He saw it all again, that tormenting flashback to Freya and Luca lying in a twisted clinch of limbs on his bed with her slender white fingers gripping his head.
She had not been holding him to her in throes of passion; she had been tugging viciously at his hair! And she had not been kissing him hungrily; she had been desperately trying to bite!
‘Leave me,’ Enrico rasped at Fredo without lifting his head up.
‘Enrico, you—’
‘Just go.’ He interrupted whatever Fredo’s anxious voice was going to say next.
Enrico needed to be alone. The details he had never allowed himself to look at before were coming to him fast now: the whitened look of shock on her face that had changed to relief when she’d seen him standing there; the way she’d hit Luca hard enough to send him rolling off her; the dizzy manner in which she’d scrambled off the bed. ‘Enrico—thank God,’ she’d sobbed out at him.
The door closed behind the retreating Fredo. Tears were stinging at Enrico’s eyes and his throat. He was seeing the bruised swelling that had been on her bottom lip now and the finger marks on the creamy globes of her breasts as she’d dragged her robe around her to cover herself up.
He was also seeing himself standing there frozen and unyielding as she’d stumbled towards him.
‘Por Dio,’ he repeated hoarsely, then dropped into the chair and covered his face with his hands.
Upstairs, Freya was standing in the bedroom, still shaking in the aftermath of the ugly scene with Enrico, when her mobile phone began to ring. Unearthing it from the depths of her bag, she then just stood there staring at it while it jangled in her hand.
Its caller-display was telling her it was Cindy. She did not want to speak to anyone right now but she couldn’t ignore her bridesmaid.
With a flick of a button she made the connection. ‘Hi, Cindy,’ she said as casually as she could.
‘So, cara, you have a son,’ a deep, smooth-as-silk voice murmured pleasantly. ‘I congratulate you on convincing my cousin that the child is his—or is he convinced? Maybe I should check this bambino out for myself.’
Freya tossed the phone away as if it had bitten her, her feet backing her away from it as she watched it land on the floor by the bed. Her eyes had turned black with staring horror, a line of white tension circling her trembling mouth.
It wasn’t! It couldn’t be. It was as if she’d conjured him up out of the morass of ugliness she’d just been through with Enrico. Though it was Cindy’s phone number on the display, she had heard Luca’s voice! How could it be his?
Luca, she repeated. Dear heaven. Her stomach turned over as the truth really hit. Luca had somehow got his hands on Cindy’s mobile phone and was using it to call her!
A sound outside the bedroom window told her that Nicky and Lissa were back from the park and playing in the walled garden. Her mobile began to ring again, flipping her attention from one familiar sound to the other. Her shaken brain took seconds to realise that the way she’d tossed the phone away must have severed the original connection.
That was the moment it really sank in, what Luca had said, and she dived down to snatch the phone up.
‘Y-you stay away from my son!’ she bit out shrilly.
‘And miss this opportunity to pluck my cousin’s god-like wings?’ Luca mocked. ‘How much do you think the tabloids will pay for my kiss-and-tell exposé, cara? I can see the headline: Tycoon’s Sex Shame! Cousin tells all about bed-swapping with Enrico Ranieri’s bride! What do you think—it would be a nice wedding present?’
‘It’s a lie!’ Freya breathed.
‘Where in what I can describe is the lie?’ he challenged. ‘Were we or were we not discovered together in Enrico’s bed?’
Freya was so icy cold now she was shivering, the sickness clawing at the walls of her throat. In some other part of her brain she was aware of Nicky’s laughter drifting up from the garden, and the addition of Enrico’s voice as he spoke to his son.
His son!
Drawn by something she could not put a name to, Freya moved on shaking limbs to the window and looked down in time to watch Nicky run to his father, who was squatting down with his arms held open to receive the little boy.
Tears blurred the image out. ‘W-why don’t you crawl back into your dark hole again, Luca?’ she said thickly. ‘No one wants to listen to your lies here.’
‘Enrico will listen—as he did the last time. All of Europe will listen when I tell how he threw both of us out three years ago after he caught us together in his bed.’
‘He will kill you before he will let you do something so vile.’
‘He would need to find me first,’ Luca laughed. ‘Mud sticks, cara, and I will be long gone before this particular mud hits its target, with my fat payment from the lucky tabloid safely stashed inside my wallet.’
‘So why are you bothering to warn me about it?’
‘To make you sweat?’ he suggested. ‘Or to give you the opportunity to make me a better offer for my silence.’
‘I don’t have any money.’
‘I know. Such a poor little rich wife you are going to be, are you not, Freya? With Enrico keeping you short on cash because he cannot trust you with it and also having you watched night and day in case you decide to tumble into bed with other men.’
‘Get to the point of this call, or I will cut the connection!’ she sliced out.
‘You won’t do that. You are too damn scared.’
