Unable to stop herself, she took a couple of steps towards him. ‘If—if that money is to pay off Luca then you’re wasting it,’ she advised him.
‘You prefer to jilt me at the altar?’
‘I prefer not to marry you at all!’
‘Tough.’ The money went into his pocket.
‘But—don’t you see?’ she insisted. ‘Whatever you do or whatever you say he can always make the same threats again! If you pay him for his silence, he will know he’s won himself a meal ticket for life! Listen to reason.’ She took another step towards him. ‘It’s bad what he can tell the Press. He doesn’t care if it hurts Nicky. He doesn’t care if most of what he says is lies! M-mud sticks, Enrico, and he wants—’
‘My head on a pole,’ Enrico finished for her with a nod of that dark head. ‘But you confuse me. When did I say that the money is for Luca?’
Freya glanced at the folder he held in his hand. ‘Th-that has his name written on it.’
Enrico looked down at the folder. ‘So it does,’ he agreed—then dared to look back at her and grin! ‘You know, cara, I had forgotten what fantastic eyesight you have. Maybe it’s the gorgeous green colour,’ he suggested, suddenly all agitating good humour. ‘I recall now how you used to read full-page documents upside down where they lay on someone’s desk and shock everyone with your knowledge. It was a great resource to have on my side when you worked with me. I missed it when it was gone.’
‘N-not so I noticed.’
‘Look at them,’ he said as he began walking towards her. ‘Green as emeralds and as sharp as diamonds…’
Freya started backing away.
‘Warm and sexily challenging,’ he continued. ‘So excitingly come-and-get-me, yet so defiantly touch-me-not cool…’
‘Y-you’re just changing the subject.’ The end of the bed suddenly made contact with the backs of her knees.
Enrico arrived a short breath away, his eyes glinting at her, and her insides decided to enjoy the squirt of excitement that had shot down her limbs.
She put a hand out to stop him from coming closer, then had to heave in a thick breath to calm her crazily beating heart.
Sex; it was always sex with him!
Why? she asked herself. Why did it have to happen only with him? He wasn’t her type—not really. He was too rich, too good-looking and way too charismatic for a poor and ordinary little nobody like her!
‘Look…’ she tried for a common sense tone ‘…if you will just listen to me you will see that this marriage thing is—’
‘Marriage,’ he interrupted, ‘was the deal that we made. Marriage is the agreement we have slept with for two weeks.’
‘But it’s—’
‘Our son expects it. All of Hannard’s and half of Europe expect it. Are you going to turn away from me and give Luca my head on a pole?’
‘It’s either your head or a scandal,’ she mumbled shakily.
‘Then we will ride the scandal—’
‘But if you believe what he can put out there—what chance have we got of riding out anything?’
That turned off the sexual gleam, Freya noted cynically. It did not take much to turn the seducer into a block of stone.
‘You could try trusting me to resolve this.’
Freya stared aghast at him. ‘What is there to trust?’ she choked out. ‘You are blackmailing me into marrying you and he is blackmailing me not to do it!’
‘Then you have a dilemma,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘I will await your decision at the altar in two days.’
With that he turned his back on her and just walked out! Leaving Freya with the weight of his challenge hanging there.
Within the hour the whole house had been ringed by a circle of security, which did not make her feel safe at all—in fact, it did the opposite. What was it that Enrico was expecting Luca to do that he felt they needed this level of protection?
Or was the ring of security there to keep her in?
Next thing to arrive was the new mobile telephone. Bang up-to-date, state-of-the-art, iced-green in colour and sexily designed, it had all the phone numbers from her old phone saved in it—including the number of Cindy’s new phone. It was only as she held it in her hand that Freya realised that Enrico had not handed her old one back to her.
For the first time in two and a half weeks she slept alone that night.
Or rather she didn’t sleep, but rolled around the huge empty bed, wanting him when she should not be wanting him and despising herself for feeling that way.
Twice she reached out for the mobile phone with an impulsive need to call him and twice she stopped herself short of the deed and tossed the handset aside with a sigh.
Where was he? What was he doing? Had he had his confrontation with his cousin? Had the thick wad of money and what she’d learned was the folder of unpaid debts been enough to silence Luca’s tongue? How much did the tabloids pay these days for a kiss-and-tell exposé?
Did it matter? She was sure that money was not all that Luca wanted—in fact, she knew he was quite capable of taking anything Enrico put on the table and still hitting them with his exposé.
Enrico did not sleep, either. He was pacing the floor in the apartment above.
He wanted her. It was a hard, nagging ache he could not stop. He needed the reassurance that he could still make her melt even while she was hating him.
Should he go down there?
He threw himself on his bed, closed his eyes and imagined her lying downstairs, curled on her side with her wonderful hair spread out behind her.
