about that extraordinary encounter this morning.
Had it actually happened? Had a man who looked like every woman’s fantasy Latin millionaire really suggested she marry him for six months and thereby earn a hundred thousand pounds? It was so insane surely it couldn’t have happened.
The knock on her door made her start. On the bed, Benji looked round interrogatively. The knock came again.
‘Miss Jones?’
The voice was muffled and she could hardly hear it through the racket coming from next door. Was it the landlord? He turned up from time to time to check up on his property, from which he made a substantial living by letting it out to those on state benefits. Cautiously she went to the door. She’d fitted a chain herself, not feeling in the slightest secure with neighbours like hers.
Bracing her weight against the back of the door, ready to slam it shut, she opened it a crack.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Rafaello di Viscenti. We spoke this morning. Please be so good as to admit me.’
CHAPTER TWO
TOTAL astonishment made her obey. As she opened the door to him Rafaello experienced a momentary qualm. Could he really go through with this? Marry this…this…what was the English word for it…? Skivvy? Even for the reasons he had. Seeing her again brought home just how dire she was. She was wearing a saggy sweatshirt and baggy trousers, her stringy, mud-coloured hair was scraped back, and her face was gaunt, with hollows under her eyes. She was, he could safely say, the most physically repellent female he’d ever set eyes on.
But that is what makes her so perfect. OK, so she was the antithesis of Amanda, his first choice, but now, instead of a sexy, airhead bimbo he could take home this plain-ass-in, single mother! It would work just as well—if not better.
Besides—the thought came to him with a stab of discomfort as his quick glance took in the dump she lived in and finally settled on the baby sitting on the bed, staring at him with big, chocolate eyes—she could certainly do with the money more than Amanda could…
‘What…what are you doing here? How…how did you find me?’
The girl was stammering, clearly in a state of shock. Rafaello stepped inside and shut the door behind him. She shrank back, getting between him and the baby.
Rafaello frowned. Dio, did she think he was going to harm her child?
‘There is no need to panic,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘I found you, Miss Jones, through the cleaning agency you work for, that is all. And I have been waiting to speak to you again all day. You have only just been reported back here. Where have you been?’
He made it sound as if she’d been absent without leave.
‘Out,’ said Magda faintly, backing away to the bed so she could snatch up Benji in a moment if she had to. ‘I don’t spend much time here.’
Her visitor made a derisive noise in his throat. ‘That I can understand. Where is that music coming from?’ he demanded, glaring around.
‘The room next door. He likes it loud.’
‘It is intolerable!’ announced Rafaello.
Yes, agreed Magda, but all the same I have to tolerate it, and so does everyone else in the house. She was still in a state of shock, she knew. She had almost persuaded herself that the unbelievable events of the morning had never happened. Now, like something out of a dream, the man was standing in front of her again.
Rafaello di Viscenti… The name rolled around her brain like a verbal caress. The name suited him absolutely, she realised, perfectly complementing the image he presented of the luxury-class Italian male.
She blinked, realising she was staring at him gormlessly. He crossed to the table in the room, which served as dining table and general work surface, and placed an elegant leather document case down upon it, from which he proceeded to withdraw a wad of documents.
‘I have had the requisite papers drawn up,’ he informed her. ‘Please read them before you sign them.’
Magda swallowed. ‘Er…I’m not signing anything, Mr Viscenti.’
‘Di Viscenti,’ he said. ‘You will be Signora di Viscenti. You must learn the correct form of address.’
Magda rubbed the suddenly damp palms of her hands surreptitiously on her trousers. ‘Um…Mr di Viscenti, I…er…I…er…don’t think I can help you. Really. It’s all a bit too…er…weird for me…’
She cast around in her mind desperately, trying to find a tactful way of saying that the whole thing was so flaky she wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
His arched eyebrows rose. ‘Weird?’ he echoed. Then, brusquely, he nodded. ‘Yes, it is weird, Miss Jones. But, as I explained to you this morning, I have no choice—it is a matter of who controls our family business, Viscenti AG, the details of which need not trouble you. But it is sufficient reason for me to require a very temporary marriage, under very controlled circumstances, to meet certain…conditions…that amount to nothing more than an empty legality. It is a mere formal exercise for which, unfortunately, my marriage—even though a temporary one—is necessary.’
‘But why to me?’ she burst out. ‘A man like you could pick any woman to marry.’
Rafaello accepted the ingenuous compliment as nothing more than the obvious. ‘Think of my proposition not as a marriage, but as a job, Miss Jones. A very temporary job.’ His voice became dry. ‘That was something the previous…candidate…found difficult to accept.’ He made a very Italian gesture with his hand. ‘The woman you encountered this morning?’ he prompted.
