by Abby Green
Rafaele’s mouth twisted. ‘Who hated my guts because I wasn’t his son. The only reason he put me through school at all was because of my mother. He washed his hands of me as soon as he could and I paid him back every cent he’d doled out for my education.’
He’d never told her this before—had always shied away from talking about personal things. She’d always assumed that he’d been given a hand-out to restart Falcone Industries. It was one of the most well-documented resurrections of a company in recent times. Spectacular in its success. She recalled his mother ringing from time to time, and their clipped conversations largely conducted in Spanish, which was her first language.
At a loss to know what to say, Sam went for the easiest thing. ‘How is your mother?’
Rafaele’s face tightened almost imperceptibly but Sam noticed.
‘She died three months ago. A heart attack.’
‘I’m sorry, Rafaele,’ Sam responded. ‘I had no idea...’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I must have missed it in the papers.’
His Spanish mother had been a world-renowned beauty and feted model. Her marriages and lovers had been well documented. The rumour was that she had cruelly left Rafaele’s father when it had become apparent that he’d lost everything except his title. But this was only hearsay that Sam had picked up when she’d gone to Milan to work for Falcone Industries as an intern.
Rafaele shook his head, his mouth thin. ‘It was overshadowed by the economic crisis in Greece so it barely made the papers—something we welcomed.’
Sam could remember how much Rafaele had hated press intrusion and the constant glare of the paparazzi lens. He put down his cup and stood abruptly. Sam looked up, her breath sticking in her throat for a minute as he loomed so large and intimidating. Gorgeous. Lord, how was she going to get through even twenty-four hours of him living under the same roof, just down the hall? Did he still sleep naked—?
‘...will you tell him?’
Sam flushed hotly when she registered Rafaele looking at her expectantly. He’d just asked her a question and she’d been so busy speculating on whether or not he still slept naked that she hadn’t heard him.
She stood up so quickly her knees banged against the coffee table and she winced. ‘Tell who what?’
Rafaele looked irritated. ‘When are you going to tell Milo that I am his father?’
Sam crossed her arms over breasts that felt heavy and tingly. ‘I think...I think when he’s got used to you being here. When he’s got to know you a bit...then we can tell him.’ She cursed herself for once again proving that her mind was all too easily swayed by this man.
He nodded. ‘I think that’s fair enough.’
Sam breathed out, struck somewhere vulnerable at seeing Rafaele intent on putting Milo’s needs first, over his wish to punish her.
Just then Bridie put her head around the door. ‘I’m off, love, and Milo is waiting for his story. If you need me over the weekend just call me. Nice to meet you, Mr Falcone.’
Sam moved towards the door, more in a bid to get away from Rafaele than a desire to see Bridie out, but the older woman waved her back with a definite glint in her eyes.
‘Stay where you are.’
Rafaele murmured goodnight and then Bridie was gone. Sam heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. And now she really was alone in the house with the man she’d hoped never to see again and her son. Milo. The incongruity of Rafaele Falcone, international billionaire and playboy, here in her suburban house, was overwhelming to say the least.
She backed towards the door. ‘I should go to Milo. He’ll come looking for me if I don’t.’ Why did she suddenly sound as if she’d just been running?
Rafaele inclined his head. ‘I have some work to attend to, if you don’t mind me using the study?’
Sam was relieved at the prospect of some space. ‘Of course not.’
And then she fled, taking the stairs two at a time as she had when she’d been a teenager.
Rafaele heard Sam take the stairs at a gallop and shook his head. He looked around the room again. Definitely not the milieu he was accustomed to, in spite of his defence to Sam. Those gruelling years when he’d done nothing but work, study, sleep and repeat were a blur now.
He felt slightly shell-shocked at how easily he’d told Sam something he never discussed. It was no secret that he’d turned his back on his stepfather to resurrect his family legacy, but people invariably drew their own conclusions.
His mouth tightened. He’d resisted the urge to spill his guts before—had been content to distract them both from talking by concentrating on the physical. Avoiding a deeper intimacy at all costs.
Rafaele cursed and ran his hands through his hair, feeling constricted in his suit. He’d come straight here from a meeting in town. As soon as he’d walked in through the front door he’d felt the house closing in around him claustrophobically and he’d had a bizarre urge to turn on his heel, get back into his car and drive very fast in the opposite direction.
For a wild few seconds when he’d looked at Sam waiting in the hall the only thing he’d been able to remember was how he’d all but devoured her only days before. He’d assured himself that he could just send in his lawyers and have her dictated to, punished for not telling him about Milo.
But then he’d seen Milo, held in her arms, and the claustrophobia had disappeared. That was why he was here. Because he didn’t want more months to go by before he got a chance to let his son know who he was. More months added on top of the three years he’d already missed. Rafaele had never really forgiven his own father for falling apart and checking out of his life so spectacularly. For investing so much in a woman who had never loved him. For allowing himself to turn into something maudlin and useless.
For years Rafaele had been jealous of his younger brother, Alexio, who had grown up bathed in his father’s love and support. So much so, however, that Rafaele knew how stifling Alexio had found it, prompting him to turn his back on his own inheritance. He smiled grimly to himself. Maybe that just proved one could never be happy?