Was she wearing one of those skimpy silk nightdresses he so loved to relieve her of? What colour was it? She’d purchased a whole range of them: black, white, cream, red, the most sexy ocean-green colour that did amazing things for her eyes…
Freya got up and started pacing. Anxious, restless—agitated. He could have called her. Would it have hurt him to ring and tell her what had happened with Luca? Did he think she deserved to be kept in the dark like this?
Her phone gave a beep. She dived on it greedily. It was a text message from Enrico. ‘Missing me?’ it said.
She typed in an adamant, ‘No,’ and winged it back to him, then wished she’d ignored him because now he knew that she was awake.
Lying there naked other than for the towel he had slung round his hips, Enrico smiled as the message arrived in his inbox. She might think that she hated him, but she was awake and therefore missing him.
The tension eased from his system as he texted a second question.
‘Liar,’ it said. ‘What colour nightdress?’
Frowning, she looked down at her skimpy ocean-green nightdress and caught an instant image of Enrico’s expression of pleasure as if he were right here in this bedroom and taking her with hungry intent.
Her breasts responded, filling and tightening, making her draw in a sharp, angry breath. She hated him, she did. And she was never going to forgive him for what he’d done and said.
Going to sit crossed-legged on the bed, she pushed her streaming hair back from her face then set her fingers tapping.
‘None of your business any more,’ Enrico read. Grimacing, he sat up, drew his knees up, spreading them so he could rest his arms on them while he scanned the rest of what her message said.
‘What happened with Luca?’
Now, there was a good question. ‘Try trusting me, cara,’ he sent back.
‘What’s to trust?’ she responded; he could even hear her tartness. ‘Do I jilt you at the altar or don’t I?’
The cutting witch, Enrico thought ruefully. ‘Your decision,’ he replied.
Freya threw herself back against the pillows. She knew what he was doing. He was demanding she trust him. But how was she supposed to do that?
‘I hate you. That’s a decision,’ she flung back at him, then switched her phone off and tossed it away.
‘And I am falling apart loving you,’ Enrico typed, then sighed and did not send it.
Declarations of that nature were best kept to himself.
He threw himself back against the pillows.
Freya curled up on her side. She wanted to weep. She had never felt so alone in her entire life. It was OK for Enrico—he had a large family in Italy ready to listen and support him if he ever needed anyone. But she had no one. Even Cindy could only be loosely called a friend. In the end, Enrico paid Cindy’s wage, therefore she owed him her loyalty more than she did Freya.
Freya knew she was not going to jilt Enrico at the altar. She knew that giving in to Luca’s blackmail would be about as effective at silencing him as Enrico’s attempt to pay him off.
But it would be nice to be able to confide in someone, have a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear in which to whisper her fears.
So you’re going to marry a man who thinks you are capable of putting it out for any man. A man who only wants this marriage because you come as part of the package, along with his son.
So he still desires you—can’t get enough of you in his bed. But what happens when that desire wears thin? Does he start looking about him for someone new? And do you learn to put up with it because you know you’re only in his life because Nicky needs you there?
And if you had a whole army of relatives and friends to in whom to confide all of that—would you?
No, of course you wouldn’t. Pride wouldn’t let you. Pride, and a need to maintain the illusion for Nicky’s sake would keep your tongue still inside your head.
And she loved him, not hated him—of course she did. She just did not allow herself to think about it often, because what possible use was that love to her? Unless she was into flaying herself.
And it wasn’t lack of family that was making her feel so lonely and weepy. It was missing him.
His silent mobile phone eventually got to him and Enrico climbed off the bed. Walking across the room, he flipped open the folder that contained information about Luca that had since been bulked out substantially by several revealing photographs.
His safeguard, he mused as he stared grimly at the top photograph; his secret weapon to keep Luca in check.
He could get dressed and take the photos down to show Freya. Put an end to all of the angst between them, reassure her about marrying him, then get down to some really satisfying loving in their bed.
But, juvenile of him though he knew it to be, he wanted to know if she could bring herself to trust him enough to marry him without knowing that Luca couldn’t carry out his threat.
Also he owed her this in return for that early wedding present she had tossed at him.
On that dry reminder, he closed the folder and turned his back on it to go and mix himself a stiff drink.
It was going to be a long night, he considered ruefully as he threw himself onto a chair instead of the bed.
CHAPTER TEN
THEY turned out to be the longest two nights of her life.
On her wedding day, Freya tried her best to raise some enthusiasm to match that of everyone else. Nicky was over-excited, Lissa’s eyes were shining because she’d managed to get a peek at the dress when it was delivered earlier that morning. Sonny was playing it cool, but even a stressed-out Freya couldn’t stop her grin when he appeared looking all suave and polished in a dark three-piece suit complete with an ice-blue silk tie instead of his usual jeans and T-shirt.
