He was good at staring though, she recalled abstractedly, suddenly thrown back to their first meeting over the meal that Arianna had insisted on inviting her to. And all Arianna’s intimidating brother had seemed to do was stare at her, eyes as dark as jet between thick black lashes. Eyes that were set in an extravagantly handsome face, eyes that could unexpectedly warm to a melted golden caramel hue and send her heartbeat inexplicably racing.
Yes, there had been very little normal getting-to-know-you conversation over that family dinner with poor Arianna being left to pick up the slack and usually sharp Vivi finding her tongue inexplicably glued to the roof of her mouth for the first time in her life. And what had she done? While Arianna had blithely chattered, Vivi had stared back, fascinated by Raffaele in the strangest way, little arrows of heat darting through her as she’d noticed new and seemingly important things about him. The commanding angle of his black brows; the masculine strength of his jaw line; the olive-toned planes and hollows of his fabulous bone structure; the classic arch of his nose and the wildly sensual curve of his sculpted lips. She had noted his perfect manners, his elegant hands and the fluid movement of them. She had sat there like a schoolgirl ogling him, forgetting to eat, forgetting everything, seduced by the new energising excitement filtering through her bloodstream like a charge of adrenalin.
And much good it had done her, she recollected with self-loathing, emerging back into the less exciting present...
* * *
Across London, Raffaele cast down his phone and moved without hesitation on to Plan B. Vivi wouldn’t speak to him. Well, he had to admit that that was a surprise but he had to find a way to make her deal with him. If civil and calm didn’t work as an approach, he would take a leaf out of her grandfather’s book and try heavy duty persuasion. And if that didn’t work out either, he would work right through the alphabet in plans until he found the magic combination to make Vivi do what he needed her to do for Arianna’s benefit.
Raffaele had a rare sleepless night, spent remembering his dismay at his stepmother’s sudden death from an overdose when he was only twenty and still a student. Her passing, mere months after his father’s demise, had impacted heavily on Raffaele’s life. Without any warning or preparation, he had found himself responsible for a twelve-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old girl he had barely bothered to even get to know...his half-sister. Yet he had grown to love Arianna and care for her in a way he had never deemed possible, for he knew his own flaws and accepted that he was essentially cold and analytical in nature.
Lying awake in the dark hours, however, he had discovered that he couldn’t suddenly switch off that deep need to protect his vulnerable sister from the drug inheritance that had damaged her through no fault of her own. Arianna harmed herself, never anybody else. So, he would do whatever it took to protect her from the fallout of that unfortunate friendship with Vivi two years earlier...and Vivi?
Well, devious, sexy little Vivi was simply going to have to bite the bullet and pay her dues on Arianna’s behalf...