‘Where is he, then?’ She fought him like crazy and she was shaking all over, body, voice. ‘W-what have you done with him? How could you do this? How could you separate him from me? How can you be so utterly, totally thick and stupid as to—?’
‘He is travelling by special taxi with Fredo because this car is not equipped with a child safety seat yet!’ Enrico ground out, grimly restraining her by her wrists while she continued to fight him to get free.
‘Then I should be travelling with him, not with you!’
Her eyes flashed, her hair crackled and her body heaved and twisted against him. His breath hissed from his body as his frustration erupted.
‘Stop this, Freya,’ he muttered. ‘You are hysterical.’ It just had not occurred to him that s
he would react like this to something that, to him, was merely a practicality! ‘You know that Fredo will take good care of him!’
‘That’s not your decision to make!’
‘It is now, cara, so get used to it.’
Angrily he threw her wrists aside and sat back in the seat, leaving her to sit alone now that the first mad rush of adrenalin was fading away—though the vibrations of terror still raced through her. This latest demonstration of his power over her showed that she was already losing control of Nicky to him.
Stress sizzled up her backbone, the afternoon of shocks and scares and battles culminating in a sudden and blinding tension headache which held her there stiff and tense on the seat. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself but she couldn’t. She tried to swallow over the dryness covering her throat but she couldn’t even manage to do that. Her heart was hammering away against her breastbone, her breathing scored by fear.
Enrico watched her through narrowed glinting eyes. She had turned as white as a sheet and her closed eyelids were showing the fine bruising of strain. A streak of angry remorse ripped through him. He had not meant to scare her so badly when he’d had to hurriedly revise travelling arrangements on Fredo’s advice. And it had actually suited him to keep the small boy out of the loop for now, while they were still fighting so many battles on every front.
He needed to keep the pressure on. If he relaxed it for a second she was going to walk away. Freya had to know as well as he did that he had no leg to stand on where Nicolo was concerned unless he travelled the long legal route through the courts to prove paternity.
At the moment, plain bullying was all he had going for him. Blunt tactics to keep her off balance and therefore easier to manipulate.
He wanted his son. In all his life he had never felt this powerfully overwhelmed by anything—unless he let his mind shift back three years to a moment he’d found this woman in bed with his cousin. For a moment he had been overwhelmed—with the desire to kill.
They left the London City perimeter and headed into Mayfair, accompanied by a silence inside the luxury car that stung and throbbed.
‘Separating you from Nicolo was not a deliberate act of cruelty on my part,’ he heard himself utter in a driven undertone and wondered why, after what he’d just told himself, he was now defending the deed.
‘It’s never happened before—never,’ she whispered. ‘He always goes everywhere with me.’
She turned her head to look at him, her eyes sparkling bright with vulnerable tears now.
Vulnerability got to him. His lips parted to offer an apology.
Then closed again. What a sucker, he mocked himself; so was his body, as that hungry animal called sexual desire leapt up inside to sink its burning sharp teeth into him and make him want to flatten her to the seat and remove that look by very physical means.
Hell, he was a bubbling collection of unfamiliar responses now. Did she think that she was the only one struggling to hold it together? This afternoon had been one long emotional roller-coaster ride since he’d stepped into Hannard’s foyer.
And indulging in some hot, no-finesse sex in his office had not slowed down the ride any, he thought grimly. If anything, it had speeded it up and he’d been running on pure instinct ever since.
Hence the kiss in the lift, the lingering effects of which were still pumping around his system. Now the vulnerable look was feeding it, so was his bad temper and the sting of remorse, plus a thousand other not-so-easy-to-define feelings that were sending messages across the small gap separating them, and she let out a small, choked gasp.
She could feel it, too. Her breathing had quickened. Her colour was coming back, the vulnerable look slowly fading into something else.
The car made a right turn at a set of traffic lights. He lost contact with her eyes as she glanced outside.
‘W-where are we going?’ She began to stiffen.
Time to get tough again, Enrico recognised. ‘My apartment,’ he said. ‘I decided it was best to start as we intend to go on, so your flat has been professionally packed up and should be delivered to my place by the time we arrive there.’
She blinked at him. ‘But how did you get into my flat without—?’
‘I took your keys from your bag while you were in the crèche.’ Enrico pre-empted what was coming and allowed the next wave of shocks to echo between them. Then he went for the big one. ‘Fredo is taking Nicolo to the zoo—to see the monkeys, I believe—so we can have a couple of hours before they arrive to get all the things Nicolo is familiar with unpacked and on show to help ease his confusion.’
He’d found another way to wipe out the vulnerable look, Enrico noted as he watched those green eyes change to chips of ice.