The Ranieri Bride

by Michelle Reid

This moment was doing that. He just stood there and let it happen—let this miniature image of himself look him over as if he were some kind of alien from outer space. He knew he looked formidable because he felt formidable. He knew he should have been doing something like softening his expression and attempting to make some kind of gesture of friendliness.

  But—what?

  And people were watching—all of them, curious kids and adults alike.

  He doesn’t like children, they were thinking. Hell, look at him, he can’t even bring himself to smile!

  Then Freya’s fingers arrived on that pair of narrow, childish shoulders, and he knew that he had to do something. His time was up. She was going to withdraw the boy from his sight.

  He dropped onto his haunches, heart thundering like crazy. ‘Ciao,’ he heard himself utter in a husky rasp across his constricted throat.

  Why in Italian—why? he asked himself.

  He received no answer. Something thick was gathering inside him. In a helpless, useless kind of gesture he lifted up his hand and opened it up.

  The boy looked down at the red toy Ferrari car, then back at him. ‘Mine?’ he asked.

  Enrico nodded, wanted to swallow but would not let himself. ‘Vostro,’ he confirmed—again in Italian, but he was thinking in English.

  It did not make any sense.

  The noisy, garishly painted playroom was so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Every word he spoke was echoing like mad.

  A tiny hand reached out and tentatively plucked the car from his palm. Then the little boy smiled.

  It was Enrico’s own smile. He was looking into his own eyes and seeing his own smile and…

  His hand moved of its own volition, reaching out to run gentle fingers through the boy’s glossy dark curls. It was like touching his own hair. When his fingers moved to lightly stroke the small bruise on the boys cheek, it felt so familiar it was like touching his own skin.

  He could not help it. He placed his hands on Nicky’s shoulders and drew the little boy towards him, breaking the protective link with his mamma, so he could brush that bruise, then the Cupid’s mouth with a kiss.

  A father’s kiss. His heart turned over and squeezed tightly.

  An Italian father’s naturally tactile greeting to his son.

  He could sense Freya fighting the tears as she watched them. He could sense how alert she was in case their son took exception to being touched and kissed by this man who was a stranger to him.

  But they were not strangers. Even the confused and frowning two-year-old was feeling something—like a son’s recognition of his own flesh and blood?

  Then Nicky reached out to touch Enrico’s hair with tentative fingers, mimicking him as he moved his small fingers on to touch a razor-edged cheek.

  Tears gathered strength. Freya couldn’t stop them. Hurt gathered with them—a mother’s hurt because, until this moment, only she’d earned that engrossed expression now placed on her son’s little face.

  Was she jealous?

  Yes, she was jealous. And desperately afraid of what this was going to mean.

  Then Enrico grinned. It was the same grin Nicky had just shown to her. It wiped the austerity from his countenance.

  Nicky grinned back.

  Then, without any warning that he was going to do it, the little boy turned, twisting out from beneath his father’s light clasp, and was taking off at a run.

  That was it.

  That was it!

  The sum total response from son to father, before the child ran off to play with his friends.

  Enrico rose to his full height, aware of the curious eyes still on him, more aware that Freya was close to tears. He glanced at Fredo, who was just looking at him, flicked his eyes to the fluffy blonde, who, by the look in her narrowed blue eyes, was not sure whether to be impressed or just plain sceptical about what she had just seen.

  Well, keep watching, cara, because this is not over, Enrico thought grimly, and shifted his attention back to Freya. His next move was instinctive, the same instinct which helped keep him forever one step ahead of his business competitors. At this moment it was all he had left to function with.

  Reaching for her shoulders, he drew Freya towards him in the same way he had done with his son. Only this was different. This was grimly measured as he lowered his dark head and placed his lips close to her ear.

  ‘He is mine,’ he husked, ‘and your fate is now sealed.’

  As he straightened up again she was quivering, fingers locked together in a tight clasp at her front. He looked nowhere else but at her pale face with its hidden eyes and its soft, kiss-swollen, trembling mouth.

  ‘You have ten minutes to say your farewells here and collect our son, mi amore,’ he announced huskily enough to sound intimate but loudly enough for all to hear. ‘Time is short and we have our wedding to organise before we leave for Milan.’

  Then he kissed her full on her gasping, trembling, totally shocked mouth before turning and striding away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FREYA paused outside Enrico’s office, trying desperately to keep it together until she had finished this.

  The personal assistant was not around, thank goodness. Nicky was safely where he always was at this time of day—in the crèche—with Fredo standing guard and Cindy now sucking up to him because curiosity had overcome her gorilla-alarm.

  Freya’s mouth twisted. Tense and pale now, not kiss-swollen and tremulous. She’d overrun her ten-minute deadline by a good fifteen, because it had taken the full ten to field all the eager questions from those in the crèche who’d overheard what Enrico had said. And, while she’d played it cool and had been blushingly evasive, anger had been steadily growing inside her until she’d been ready to tear Enrico limb from limb.