‘You were going to marry her?’
‘Yes. Unfortunately she…withdrew at the last moment. Hence,’ he went on with heavy civility, ‘my urgent need for a replacement. I must marry as soon as possible.’
‘But why me?’ Magda persisted. It still seemed so totally absurd. However, she had to admit that the knowledge that he had been on the point of entering into this weird marriage he wanted with that underdressed cow who had stormed out of his apartment this morning did make what he was proposing more credible. But it still left his choice of herself as a replacement incredible. After all, surely a man like that would know women like that first one by the score.
‘Because there is one essential difference between you…and women like her. Amanda wanted the money I was going to pay her. You…’ He paused and looked at her, and his eyes suddenly seemed to see right into the heart of her. ‘You need the money. That makes you more…reliable.’
Magda stilled.
Remorselessly he went on.
‘You do need the money, Miss Jones. You need it desperately. You need it to save you—and your child.’ His dark eyes held hers, holding her as if he were the devil himself. Tempting her beyond endurance. ‘You can’t go on living here—you know you can’t. You have to get out—you know that. My money will let you do that. It’s a life-raft for you—and your child. Take it—take the money I’m offering you.’
Her face had paled. He could see the emotions working. Ruthlessly, as if he were driving yet another hard-nosed business deal, he pressed his advantage. The thump of the music vibrated in every stick of furniture in the shabby bedsit.
‘I hold the key to a new life for you—a new future—in exchange for four weeks of your life now. That’s all I ask of you in exchange. A month in my company—and then you are free. Free—with enough money to get you out of here for ever…’
His eyes were boring into hers. She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. Could hardly breathe.
‘I…I don’t know who you are…You could be anyone…’ Her voice was faint.
His chin tilted with an inborn arrogance that had been bred into his genes. She could see that.
‘I am Rafaello di Viscenti. The di Viscentis are a family of the utmost respectability and antiquity. I am chief executive of Viscenti AG. It is a company valued at well over four hundred million euros. I do not usually—’ there was a distinct bite in his voice ‘—have to present my credentials.’
Magda swallowed. ‘Yes, well,’ she mumbled, ‘I don’t exactly move in those circles…’
‘And the offer I have made you,’ he went on, with that same edge of hauteur in his voice, ‘is exactly what I have outlined to you. There are no hidden clauses, no tricks to deceive you. You may talk everything through with my lawyers if you wish. What is in those papers—’ he gestured with his hand to the documents on the table ‘—is what you will get. Now, tell me, if you please, what is stopping you from signing them?’
You, she wanted to shout. It’s you. She stared at him wildly. I can’t marry a man who looks like you, who’s as rich as you, who’s as gorgeous as you—I can’t marry a man, no matter what for, or how temporarily, who looks as if he’s stepped out of a celebrity mag. It’s absurd. It’s nuts. It’s…
A wail distracted her. Benji, bored with posting shapes, had knocked over the tower and started to howl. Automatically Magda collapsed back on the bed and lifted him up to her knees, hugging his firm little body. The sobs ceased, and Benji twisted round in her lap to pay some attention to the stranger in the middle of the room. Magda’s arms wrapped round him, and she felt his little heart beat against hers.
‘A hundred thousand pounds,’ said Rafaello softly. ‘Think…think…what you could do with it…’
Magda’s body started to rock…Go away, she thought desperately, go away. Take your designer suit and your expensive briefcase and go…go before I give in, before you tempt me like Lucifer himself…
‘You wouldn’t be doing it for yourself. You’d be doing it for your baby.’
She shut her eyes, trying to block out that soft, seductive voice.
‘If I walk out now—never to come back—how will you live with yourself? Knowing you turned down the chance to get your baby out of here, for ever?’
She went on rocking, her arms wrapped so closely around Benji that he began to protest.
‘Four weeks—no more than that—in my family home in Italy, which is very respectable, Miss Jones, I do assure you—and then you’re free.’
‘Benji comes with me.’ Her voice was high-pitched.
Rafaello spread his hands. ‘Of course the baby comes with you—that is essential.’ It wasn’t necessary to spell out to her just why his bride should arrive accoutred with a fatherless child. ‘You just have to sign the papers, that’s all you have to do…’ He slid his hand inside his breast pocket, taking out a gold fountain pen, slipping off the top, proffering it to her. ‘Come—’
There was an imperiousness in his voice she could not resist. Slowly, as if she was sleepwalking, she slid Benji from her lap back on to the bed, ignoring his wail of protest. Slowly, very slowly, she got to her feet. It wasn’t real. None of this was real. She’d wake up in a moment and find it had all been a dream.
