Libby moved over and picked it up.
‘That’s Caesaro,’ Giorgio informed her importantly. ‘I had him when I was little. Nonna says I’m too old for him now, but Zio said I shouldn’t let him go just because he’s old and can’t hear very well any more. This is my mamma, Caesaro.’ He reached up and, with his hand sheilding his mouth, gabbled something in the bear’s single ear. ‘He says he can’t speak either,’ he told Libby, grinning. ‘That is why he hasn’t said buon giorno to you.’
Looking down at the furless little bear, emotion clogging her throat, somehow Libby managed to whisper, ‘We’ve already met.’
She had bought the teddy for Giorgio when he was ten days old and it had gone with him the day she had handed him over. The day her life had ended. She couldn’t bear to think about that.
‘Why are you crying?’ The little boy was looking at her with those huge, dark, impish eyes that were so like his father’s. ‘Are you unhappy?’
‘No, Giorgi.’ What could she say to him? There was so much she needed to say, and yet she couldn’t find the words.
Dropping down to her knees, suddenly all she could do was clutch him to her, holding him close, her hand cradling his soft head while scalding tears squeezed out from beneath her tightly closed eyelids.
‘Why did you go away?’
Pain constricted her throat. How could she answer that? How could she begin to explain to this innocent little boy—her own child—the circumstances that had forced her into giving him up? She couldn’t do it. Not without incriminating the people he loved. The only family he had grown up with.
Sniffing back tears, she straightened, brushing his hair back with a loving hand. She had to tell him something. But what?
‘She went away because she had to,’ a deep masculine voice intoned from the doorway. ‘Because she’s a very busy lady.’ Romano strode in. A dominating figure. Cool. Self-possessed. Totally relaxed.
Libby met his eyes, not warm and mischievous like Luca’s but shrewd and penetrating, glitteringly black. All she could manage was a flicker of a smile as she got to her feet.
She couldn’t tell him how grateful she was that his timely intervention—however discriminatingly slanted towards her—had rescued her from having to answer such a difficult question, because it seemed to satisfy the little boy.
‘Are you busy now?’ Giorgio enquired, his spirits seeming to drop a little.
‘No. No, I’ve got all the time you want, Giorgi,’ she assured him softly, because the shoots and commitments, her agent and her manager and anyone else who thought they were more important than bonding with her son could wait.
‘And you’re not going away again, are you?’
What could she say? No. I’ll never go away again! I’ll never leave you like I did before!
She looked desperately to Romano to rescue her for a second time. It wasn’t up to her, was it? He wasn’t helping her this time, however, and, though she’d already decided she would move heaven and earth to keep her son with her this time, she knew that whatever Romano Vincenzo decided would be law. He was the child’s legal guardian now after all.
‘Let’s take each day as it comes, Giorgio,’ she advised gently, just as a maid came in to tell them that Signora Vincenzo was insisting that they join her for tea.
Libby noticed the way Romano’s mouth seemed to tighten.
‘Why don’t you run along and tell your grandmother we will be down shortly?’ he suggested to his nephew, adding something in Italian that Libby didn’t catch when he sensed an obvious reluctance that made the little boy whoop with joy.
‘What did you say to him?’ Libby asked as soon as they were alone again.
‘I find a pay-off usually works no matter how young or how innocent the recipient,’ Romano returned drily, reminding her all too acutely of the pay-off she had received from his father on handing over her baby—as he had intended to. The brush of his hand against hers as he relieved her of the teddy she had forgotten she was still holding made her catch her breath. ‘I promised he could stay up an hour later tonight.’
And he would rest assured in the knowledge that his Uncle Romano would keep his promises, Libby thought, under no misconception of how much her son loved and respected Luca’s elder brother. As he should have loved and trusted her…
‘I’ve missed so much of his life. I don’t recognise him any more,’ she uttered, despairing at the years that had flown and could never be replaced. ‘I don’t know him.’