  Until she’d reached this door, that was. All the way through the crèche inquisition, she’d let the anger grow inside her. All the way through her eventual escape, and then the minutes she’d spent in the nearest ladies’ room attempting to make herself look and feel respectable again.

  Feeling respectable again had been the most difficult part to grasp. After the use of a comb, her hair was back up in a scalp-stinging tight knot and secured by a couple of elastic bands filched from Cindy.

  It was the moment when Cindy had gently pointed out that her jacket buttons were done up in the wrong order that had really thrown her.

  She’d known then that they all knew what she’d been doing to get into such a dishevelled state. Or they thought they knew. She could only hope that their imaginations did not stretch as far as the real, unfettered, lustful, shameful truth.

  Whatever. It would be all over the building by now—everything, from the juicy arrival of the shoeless Freya Jenson into the crèche with her hair wild about her shoulders and her jacket wrongly buttoned up, to the following entrance of the super-elegant Enrico Ranieri, looking as tall, dark and handsome and dauntingly formidable as his reputation said he was.

  She could almost hear the squeals of scandalous delight shrilling down telephones lines and across e-mails as their witnesses relayed, ‘She looked ravished! And guess who did the ravishing? Our gorgeous new boss! Would you believe he’s Nicky’s father? Would you believe they’re getting married? Fast worker, hmm? I wish my shoes were hiding wherever her shoes are hiding…’

  Freya wanted to shrivel up and die.

  Now here she stood, about to face her persecutor and it had only just hit her that she had nothing to face him with. In just a few short hours he’d ripped her life apart and left her without a single weapon with which to fight.

  Except for one…

  Her top teeth buried themselves in her bottom lip. The mere hint that she could tell Enrico such a big, wicked lie was enough to make her cringe inside.

  If she was wicked enough to claim that Nicky was Luca’s son, would it gain her anything other than the knowledge that she had landed one hit back at him?

  She couldn’t do it. She only had to recall those fe
w heart-wrenching moments down in the crèche when Nicky had connected with Enrico to know she could no more murder that special moment than she could do away with her beautiful son.

  The door suddenly swung open. Freya blinked as Enrico filled the gap. An instant, uncontrollable rush of sexual awareness ran right down through her.

  ‘If you stand there fighting with yourself for much longer you will take root,’ he mocked acidly.

  ‘But how did you—?’

  ‘Instinct,’ he clipped. ‘I could feel the vibrations of your angst reaching out to me through the solid wood.’

  He stepped to one side in a grim indication for her to enter. She did so reluctantly and couldn’t control the small wince as she heard the door shut.

  It was like revisiting the scene of a dreadful crime, she thought hollowly as she stared at the room where less than an hour ago she’d…

  ‘Take your hair down.’

  ‘No…’ She turned to look at him as he went past her on the way to the desk. Sitting on top of it was the box containing her personal stuff with her handbag beside it. Standing alongside was a zipped-up business case which had to contain Enrico’s laptop. On the floor by the chair, set neatly together, were her shoes.

  He was ready to leave here.

  He’d only been waiting for her to turn up.

  Then what?

  A trip to the nearest register office, then ten years or so of marital punishment until Nicky was old enough to cope without her around?

  Freya’s stomach knotted. ‘Enrico…’ she murmured.

  ‘Shoes.’ He indicated with a flip of a hand as if it was perfectly normal to have a pair of women’s shoes standing neatly to attention by the chair.

  ‘Listen first,’ she insisted. ‘A-about Nicky…’

  ‘I’m a step ahead of you, Freya, so don’t bother to say it,’ he cut in yet again.

  ‘You can’t know what I was going to say!’ she snapped out.

  ‘You were about to tell yet another lie and claim that Luca is Nicolo’s father.’

  Freya’s mouth opened and closed on a soundless gasp.

  ‘It is what you spent five minutes struggling with outside my door,’ he added.

  How could he have known she’d been fighting with that? ‘I w-wasn’t going to say that.’

  ‘Another lie.’ He looked at her grimly. ‘But, as I’ve told you once already today, I now know I am that boy’s father and your fate is sealed. Now, put on your shoes so we can leave.’

  ‘It takes more than a sperm head to make you a father,’ she sliced at him.

  ‘It also takes the opportunity to become one. You did not give me that.’

  About to push her feet into her shoes, Freya lifted her head and stared at him. ‘Are you daring to say that it’s my fault you did not get the chance?’

  ‘You could have called me,’ he muttered. ‘Once he was born and you could see for yourself that I—’

  ‘You expected me to call you up and beg you to come and check Nicky out?’

  ‘It would have cost you nothing.’

