The Ranieri Bride

by Michelle Reid

  Icy cold was how she always felt when she let herself think about Enrico. Hurt, hatred and contempt could turn a warm-blooded woman to a block of ice.

  So could fear.

  Of the unknown.

  Of what Enrico was going to do next.

  She shifted, blinking her green eyes as a hungry beak pecked at her fingers. Relinquishing the small crust to the greedy duck, she turned to Nicky, who was sitting there in his element, smiling—and looking so much more like his father than she’d ever let herself see before, that it came as a shock each time she gazed at him now.

  Now that she had seen his father in the flesh again.

  Now that she had seen the grown-up version of her son’s handsome face, those black eyes, the stubborn mouth and determined chin.

  The fact that Enrico had been so quick to recognise himself in Nicky had shaken her to her very roots. How dared he—how dared he do that after all he’d said and done to disown responsibility?

  She’d come to hate him for doing that.

  ‘Get out of my life,’ he’d ripped at her three years ago. ‘You are a cheat and a slut and I never want to see you again so long as I live.’

  Bitter, cold, heartless. Arrogant, superior, judgemental; deaf…

  She ran out of adjectives and made do with a sigh instead.

  Maybe he’d had second thoughts about Nicky by now, she thought hopefully. He might have seen a miniature mirror image of himself in her little boy, but there again his cousin Luca was yet another reflection of those disgustingly handsome Ranieri features. A sly, mean, nasty mirror of Enrico, but the likeness was there, and Enrico would have remembered that by now and dismissed her and Nicky out of his nasty suspicious—

  Then it hit her—the one thing she had been trying very hard not to think about.

  What had he been doing in Hannard’s foyer, anyway?

  He hadn’t bought Hannard’s—had he? He wasn’t about to become her boss again?

  Her spine tensed up as nerve ends crashed together, her cold fingers twisting tightly on her lap. No, she thought—no! Don’t look for the worst-case scenario. He could have just been passing through. Maybe he was a friend of Josh Hannard and was only meeting him for lunch.

  And maybe pigs can fly, she was then forced to tell herself. When Enrico Ranieri appeared in a company’s foyer with his faithful entourage stacking up behind him, then he was there for only one purpose.

  It was a buy-out and, with his usual tactics, he was making a surprise hit on a new acquisition like a lethal bolt of lightning striking out of the blue.

  A shiver ran down her back. Oh, no, she thought, and lowered her face to her knees because she just couldn’t face the idea of him having the power to ruin her life—again.

  Once had been enough.

  Once upon a time three years ago she’d had a wonderful job as his personal assistant. She’d lived a wonderful life as his live-in lover. They’d barely survived being out of each other’s sight. Two hot lovers with passionate and feverishly possessive temperaments, they’d matched each other, fire for sizzling fire.

  Then she’d met his cousin and within weeks it was all over.

  ‘Monkey,’ Nicky said levelly.

  ‘We will see the monkeys tomorrow,’ Freya promised, lifting her head to look at this dark-haired little boy who was the most important thing in her life—whoever his father was.

  ‘No, monkey over there,’ he insisted, pointing with a finger.

  Turning her head, Freya found her eyes fixing on the bulky shape of Fredo Scarsozi. He was standing beneath the shade of a tree not twenty feet from them. As she stared he sent her a brief nod in acknowledgement and she knew then, knew with every single fractured nerve she possessed that, far from dismissing them, Enrico was right there watching them from behind the steady gaze of his most trusted employee.

  Well, this was one fight he was going to have with himself because she was not going to play any part in it, she decided as she clambered to her feet. Nicky was her son and only hers, and it was going to be up to Enrico to prove otherwise.

  If he cared enough.

  Bitterness welled, and anger—a hard, cold rod of contempt that straightened her spine as she held a hand out to her son.

  ‘Come on, sweetie,’ she murmured. ‘It’s time for us to go back now.’

  Nicky came without argument. With no bread left, the ducks had scooted back into the pond. Plus her son was used to the routine he had been living with since he was three months old and she had been so very fortunate to land a job at Hannard’s with its crèche all ready and waiting to take in her son.

  The job itself might be basic and the pay reflected the money it cost her to place Nicky in day care, but at least he was right there in the same building with her and she could see him whenever she needed to. Their little flat might be poky and erring towards shabby but they managed.

  They were happy—content to have just each other. They did not need a man in their lives and once Enrico had recovered from the shock of seeing them he would realise that he could not want anything to do with them.

  ‘The monkey is following us,’ Nicky informed her.

  ‘He’s not a monkey, he’s a man,’ Freya corrected and refused to glance back at Fredo—refused.

  But that cold chill was striking at her again, the grim knowledge that she was lying to herself if she dared to believe that Enrico was going to let her off the hook without knowing the truth.