He held the pen out to her. Numbly she took it. Numbly she looked down at the table, to where he was turning the documents to the last page and placing one long, lean finger where she should sign.
The ink flowed from the gold pen in smooth, lustrous curves, despite the halting jerkiness of her signature. In the evening light it seemed blood-coloured. As she handed it back to him, standing at her side like a dark, infernal presence, she felt a wave of weakness go through her.
What have I done? Oh, dear God, what have I done?
But whatever it was, it was too late to go back.
Magda sat, staring out of the porthole, at the sunlit cloudscape beyond. Benji was on her lap, asleep. He’d had a bad takeoff, even with sucking on the bottle of juice to ease the pressure on his little eardrums, but now, after half an hour of grizzling, he’d finally fallen asleep.
She glanced covertly across the aisle to where Rafaello di Viscenti was sitting. He was working through a pile of papers laid out on the table in front of him, and so far as he was concerned, she could tell, he might as well have been alone on the plane.
There were no passengers apart from themselves on the luxurious executive jet winging its way across Europe. For Magda, who had never flown in her life, it was an experience she could hardly believe was happening.
But then her whole life since she had signed her name at Rafaello di Viscenti’s arrogant bidding had been completely unbelievable. She knew that if she had thought too much about what she was doing she could not have gone through with it. So she’d just let herself be swept along, let herself be that tin can racing along behind Rafaello di Viscenti’s powerful, unstoppable car taking her into an un-dreamed-of future.
Not that she’d seen him between that evening and today. Ironically, it had been his total indifference to her once he had got her to agree to marry him that had reassured her most. It was indeed, in his eyes, just a job, and she was nothing more than a junior employee. He had despatched one of his other junior employees to ensure the correct documents for their marriage were in place, to accompany her to register the marriage, and to arrange passports for her and Benji.
This morning she had been collected from her bedsit and driven to her local register office. The ceremony uniting them in matrimony had passed in a complete haze. She must have said the right things at the right time, but all she could remember now, as she sat and stared out at the sun-drenched cloudscape, was an overwhelming impression of a tall presence beside her, a deeply accented voice interspersing with hers and the registrar’s, and that was that.
Only one moment stood out—when the tall presence beside her had lifted her hand and slid a gold wedding ring on her finger. Something had prickled through her like electricity. It must have been the coolness of his brief touch, nothing more. A moment later she’d been required to perform the same office for him, and to her own astonishment had realised she could hardly do so—her hand had trembled so violently.
She’d managed it somehow, all the same, and then, distracting her completely, she had heard Benji, kept back in the outer room with some more of Rafaello di Viscenti’s minions, give out a mournful wail. From that moment on her sole thought had been to get back to him, and the rest of the ceremony had been lost to her.
As soon as she could she had hurried out, back to Benji, and scooped him into her arms. Then Rafaello had been beside her, taking her elbow and saying smoothly, but completely impersonally, ‘If you are ready, we must go.’
A limo had whisked them to Heathrow and, apart from asking her in that same impersonal manner if she were comfortable and had everything she required, that was all her new husband had said to her. He’d seemed, Magda vaguely registered, to be quite abstracted during the whole procedure—as abstracted as she was.
The haze around her brain deepened. Go with the flow, she told herself, and smoothed Benji’s silky hair, gazing again out of the porthole. Shock was keeping her going, she knew. Yet beneath the numbness she could feel a thread of excitement stirring. However bizarre the circumstances, she was going abroad for the first time in her life.
Italy. Could she really be going there? In the time since she had given in to Rafaello di Viscenti’s imperious will she had got out as many library books as she could on the country. Reading had always been her solace, ever since she had discovered it was a way of blotting out reality—the reality of being brought up in care—taking her away to magical lands, with wonderful people, a world away from the disturbed, unhappy children that surrounded her, the cast-off jetsam of adults too dysfunctional to be responsible parents themselves, making their unwanted children pay the price for their own emotional shortfalls.
As she stared out over the radiant cloudscape—another mystical land up here, so far above the earth—her memory fled back to Kaz. Her face clouded. Although she might feel the desolation of a child utterly abandoned by its parents, at least Magda knew she had come off lucky compared with Kaz. Kaz had had the bruises, the badly mended bones, the haunted eyes. Taken into care to be safe from an abusive stepfather and alcoholic mother, Kaz had been almost as withdrawn as Magda. Perhaps it was natural the two of them had drawn together, to form, for perhaps the first time in either of their lives, a real friendship, a real emotional bond.
Sorrow pierced her. She gazed out over the fleecy, sunlit surface of the clouds. Are you out there somewhere, Kaz? she wondered.
