The Ranieri Bride

‘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.

‘Really? Now, I wonder what incentive I could find that would change your mind about that? More money, perhaps? A safer job? Child care for the bambino to better that which he enjoys now?’

Her green eyes sparkled at him, face so white Enrico wondered if she was about to faint. ‘He loves the care he gets right here,’ she insisted unsteadily.

‘Come and sit down again and we will discuss it…’

But Freya didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to turn around and run and never look back. Another silence stretched; so did the tension, keening like rusty wire scraping across her bones. She could feel him watching her, waiting, could feel the cold, hard, ruthless cut of his brain calculating what more it was going to take to make her give in.

‘I think, Jenson, this might be a good point for me to remind you of exactly who I am…’

And now he was truly pulling rank. Her spine stiffened tautly. But she still couldn’t get her leaden feet to budge.

‘Don’t threaten me, Enrico.’ She made one last husky grab at control here.

For an answer Enrico straightened up and walked back to his desk. With a smooth reach of his hand he picked up the telephone, his hard black gaze not leaving her wary, pale face.

‘Carlo,’ he said smoothly, ‘I am terminating Jenson’s employment with this company, with immediate effect. Have her workstation cleared and her personal possessions brought up here, please.’

As cool as that, he completely shattered her. As cool as that, he put down the phone. ‘There,’ he drawled lazily, ‘sacked again.’

Totally impassive, he leant back against the desk and waited for the full weight of what he had just done to sink in.

Then he said levelly, ‘Now come back here and sit down…’

Like a ghost on a walkabout, Freya moved towards him. If he’d thought the cheap suit resembled grey tissue paper, then the colour of her face matched it now.

Had he seriously sacked her? Enrico asked himself. Hell, he did not know if he was serious. Could he be this ruthless to a woman in her situation? Hell, yes, he admitted, so long as he did not know her as intimately as he knew this particular woman.

Other than for that small detail, Freya knew as well as he did that you did not take personal circumstances into consideration when you worked in his line of business.

So she believed him, even if he wasn’t sure he believed himself.

She came to a stop right in front of him. With the chair she’d been sitting on earlier nudging against her right knee, the stretched length of his long legs was blocking her way and preventing her from moving to sit down.

This close up he could see the fine tremors attacking her slender figure. Her eyes were lowered, her arms wrapped around her body as if they were some kind of protection.

But they were not.

‘Please don’t do this to me,’ she whispered. ‘I need this job.’

For some inexplicable reason, that shaky little plea made his body stir in a flood of heat.

Enrico let it happen.

He could smell her perfume, warm and female and tantalisingly light. The suit was a sack but it did not stop him from building an image of what lay hidden beneath: the pale, firm breasts with their wonderfully sensitive nipples, the slender ribcage that loved to be licked, just like the tiny oval of her navel and the delicate lines of her groin.

Go any lower and he was in trouble, he mused grimly, so flicked his gaze back to her face. Bella, he thought. Molto bella, even with her too-pale skin and small, trembling mouth and the hidden starkness of her green eyes.

If he took her hair down, would she resist him? If he leant over and kissed that trembling mouth, would she bite?

He had her right where he wanted her and she knew it. She was defeated in every way but for that one important confession: yes, he’s your son. It would come sooner or later. He was not that bothered about hearing it right now because this was much more potent, this warm sensation that was seeping nicely into his blood.

Could he let himself want her like this again? Sure, a lazy voice in his head replied. You’ve learned very well over the last three years how to take physical pleasure without an emotional connection—a great learning curve that you could repeat on the likes of this cheating, lying, robbing, sexy female who, for twel