The Ranieri Bride

Freya pushed at him with the heels of her hands. ‘My lover,’ she taunted on angry impulse. ‘The one who has a better temperament than yours and a hell of a lot more tact! We are planning to disappear together once I’ve used up your credit-card limit!’

His ensuing kiss was a hot, grinding punishment. By the time he released her she was pale and shocked.

‘Don’t play me for a fool, cara, or you will not like the consequences,’ he bit out, then he grabbed up his business case and strode out of the room while Freya stared after him with a set of fingers pressed to her burning lips.

Her lips were still smarting when she called Cindy back to agree on a time and place for them to meet. In a fit of defiance she left the house without bothering to inform Sonny where she was going.

Her phone went while she was making her way to the nearest tube station. ‘Where are you?’ Sonny demanded.

‘I’ve escaped,’ she said caustically then broke the connection and in sheer defiance switched off her phone.

Enrico had a string of heavy meetings

with Hannard executives all morning and was in no better frame of mind by the time he’d seen the last one out of his office and Fredo walked in.

One glance at his bodyguard’s face and he sensed trouble.

‘What?’ he lanced out.

‘It’s Freya,’ Fredo said, then he shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a very uncharacteristic show of uncertainty and Enrico felt a warning sting attack the back of his neck.

‘What about Freya?’

‘No one has seen her since this morning after you left the house.’

‘She will be out swapping her blue wedding gown for a white one,’ Enrico said grimly, picking on the point of conflict that had flared between him and Freya this morning as a way of dealing with this worrying information.

But Fredo gave a shake of his head. ‘Sonny says that the dress was never blue in the first place. She was just teasing you.’

Making him rise to the bait, Enrico thought and sighed, aware that his bad temper this morning had deserved to be hooked.

‘Then where did she go? Didn’t Sonny—?’

‘Sonny said she made a call on her mobile just after you left, and the next thing he knew she’d gone out.’

A phone call. It was crazy to let it happen, but that hit him right in the centre of his chest. He shifted his stance impatiently, wishing he could trust her, but knowing only a mad, love-blind fool would do that.

‘How long ago?’ he demanded.

‘Four hours,’ Fredo supplied. ‘And that’s not all…’

There was more…? Enrico glared at him.

‘She disappeared for several hours last week, too, only she had the bambino with her that time. He said they’d been to the park to feed the ducks but…’

‘But—what?’ Enrico incised, not liking the expression he could see on Fredo’s face.

‘We could not locate Luca…’

‘I know that.’ Enrico frowned impatiently. ‘I’ve got people tracking him down.’

Luca was another problem he still had to deal with. His cousin was out there somewhere but none of the people Enrico had looking for him could find him. All they knew was that he had left his rich mistress in Hawaii, caught a flight to New York then just disappeared.

‘They have tracked him,’ Fredo said, grabbing Enrico’s full attention. ‘One of the investigators received word of his whereabouts last night but only got around to reporting it to me five minutes ago.’ Fredo paused for a second then heaved in a deep breath. ‘You are not going to like this, Enrico,’ he warned grimly, ‘but Luca has been here in London since last week…’

That sting at the back of Enrico’s neck became a full throb. His mind’s eye pushed an image in front of him of Freya standing there, dressed in a sassy grey suit and glaring at him as she taunted him with another man.

Luca? Had she been taunting him with the truth?