The Ranieri Bride

‘What I’m wearing is none of your business!’ Freya responded, but she could suddenly feel the intricate lace pattern of her panties acutely against her skin.

‘And tights,’ he continued regardless. ‘You used to be very practical about pantihose until I introduced you to the special pleasures of stockings with very sexy lace tops.’

Suddenly very aware of the lacy tops on her stay-ups, Freya shifted uncomfortably. ‘I suppose you think you can say anything you like to me because we were once lovers,’ she said stiffly.

‘Also those awful cotton bras you wore a full cup size too big—in case your breasts decided to grow into them, I always presumed,’ he persisted. ‘Did they grow when you were carrying my son?’

‘He is not your son!’ she sliced hotly at him.

He uncoiled from the chair like a big black snake rising upwards, then he leant towards her and placed his hands flat on the desk.

‘Did they?’ he spat at her through tightly gritted white teeth. ‘Did your breasts grow plump and your body grow round, and did your lousy conscience prick you even once, that you were keeping my son from me?’

CHAPTER THREE

FREYA leapt to her feet, shaking with anger and quaking with alarm at this second act of threatened violence he was treating her to. She stared into those flashing black eyes and wanted to take a defensive step back, but she would not allow herself to do it.

Instead, heart thundering, she planted her hands on his desk and took him on hard, look for look.

‘Not once,’ she shook out angrily. ‘I didn’t think about you once, Enrico. Why would I? What were you but just another guy who’d got what he’d wanted and then walked away?’

‘You walked. I threw you out!’

‘And weren’t you happy to see me go?’ she hit back. ‘Perhaps you even set Luca up for me to give you an excuse to throw me out!’

‘You could have said no to him.’

But he did not deny the charge! ‘And spoil the Ranieri sport?’ Freya retaliated. ‘At least Luca had the honesty to tell me to my face that he only wanted me for the sex!’

He’d gone white but she was whiter, the amount of anger bouncing between them acting like a static cocoon to close them into a tight corridor of seething eye contact that sizzled and sparked and spat across the desk.

‘I hope I would not be quite so crass as to say that to any woman,’ he fed to her like vile-tasting poison.

It hit its spot, too, sank into her flesh and hurt.

Freya straightened up, quivering like crazy. ‘Stand where I’m standing, Enrico,’ she responded huskily. ‘Believe me, from this side of the desk you are as crass as they come.’

With that she turned, arms folding around her as she slumped down against the edge of the desk, feeling weak and shaky now because it had all become so heated when she’d been determined to—

He moved behind her. The fine hairs across her nape tingled as she waited in the thrumming, drumming silence that had fallen to find out what he was going to do or say next.

It was annoying to feel it, but tears began pricking at her backs of her eyes and her throat. She had loved this man once, and so thoroughly she’d believed nothing he could ever do would kill that love.

Maybe it wasn’t dead, she thought then as her silly, dipping, thumping heart gave a squeeze to remind her that some feeling for him was still there—like a desperately hurt and wounded love that was suddenly threatening to strangle her breath.

Bleakly she stared fixedly down at her feet. Her shoes were scuffed, she noticed inconsequentially. She’d forgotten to buff them up this morning before she left the flat. And her skirt was creased.

Unclipping a hand from beneath her other arm, she tried to smooth out the creases with fingers that trembled so badly she gave up and shoved the hand back where it had been.

He appeared on the periphery of her lowered vision. A pair of long masculine legs wrapped in the finest silk-wool mix striding with long grace across the office. His shoes weren’t scuffed, she saw. That almost black suit wouldn’t dare to show a crease.

‘Want something?’ he offered.

She heard the chink of glass and shook her head. ‘I have to get back…’

‘To the riveting job scanning hard copy?’

That brought her head up, dignity firing up her green eyes. ‘It pays my wages, Enrico.’

‘Meagre wages,’ he derided. ‘You earned ten times that amount when you worked for me. Josh Hannard did not know what a gem he had hiding in his basement. You could have run this place more efficiently than he did standing on your head with your hands tied behind your back.’