  He was ruthless and tenacious.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LYING, cheating, vindictive whore…

  Enrico sat behind the desk, silently throwing those insults at the photograph sourced from Hannard’s security files that looked out at him from his computer screen.

  She looked so cute, so sweetly innocent, he mocked acidly. As if butter would not melt in her mouth.

  But it did melt.

  With a flick of the mouse he blanked her out by pulling up a photograph of the boy and once again felt that soul-shattering, crash-and-burn feeling rock his insides.

  ‘What do you think—is he mine or Luca’s?’ he asked Fredo.

  Fredo gave one of his shrugs. ‘If he is Luca’s, then the bambino has been fortunate enough to miss out on his papa’s less savoury genes,’ the bodyguard said drily before adding quietly, ‘He has your eyes and mouth and your—stubbornness. He also has your sense of fun…’

  Fredo was thinking about the way the boy had kept glancing up to check on him all the way back here and the cheeky smile he’d worn on his little mouth. As they’d entered the building he’d turned and shouted, ‘Bye, monkey!’ before being dragged off chuckling by his mamma who’d refused to glance Fredo’s way at all.

  Enrico did not feel as if he had so much as a drop of fun in him right now as he sat there staring at the child’s face; it was as if those ink-dark eyes were making a link with his own—he could feel it right down to the dregs of his swirling, tensing gut.

  ‘He is mine, I feel it,’ he uttered gruffly.

  ‘Si.’ Fredo nodded.

  Why the sombre confirmation from his bodyguard further creased him up Enrico did not know—but it did.

  ‘Get down to the crèche and keep your eye on him,’ he instructed.

  For the first time in all the years they’d been together Fredo balked at a command. ‘You want me to spend the afternoon in a nursery—with bambinos?’

  He was horrified. Enrico looked at him. ‘Who the hell else can I trust to keep an eye on him while I work this mess out?’

  ‘But he cannot go anywhere without his mamma! She—’

  Enrico got up, all lithe muscle and brooding unease. ‘She could run,’ he muttered. ‘I cannot afford to let her disappear until I know the truth.’

  Fredo was silent. He might not like the job he was being handed but he saw the possibility in what Enrico said. With a fatalistic shrug of his big shoulders he turned to the door.

  ‘Where is Luca hiding out these days?’ Enrico sent grimly after him.


  Fredo paused. ‘Last I heard he was in Hawaii with his latest rich puta.’

  ‘Arrange to keep him there,’ Enrico ordered. ‘Use threats or money or both if you have to.’ Though it closed up his throat to give his cousin a single euro. ‘I don’t need him turning up and queering this for me when he hears I have a son by Freya.’

  ‘How will he hear it?’ Fredo asked in bewilderment. Luca had been cast out of the Ranieri family; he did not even have contact with his own mother any more!

  ‘He will hear it like the rest of the world will hear it,’ Enrico said. ‘When I announce it publicly that I have a son and intend to marry the boy’s mother.’

  There was a very thick pause, then Fredo said carefully, ‘You are going too fast with this, Enrico—’

  A pair of black-ice eyes lanced Fredo with a look that made the other man sigh.

  ‘You need positive proof before you—’

  ‘The boy is mine. I want him. The mother comes with the package.’

  ‘Try telling the signorina that,’ Fredo said drily.

  ‘I intend to.’

  Freya was wistfully wishing she lived on the other side of the world right now.

  But she didn’t. She was standing right here in Hannard’s basement, mindlessly feeding paper into an old flatbed scanner so the information on it could be transferred to the mainframe computer.

  Trapped, she thought bleakly, by the need to earn a living.

  And frightened, because she didn’t know what Enrico was going to do.

  It was all over the building that he’d bought out Josh Hannard. It was also all over the building that he’d accosted her in the foyer this lunchtime and caused an ugly scene.

  Her telephone rang. It hadn’t stopped ringing since she’d got back from lunch, flooding her with calls from her fellow workmates wanting her to dish the dirt as to what Ranieri had said to her. The whole place was agog with curiosity and scared out of their wits for their livelihoods…more scared if they had a child in Hannard’s crèche. All she could do was to lie and say, what confrontation? He was just asking about the quality of care at the crèche.

  Because the real truth was way beyond her means to tell—even to herself. She didn’t want to think about what it was going to mean to her and Nicky.

  She picked up the phone, ready with her by now well-practised light answers.

  ‘A Scarsozi has taken up residence in the crèche,’ announced the familiar voice of Cindy, its manager. ‘He says he’s here under instructions from our new boss to watch over Nicky. Can you tell me what the heck is going on?’

  Freya closed her eyes as her heart sank to her stomach, fresh fears clenching her fingers in a tight clasp around the phone receiver. ‘Has he—touched Nicky?’ she asked unsteadily.

  ‘No,’ came the firm reply. ‘If he tried I wouldn’t let him.’

  Try stopping him, Freya thought with a shiver as she recalled the way Fredo’s strong arms had secured her son once already that day.