In her arms, Benji stirred. Gently Magda bent to kiss his fine dark hair, her heart swelling with love. She lifted her eyes again and stared out of the window. She had done the right thing in agreeing to this bizarre marriage; she knew she had. However weird this was, she was doing the right thing for the right reason.
For Benji.
For the first time since Rafaello di Viscenti had turned her world upside down, she felt at peace with herself for what she had done.
The peace lasted until the plane landed. Then, in the confusion of a busy Italian airport, hanging on to a wailing Benji, whose ears had set off again during the descent into Pisa, Magda once more felt like that tin can rattling along a motorway.
A hand pressed, not roughly, but insistently, into the small of her back.
‘This way,’ said Rafaello di Viscenti, the man she had married a handful of hours ago, and guided her forward. They made their way out of the airport to where a large limousine hummed at the kerb. Within moments they were inside, luggage in the boot, and the chauffeur was drawing out into the traffic.
The journey took well over an hour, and the latter part, away from the autostrada, was by far the most fascinating. Magda stared out of the window, drinking in the Tuscan landscape, a world away from the rainy South London streets she had left that morning. As the car purred along she pointed things out to Benji, whose baby seat was closest to the window. She leant over him, glad of the opportunity to put as much distance between herself and the man occupying the far corner of the huge car. Since he seemed to be preoccupied with his work still, tapping away at a laptop on his knees, she assumed he preferred to be left alone.
That suited her completely. Having to make stilted conversation with him would have been much worse. Right now, she just wanted to savour being in Italy.
Talking softly to Benji, she drank it all in. Road signs in Italian, driving on the wrong side of the road, houses, cars and people—all Italian. They were steadily climbing, she realised, heading up into the hills. Summer sunlight drenched the rolling landscape, etching the cypresses like ink. She stared, entranced. Stone farmhouses and picturesque stone-built towns, olive groves and vineyards, goats and sheep grazing, and, as the road grew steeper and narrower, old men with donkeys, old women covered in black from headscarf to heavy shoes.
Finally, as the roads grew narrower and the traffic more and more sparse, the limo slowed and turned in through large ironwork gates that opened at a buzz from the chauffeur. She heard Rafaello click off his laptop and close it up.
‘We are here,’ he announced.
She glanced briefly across at him. His face was expressionless and, it seemed to her, particularly tense. Automatically she tensed as well. It dawned on her that the flight and car journey had been nothing more than an interlude. Now, right now, in front of others, she was about to take on the role of Signora di Viscenti.
As if reading her attack of nerves, Rafaello spoke suddenly.
‘Be calm,’ he instructed. ‘There is nothing for you to be anxious about. For you, this is simply a job. Please remember that.’
Was she imagining it, or had a grimmer note entered his tense voice? His dark gaze flicked over her again, and something in it sent a chill through her. Instinctively, Magda felt the chill was not directed at her. But there was anger deep down in there somewhere, she knew. Anger at having been required to marry at all.
Well, she thought resolutely, that was his business, not hers. She was simply doing what he was—to put it bluntly—paying her to do. She had gone through a wedding ceremony but it was nothing more than a legal formality. She was Signora di Viscenti in nothing more than name—and she would never be anything else.
For a moment so brief it hardly existed a longing struck her, so intense it pierced like pain, that somehow, if fairytales were real, this might be one—she really was sweeping along the driveway to her new home, with a husband beside her to die for…
But fairytales weren’t real. They were just…fairytales.
Nothing to do with her.
The car drew up in front of a castellated villa that made Magda’s eyes widen in wonder. It was ancient—and beautiful. The old stone was weathered, the huge wooden door studded, and the grounds stretched all the way to the woods and hills beyond.
Carefully she extracted Benji, who had been lulled off to sleep some time ago, by the rocking motion of the car, and clambered out with him. She held him on her hip and gazed around. The warmth of the late afternoon after the limo’s air-conditioning struck her like a blessing, warming her through the thin material of the cotton dress she was wearing. It was the best she possessed, though it had cost under five pounds in a charity shop and was a size too large for her. Its low-waisted, button-fronted style, she knew, would probably have suited a matron of fifty better than herself. But what did it matter? If Rafaello di Viscenti had objected to it he would have got one of his minions to arrange an alternative.
‘Come—’ The man she had married that morning slipped a hand under her elbow. There was a tension in his grip that communicated itself to her and to Benji, who gave a little grizzle.
Magda suffered a swift glance at Rafaello’s face. Its expression was closed and shuttered, and looked, she thought, very remote. Instinctively she realised that she and Benji were the last things on his mind.