‘It’s hardly surprising, is it?’ he said, dispensing with the little bear on the pillow above the bright red racing car that patterned the coverlet on the little single bed. When you relinquished all claim to him when he was two months old!
Straightening, he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying it, and saw her almost visibly flinch as though his unspoken thoughts had had the power to flay her.
He had to confess, though, that that show of emotion just now when he had come in and caught her sobbing had surprised him. Downstairs she had seemed far too restrained, almost unaffected, for a mother reunited with her son after so long. Yet reluctantly now he found himself questioning just how deep her feelings might go; if she was actually capable of experiencing real maternal love.
Memories, long buried and denied, rose like spectres out of the ashes of his own childhood, but mentally he shook them aside. Coming back to the present, he forced himself to acknowledge that guilt too could produce tears like those he had witnessed just now—and this girl had a lot to feel guilty over. Beautiful, with a heaven-sent face and figure—and mercenary beyond belief! Santo cielo! He admonished himself for even wanting to be taken in. Soften towards her and he would be the same kind of manipulated fool that Luca had been!
‘Well, congratulations!’ he found himself grinding out tersely, even while he knew it would do nothing to help the tense relations that already existed between them. ‘I’m sure you managed to convince him of your good intentions with that remarkably touching performance.’
Libby almost staggered under the sting of his lashing censure. Was that what he thought this was? she wondered, agonised. A performance?
‘Yes, well…I could hardly tell him the truth, now, could I?’ she retorted acridly, refusing to let him see how much his condemnation of her hurt. ‘That I was far too busy to bother with him before this.’ Emphatically she twisted his earlier explanation around to express the meaning he had really intended to convey. ‘And that keeping him would have messed up my life far too much!’
She would have pushed past him then if a strong hand hadn’t reached out and caught her. His fingers bit into her arm as his glittering eyes searched hers, challenging and hard.
‘Nor will you ever let him think that! Either now or at any time in the future!’
‘Why not?’ Forcibly she tugged out of his grasp. ‘You think it!’
‘That’s different,’ he assured her coldly. ‘I’m made of…what is the phrase you use? Sterner stuff. And I know how to handle beautiful, heartless little social climbers like you.’
She wanted to fling at him that he couldn’t handle a dinner party. That he was such a prejudiced oaf he wouldn’t recognise honesty if he spooned it out of his soup!
Instead, with forced composure and a twisted little smile that she knew would do her no favours, she said, ‘Do you, Romano? I wonder,’ and then feared from the dark emotion that leaped in those beautiful eyes that she had provoked him just that bit too far.
As both hands locked onto her shoulders, she saw the determined purpose in his eyes and, every nerve racing with a dangerous excitement, Libby steeled herself for the humiliation she knew would come.
‘We’re both single-minded.’ His voice was menacingly low, his long black lashes lowered as his gaze rested on the trembling fullness of her mouth. ‘We both go after exactly what we want.’
‘Do we?’ Was that her voice? So faint? So croaky? ‘Don’t bracket me with yourself,’ somehow she managed to g
et out, while her heart seemed to be pumping so fast she thought it would burst, ‘or with any other member of your wonderful family, please!’
He laughed low in his throat. ‘You did that yourself when you made the very foolish mistake of marrying my brother.’
‘Not foolish, Romano. I had everything I wanted.’ Which was Luca’s love! she thought wildly and with a fervour that left no room for any doubt. And Giorgio! All the pain she suffered throughout her marriage and since had been worth it to know that there was Giorgio.
‘Did you?’
His stripping regard caused her brows to come together. What was he doing? Trying to cast doubt on the one thing about her life here that had been any good?
‘If you’re referring to Vincenzo finances then yes, I can imagine that you would have felt as though you’d landed in a bed of roses. But if you’re talking about anything else…’ a mocking sensuality curved that devastatingly masculine mouth ‘…then I think it would have taken very little on my part to show Luca exactly what a fickle little creature you were when it boiled down to loyalty.’