‘You sacked me—’

‘For colluding with my cousin to rob me.’ He nodded. ‘I remember it so well. Luca made some big mistakes in his life but that one got him caught and thrown out of the family. You were only thrown out of a job.’

And your life, Freya tagged on silently. ‘Without a good reference from you I was virtually unemployable.’

He just lifted his drink to his mouth and drank. Indifferent, uncaring, cold, arrogant…

She was back to those adjectives, she realised and heaved in a deep breath. ‘I didn’t do it. He set me up. I caught him with his fingers in your safe and threatened to tell the police.’

‘Only threatened?’ A sleek eyebrow arched cynically.

And that, Freya thought, had been her downfall. Luca was family. She’d worked and lived with Enrico long enough to know that you did not shop family to anyone, especially to the police.

Or thought she knew it.

‘I decided that it was up to you to make that decision. So I went back to the apartment to wait for you to get home. He arrived drunk as a skunk. I’d just got out of the bath. He had a key he said you’d given him so he could let himself in. He was standing there in our bedroom stark naked and l-laughing at me, telling me that you’d handed me over to him because—’

‘You know I don’t want to hear this, so why are you saying it?’ Enrico cut in coldly.

‘One reason,’ she said, cramming the rest of that ugly scene back down inside her. ‘I have as much right as the next person to defend myself against the slur you Ranieris placed on my character.’

‘But I did not listen to you then, so why do you think I will listen now?’

‘Because you want something from me that you are not going to get without giving me a fair hearing and then reparation for what you and your rotten cousin did to me.’

‘Are we talking about my son?’

‘He isn’t your son.’

The tension was heating up again. Enrico stiffened infinitesimally. ‘He is my son,’ he insisted.

‘I want proof of that.’

‘Perdono?’ He stared at her. ‘Isn’t that my line?’

Freya crossed her arms more tightly and refused to rise to his sarcasm. ‘I don’t need to prove anything,’ she bluffed. ‘And since I don’t want you to be Nicky’s father I am contesting your claim. If you’re that sure of yourself then prove it,’ she challenged. ‘I want DNA proof.’

‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ he demanded.

Not so she’d noticed. Freya gave a small shrug. ‘I’m the woman you believe tripped like a butterfly from Ranieri to Ranieri—’

‘Will you stop saying my name as if it is an insult?’ he ground out.

But the name was an insult to her. ‘If what you believe about me is true, then even this man-tripping butterfly would not know if you are my son’s father. So I demand proof before I let you near Nicky,’ she repeated.

‘But anyone with eyes can tell that he belongs to me!’ Enrico bit out.

‘Or Luca,’ she said, and watched with grim satisfaction as his handsome face locked up. ‘Unless, of course, what you believe about me is just a pack of wicked lies you enjoyed swallowing…’

‘I did not enjoy it,’ he answered stiffly.

‘Then in my place,’ she continued, undeterred by the interruption, ‘no caring mother would want a man who can believe such bad things about her to have anything to do with her child. Your cynical view of me would inevitably rub off on him and poison his mind about the mother he loves.’

‘I would not do that.’

‘I don’t believe you. So I repeat, you prove Nicky is your son because I am not going to help you.’

He turned on her then, slamming the glass down. ‘But you know he’s my son!’

‘Do I?’

‘Stop playing this game, Freya.’ He frowned impatiently. ‘This is stupid. I know he is mine, even if you cannot be sure.’

‘Oh, that was good, Enrico.’ She smiled. ‘I turn the tables on you and you’re turning them back again—but that was a mistake,’ she declared. ‘Because all you’ve just managed to do is to confirm what a truly uncaring and cynical bastard you are. So let me put it bluntly…’ Freya straightened from the desk. ‘I don’t want you having any influence in my son’s life, therefore I will do whatever it takes to keep you out of it. I’ll fight you with medical science if you make me, then I’ll fight you in court.’

‘You have the cash handy to back that up?’

‘There is such a thing as legal aid in this country,’ she pointed out. And on that she turned for the door. ‘Call Fredo off,’ she added as she started walking. ‘Or I will inform the authorities that we have a child-stalker in the building.’

