Then—no, he told himself. He was not going to let his mind go down that route.
‘Where is Luca staying?’ he asked tightly.
‘He’s crazy enough to be using one of your hotels.’
Of course it had to be one of his hotels, Enrico thought grimly. Luca had always coveted his cousin’s possessions—his wealth, his standing in the family, his hotel accommodation, his woman…
It came without warning, but he found himself reliving a flashback to three years ago when he had caught his cousin and his lover lying in a twisted clinch of limbs on his bed. He could see the discarded heap of male clothes on the floor and the way her robe had been flung open wide on either side of her as if they’d been too eager to bother taking it off. They were heaving and panting, rushed and desperate, her hair flying all over the place, her fingers gripping Luca’s head as she’d kissed him with that all-consuming—
Damn, he cursed, and switched off the image. Stop going there! he told himself.
‘The guy tracking him hung around the hotel to do some sleuthing,’ Fredo was saying. ‘A woman arrived there this morning. He followed her up to Luca’s suite…’
There was another pause—one of those long, uncomfortable pauses that made Enrico flick Fredo a hard, warning glance. The bodyguard grimaced, clearly unhappy about what he had to relay next.
‘She was a long-haired redhead, Enrico,’ he announced heavily. ‘A tall, slender redhead wearing a grey suit…’
Freya arrived back at the house feeling as if she’d done the London marathon. Her feet were aching through trailing in and out of just about every store the city had to offer with the disgustingly energetic Cindy, who’d been determined to fill every precious second of her time off from Hannard’s.
Oh, what a sad soul you’ve turned into that you can’t even stay the course of some girly shopping, she mocked herself wearily as she climbed up the stairs carrying bags stuffed within bags, trophies of the spending spree she’d indulged in, using Enrico’s credit cards in outright rebellion after his nasty comment about her spending his money.
Only one item in the bags had been bought with her own money. And that one small item had been cheap by Enrico Ranieri’s exalted standards, yet it had still depleted her tiny savings to an alarming degree.
She was going to have to do something about that, she thought frowningly as she stepped into the bedroom. As soon as this marriage thing was out of the way and they’d settled in Milan, she would have to go job-hunting and grab back her independence from this—
‘Where have you been?’
In the process of dumping her bags on the floor, Freya looked up in surprise to find Enrico standing in front of the window, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets and his jacket flipped back to reveal his bright white shirt, which was delineated by the dark silk strip of his slender tie. He looked long and lean and totally sexy.
Her senses lit up. She really should be doing something about smothering them, she told herself, because the man was still and always would be the circling shark she couldn’t trust.
‘Out,’ she answered, not seeing any reason why she should offer up more than that, when it was obvious what was stashed in the store bags. ‘Why are you back here so early?’
‘It is four o’clock—’
‘Seven is closer to your rolling-in time.’
‘And you have been out for most of the day.’ He ignored her sardonic response.
‘Don’t my feet know it!’ Dropping the last of the bags, she sat down on the end of the bed and with a sigh kicked off her shoes.
Her hair shimmied forward as she bent to rub at her aching toes and the throbbing balls of her feet.
The silence from the window stretched like tension wire and eventually forced her to tilt a look at him. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t appear as if he was even breathing.
Was he still miffed about the blue wedding dress…?
Well, she wasn’t going to tell him the truth. He could wait to find that out the traditional way when she walked down the aisle. She was the bride who knew she should not be allowing herself to be a bride, even though she was doing nothing to stop it from happening.
Because you’re weak, she chided herself. Because, despite everything he did to you three years ago, you’re still such a fool where he is concerned that you just can’t bring yourself to call a halt to it.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked innocently, refusing to let him know that the morning’s row was still pulsing through her bones.
He didn’t answer, and his dark silhouette, backlit by the sun coming in from behind him, began to take on the shape of a grim reaper. Looking away again, she frowned as she continued to rub at her feet. She knew that Nicky was fine because she’d just met him and Lissa on their way to the park as she’d walked back from the tube. They were going to play football. Her son wanted an ice cream from the park café, so she’d handed over some coins and managed to steal a quick hug before he’d raced off with Lissa in charge of his hand.
Any other time and she would have been begging to go with them, but after a hard day’s shopping her
feet just—