He made his way to the study and sat down behind the desk, firing up various machines. He stopped abruptly when he heard movement above his head. His heart twisted at the realisation that he must be underneath Milo’s room. Obeying an urge he couldn’t ignore, Rafaele stood up and walked out of the room and up the stairs, as silent as a panther.
He saw the half-open door of Milo’s room and stopped when he could see inside. The scene made him suck in a breath. Sam was leaning back against a headboard painted in bright colours with Milo in her embrace. She held a book open in front of them and was reading aloud, putting on funny voices, making Milo giggle.
Rafaele had forgotten that she wore glasses to read and write. They made her look seriously studious, but also seriously sexy. Her mouth was plump and pink. Even in the plain white shirt and trousers her slim curves were evident. This sight of her was hugely disconcerting. He’d never expected to see her in this situation. And yet something about it called to him—an echo of an emotion he’d crushed ruthlessly when she’d first told him she was pregnant. Before the shock had hit, and the cynical suspicion that she’d planned it, had come something far more disturbing. Something fragile and alien.
He hated her right then for still having an effect on him. For still making him want her. For invading his imagination when he’d least expected it over the last four years. He would find it hard to recall his last lover’s name right now, but Sam...her name had always been indelible. And this was utterly galling when she’d proved to be as treacherous as his own mother in her own way. When she’d kept the most precious thing from him. His son.
For a moment Rafaele questioned his sanity in deciding to take over funding the research programme at the university in a bid to get to Sam. But then he remembered looking down into Milo’s green ey
es and recognising his own DNA like a beacon winking back at him.
As much as there was a valid reason behind his rationale, it had also come from that deeper place not linked solely to rationale and he hated to admit that.
His eyes went to his son and Rafaele put a hand to his chest, where an ache was forming. He would make it his life’s mission to keep Sam from sidelining him from his own son’s life. Whatever it took. Even if it meant spending twenty-four hours a day with her. He could resist her. How could he desire a woman who had denied him his most basic right of all? His own flesh and blood.
* * *
Later, when Sam was in bed, the familiar creakings of the old house which normally comforted her sounded sinister. Rafaele Falcone was separated from her only by some bricks and mortar. And reality was slowly sinking in. Her new reality. Living and working with Rafaele Falcone. She suspected that he’d flexed his muscles to get her to work for him as much to irritate her as for any bona fide professional reason, even if that was why he’d first contacted her.
The thought of going back into that factory environment made her feel clammy. Although she’d loved it the first time around—it had been so exciting, getting an internship with one of the most innovative and successful motor companies in the world.
Rafaele had made his initial fortune by devising a computer software program which aided in the design of cars, and that was how he’d first come onto the scene, stunning the world with its success. That was how he’d been able to fund getting Falcone Motors off the ground again—injecting it with new life, turning around the perception of the Falcone car as outdated and prehistoric. Now Falcone cars were the most coveted on the race track and on the roads.
And Sam had been in the thick of it, working on new cutting edge designs, figuring out the most fuel-efficient engine systems. From her very first day, though, she’d been aware of Rafaele. She’d gone bright red whenever she saw him, never expecting him to be as gorgeous in the flesh as he was in press photos.
He’d surprised her by being very hands-on, not afraid to get dirty himself, and invariably he knew more than all of them put together, displaying an awesome intelligence and intellect. And, in a notoriously male-dominated industry, she’d met more females working in his factory than she’d encountered in all her years as a student. Clearly when he said equal opportunities he meant it.
Sam had found that each day she was seeking him out...only to look away like a naive schoolgirl if he met her gaze, which he’d appeared to do more and more often. She’d been innocent—literally. A childhood spent with an emotionally distant father and with her head buried in books hadn’t made for a well-rounded adolescence. While her peers had been experimenting with boys Sam had been trying in vain to connect with her scatty but brilliant father. Bridie had been in despair, and had all but given up encouraging Sam to get out and enjoy herself, not to worry so much about studying or her father.
The irony of it all was that while the more predominantly masculine areas did appeal to her—hence her subsequent career—she’d always longed to feel more feminine. And it was this very secret desire that Rafaele had unwittingly tapped into so effectively. Just by looking at her, he had made Sam feel like a woman for the first time in her life.
One of their first conversations had been over an intricate engine. The other interns and engineers had walked away momentarily and Sam had been about to follow them when Rafaele had caught her wrist. He’d let her go again almost immediately but her skin had burned for hours afterwards, along with the fire in her belly.
‘So,’ he’d drawled in that sexy voice, ‘where did your interest and love for engines come from, Miss Rourke?’
The Miss Rourke had sounded gently mocking, as if some sort of secret code had passed between them. Sam had been mesmerised and it had taken a second for her to answer. She’d shrugged, looking away from the penetrating gaze that had seemed to see her in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying.