No sign of Fredo today. But then Fredo would be where he usually was, shadowing his lord and master—wherever Enrico was.
Cindy had arrived while Freya was trying to bathe away the aches and creases of her second sleepless night in a row. Then suddenly the morning had gone.
Too fast. Much too fast.
In half an hour she was due at the church.
Cindy sighed as she stood back to view Freya’s full effect in the mirror. ‘Gosh, you look amazing,’ she breathed.
Cindy’s blue eyes were wearing a dewy look. But then Cindy was a fully paid-up member of the romantic dreamers’ club.
Maybe this would be a good point for her to start pretending that she was, too, Freya mused as she looked at her reflection and saw the perfect romantic bride prepared for the perfect romantic wedding.
Tradition was really on a roll here. She even wore a fragile gold necklace complete with two diamond set-joined hearts that nestled lovingly in the hollow between her breasts. It had been delivered that morning with a note from Enrico.
‘Be there,’ was all he’d written. That was all, no reassuring words about Luca, just be there, like a command and a threat.
Her stomach muscles knotted.
‘You’re so lucky,’ Cindy said softly. ‘You get to marry the man of your dreams and he’s such a romantic hunk.’
‘You mean the asset-stripping shark with the very sharp teeth?’
Cindy laughed. ‘You adore him really, so don’t use that cynical tone around me. Don’t you feel just a tiny bit as if none of this is real?’
All the time, Freya thought heavily. ‘Any minute now my fairy godmother is going to turn up, complete with a pumpkin coach and six prancing white horses,’ she mocked drily.
What they actually got was Sonny, a chauffeur and a black Bentley Continental.
The paparazzi were out in force to capture their pictures. Sonny and the chauffeur held the pack back while Freya and Cindy got into the car.
The church was one of those tiny old chapels squashed in between modern constructions, which made London the unique, crazily charming place that it was.
Five steps led up to the entrance. Lissa stood waiting inside the small foyer with a restless Nicky dressed in proper trousers, a shirt and an ice-blue silk tie like Sonny’s. He looked so grown-up and cute with his dark curls combed into order that Freya’s eyes tried to fill with silly tears.
Then the music started and she lost touch with everything: the tears, the small clutch of people standing around her. Her heart began pounding, a bow of panic playing a rusty screech across her nerves.
This was it: the moment to make her mind up. She could run in the other direction without needing to set eyes on Enrico. She could just pick up her son and—
‘OK, sweetie?’ a quiet voice questioned.
She looked up at Sonny, who was looking solemnly down at her and at the same time blocking the door.
He knew. He knew what she was thinking and maybe even what she was feeling. Sonny and Fredo probably knew everything.
She moistened her lips, tasted clear gloss on the tip of her tongue. ‘I can’t—’
‘Si, you can,’ Sonny said firmly. Then he lowered his head to whisper, ‘Trust him, cara.’
It always came back to that word, didn’t it?
Then, as if someone had planned it, she felt a little hand slide into her hand. ‘C’mon, Mummy,’ Nicky said impatiently. ‘We’ve got to go and marry Daddy.’
Marry Daddy, she repeated to herself. Did the small boy even understand what that meant? Did he care? She was his mummy and Enrico was his daddy, just as Fredo and Sonny and Lissa were his very best friends.
The marriage had already happened, in a sense: her son was wed to these people. She needed to stop being an idiot and get in there and make it official—for him.
She let Nicky pull her across the tiny foyer. She allowed Cindy to fuss with her dress. Her heart was still pounding. Her fear of what Luca could do to them still made her feel cold with dread.
Clutching her son’s hand, she took that first, tremulous step then another. She saw Enrico come to his feet at the top of the aisle. He was wearing a dark suit and his shoulders looked as if someone had strapped them to an iron bar.
There was a stir and it was then that she became aware of the congregation. She hadn’t taken part in any of the arrangements. She’d just allowed herself to be carried along on the marriage wagon, buying things when she’d been told to buy them and kind of drifting through the weeks without bothering to think about this part at all.
But she had expected the chapel to be empty other than for their
small wedding party, so it came as a shock to see that it was full of guests. The narrow pews were lined with row upon row of Ranieris, uncles, aunts, cousins, people who were complete strangers to her, but all with those distinctive genes that made them all look so familiar. Some were turning to stare at her curiously, others were smiling, and a few looked just plain arrogant—like the tense man who stood at the top of the aisle with his ramrod-straight back to her.
On the other side of the chapel the pews were filled with a sea of familiar faces: Hannard employees, a few wearing starry-eyed romantic smiles like Cindy’s.
The Ranieri Bride Page 14