  Freya laughed—cost her nothing? ‘I might have been a naïve little fool when I met you, Enrico, but I’m a hell of a quick learner. What you taught me about humiliation is now seared forever into my brain! I hate you for teaching me to feel like that, do you know that?’ she flashed. ‘I hate you so much for it that even being in the same room as you makes me want to tear down the walls to get out!’

  ‘The door requires less energy,’ he said smoothly. ‘Put your shoes on and we will use it.’

  ‘When—’ she ignored that ‘—did you make any attempt to contact me? I still live in the same flat I leased before I met you; you know that I kept on paying the rent even though I moved in with you. It still has the same telephone number. I don’t recall finding you standing at my door enquiring after me or my child. I don’t remember any telephone messages enquiring if I was OK! I do recall pacing the delivery suite at the hospital,’ she continued furiously, ‘and, between contractions, spotting a nice, glossy magazine sitting on a table filled with pictures of you with your latest conquest attached to your hip!’

  He frowned. ‘Was the pain very bad?’

  ‘Did the lush brunette come through with the goods?’

  His frown deepened.

  ‘Does it please you to know that while I was giving birth to Nicky you were probably enjoying yourself with that woman?’

  ‘No,’ he said gruffly. ‘It does not please me.’

  ‘I think those very helpful glossies placed you with a sexy blonde, while I was placing the floor every night because Nicky was teething,’ she went on. ‘Maybe you think I should have interrupted you with a phone call then, to come and see if you fancied becoming a father to my son.’

  ‘Stop scoring points off me,’ he snapped out. ‘Do you think it has been easy for me to find out I have a two-year-old child?’

  ‘He’s not yours.’ She just could not stop herself from saying it.

  Enrico let the air leave his lungs with an angry hiss and stepped up to her to take a grip on her shoulders. ‘He is mine, you vindictive witch,’ he sliced into her. ‘You know he is mine. I know he is mine!’

  ‘If he didn’t look so much like you, you wouldn’t even be thinking that!’

  He dropped his hands from her, lean body twisting away because he knew she was only telling the truth. In the thrumming silence which followed, Freya fought the tears back while she stuffed her feet into her shoes.

  ‘Please leave us alone,’ she pushed huskily into the silence. ‘This marriage thing you’ve come up with is just a knee-jerk reaction. You know you don’t want me back in your life.’

  He turned, lean face hard like granite again. ‘I want my son. You come with him. Marriage comes with the whole damn package.’

  ‘Nicky is…’

  ‘Mine,’ he stated. ‘You know it. I feel it. Nicolo feels it. We connected. I will not disconnect simply because you wish I would.’

  ‘And I won’t marry you.’

  ‘Then I will do this the hard way and I will fight you through the courts. And I will win, Freya,’ he warned harshly. ‘For what can a jobless single mother offer the boy in comparison with what I can?’

  Love, she wanted to say, but even as the word settled on the tip of her tongue she could see the ferocity of his love for Nicky burning bright in Enrico’s eyes.

  He loved him already! She wanted to sit down and sob her heart out.

  What she actually did was lower her head and pick up her bag without saying another word.

  With that grim, thick silence crowding around them, Enrico picked up the box with her belongings in it and his business case, then strode over to open the door. The PA was back at his desk, face poker-straight.

  ‘Call Fredo and tell him to meet us at the car with our son,’ Enrico instructed.

  Freya lifted an anxious face to his. ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘On second thoughts, leave the call to me,’ Enrico amended, and turned to hand his business case to Freya so he could hunt in his jacket pocket for his mobile phone.

  She felt strange, oddly detached from reality as she walked beside him towards the lifts, listening to Enrico’s deep voice speaking in smooth Italian while she carried his business case as she’d used to.

  He was asking Fredo if he thought Nicky would come away with him, his fatherly instincts already beginning to work.

  Jobless, he’d called her. Jobless might not make her completely powerless against a man like him in the long term, but in the short term it made her feel scared to death. How were she and Nicky going to survive without a regular wage coming in?

  No crèche in which to safely leave him while she job-hunted. No money to spare for trips to see the monkeys at the zoo. Then there was rent to pay, food and utility bills to cover. She’d always managed to steer clear of unemployment benefits or Social Services’ help, because she’d always known the first question they would ask her was, who is Nicky�
�s father? Which meant that the Child Support Agency was out of the question, too. And look at him, she told herself in despair—standing next to her at the lifts and looking from his sleek head to his hand-stitched shoes like the billion-dollar man he was. Explain him away, then beg for a state handout. Admit it to them that yes, this guy is Nicky’s father, but I don’t want him to know that, and they would laugh in her face!

  Enrico suddenly turned his back on her and paced away with the phone still stuck to his ear, his voice now low and impatient, his Italian too fast for her to translate. A lift arrived but he was already halfway back down the corridor, lean, lithe, packed with all that restless grace and elegance and switched-on sex appeal that made just looking at him stifle the breath in her throat.