Or hell, he amended a few seconds later when the storm was over.
For where or how with anyone else was he ever going to match that?
When had he ever matched it since she’d gone from his life?
Her head was resting now on his shoulder, her hair splayed over both of them. She was shivering and quivering and as weak as a kitten.
And his own legs were not so steady, especially when he made the grim decision to withdraw.
Her legs slithered down the length of his. If tension had a taste to it, then it would be of the aftermath of sex with a woman you should not have indulged with.
Now it was over he was regretting it to the tips of his tingling, clenched, still-pumping nerve ends.
He took a step back and began straightening his clothing. Freya had to lean weakly back against the wall behind her, eyes tight shut, breathing nearly stopped.
‘Dio,’ Enrico muttered to himself when he saw how badly his fingers were trembling, and strode off to the adjoining bathroom, where he spent a few minutes sluicing his face and trying to calm himself.
He should not have done that. What the hell had he thought he’d been playing at?
Fastening his shirt buttons, he actually felt himself blush when he saw that his dark silk tie was still knotted around his throat.
Good definition of crass, Ranieri, he told himself grimly.
By the time he let himself out of the bathroom, Freya was standing over her discarded clothes with her naked back to him, fumbling with shaking fingers in her efforts to fasten her bra.
So what now? he wondered, and didn’t have an answer. On a low sigh he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and leant a shoulder against the wall while he watched her twist the bra around then shimmy into it. Her skirt had fallen back into place by its own volition but he found himself wondering what her panties were doing beneath it.
Lace bra, panties and lace-topped hold-up stockings. His mouth shifted into a grimace as he watched her stoop to gather up her jacket. It was dragged around her body like a piece of sackcloth. Her hair was caught inside it and his fingers twitched in his pockets with the need to go and set it free.
She did that, yanking out the long, silken swathe with a brutality that made Enrico wince. And the silence between them was so thick now you could barely breathe.
Her bag was lying on the floor by the chair with its contents spilling out from it. She must have forgotten to close the clasp when she’d rushed out of the ladies’ room, Freya realised, and vaguely wondered how she was going to bend down there and scoop it all back in when her stomach was dipping and diving so badly she would probably end up slumped on the floor in a puddle of dizzying shame.
How could she have done that? Let him do that to her?
He’d done it.
Through that same oddly vague haze, she watched Enrico walk to the chair then squat to pick up her overlarge, cheap, imitation-leather bag and begin to gather its contents with long, steady fingers that had just…
She sucked the breath into her lungs like a drowning person suddenly finding air to breathe. He heard it happen, but went on still with what he was doing, his dark head lowered, a bright red toy Ferrari held in his hand.
Nicky’s toy Ferrari.
Her son’s little toy car.
Enrico owned several Ferraris—collectors’ pieces most of them—only they were the man-sized real thing.
‘You want me to say something,’ he gritted.
‘No,’ she responded with a quaver that told her the tears were not far away.
While she had been behaving like a whore, her son was being safely taken care of by specialised staff six floors beneath her guilty, disgusted, trembling feet.
And she didn’t even have a right to be in this building any more. Neither did Nicky.
They’d both been terminated by the ruthless, heartless seducer of weak-willed, easy females. The man with—
A knock sounded at the door. Freya had this sudden, wildly hysterical image of Security arriving to escort her out.
Enrico straightened abruptly, tossing her bag onto the desktop—the same desktop where she’d—
‘Wait,’ he called out in terse command to whoever was on the other side of the door. He picked up his jacket and shrugged it back on.
Six-feet-three, dark and too good-looking for his own good, recently ravished, yet he didn’t have a hair out of place or a single crease in his clothes, Freya noticed. Did his legs feel hollow the way hers did? Was he suffocating beneath the same thick, clammy blanket of shame?
He turned then to look at her—no, not to look exactly, but to flick a pair of grimly half-hooded eyes over her ashen face, then her limp and dishevelled suit. In all her life Freya had never fought back her tears as fiercely as she had to do at this precise moment.
Her mobile phone began to ring. Forcing her unsteady legs to move, she went towards Enrico, hoping to goodness he moved out of her way so that she could get at her bag without her having to brush against him.
‘Leave it,’ he said in a sandpaper rasp that scored across her skin.
She stepped between him and the chair. ‘I can’t,’ she shook out.
Her phone only rang in emergencies.
‘Now, don’t go into one of your panics,’ Cindy, the crèche manager, warned quickly, ‘but Nicky’s had a fall. He was showing off for the gorilla and…’
The rest was said to fresh air. Freya just dropped the phone and ran.
‘What, for Dio’s sake?’ Enrico called after her.
But she was already pulling open the door. Enrico’s PA stood on the other side of it holding a cardboard box and blocking her way. Freya vaguely recognised her own things stacked inside the box and, on a whimper that had nothing to do with the physical reminder that she’d been sacked, but with a need to get past the cold-eyed young man, she shoved him inelegantly out of the way and raced for the lifts with her hair flying out behind her and no shoes on her feet.
No damn shoes! Enrico saw as he went after her. Where the hell were her shoes?
‘Move, Carlo,’ he gritted as his PA was only just recovering from Freya’s rude push.
This time Carlo managed to step to one side before the more heavily built Enrico threatened to knock him over, staring after him as his boss took off at a run.
Enrico didn’t run; Enrico strode through with arrogant elegance. He did not chase after women; women chased after him.
But Enrico was not an idiot. He’d worked it out that if Freya was running it had to have something to do with their son.
Their son!
It hit him for the first time what those words truly meant to him. Something hard like iron congealed in his gut. He reached the lifts just as the doors were closing with Freya on the other side of them.
Cursing beneath his breath, he stabbed the call button for another ride. It arrived within seconds and he strode out onto the second floor in time to follow the stream of wild, red-silk hair and found himself striding into a large, brightly coloured room.
Freya scanned the room at the speed of lightning, passing over the paint corner, the rest corner, the small sea of children busy doing the things that small children do, until she found her son in the climbing corner.
Of course the climbing corner, she thought with a barely stifled choke. Where else would Nicky be showing off for Fredo?
And who else would be squatting there, holding her son firmly in his big arms? Nicky was curled there as if it was his only source of comfort, his dark head tucked into Fredo’s shoulder, his little arms wrapped tightly round the big man’s neck.
Fredo looked up as she approached them. For a tough bruiser he looked very pale. Cindy was squatting down beside them and trying to get Nicky to let her see his face.
‘He’s fine—honestly,’ she said quickly to Freya. ‘He took a tumble off the climbing blocks and would have landed safely on the cushion floor, only he managed to bump his cheek on the way. But, as usual, he won’t let me lo
ok at the damage.’
Oh, the indignity of it, Freya thought helplessly as she came down beside Fredo. ‘Come on, big boy,’ she encouraged with only a tiny shake to her voice. ‘Let Mummy take a look.’
‘No.’ Nicky’s arms tightened around Fredo.
‘He hurt his pride more than himself,’ Fredo said gruffly.
‘I know,’ Freya replied without removing her eyes from her son.
If she had done so she would have seen the way Cindy was staring at her, at the wild flow of her hair streaming down to her waist, then at the tall guy who’d come to stand right behind her. He was looking down at Nicky wrapped in the gorilla’s arms. The newcomer just had to be Enrico Ranieri, Cindy realised. And if those ink-black eyes were not Nicky’s eyes, then she was the dumb blonde some people took her for.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Fredo said huskily. ‘I could not reach him quickly enough to break his fall.’
That was the point when Freya became aware of Enrico, then she caught the look on Cindy’s face. Heat poured into her cheeks and she quickly fluttered her eyes back to Nicky, hands, arms trembling as she reached out for him and gently untangled the small boy. Nicky transferred his arms to her neck, little fingers curling in her hair as she stood up with him and, ignoring everyone else, walked over to another corner of the room where it was quiet, and sat down on a bench with him straddling her lap.
There was a calm, gentle dignity in the way she coaxed Nicky out of hiding to show her the damage. Enrico watched, his expression grave, his insides locked in some strange, aching place that made him feel so separate from all of this that he struggled to understand why he was here at all.
He knew nothing about children, even less about brightly coloured playrooms like this. He was used to smart, efficient offices and slick business environments, living spaces made up of neutral-coloured elegance and hushed sophistication, not bright primary colours, noise and mess.
He was even used to fluffy blue-eyed blondes staring at him, but this one did it in a way that made him want to run a finger under his shirt collar like a nervous boy.
She knew. She’d seen the likeness between father and son. He could sense it, even though he refused to let himself check that out by looking directly at her.
And over there was his two-year-old son, who did not know him from a stranger. Plus an ex-lover he did not want as a lover again, yet he had just sunk himself into her like a man with a fever and no damn finesse.
Look at her, he told himself. She was sitting there with that hair like fire all around her, pale and strained-looking. But smiling tenderly as she inspected the child’s face while he stroked his hands over that glorious hair and listened intently to what she was saying to him.
Hot nymph and earth mother in one package.
In the last short hour he had coolly put her out of work and hotly ravished her, but there she sat, looking as serene as an angel as she talked to his son.
His son! It was finally—finally—getting through to him. He had been repeating those words to himself since he’d first seen the boy in the foyer. But it was only now as he stood here in this alien place with yet another clutch of curious eyes fixed upon him that the full power of those words truly took shape.
He had to go over there, he knew that he did. He could not let the moment pass by. He had to make his first approach towards that small person as a father, with all of these strangers looking on. His fingers curled into fists at his sides and it was only as they did so that he felt something in his right palm.
He looked down, then just stared at the red toy Ferrari. It was the same model he’d used to drive around in when Freya was in his life.
In every which way he happened to stumble upon, she had been making connections between him and that little boy; consciously or subconsciously—it did not matter.
And, for some crazy reason, he realised this knowledge was causing a rare burn to attack the back of his throat. He swallowed, glanced at Fredo, who was looking back at him. This man, whom he had known since they were boys, could read him like an open book.
Just as he could also read Fredo, when those grave, knowing eyes gave a flick towards Freya and the child. Get over there, the look said.
He didn’t want to.
He kept a dozen multimillion-dollar companies with who knew how many employees functioning to his express bidding, yet the idea of approaching this small boy was completely defeating him.
What if Nicky was Luca’s son, and he’d spent the afternoon making a big fool of himself? Threats, blackmail and intimidation could make a woman in Freya’s situation say anything—lie, if she believed it was her only way out!
But she had not lied. She still had not declared anything, even when she’d finally accepted it was her only way out.
Because she was punishing him, or because she could not bring herself to lie about the father of her son?
He made himself walk on feet made of concrete, the sting in his throat dying down to be replaced by a dull throb in his gut. The fluffy blonde crèche manager was just standing there watching him like some wise, all-knowing, blue-eyed owl, but she did not know about Luca, did she?
His jaw took on a rigid clench.
Freya saw those muscles in his face tighten as he came towards them, and wondered heavily what was going through his head now.
Having second thoughts, Ranieri? she mocked silently. Wondering at last if you want to be an instant father to a two-year-old boy?
Or has Luca raised his head in your nasty thoughts again?
She lowered her eyes to Nicky before her face decided to show the bitterness she was feeling inside. Nicky would not understand her expression.
‘Hey,’ she said as lightly as she could do in the circumstances. ‘Have you noticed, by any chance, that I came running here without putting on my shoes?’
He looked down at her feet then back at her face. Freya sent him a grimace, and his solemn little face broke into one of those wonderful, white-toothed grins.
‘Trust you to find it funny that I came skidding over here in my stockings just to give you a cuddle.’
She kissed the tiny bruise on his cheek as Enrico’s long shadow crawled up Nicky’s back then over her face.
Freya fought down the urge to shiver. Tension zapped every nerve in her back. She looked up, defiant and defensive. This was one confrontation she was not looking forward to—the one where father and son came truly face-to-face.
‘He is hurt?’ Enrico enquired stiffly. ‘He requires professional medical attention?’
His accent had thickened, Freya noticed. His desire to be anywhere else but here right now was alive in the muscle-tense set of his whole frame.
She shook her head, having to swallow before she could bring herself to say lightly to Nicky, ‘Just a bump, hmm, kiddo? We don’t need an ambulance with screeching sirens or a couple of fire engines for escorts, do we?’
‘No, silly,’ he laughed.
Then Nicky looked up at Enrico’s long, lean, sharp-suited form until he reached his severely defended face. Freya’s heart gave a lurch that turned into a mammoth, throbbing ache as she watched Nicky’s expression grow wary in response.
It could not go on, she realised right there in that moment. She just could not let it happen. Her own bitterness towards Enrico was something she had to deal with, but she would have to be the worst kind of mother if she let it spill over and ruin this so-important moment for her son.
Because there was only one way she could think to do this, she tipped Nicky off her knee and stood up herself, going to stand protectively behind him as she turned them both to fully face Enrico.
Then she took a deep breath. ‘Nicky, darling, I want you to…’
Yet again she was too late. When your timing is out it stays out, she thought helplessly as she watched the way father and son were looking at each other and her words were swallowed when she saw the same almost unholy flare of possession light Enrico’s face as it had done in the foyer.
His son—his, not Luca’s!
He could feel it again in those ink-black eyes that were connecting with him like tiny fingers reaching inside him and closing round his heart.
He just did not know what to do next.
No one had told him that life was always going to be easy, he thought helplessly. But neither had anyone bothered to whisper in his ear, ‘Hey, watch out for the moment someone rips your guts out in public and hangs them out to dry.’
The Ranieri Bride Page 6