The Ranieri Bride

‘Hey,’ she said as lightly as she could do in the circumstances. ‘Have you noticed, by any chance, that I came running here without putting on my shoes?’

He looked down at her feet then back at her face. Freya sent him a grimace, and his solemn little face broke into one of those wonderful, white-toothed grins.

‘Trust you to find it funny that I came skidding over here in my stockings just to give you a cuddle.’

She kissed the tiny bruise on his cheek as Enrico’s long shadow crawled up Nicky’s back then over her face.

Freya fought down the urge to shiver. Tension zapped every nerve in her back. She looked up, defiant and defensive. This was one confrontation she was not looking forward to—the one where father and son came truly face-to-face.

‘He is hurt?’ Enrico enquired stiffly. ‘He requires professional medical attention?’

His accent had thickened, Freya noticed. His desire to be anywhere else but here right now was alive in the muscle-tense set of his whole frame.

She shook her head, having to swallow before she could bring herself to say lightly to Nicky, ‘Just a bump, hmm, kiddo? We don’t need an ambulance with screeching sirens or a couple of fire engines for escorts, do we?’

‘No, silly,’ he laughed.

Then Nicky looked up at Enrico’s long, lean, sharp-suited form until he reached his severely defended face. Freya’s heart gave a lurch that turned into a mammoth, throbbing ache as she watched Nicky’s expression grow wary in response.

It could not go on, she realised right there in that moment. She just could not let it happen. Her own bitterness towards Enrico was something she had to deal with, but she would have to be the worst kind of mother if she let it spill over and ruin this so-important moment for her son.

Because there was only one way she could think to do this, she tipped Nicky off her knee and stood up herself, going to stand protectively behind him as she turned them both to fully face Enrico.

Then she took a deep breath. ‘Nicky, darling, I want you to…’

Yet again she was too late. When your timing is out it stays out, she thought helplessly as she watched the way father and son were looking at each other and her words were swallowed when she saw the same almost unholy flare of possession light Enrico’s face as it had done in the foyer.

/> It was there, he could see it. What had his brain been playing at, taunting himself with his cousin?

His son—his, not Luca’s!

He could feel it again in those ink-black eyes that were connecting with him like tiny fingers reaching inside him and closing round his heart.

He just did not know what to do next.

No one had told him that life was always going to be easy, he thought helplessly. But neither had anyone bothered to whisper in his ear, ‘Hey, watch out for the moment someone rips your guts out in public and hangs them out to dry.’

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.