The Ranieri Bride

by Michelle Reid

She tasted of Freya and she smelled of Freya and she kissed him back like Freya always did whether she wanted to kiss him or not! Enrico thought angrily. And he wished he knew why the hell he was kissing her at all, when what he should be doing was throwing her out of his life the way he had done the last time that she’d done this to him.

  Had she kissed Luca like this today? Had she enjoyed playing one cousin off against the other again? Had she paraded her son in front of Luca to hedge her bets in case Enrico did not come through with what she wanted from him?

  Or did she really not know which one of them was Nicky’s father?

  Well, he could tell her. He knew the answer without asking the question!

  He pushed her from him, cursing the way his body was burning for more of her while the deep pit of his anger gushed like iced water through his blood.

  ‘What was that for?’ she choked, shoving a set of fingers up to cover her ravished lips.

  ‘I have to go away.’ He turned his back on her, stiff-shouldered, stiff-damn-everything! ‘I will not see you again until we meet at the church.’

  ‘So that was meant as a farewell kiss, was it?’

  She sounded shaken and shocked and he wanted to swing round and strangle her—but he had his son to consider, and a marriage to get through to secure Nicolo’s place in his life.

  ‘Sorry to tell you this, Enrico, but your technique is slipping.’

  ‘Put it down to pre-wedding nerves,’ he heard himself respond with only a slight hint of sourness.

  ‘Just say the word and we can call it off.’

  The offer pulled him up short just as he was about to leave. He really thought he could live this lie through until she was safely married to him—but he found he could not.

  His control exploded and he turned on her, his expression savaged by anger and contempt. ‘I know about Luca!’ he ripped out harshly.

  She stopped rubbing her bruised lips to look up at him. ‘You know what about Luca?’ she asked.

  So wide-eyed and innocent, he thought cynically. And the hair—the damned hair! Loose and flowing and shining like silk around her perfect face!

  The bitch, the bitch—he had to clench his fists together to stop himself from reaching for her long, white, satin-smooth throat. He wanted to hate her so badly that the need burned like acid in his blood.

  But he did not hate her, he—

  ‘You met with him today in London,’ he enunciated over the hard rock of other words blocking his throat.

  ‘I did not!’ she denied.

  ‘And on at least one other occasion in the last two weeks.’

  Freya was looking at him now as if he had gone mad. ‘I haven’t set eyes on your awful cousin since you kicked him out of your apartment three years ago, and nor do I ever want to,’ she insisted. ‘Where did you get the crazy idea that I have?’

  ‘I had him tracked down to a hotel close to here—’

  ‘Good for you.’ She mocked that. ‘What has it got to do with me?’

  He made a tense, tight movement with his body that seemed to help him to pull in air through flaring nostrils.

  ‘A woman was seen going into his suite,’ he informed her. ‘She was a redhead.’

  Freya stared at him open-mouthed. ‘And you’re assuming that the redhead was me?’

  ‘Don’t look so innocent,’ he disparaged. ‘It may not have been my own eyes that witnessed your betrayal this time, but the description said it all!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ENRICO swung away from Freya as if he could not stand to look at her.

  ‘Wait a minute…’ She stepped up to grab his jacket sleeve and pulled him back around. Her legs were shaking, her insides beginning to succumb to nausea. ‘Are you telling me—’ she tried to keep her voice calm but was not successful ‘—that you believe I met with your cousin behind your back only two days before I am due to marry you?’

  ‘Twice, that I know of.’ He pulled his sleeve free as if her touch offended.

  Hell really does freeze over, Freya thought coldly as she felt it happen right there and then.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ she breathed out icily.

  ‘Don’t play that one again,’ Enrico denounced. ‘I have heard it before and I am no sucker for it. You met with him today.’

  Freya didn’t answer.

  His eyes flashed black murder. ‘You even took my son with you on the first occasion when you met with him last week!’

  Folding her arms beneath her breasts, she faced him out. ‘You know that for a fact, do you?’

  ‘The evidence stacks up.’

  ‘It can only be circumstantial evidence,’ she declared. ‘But then you have always enjoyed thinking the very worst about me!’

  ‘Do you believe I enjoy being reacquainted with the real person behind the pretty face and honest green eyes?’ he demanded.

  ‘Don’t forget the I’ll-take-it-since-it’s-on-offer hot sex!’ she lashed back.

  ‘You are as turned on by the sex as I am,’ he derided.

  Her chin went up. ‘You mean, like a cheap tramp?’

  He frowned. ‘I did not say that.’

  ‘But you think it, Enrico, or you would not be saying these things to me at all!’

  He turned his back on her again. ‘You should have stayed away from him.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Shaking badly now, she turned to walk back to the bed then bent to rummage in her shopping bags. ‘Luca is beginning to come out of this the better cousin all round. At least he knows he’s a piece of low-life! Whereas you dare to kid yourself you have a right to take the moral high ground!’