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

Freya’s head went back. ‘I’m walking out of here—’

‘Out of your job—?’

The challenge landed like a barb to hit dead centre of its target, acting like a lead weight that dropped at her feet and pulled her to a stop.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Need it, do you, Miss Jenson?’ he drawled. ‘Need the meagre wages it pays into your bank?’

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

‘Need the day care it gives to your son, also? Now, just how would you manage if it wasn’t there…?’

Freya’s insides began trembling, the meaning behind each single taunt making her feel suddenly very sick. Cold defiance was only effective as a weapon when you had the resources to back it up.

Enrico had just shown her that she had none.

She turned slowly. It was the only way to do it if she didn’t want to collapse in a heap on the floor. He was still standing by the drinks cabinet, lounging there now like some super-arrogant modern sculptured Italian god, with his long legs crossed at the ankles and his casual air of sartorial elegance, his power and confidence knocking the spots off her attempt to gain the upper hand. The afternoon sun was pouring in through the windows, catching hold of his lean, golden features and glinting, hard eyes, and his even harder-looking mouth clipped by a tight, taunting smile.

She’d gone quite nicely pale, Enrico noted with grim satisfaction. Toss your head at me now if you dare.

‘You wouldn’t,’ she husked out.

‘Why not?’ he countered. ‘I am the crass bastard who hands you over to his cousin for a bit of good sex, remember? I am capable of doing anything.’

He didn’t mean it, Freya told herself anxiously. He was just getting his own back on her for calling him crass. ‘But it would hurt so many other mothers with—’

‘Oh, come on, Freya,’ he cut in, ‘you worked with me for a year so you know the score. If you wanted to cut costs at Hannard’s, where would you begin—?’

‘Not with the crèche!’ she cried out.

‘Because you have a vested interest there?’ Her eyes were flashing with fear, not defiance now, Enrico noted. ‘Whereas I do not.’

‘You—you…’ The words trailed off, bitten back before she could say them.

Enrico leant forward slightly. ‘Yes?’ he prompted. ‘Were you about to say something important then, cara? Were you about to tell me that I do have a vested interest there?’

‘No,’ she choked out.

He relaxed back again. ‘Your own job, then,’ he moved on with a zealous, razor-like slice. ‘If you had to sit on my side of the desk, what other cost-cutting exercise would you be looking at? The filing department, perhaps?’ he suggested. ‘That vast paper storeroom in the basement of this building that uses up expensive workspace that could be leased out to some other business for a damn good return?’

‘Every business has files to store.’ Her arms were back round her body again, trying to defend the panic erupting beneath their tight clasp.

‘All the efficiently run businesses I know do not employ a clutch of mindless people for the exclusive task of feeding paper into a couple of ancient scanning machines,’ he responded with contempt. ‘I could contract out—bring in fifty people with fifty state-of-the-art machines and clear that whole basement of paper in a week. It would cost me maximum—’ He named a figure that made Freya blench. ‘That makes your job and the jobs of your fellow paper-scanners redundant. Now, where do I turn next to cut costs?’

Freya was really trembling now—no, shivering, her skin as cold as ice. In one easy shift of his brain he’d threatened to relieve her of her job, plus those of the dozen others who worked in the basement with her. And if that wasn’t enough, he was also threatening to relieve thirty-four other mothers of their child-care facility, thereby making the staff that ran the crèche redundant, too.

‘You don’t deserve a son,’ she breathed thickly. ‘You don’t deserve to be standing there at all! You should be crawling around in some gutter right now, getting your just deserts for being such an outright low-down, no-good excuse for a man!’

Impervious to insults, Enrico just shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I am in the business of saving drowning companies, not people,’ he answered. ‘And I can tell you bluntly that this place runs on pure fresh air right now. Everyone working here has been living on borrowed time,’ he added grimly. ‘There is not a single employee I would willingly keep on.’

‘And I will be the first one to go,’ she muttered. ‘I h-hate you,’ she added on a driven breath.

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