He was right: she was scared—terrified of the damage Luca could do to that small boy she could see down there riding on his father’s arm with a look of total adoration on his face. The late-afternoon sun was catching Enrico’s lean, dark profile. Freya’s heart turned over then gave a tight squeeze, because she could see even from up here the grim austerity underlining the warm smile Enrico wore for their son.
She was going to have to tell Enrico, she realised bleakly. She just dared not risk giving Luca the chance to carry through his threat and sell his story to the Press.
Her mind reeling, she walked across the bedroom, her face turned ashen now, because she knew what she was going to have to do next.
‘H-how did you get hold of Cindy’s mobile?’ she asked huskily as she quietly pulled open the bedroom door.
‘I—borrowed it,’ Luca answered drily. ‘Or a friend of mine did.’ For some reason he found that last remark funny enough to make himself laugh. ‘I would imagine your bridesmaid is hunting through her many bags of shopping looking for it, as you and I speak.’
‘Stealing from others again, Luca?’
Her insides were a twisting, quivering mess and her legs felt as if they’d been attached to live cables that made them tremble, as she walked down the stairs still clutching her phone.
‘It was necessary for me to reach you without going through Fredo or Sonny,’ Luca drawled.
‘Or worse—through Enrico,’ Freya put in as she crossed the hall and entered the drawing-room, where the crystal chandelier reflected rainbows across the pale gold walls. ‘You accuse me of being scared, Luca. But I know you’re scared of Enrico, or you would be having this conversation with him not with me.’
Silence met that last statement. The kind of silence that told her she had hit a raw nerve. Freya took grim pleasure in knowing it as she crossed the drawing-room floor.
‘I would watch what you say to me, cara,’ Luca came back eventually. His pleasant tone had disappeared now and a grimly threatening growl had arrived in its place. ‘I am the one in a position of power here. I can ruin your romantic wedding day with one easy phone call.’
Freya stepped through the open French windows into soft sunlight, its warm gold colour shimmering across her hair and her cold, pale skin. Nicky was riding his truck, skidding down garden pathways and showing off for Enrico.
Enrico must have heard her footsteps, because he spun round sharply. Freya’s breath caught in her chest, imprisoned there as she mentally compared the hard, handsome qualities that this Ra
nieri man before her possessed to the weak good looks of the one she was listening to on the phone.
They were really nothing like each other, she realised with an inner start of surprise. They might possess the same basic Ranieri features. But it was the way in which those features were arranged that made this man in front of her such a visibly dynamic force to look at, while the other was just a paler version—like a shadow without any substance.
Enrico took a step towards her, his lips parting as if to speak.
Freya stopped him with a quick warning shake of her head. ‘If you’re going to use blackmail, Luca,’ she said as coolly as she could in the circumstances, watching as the sound of his cousin’s name made Enrico stiffen fiercely, his face darkening into a savage black, questioning frown, ‘then why don’t you just get to the point and tell me exactly what will stop you talking to the Press?’
Without a pause, she handed the phone to Enrico, then just stood there, heart hammering as he put the handset to his ear.
‘I want you to jilt him at the altar,’ Enrico heard Luca say smoothly. ‘Nothing short of his public humiliation will do for me, cara. I want him to know how it feels to be cast aside like he is nothing. I want him to learn that, even with all his wealth and power and popularity, when it comes down to it his pride can still be wiped away under someone else’s feet. Are you listening to me, Freya…?’ he prompted suddenly, maybe aware that her silence was different.
Without saying a word, Enrico placed the mobile phone to Freya’s ear and gave a curt nod of his head.
‘Y-yes,’ she answered obediently.
The handset was removed again. Enrico listened without expression as Luca finished his blackmail pitch.
‘Do this for me and I will hold my silence with the newspapers,’ he promised. ‘I will even let your son keep his papa. God knows I have no desire to claim the boy and we both know it would be a battle I could never win with medical science being what it is. But I will have Enrico’s pride in return for this favour I will do for you—understand me?’
Enrico held the phone to Freya’s ear again and gave yet another nod of his head. ‘Y-yes,’ she repeated unsteadily.
‘And will you do it?’
‘Y-yes,’ she whispered, wishing she knew what it was she was agreeing to.
Enrico cut the connection. He did it so abruptly that Freya blinked. Then they just stood there looking at each other, while the sound of the plastic wheels on their son’s truck scraped through the stillness of the late-afternoon air.
Freya spoke first. ‘What does he want?’ she questioned.
‘My head on a pole,’ Enrico said drily, then his mouth shifted into a kind of grimace. ‘You have just agreed to jilt me at the altar,’ he informed her.
‘Oh!’ Disconcerted, she did not know what else to say without losing her cool façade.
Enrico’s mouth shifted into a different expression. ‘How did Luca get hold of your mobile-phone number?’ he asked.
