The Ranieri Bride

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.