was rolling, nothing was going to stop it in the near future without someone—or all of them—losing face.
She closed her eyes, wishing her head would just stop spinning now so she could think.
She needed to ring Mark. The whole story had gone bottom upwards and she needed to warn him then get his take on what she should do next.
Ignoring the swimming room, she got up then just stood looking down at her feet. Her shoes had disappeared. Tugging the throw around her chilled shoulders, she began searching for them but they weren’t anywhere to be found.
He must have taken them with him. To stop her from making a bid for freedom? He had to be crazy if he thought her mad enough to run out there where the paparazzi waited—with or without her shoes!
She did find a bathroom, though, which she was sincerely glad about, since she had not been near one for hours and hours. It smelled of Raffaelle Villani: clean and tangy, with a hint of spice.
Nice, she thought as she washed her hands in the basin. The kind of expensive scents you expected to surround a super-elite male. Then she supposed she must also smell super-elite right now, bearing in mind that her body had been pampered by a whole range of expensive products Elise had provided along with the expensive hairstyle and dress.
She caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror then and was actually taken aback because she hardly recognised herself—that sleek blonde thing with dead straight hair and heavy make-up.
Well, she thought grimly as she viewed the thick licks of mascara that lengthened her eyelashes and made her eyes look bluer than they really were, everyone just loved to tell her that she had the potential to look almost as good as Elise if she’d only take time with her appearance. Now it seemed they’d achieved their dearest wish, only—
She was not and had never wanted to be Elise, had she? And that person she could see in the mirror was just someone pretending to be something she was not.
The fraud, in other words—the fake.
The pink lipstick had all gone by now, she saw, but her lips still looked fuller than she was used to seeing them. Fuller and sexier because of too many hot kisses shared with a complete stranger.
A stranger who was in for a big shock when he eventually got to meet the real Rachel Carmichael.
Releasing a sigh, she turned away from the mirror and went back into the bedroom to search for that other item that had gone missing—her bag with her cellphone inside it.
It wasn’t in the bedroom so she let herself into the hallway, then walked down it and into the living room. The dress did not feel so indecently short now that her ankles were no longer elevated by four-inch heels, she noticed as she walked.
She heard the bag before she found it because her phone was already ringing. It had to be Mark—who else? she mocked grimly as she followed the sound and found the bag lying on the floor by the sofa she’d last sat down upon.
Her half-finished glass of vodka stood alongside it. As she bent to get her bag there was a moment when she considered picking up the glass first and downing what was left in true Dutch courage style before she told Mark what had happened.
In the end she didn’t need to tell him. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she put the phone to it.
‘Rachel, what the hell are you doing in Raffaelle Villani’s apartment?’ Mark’s voice all but pounced.
‘How did you find out where I am—?’ she asked.
‘Because it’s all over the bloody Internet!’
A sound from behind her made her turn to find Raffaelle Villani propping up the living room doorway. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now, revealing tanned muscular forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to make her wonder where else on his body it might be.
Her stomach muscles quivered. Her mouth went dry. Fluttering down her eyelashes, ‘It’s nothing for you to panic about,’ she said huskily into the phone. ‘I—I’ve been explaining the—situation to R-Raffaelle.’ The name fell uneasily from her lips and she caught the way one of his eyebrows arched in mocking note of that. ‘He—he’s being very understanding about it as—as I told you and Elise he would be once he’d heard all the facts.’
There was a short silence. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
‘No—!’ Rachel pushed out. ‘It—it’s better that you stay away from here.’
‘Because I’m the press? Because between the two of you—you’ve come up with this crazy engagement announcement that is flying round Europe as we speak?’
That far, that quickly—? Rachel swallowed.
‘I’m your brother first, Rachel,’ Mark was saying angrily. ‘And if that bastard is—’
‘Well, it’s just a bit too late to remember that, Mark!’ she cut in. ‘After the way you left me standing tonight, I wish I didn’t have a brother!’
‘I thought you were right behind me until I reached my car.’ He had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘When I did think to look back, the rest of my cronies were piling out of the hotel and I couldn’t see you anywhere, so I assumed you’d disappeared in the other direction.’
‘And, happy with that very stupid idea, you just went home without me to post your scoop.’ Wasn’t that just typically Mark?
‘I had a deadline,’ he grunted.
I had a life, Rachel thought angrily. ‘Well, it’s too late to come at me with the brotherly concern now.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Rachel. So he’s okay with all of this, then?’
Straight from apology back to business, Rachel noticed. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He sucked in a breath. ‘So when are you coming back here?’
‘Coming back?’ She looked at Raffaelle Villani. He was standing there, waiting to hear her answer as much as Mark was.
And she knew suddenly that she was going nowhere. She owed it to this man to play the game the way he had decided it would be played.
‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention. ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’
‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.
She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—
‘Yes,’ she said.
But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’
Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you—tomorrow,’ was all she said.
‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’
And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.
‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’
‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’
The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.
Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale