‘I don’t know how you do this to me but you do,’ he muttered as he arrived on top of her, a seething-hot mass of satin-tight muscle and tensely aroused male.
His mouth arrived back on hers and her arms still clung to his neck. It took less than ten seconds for Freya to accept that she was lost, her common sense sunk without a trace in the dizzying knowledge that he couldn’t help himself any more than she could.
They made love until the early hours and slept late the next morning while their son enjoyed running rings round his new nanny and Fredo.
The premature honeymoon to follow the premature wedding night, Freya likened a week later as she stood still while the designer Enrico had commissioned to make her wedding gown stepped back to view his creation along with Sonny, who went everywhere that she went, and Cindy, who was to be her bridesmaid.
They were discussing her but she didn’t hear much of what they said.
She was too busy trying to work out how she had allowed herself to be so completely taken over by everyone—especially by the will of one very, very passionate man.
Was she being a fool for letting it happen?
Of course she was behaving like a fool, she admitted. Hostilities might have been halted for the time being, but the issues had not gone away and she needed to keep on reminding herself of that.
But it was just too easy to dismiss how this had all started out when everything else was going so right.
And Nicky was happy.
As the tension between her and Enrico had eased, the whole household had relaxed and her son was flourishing in the new atmosphere. He was close to hero-worshipping Enrico. Fredo had become his very best friend. Sonny was his stomach’s best friend and Lissa was like a big sister who was never too busy to play with him. The nanny was proving to be the ideal substitute to Hannard’s crèche, which had played such a major part in the little boy’s life. By the time they made the move to Milan in a few days Freya predicted that her son would barely notice the loss.
Even Cindy had said so. But then Cindy had bought into the whole love-lost-and-found fairy tale Enrico had carefully fed out there to the curious masses. She saw happy-ever-afters in everything Enrico said or did and made happen. He was even the romantic hero who’d invited Cindy to be Freya’s bridesmaid when he discovered she had no one else to ask.
Freya’d lost touch with most of her college buddies four years ago when she’d moved in with Enrico and had begun to live a completely different life. When that relationship was over, she hadn’t wanted to creep back to old friends with her tail between her legs, pregnant and miserable—and was too proud to let them know how badly she’d fallen flat on her face. After Nicky was born she just hadn’t had time to develop new friendships.
Now, all of a sudden, Cindy was her best friend, and Cindy’s new boss was the great guy who gave the crèche manager the week off work before the wedding took place. No bride could be more pampered and cosseted and indulged than Freya.
‘She looks like a pagan princess,’ she heard Sonny murmur.
I feel more like Cinderella, being given this one chance to know what it feels like to be a princess before the clock strikes twelve and it all vanishes.
Enrico sat contemplating the rings that had just been delivered to his office. Two matching gold wedding bands and a diamond eternity ring as was traditionally given on the birth of a first child.
Tradition was everything, he mused. He had gone all out to create a wedding for his son to remember and, although it was all taking place back to front, it was happening.
So why was he not feeling better about it? Why was he sitting here staring at these rings and feeling as if none of it was real?
Two weeks. In just two short weeks he had managed to pull off the most successful takeover he’d ever undertaken. He had his son living with him. He had the most sensually receptive women as a permanent fixture in his bed. In a few more days she would become his wife, then he would begin the legal process to claim Nicolo as his son.
It was all that he wanted—wasn’t it?
No.
He wanted more. He wanted Freya to tell him out loud and unprompted to his face that Nicolo was his son. Other than for that one whispered confession she’d made while she’d been half asleep, she had not said it.
She had not come close to saying it.
She lived in his house and slept in his bed, she dived greedily and wantonly into his passion every night. She let him feed and clothe her and was even willing to let him marry her. He had made all the concessions, he thought arrogantly, so was this one small concession on her part too much to expect?
That night he made love to her as if it was going to be their last time. The next morning over breakfast he was bad-tempered and sour. When Lissa asked Freya if her bridal gown would be white or cream, her reply stoked his temper even more.
‘I thought I gave explicit instructions that you were to wear a white dress,’ he said tightly as soon as Lissa had disappeared to get Nicolo ready for his morning at Hannard’s.
‘I’ve got a two-year-old son born out of wedlock,’ Freya mocked drily. ‘A woman like me would have to be a real hypocrite to walk up the aisle wearing white. It’s bad enough that you’ve insisted we have a church wedding!’
‘I told you why I want that. I want there to be no blemish on our son’s memory of the day his father married his mother. Our marriage will be as traditional as we can make it for him!’
For his son. It was always for Nicky.
‘I don’t see me causing him life-long damage by turning up to marry you in blue instead of white,’ she snapped.
‘The dress had better not be blue,’ he warned very grimly.
Freya stuck up her chin to him and stared. ‘It’s my prerogative to choose what I wear to my own wedding.’
The look hit him right between the legs and he’d reacted to that ever-present sexual urge. ‘While it is my money you’re using to pay for every item you put on your back, you will wear what I tell you to!’
She went white. A hard silence hummed between them while she stared at him through pained green eyes. Her mobile telephone began to ring. Freya broke eye contact to pick it up and make the connection, hurt stinging the back of her throat.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ a familiar voice said.
It was Cindy. They were supposed to be meeting up today in London to do some shopping, but Enrico’s bad mood had put Freya in two minds as to whether to go. Then she remembered that she had something special she wanted to do, and got up from the table to turn her back on Enrico.
‘Look, can’t talk now,’ she mumbled hurriedly. ‘I’ll call you back in a few minutes—OK?’
When she turned back to Enrico he was glowering. ‘Who was that?’ he demanded.
‘None of your business,’ she responded—then let out a yelp when he reached out and tugged her up against his chest.
‘Tell me,’ he gritted.
Freya pushed at him with the heels of her hands. ‘My lover,’ she taunted on angry impulse. ‘The one who has a better temperament than yours and a hell of a lot more tact! We are planning to disappear together once I’ve used up your credit-card limit!’
His ensuing kiss was a hot, grinding punishment. By the time he released her she was pale and shocked.
‘Don’t play me for a fool, cara, or you will not like the consequences,’ he bit out, then he grabbed up his business case and strode out of the room while Freya stared after him with a set of fingers pressed to her burning lips.
Her lips were still smarting when she called Cindy back to agree on a time and place for them to meet. In a fit of defiance she left the house without bothering to inform Sonny where she was going.
Her phone went while she was making her way to the nearest tube station. ‘Where are you?’ Sonny demanded.
‘I’ve escaped,’ she said caustically then broke the connection and in sheer defiance switched off her phone.
Enrico had a string of heavy meetings
with Hannard executives all morning and was in no better frame of mind by the time he’d seen the last one out of his office and Fredo walked in.
One glance at his bodyguard’s face and he sensed trouble.
‘What?’ he lanced out.
‘It’s Freya,’ Fredo said, then he shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a very uncharacteristic show of uncertainty and Enrico felt a warning sting attack the back of his neck.
‘What about Freya?’
‘No one has seen her since this morning after you left the house.’
‘She will be out swapping her blue wedding gown for a white one,’ Enrico said grimly, picking on the point of conflict that had flared between him and Freya this morning as a way of dealing with this worrying information.
But Fredo gave a shake of his head. ‘Sonny says that the dress was never blue in the first place. She was just teasing you.’
Making him rise to the bait, Enrico thought and sighed, aware that his bad temper this morning had deserved to be hooked.
‘Then where did she go? Didn’t Sonny—?’
‘Sonny said she made a call on her mobile just after you left, and the next thing he knew she’d gone out.’
A phone call. It was crazy to let it happen, but that hit him right in the centre of his chest. He shifted his stance impatiently, wishing he could trust her, but knowing only a mad, love-blind fool would do that.
‘How long ago?’ he demanded.
‘Four hours,’ Fredo supplied. ‘And that’s not all…’
There was more…? Enrico glared at him.
‘She disappeared for several hours last week, too, only she had the bambino with her that time. He said they’d been to the park to feed the ducks but…’
‘But—what?’ Enrico incised, not liking the expression he could see on Fredo’s face.
‘We could not locate Luca…’
‘I know that.’ Enrico frowned impatiently. ‘I’ve got people tracking him down.’
Luca was another problem he still had to deal with. His cousin was out there somewhere but none of the people Enrico had looking for him could find him. All they knew was that he had left his rich mistress in Hawaii, caught a flight to New York then just disappeared.
‘They have tracked him,’ Fredo said, grabbing Enrico’s full attention. ‘One of the investigators received word of his whereabouts last night but only got around to reporting it to me five minutes ago.’ Fredo paused for a second then heaved in a deep breath. ‘You are not going to like this, Enrico,’ he warned grimly, ‘but Luca has been here in London since last week…’
That sting at the back of Enrico’s neck became a full throb. His mind’s eye pushed an image in front of him of Freya standing there, dressed in a sassy grey suit and glaring at him as she taunted him with another man.
Luca? Had she been taunting him with the truth?
Then—no, he told himself. He was not going to let his mind go down that route.
‘Where is Luca staying?’ he asked tightly.
‘He’s crazy enough to be using one of your hotels.’
Of course it had to be one of his hotels, Enrico thought grimly. Luca had always coveted his cousin’s possessions—his wealth, his standing in the family, his hotel accommodation, his woman…
It came without warning, but he found himself reliving a flashback to three years ago when he had caught his cousin and his lover lying in a twisted clinch of limbs on his bed. He could see the discarded heap of male clothes on the floor and the way her robe had been flung open wide on either side of her as if they’d been too eager to bother taking it off. They were heaving and panting, rushed and desperate, her hair flying all over the place, her fingers gripping Luca’s head as she’d kissed him with that all-consuming—
Damn, he cursed, and switched off the image. Stop going there! he told himself.
‘The guy tracking him hung around the hotel to do some sleuthing,’ Fredo was saying. ‘A woman arrived there this morning. He followed her up to Luca’s suite…’
There was another pause—one of those long, uncomfortable pauses that made Enrico flick Fredo a hard, warning glance. The bodyguard grimaced, clearly unhappy about what he had to relay next.
‘She was a long-haired redhead, Enrico,’ he announced heavily. ‘A tall, slender redhead wearing a grey suit…’
Freya arrived back at the house feeling as if she’d done the London marathon. Her feet were aching through trailing in and out of just about every store the city had to offer with the disgustingly energetic Cindy, who’d been determined to fill every precious second of her time off from Hannard’s.
Oh, what a sad soul you’ve turned into that you can’t even stay the course of some girly shopping, she mocked herself wearily as she climbed up the stairs carrying bags stuffed within bags, trophies of the spending spree she’d indulged in, using Enrico’s credit cards in outright rebellion after his nasty comment about her spending his money.
Only one item in the bags had been bought with her own money. And that one small item had been cheap by Enrico Ranieri’s exalted standards, yet it had still depleted her tiny savings to an alarming degree.
She was going to have to do something about that, she thought frowningly as she stepped into the bedroom. As soon as this marriage thing was out of the way and they’d settled in Milan, she would have to go job-hunting and grab back her independence from this—
‘Where have you been?’
In the process of dumping her bags on the floor, Freya looked up in surprise to find Enrico standing in front of the window, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets and his jacket flipped back to reveal his bright white shirt, which was delineated by the dark silk strip of his slender tie. He looked long and lean and totally sexy.
Her senses lit up. She really should be doing something about smothering them, she told herself, because the man was still and always would be the circling shark she couldn’t trust.
‘Out,’ she answered, not seeing any reason why she should offer up more than that, when it was obvious what was stashed in the store bags. ‘Why are you back here so early?’
‘It is four o’clock—’
‘Seven is closer to your rolling-in time.’
‘And you have been out for most of the day.’ He ignored her sardonic response.
‘Don’t my feet know it!’ Dropping the last of the bags, she sat down on the end of the bed and with a sigh kicked off her shoes.
Her hair shimmied forward as she bent to rub at her aching toes and the throbbing balls of her feet.
The silence from the window stretched like tension wire and eventually forced her to tilt a look at him. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t appear as if he was even breathing.
Was he still miffed about the blue wedding dress…?
Well, she wasn’t going to tell him the truth. He could wait to find that out the traditional way when she walked down the aisle. She was the bride who knew she should not be allowing herself to be a bride, even though she was doing nothing to stop it from happening.
Because you’re weak, she chided herself. Because, despite everything he did to you three years ago, you’re still such a fool where he is concerned that you just can’t bring yourself to call a halt to it.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked innocently, refusing to let him know that the morning’s row was still pulsing through her bones.
He didn’t answer, and his dark silhouette, backlit by the sun coming in from behind him, began to take on the shape of a grim reaper. Looking away again, she frowned as she continued to rub at her feet. She knew that Nicky was fine because she’d just met him and Lissa on their way to the park as she’d walked back from the tube. They were going to play football. Her son wanted an ice cream from the park café, so she’d handed over some coins and managed to steal a quick hug before he’d raced off with Lissa in charge of his hand.
Any other time and she would have been begging to go with them, but after a hard day’s shopping her
feet just—
A sudden gasp broke from her as the pair of black leather shoes that appeared in front of her took her by surprise; she had not heard Enrico move.
She looked at the same moment that he bent to grasp her elbows. The next thing she knew she was being propelled to her feet by hands that were not gentle.
‘What the—?’ she began, but his mouth took the rest away, crushing her lips with a hard, bruising kiss that completely stole her breath.
The Ranieri Bride Page 11