One Night in... Milan. Кейт Хьюит

advising you to draw on your knowledge gained from both of your siblings and think carefully before you move or speak.’

      ‘It sounded more like a command to me.’

      ‘Call it what you want,’ he said. ‘But accept that you will not go out without someone with you,’ he instructed. ‘I will assign one of my own security people to escort you.’

      It was only as he said it that Rachel realised she was stuck here in London, in his apartment with nothing to do. Elise was away. Even Mark was away. She didn’t know anyone else in the city! While it was very obvious by the way he was dressed that he was not going to hang around here if at all possible and keep her company.

      ‘So I’m to be a prisoner now as well as your …’ She severed the rest but they both knew what she had been about to say.

      ‘It cuts both ways, cara,’ Raffaelle said unsympathetically. ‘I had a life and relative freedom with which to live it until you threw yourself at me. Now I have you, a bed and no life to call my own.’

      ‘At least you get to go to work.’

      ‘It is what I do during the day.’

      ‘Well, lucky you.’ Rachel handed him back the newspaper, then she curled on her side and tugged the duvet up to her ears. ‘I might as well stay right here then, since it’s the only place I am useful.’

      He laughed. ‘Hold that delightful thought until I return.’

      Then he was gone. The door closed. He strode down the hallway and out of the apartment, then into the lift. It took him down to the basement where Dino and his limo awaited him. The moment he settled in the rear seat and opened his laptop his business cellphone began ringing and real life settled in. As he concluded his fourth complicated call of the journey, Dino was pulling the car to a stop outside the Villani building. He climbed out and strode in through the doors into familiar surroundings where that other excitement which came a very close second to sex waited to take him over.

      Then it came.

      ‘Congratulations, Mr Villani!’

      ‘Congratulations, sir!’

      Congratulations resounded from every corner. The curious smiles that accompanied them were due almost entirely to the photograph printed in this morning’s paper, he judged.

      His smile was mocking but fixed. And even that was wearing thin by the time he hit the top floor of the building.

      ‘Congratulations, Raffaelle,’ his secretary greeted him and dumped a whole load of telephone message slips down on his desk.

      ‘What are those?’ he asked dubiously.

      ‘Congratulations and invitations, of course.’ She grinned. ‘I would hazard a guess that these are only the beginning. It looks as if you and Miss Carmichael will be dining out every night for months!’

      He gave her them back. ‘You deal with them.’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘Filter out the rubbish and sort the rest into some kind of order,’ he instructed. ‘Then I will look at them.’

      ‘But wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Miss Carmichael did it?’

      Recalling the woman he had just walked away from brought a gleam to his eyes. ‘No. She has better things to do,’ he murmured dryly.

      Like playing his personal little sex nymph.