  Straightening up, she threw something at him. It landed with a hard clunk against his back then dropped to the floor at the heels of his shoes. Enrico turned, frowning as he looked down and saw a flat gold-wrapped package tied up with a cream satin ribbon.

  ‘Open it,’ she instructed. ‘See for yourself what I was really doing while you believed I was screwing your cousin in a hotel room!’

  The fine hairs at the back of his neck were on the rampage again as Enrico bent to pick up the package. The sound of broken glass crunched beneath his fingers—fingers that were not quite steady as he undid the ribbon and unfolded the paper to see what was contained inside.

  Freya was trembling from head to foot as she watched him do it. Never in her life had she felt so angry or hurt by him. Suddenly Enrico went perfectly still, his eyelids hooded so she couldn’t gauge the expression in his eyes and her own blurred with hot, wounded tears.

  ‘I had to wait for two hours while the registrar reproduced that exact copy of Nicky’s birth certificate,’ she informed him unsteadily. ‘Then I spent another couple of hours trawling London looking for just the right frame to mount it in.’

  The glass was broken now, split into several sharp-edged shards, but the gold-edged and mirrored frame was still intact, complete with its hand-etched inscription.

  Thank you, it said, for our beautiful son.

  ‘You named me as his father.’ The statement arrived from Enrico flat and low.

  ‘Yes!’ Freya tried to laugh but didn’t quite make it. ‘Childish of me, I know, to keep on denying it when it’s been right there all the time in black and white, but you…’ She stopped to pull in a breath. ‘When I decided that you deserved to know the truth I came up with this…silly gesture. It was meant as my wedding gift to you but…’

  ‘It is not silly.’

  ‘W-whatever,’ she dismissed. ‘As you see, you don’t really need to marry me to secure a place for yourself in our son’s life. You’ve always had it. I was going to give you that on our wedding night as a…’

  Token to show my commitment to our marriage. But she couldn’t say it, not now, because it was no longer relevant. There was not going to be a marriage.

  ‘Who called you this morning before you went out to do this?’

  He had to ask that, didn’t he? He just couldn’t let the Luca thing go! And he hadn’t looked
at her once since he’d bent to pick up the gift. Was that because he was too busy kicking himself for not bothering to check out Nicky’s birth certificate before now? If he had done, he would not be stuck in this bedroom with a woman he could not trust as far as he could spit!

  ‘Cindy,’ she answered, her voice hardening now as the tears turned cold and her chest closed up. ‘We’d arranged to spend the day together doing…’ What any bride and her bridesmaid would do before the wedding, shopping for frivolous things like the sexy underwear and the sheer nightdress that lay in one of the shopping bags and…‘So if you require a witness to confirm how I spent my escape time—refer to her.’

  Enrico moved then, jerkily. He lifted his head to look at Freya, only to find that she had already turned away. His throat was working, his eyes felt sunken into his head beneath a remorse that was tearing his insides to shreds.

  ‘I’m—sorry,’ he uttered inadequately.

  Freya just shook her head. His apology was too little and too late for her to want to accept it.

  She heaved in another thick breath. ‘I’ve tried to see everything from your point of view. I even understood why you believe what you do about me.’ It had been damning evidence, after all—first-hand evidence. ‘I h-hoped that this time we could make a go of it and put the past behind us for Nicky’s sake, if not for our own. But this thing with Luca has shown me that it’s useless. You will always despise and resent and suspect me of being a cheap little tramp who trips from cousin to cousin without a single twinge of guilt.’

  ‘I don’t see you like that.’

  ‘You do see me like that,’ she rounded on him. ‘And you know what, Enrico? I feel like the tramp who sold herself cheap to you!’

  ‘You had a thing going with my own damn cousin!’ He went on the attack again.

  ‘I had a stronger thing going with you until you well and truly put it to death,’ she threw back.

  ‘You expect me to ignore what you did three years ago?’

  ‘Three years ago I was lied about, falsely accused and given no chance to answer the charges. I was insulted and humiliated, then thrown out of your life! Do you remember how I begged you to believe me, Enrico, how I told you I was pregnant with your baby, wept all over you? Do you recall how disgusted you were that I dared to put on such an unseemly display in front of your oh-so-righteous self? And how you removed me from your person like I was something a passing bird had dared to drop on you, then had me escorted—escorted,’ she shrilled at him, ‘from your presence by the ever-faithful Fredo, who had to witness my final indignity when I threw up in the nearest loo?’

  Enrico had grown paler by the second, and so he should do, Freya thought bitterly, taking his discomfort as her due.

  ‘I wasn’t even allowed time to pack my own things,’ she continued thickly. ‘They were sent to me in a cardboard box marked “Personal Effects of Freya Jenson” as if I were a dead woman.’

