CHAPTER ONE IT WAS like playing Russian roulette with your sex
life: place a loaded invitation in the barrel, then shoot and see
if you scored a hit. Everyone was doing it, Raffaelle Villani
observed cynicallythe young and nubile, complete with breast
implants and carefully straightened and dyed blonde hair. They
circled the room eyeing up likely victims, picked the richest man
they could find, then primed him and fired their lucky shot. Or
unlucky, depending from which side of the fence you viewed it. Some
you win, some you lose, he mused as one eager player tried the deal
on him only to be rewarded with the sight of his back. Contempt
twisting his lean golden features, he beat a retreat to the
furthest cornerof the room where the bar was situated. Discarding
his untouched glass of champagne, he ordered a glass of fullblooded
red wine to take its place. Functions like this were the pits and
he would not have come but for his stepsister twistinghis arm. He
owed Daniella a favour for pulling him out of a tricky situation
recently with a woman who had been about to become his latest
loveruntil Daniella had whispered in his ear that the woman was
married with a small son. It turned out that she had even lied to
him about her name. Discovering that she was actually the
ex-catwalk model Elise Castle, now married to the heavyweight Greek
Leo Savakis, had not made Raffaelle feel good about himself. een
her own.
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Or maybe not, Raffaelle then contended. Perhaps the breasts and
the blue eyes had been just more lies the beautiful Elise had fed
to him. Fortunately he had notmanaged to get close enough to find
out. But he still owed it to Daniella thathe?d managed to get out
of a potentially scandal-spinning tangle before it had exploded in
his face. He was into gun metaphors, he noticed. What a great way
tospend a Saturday night. Where was Daniella--? Straightening his
six-foot-four-inch frame up from its bored languid slouch against
the bar, Raffaelle began scanning the sea of bodies milling about
in front of him for a glimpse of the sylphlike figure belonging to
his beautiful stepsister. He found her almost instantly.Her glossy
mane of black hair and the red dress she was wearing made her
virtually impossible to miss. She was standing with some
smooth-looking guy over by a wall on the other side of the room,
and it came as a shock to Raffaelle to see that she was playing the
game like all the rest! She was pouting, her pose distinctly saucy,
her breasts pushed up almost against the guy?s chest while he
lookeddown at her with one of those lazy I?m-interested-smiles on
his handsome face. Were Daniella?s breasts her own--? The question
hit Raffaelle?s brain and made him curse softly because he didn?t
care what Daniella?