  ‘He just stands in a corner of the playroom watching him and scaring the rest of us half to death,’ Cindy went on. ‘Have you seen him, Freya? He’s built like a gorilla! I want the scary thing out of my crèche!’

  ‘Right,’ Freya said, beginning to shake all over again. ‘Is—is Nicky scared of him, too?’

  ‘Are you joking? Your son had the bold cheek to go right up to him and say, “Hi, monkey, want to come and play?” Does Nicky know him?’

  Now, there was a question. How did she answer it—no or yes? If she said no, she would put everyone involved in the crèche into a panic. If she said yes, she was setting herself up for more questions she had no way of answering.

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she replied, going for the sidestep response.

  What did Enrico think he was doing? she wondered helplessly as she put down the phone. Was he trying to intimidate her through Nicky before he’d even—?

  ‘Your tea break, Freya,’ a frosty voice intruded. ‘Though the way you’ve been stuck on that phone all afternoon I’d say you’ve already had the equivalent of several of them.’

  Freya blinked, green eyes looking blankly at her head of department, a cool creature with dyed blonde hair and a tight pink mouth, who loved ruling over everyone like a tyrant.

  ‘Be so good as to keep your personal life out of my department in future, if you don’t mind.’

  The woman was also miffed because, like everyone else, she’d asked Freya the same eager questions, only to receive the same stock, frustratingly unrevealing answers.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Right,’ Freya mumbled—then she grabbed her bag and ran.

  She had to talk to Enrico, and she had to do it now! Unearthing her mobile phone from her bag the moment she hit the outer corridor, she leant back against the wall and dialled into Hannard’s via Reception. Her fingers were still tense, her insides shaking. She didn’t want to speak to him but if she had to do it, then it was better over the phone than face-to-face.

  She managed to get as far as his personal assistant—a male personal assistant—who coldly informed her that Ranieri was in conference. Since Freya had once occupied the same post, she knew exactly what ‘in conference’ really meant. Enrico was talking to no one. He was too busy plotting her demise, no doubt.

  ‘Look,’ she said impatiently, too stressed and in need of sorting this situation out to play word games, ‘I need to speak to him urgently, so you will tell him that Freya will call back in five minutes and even if he is still in conference I’m coming right up!’

  With that she severed the connection, not wanting to hear what the PA had to say to that piece of defiance. Then she shot off to the ladies’ room to use the next five minutes to freshen up.

  Enrico received the message with his handsome face cut from granite. So she was panicking already. Good, he thought grimly. He wanted her to panic. He wanted her to live in fear for her life.

  Freya had to wait in line for a cubicle. By the time she’d bagged one her five minutes were almost up and the panic Enrico was hoping for was really setting in. Quickly dragging her phone out of her bag, she rang into Hannard’s again.

  It didn’t help that it took almost another two minutes to make the connection with his PA. There was a queue a mile long waiting to use the ladies’, and sitting there with her panties stretched taut across her knees and a mobile telephone clamped to her ear felt pretty damn weird to say the least.

  ‘I will put you through now, Jenson,’ that cold male voice informed her.

  The man knew her name, which made her stomach lurch because Enrico must have told him. What else had he said? Who else had he spoken to here about her?

  ‘I want you to leave me alone, Enrico,’ she rushed out in a driven whisper the moment the connection was made. ‘My son is not your son, so call off Fredo!’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m trying to talk seriously to you without half the building hearing me!’ she unleashed in an unsteady, husky hiss. ‘You can’t do this to me, Enrico. You can’t just stroll into my life and take it over. You can’t…’

  Someone knocked on the cubicle door. ‘You all right in there?’ a female voice questioned. ‘You’ve been in there for an age!’

  ‘In where for an age?’ Enrico rasped out.

  ‘In the loo,’ Freya answered impatiently. ‘I’m in one of the loos because it happened to be where I was when my five minutes were up.’

  ‘The loo,’ he repeated, then went perfectly silent.

  Freya plucked tensely at the lacy edge of her panties while she waited for him to recover from the shock. ‘We all need it some time, Enrico,’ she sighed out eventually. ‘Even you.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ he gritted. ‘You are speaking to me on this phone while sitting on the loo?’

  ‘It’s my afternoon break,’ she explained. ‘I only get ten minutes so I don’t have time to…freshen up and talk to you unless I combine the two.’

  There
was another of those telling silences. Why it had to tickle at the cluster of curls between her legs, Freya didn’t know—but it did.

  She shifted uncomfortably. ‘Enrico, call off Fredo,’ she pleaded. ‘He’s scaring everyone!’

  ‘Pull your pants up and get up here, Jenson,’ Enrico instructed coldly. ‘I expect to see you standing fully dressed in my office in five minutes—and don’t make me wait or you won’t like what I decide to do next.’

  The line went dead. Freya didn’t have five minutes left of her break!