  Eyes stinging, mouth wobbling, Freya had to turn her back on him again and so missed the way he stiffened in shock.

  ‘I did not organise the return of your belongings.’ His voice came to her like a dark cloak being thrown over her.

  ‘Well, that absolves you, of course. Good for you.’

  ‘Per Dio,’ he rasped. ‘I was upset! You cannot begin to imagine how I was feeling at that time!’

  ‘Fooled, wounded, betrayed?’ she twisted round to lance at him.

  ‘Si—si–si!’ He threw out his hands. ‘Deeply fooled, deeply wounded, deeply betrayed!’

  ‘Well, hey!’ Freya cried, throwing open her own arms in a matching gesture. ‘Look at me, Enrico, standing here feeling all of those rotten things, too! And you want me to feel sorry for you?’

  He made a move like a man at war with himself now. ‘I still see it,’ he admitted harshly. ‘Each time I let myself think about Luca, I see what you were doing with him!’

  ‘And I still see the man I loved standing there condemning me instead of trying to defend me,’ Freya shook out, ‘which kind of says it all about what we were intending to do here.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ His head came up, eyes like black diamonds glittering inside the pale mask of his face.

  She wanted to hate him. Oh, how badly Freya needed to hate him! But she loved him! And that was the most tragic part of all of this.

  For an answer she turned and walked into the dressing-room. There was a twisted kind of irony in the way she bent to pick up a cardboard box still half unpacked and carried it into the bedroom. She placed it on the bed, then started opening drawers to toss things into it.

  ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ Enrico lanced at her.

  ‘Packing,’ she answered. ‘Getting out of your life.’

  Only this time she would do her packing herself.

  He strode across the room and wrenched her round to face him. He looked as pale as death. ‘You believe that I will let you do this? You believe I am going to let you walk away with my son?’

  His son—his son. It had always only been about Nicky. She’d only ever been a means to an end, with a bit of good sex thrown in! All his nasty thoughts about her and Luca he had so carefully stored up to keep him in touch with his reasons for marrying the likes of her at all!

  Where had her brain been? Lost in the clouds, she answered her own stupid question. Living out a three-year-old dream, when everyone knew that dreams didn’t come true!

  ‘I will not let you do it to him.’

  Ah, the big one. The one and only reason fit to make her stop and think. Nicky adored this man. He loved his newly extended family. Could she rip him away from all of this…?

  ‘If I can overcome what I witnessed three years ago and marry you for our son’s sake, then you can overcome that today I seem to have made a mistake about you and Luca.’

  Hedging his bets, Freya noted bleakly. She just knew he was going to check her story out before he really let himself believe a single word that she’d said.

  His fingers bit into her arms when she said nothing, her eyes glassed over like ice. ‘Are you listening to me?’ he demanded roughly. ‘Nicolo deserves that you do this. He has a right to the life I can offer him and which you cannot!’

  And that, Freya thought, was the real bottom line. Enrico had everything with which to give Nicky the life that he deserved, and she could not take that away from her son.

  She took a step back from him, swiping his fingers away as if they made her skin creep. ‘I want you out of this bedroom,’ she quivered out. ‘I don’t want you to touch me ever again.’

  ‘That’s just—’

  ‘The way it is going to be from now on, Enrico,’ she cut over him. ‘Because I will not pay the price any more for what your rotten cousin did to me. And I will not be the victim of your lack of trust. You wanted a marriage of convenience for Nicky’s sake? You’ve got one—on my terms. So now, get out.’ With that she turned and walked into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

  Sizzling with helpless rage, Enrico turned and stormed out the bedroom door, wondering how he had got it so wrong.

  Fredo was waiting downstairs in the hallway.

  ‘Get your informant on the bloody phone!’ Enrico raked at his bodyguard on the way to his study.

  Fredo already had his mobile to his ear as he followed his boss. Two minutes later, digital photographic evidence of the redhead caught on camera as she entered Luca’s hotel suite flashed up on Enrico’s computer screen.

  Silence followed while both men stared at the image. Then the bodyguard released a soft curse that just about covered the way Enrico was feeling. ‘It’s not her,’ Fredo muttered.

  He also sounded relieved.

  Enrico wasn’t relieved; if anything he was all the more angry. He had just made a complete idiot of himself and totally alienated Freya at the same time! Two weeks of careful planning had just been tossed out of the window.

  Now what did he have?

  He looked down at
the broken frame resting on the desk in front of him. His eyes burned in his head as he reread the details of his son’s birth then the message inscribed on the frame.

  She had done this for him. She had thought it through and prepared this wedding gift because finally she had been ready to trust him.

  In doing so she had given him everything he’d believed he wanted, but now it felt as if he had just lost everything.

  I still see the man I loved standing there condemning me instead of defending me.

  Por Dio, could she have been telling him the truth?