The Ranieri Bride

‘Then I will do this the hard way and I will fight you through the courts. And I will win, Freya,’ he warned harshly. ‘For what can a jobless single mother offer the boy in comparison with what I can?’

Love, she wanted to say, but even as the word settled on the tip of her tongue she could see the ferocity of his love for Nicky burning bright in Enrico’s eyes.

He loved him already! She wanted to sit down and sob her heart out.

What she actually did was lower her head and pick up her bag without saying another word.

With that grim, thick silence crowding around them, Enrico picked up the box with her belongings in it and his business case, then strode over to open the door. The PA was back at his desk, face poker-straight.

‘Call Fredo and tell him to meet us at the car with our son,’ Enrico instructed.

Freya lifted an anxious face to his. ‘I don’t think…’

‘On second thoughts, leave the call to me,’ Enrico amended, and turned to hand his business case to Freya so he could hunt in his jacket pocket for his mobile phone.

She felt strange, oddly detached from reality as she walked beside him towards the lifts, listening to Enrico’s deep voice speaking in smooth Italian while she carried his business case as she’d used to.

He was asking Fredo if he thought Nicky would come away with him, his fatherly instincts already beginning to work.

Jobless, he’d called her. Jobless might not make her completely powerless against a man like him in the long term, but in the short term it made her feel scared to death. How were she and Nicky going to survive without a regular wage coming in?

No crèche in which to safely leave him while she job-hunted. No money to spare for trips to see the monkeys at the zoo. Then there was rent to pay, food and utility bills to cover. She’d always managed to steer clear of unemployment benefits or Social Services’ help, because she’d always known the first question they would ask her was, who is Nicky?

?s father? Which meant that the Child Support Agency was out of the question, too. And look at him, she told herself in despair—standing next to her at the lifts and looking from his sleek head to his hand-stitched shoes like the billion-dollar man he was. Explain him away, then beg for a state handout. Admit it to them that yes, this guy is Nicky’s father, but I don’t want him to know that, and they would laugh in her face!

Enrico suddenly turned his back on her and paced away with the phone still stuck to his ear, his voice now low and impatient, his Italian too fast for her to translate. A lift arrived but he was already halfway back down the corridor, lean, lithe, packed with all that restless grace and elegance and switched-on sex appeal that made just looking at him stifle the breath in her throat.

As if the day hadn’t thrown out enough lousy twists at her, it decided now to throw out an image of her sinking into him like a sex-starved wanton.

She turned away, despising herself for being such an easy, willing kill. Had he lost any of his dignity? Not this man. But she’d lost everything: grace, dignity, self-respect.

The lift doors had closed. She hadn’t noticed. With an impatient finger she stabbed the button to call up another one. Tears stung her eyes and clogged her throat.

He arrived back at her side, and he’d switched to speaking English. She realised that he was speaking to Cindy, telling her what was about to happen in precise and cool boss-like language, then he was holding the phone out to her.

‘She requires your confirmation that Nicky can leave here with Fredo.’

The word Nicky slid strangely off his tongue; it was kind of foreign to him yet intimate. Her stomach muscles knotted while at the same time her voice remained level and calm as she gave the permission Cindy required. A new lift arrived and they entered it as Cindy was trying to get Freya to answer yet more questions about what was going on.

Enrico took the phone back from her. ‘You are now OK with this?’ he enquired.

Only an idiot would try and ask him the same questions Cindy had been asking Freya. The call ended abruptly and, just like that, her son was being handed over to a stranger.

Power always at his elegant fingertips, she thought bitterly as the lift took them downwards. Her life had been taken over. Her son’s life had been taken over. Hannard’s and its entire workforce had been taken over.

She wished she could see even a tiny bit of difference between the three, but she couldn’t. He was invincible, intractable…

More rotten adjectives.

She heaved out a sigh. The lift stopped. It took her a few seconds to realise that the doors were not opening, but it was only when she glanced at Enrico that she realised that he’d done it.

He’d stopped the lift between floors and was in the process of bending to place her box of things on the floor. He straightened up, and the stern cut of his expression was granite-like when he fixed his eyes on her.

‘What?’ she asked warily.

‘You,’ he answered.

‘M-me?’