Libby swallowed. What was he saying? That her failure to be cowed by his rampant superiority sometimes had been some sort of come-on?
You scared the hell out of me! she wanted to scream, but her lips wouldn’t seem to move.
‘As I said, mia cara, we both know what we want. And exactly how to get it.’
Libby’s eyes darted anxiously to his. After her shaming—if inexplicable—response to him in her flat the other day, he couldn’t fail to have realised how profoundly he affected her. Even if he thought she’d been nursing some ungovernable desire to leap into bed with him when she had been married to his brother! But would he really spell it out? Show her? Not in Giorgio’s room surely! she thought hectically. And maybe he was thinking along the same lines because suddenly he released her and, with remarkable control and a courteous sweep of his arm that seemed ludicrous in the circumstances, he breathed, ‘Allora? Shall we go down?’
CHAPTER FOUR
LIBBY spent the next day getting to know her son. He was remarkably bright for his age, she discovered, watching how capable he was on his computer, and she was amazed by how well he could already read and write.
‘That used to be one of my favourites too,’ she told him fondly when he showed her his best-loved story book, remembering the characters that her father had brought to life so vividly for her before she had been old enough to read about them for herself.
If only life could have been more simple! If only he hadn’t been so ill. If only Luca hadn’t died! How different things would have been, she thought achingly.
‘Zio said he’s going to take me out with him today and that you can come too,’ Giorgio informed her importantly when he was returning the book to his brightly painted little bookcase. ‘You will come, won’t you, Mamma?’ he implored.
How she had longed for and dreaded that she might never hear her son call her that! ‘You try and stop me!’ she laughed, ruffling his hair.
With mixed emotions, though, Libby licked suddenly dry lips. Just why did this longed-for reunion have to come with such a price? Have to include Romano Vincenzo when she despised the man; when she was so drawn to him physically that she despised herself for it in equal measure?
‘He’s very good to you…your Uncle Romano, isn’t he?’ she ventured, reluctantly fishing for any snippet of information she could get about Luca’s brother. It was surprising, she thought, that, though he had left such a mark on her past, and she was well aware of the power he wielded both in and outside the family circle, she knew remarkably little about the real man, what it was that made this deep, dark billionaire tick.
‘Oh, si!’ Giorgio confirmed enthusiastically. ‘And when I grow up I’m going to be just like him.’
‘Perhaps your mother has other opinions about that.’
Heart leaping from the deep voice that sliced across the silence, Libby swung round, her bright hair swishing like silk against her tight tense shoulders.
Wearing black jeans that hugged his powerful hips and a casual yet superbly tailored ivory shirt, Romano Vincenzo looked all that he was: hard, lean and so powerfully sexy that Libby’s blood seemed to fizz in response.
‘Perhaps she has,’ she couldn’t help lobbing back in defence against all she was feeling.
His smile seemed to mock the unmistakable wobble in her voice.
‘I’m driving into town,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Giorgio’s mentioned we’d deem it a pleasure if you came with us.’
‘Well…he didn’t put it that nobly,’ she remarked with a sceptical lift of her brows, aware that for Romano certainly her presence would be anything but a pleasure.
‘I’ll be leaving in twenty minutes,’ he stated, clearly refusing to be drawn into any altercation with her and taking her acceptance for granted as he turned away.
It was a surprisingly enjoyable day. Romano took them to one of the small neighbouring towns and Libby waited with Giorgio in the large 4 x 4 while he settled some business in the bank.
She was showing Giorgio some photographs she had brought with her when Romano rejoined them. Snaps of Luca and herself together. Her own mother holding her as a baby, and her likeness to Giorgio struck her so fiercely that it took her breath away.
‘And that’s your English grandfather. Nonno,’ she translated, emotion pressing on her chest as a little hand took the snapshot of the man leaning on his spade in the cottage garden he had loved, and which she always carried in her purse.