‘My father is a professor of physics, so I’ve grown up surrounded by science. And my grandmother...his mother...she was Irish, but she ended up in England during the Second World War, working in the factories on cars. Apparently she loved it and had a natural affinity for working with engines—so much so that she kept her job after the war for a few years, before returning home to marry.’ She’d shrugged again. ‘I guess it ran in the family.’
Sam looked back at her young naive self now and cringed. She’d been so transparent, so easy to seduce. It had taken one earth-shattering kiss in Rafaele’s office and she’d opened herself up for him, had forgotten everything her upbringing had taught her about protecting herself from emotionally unavailable people.
He’d whispered to her that she was sensual, sexy, beautiful, and she’d melted. A girl who had grown up denying her very sexuality had had no defence mechanism in place to deal with someone as practised and polished and seductive as Rafaele.
She’d fallen for him quicker than Alice in Wonderland had fallen down the rabbit hole. And her world had changed as utterly as Alice’s: beautiful dresses, intoxicating dates—one night he’d even flown them to Venice in his helicopter for dinner.
And then there had been the sex. He’d taken her innocence with a tenderness she never would have expected of a consummate seducer. It had been mind-blowing, addictive. Almost overwhelming for Sam, who had never imagined her boring, almost boyish body could arouse someone—never mind a man like Rafaele Falcone, who had his pick of the world’s most beautiful women.
During their short-lived affair, even though he’d told her, ‘Samantha...don’t fall for me. Don’t hope for something more because I have nothing to give someone like you...’ she hadn’t listened. She’d told herself that he had to feel something, because when they made love it felt as if they transcended everything that bound them to this earth and touched something profound.
At the time, though, she’d laughed and said airily, belying her own naivety, ‘Relax, Rafaele! It is possible, you know, for not every woman you meet to fall in love with you. I know what this is. It’s just sex.’
She’d made herself say it out loud, even though it had been like turning a knife towards her own belly and thrusting it deep. Because she’d been so far out of her depth by then she might as well have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She’d been lying, of course. She’d proved to be as humiliatingly susceptible to Rafaele’s lethal charm as the next hapless woman.
If anything, he’d given her a life lesson and a half. For a brief moment she’d lost her head and forgotten that if it looked like a dream and felt like a dream, then it probably was a dream. Her real world was far more banal and she’d always been destined to return to it. Milo or no Milo.
Punching the pillow beneath her head now, as if she could punch the memories away too, Sam closed her eyes and promised herself that not for a second would she ever betray just how badly that man had hurt her.
* * *
‘Mummy, the man is still here. He’s downstairs in the book room.’
Sam responded to the none-too-gentle shaking of her son and opened her eyes. She’d finally fallen asleep somewhere around dawn. Again. Milo’s eyes were huge in his face and Sam struggled to sit up, pulling him into her, feeling her stomach clench at the reminder of who was here.
‘I told you that he’d be moving in with us for a while, don’t you remember?’ she prompted sleepily.
Milo nodded and then asked, ‘But where’s his house?’
Sam smiled wryly. Little did her son know that his father had a veritable portfolio of houses around the world.
‘He doesn’t have a house here in London.’
‘Okay.’ Milo clambered out of the bed and looked at her winsomely. ‘Can we get Cheerios now?’
Sam got out of bed and reached for her robe—and then thought better of it when she imagined Rafaele giving it
s threadbare appearance a caustic once-over. No doubt he would wonder what on earth he’d ever seen in her.
Hating to be so influenced by what he might think, Sam reached for jeans and a thin sweatshirt and yanked her sleep-mussed hair into a ponytail. No make-up. She cursed herself. She wasn’t trying to seduce Rafaele, for crying out loud.
Milo was jumping around now and then stopped. ‘Do you...do you think he’ll eat Cheerios too?’ He looked comically stricken. ‘What if he eats my Cheerios?’
Sam bent down and tweaked Milo’s nose. ‘He won’t touch your Cheerios while I’m around. Anyway, I happen to know for a fact that he only likes coffee for breakfast.’
Something poignant gripped her as she remembered lazy mornings when Rafaele would take great pleasure in feeding her but not himself, much to her amusement.
‘Ugh,’ declared Milo, already setting off out of the room, ‘Coffee is yuck.’
Sam heard him go downstairs, sounding like a herd of baby elephants, and took a deep breath before following him. The study door was ajar, and as she passed she could hear the low deep tones that had an instant effect on her insides.
Milo was pointing with his finger and saying in a very loud stage whisper, ‘He’s in there.’
Sam just nodded and put a finger to her lips, then herded Milo towards the kitchen, where he quickly got distracted helping to set the table.
And even though she knew Rafaele was in the house she still wasn’t prepared when she turned around and saw him standing in the doorway, looking dark and gorgeous in faded jeans and a thin jumper. It did little to disguise the inherent strength of his very powerful masculine form, akin to that of an athlete. He was so sexy. With that unmistakable foreign edge that no English man could ever hope to pull off.
The memory of his initial effect on her four years ago was still raw, but she forced herself to say civilly, ‘Good morning. I hope you slept well?’
He smiled faintly but she noticed it barely touched those luminous green eyes. ‘Like a log.’