Freya instantly stiffened. The question pierced that sensitive spot called suspicion—Enrico’s persistent suspicion of her.
Did he think that she’d given her number to Luca?
She pulled in a deep breath, thought about telling a lie just for the hell of paying him back…but this was just too serious to lie about.
‘He stole Cindy’s mobile,’ she answered, then reached out to take her phone back and tilted up her chin to him. ‘Would you like to play snoop again while I call Cindy up to confirm that?’
His lips flat, he nodded.
Cold-eyed and tight-throated, Freya flipped through the phone’s directory until she found Cindy’s land-line number and hit dial. The sound of Nicky’s truck was coming closer. Any second now he was going to glance up and see his mother standing here.
‘Someone pinched my mobile phone while we were out!’ Cindy burst out indignantly before Freya could utter more than a husky, Hi, it’s me. ‘It had to be that red-haired bitch who sat next to me on the bus when I was on my way home,’ she ranted.
Ah, that other red-haired bitch who gets mistaken for me, Freya thought coldly.
‘She knocked all my bags off my lap when she sat down,’ Cindy was saying. ‘I thought she was being nice when she helped me pick up my stuff!’
‘Do me a favour, Cindy, and repeat all of that to Enrico. I’m just going to hand you over to him.’
With that Freya gave Enrico the handset again, then stepped round him to go and greet her son.
Enrico let her go without saying anything.
Cindy was soon explaining how her phone had been stolen. As Enrico listened, he reacted to her mention of the red-haired woman in exactly the same way that Freya had done. He was also aware of a deep-gut relief in accepting that Cindy was not guilty of helping Luca gain access to Freya.
Freya walked past him then, with their son straddling her hips as she carried him inside. They were laughing and chatting. No one would know from her voice and her smiling expression that she’d just been put through the emotional wringer—twice.
Just as no one would know by looking at him that he felt about as distanced from the laughing chatter as a man could feel when he was still coming to terms with the fact that he had made some big, maybe irreparable, mistakes.
Then—no, he would not think like that. The damage one short hour had wrought had to be and would be reversed.
‘Make sure you report the phone stolen to your provider,’ he instructed Cindy. ‘Freya has been receiving…nuisance calls. I will have a new phone sent around to your flat within the next hour.’
Pocketing Freya’s phone, he strode into the house. It was time to get tough again, time to do what he did best and be the ruthless troubleshooter who would take no prisoners in his quest to make Freya Jenson his wife.
His wife! Enrico noticed the change in emphasis from his son to his wife and actually managed a thin-lipped smile. Maybe it had always been like that, buried deep behind his blindness.
CHAPTER NINE
HIS expression set, Enrico followed the sound of his son’s chatter to the kitchen and found him with Sonny, helping to feed fresh pasta through the pasta machine—but no Freya.
The two chefs looked up and smiled at him. He sent a reasonably relaxed smile back by return, then lost it the moment he’d turned out of the kitchen to head for the stairs.
He found Freya in the bedroom, sitting with her back to him on the edge of the bed, surrounded by her day’s purchases as if the carnage during the hour in between had not happened.
Only this time, when Enrico got nearer, he realised her face was hidden in her hands.
His chest muscles tightened, recognising exactly the feeling behind the need to sit like that. Then he fixed his shoulders and strode further into the room, swinging the door shut behind him with enough force to make her hands drop away from her face.
She jumped to her feet, going from hopeless-looking to fierce in a second. ‘I thought I told you—’
He grabbed her and kissed her. Shock tactics were the only way to go with her right now. So his lips crushed hers to stop her from yelling at him, and his hands clasped her arms to stop her from hitting out. He could feel the need vibrating from every tensed nerve ending she possessed. But she still could not stop herself from kissing him back the way she always kissed him—hungrily, greedily, helplessly.
It was his only weapon—she could not stop herself from responding to him. By the time he’d allowed their mouths to separate, his own body was aching for more. And he thought about it. Enrico stood there in front of this angry-eyed, beautiful creature and seriously considered giving in to the temptation that was rattling around inside him and just tossing them both down onto the bed and wiping out the last hour doing what they did best!
But an image of the way Luca had done that to her three years ago put such a temptation to death and he released her.
‘You—you—’
‘Quit the incoherent rant, cara,’ he interrupted, moving away from
her. ‘I don’t have time for yet another round of fighting.’
He stopped in front of the tallboy with a bunch of keys in his hand which he used to unlock the top drawer and touched a switch inside. Above the tallboy, the framed portrait of a Georgian lady hanging on the wall sprang out to reveal a safe.
Freya released a gasp because she hadn’t known there was a safe hidden there! She watched Enrico remove a thick wad of paper money and a business folder, and something very close to alarm went chasing down her spine.
‘W-what are you doing?’ she asked warily.
He didn’t answer. He just flipped the safe door shut again with long fingers and relocked the drawer.
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