‘Your father?’ From the driver’s seat, Romano glanced over his shoulder at the photograph Giorgio was studying.
She nodded.
‘Where is he now?’
‘He died.’ She didn’t want to share the knowledge with him, for reasons, she thought bitterly, he would know only too well. ‘Just over a year ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Was he?
Surprisingly his eyes commiserated, but she didn’t want his sympathy, either real or affected.
‘Let’s go, then, shall we?’ she said, a little too brightly, as she slipped the retrieved photograph back into her purse, feeling those shrewd masculine eyes raking over her face before Romano pushed the car into gear and pulled away.
After that things became a little more relaxed for a while when Romano took them both to lunch in a friendly-run café where the waiters made a great fuss of Giorgio and presented him with a red balloon on a string, which he promptly popped so that they had to go and find him another, and they all came out laughing. High-spirited. Relaxed. Like a family, Libby found herself thinking, and killed that ridiculous notion the second it was born.
Despite his opinion of her, however, Romano kept the conversation amiable. Obviously for the benefit of his nephew, Libby decided caustically, yet grateful for it as they wandered into a shop to help Giorgio select new trainers.
‘I want to buy them for him,’ Libby expressed, when he had chosen the pair he wanted.
‘That isn’t necessary,’ Romano drawled.
‘Nevertheless, I’m going to,’ she asserted, squatting down to help her son tie his laces before Romano could.
She caught the barest movement of a broad shoulder as she glanced up.
What was he thinking? she wondered as those darkly penetrating eyes regarding her from their vantage point caused that insidious tension to coil deep down in her loins. That it would take much more than that to make up for all the years she hadn’t been around?
Her spirits were lowered as they made their way back to the car.
About to cross the relatively busy road, Romano caught Giorgio’s hand. Automatically, the little boy’s other hand came up to clasp his mother’s.
Above his head, Libby’s eyes connected involuntarily with Romano’s. The innocent gesture on Giorgio’s part seemed to link them together in a way she would rather have avoided and it was obvious her son was thinking along the same lines when, after tilting his head to look at
first one and then the other, he enquired mortifyingly of her, ‘Are you going to stay here forever and live with Zio and me?’
All Libby felt like doing was sinking into the concrete as they stepped onto the pavement on the other side of the road. How could she answer that? she wondered chaotically.
‘I certainly won’t be imposing on your…uncle…any longer than I have to,’ she stated emphatically. The last thing she wanted to do was live with Romano Vincenzo!
‘What does imposing mean?’ Giorgio queried guilelessly, frowning up at them both in turn.
‘Something to do with being where someone else doesn’t want them to be,’ Romano explained tightly. A moment later, passing an ice-cream vendor, he extracted a coin from the pocket of his jeans and, with a few words of Italian to Giorgio that rippled like silk off his tongue, sent his nephew racing off to claim his unexpected treat.
‘Don’t do that,’ he ground out stiffly to Libby when the boy was out of earshot.
‘Do what?’ The soft anger in his voice had made her look up at him, bemused.
‘Use the boy’s innocence to air your obvious animosity towards me,’ he stated through suddenly clenched teeth.
‘I wasn’t doing that,’ she argued in defence, ashamed to realise that that was just what she had been in danger of doing. ‘At least, that wasn’t my intention.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he accepted, though his proud features were still inexorably set. ‘I don’t care how inconvenient or how uncomfortable this whole exercise might be for you, if you care for your son’s welfare you will stay here as long as it is necessary, is that understood?’
There was no point telling him that she intended to. That she would be doing everything in her power to keep her son in her life now that she had found him again and that there was no way that he would be able to just cast her aside like an old sheet when he decided the time was right as easily as he was obviously hoping to do.
‘I’m staying here because I want to, and not because of your or anyone’s else’s bullying tactics,’ she returned with soft determination, pushing ahead of him then to follow Giorgio up to the ice-cream vendor.
Blackmailed For Her Baby (Bought For Her Baby Series Book 4) Page 6
