The Ranieri Bride

‘Don’t look so innocent,’ he disparaged. ‘It may not have been my own eyes that witnessed your betrayal this time, but the description said it all!’

CHAPTER EIGHT

ENRICO swung away from Freya as if he could not stand to look at her.

‘Wait a minute…’ She stepped up to grab his jacket sleeve and pulled him back around. Her legs were shaking, her insides beginning to succumb to nausea. ‘Are you telling me—’ she tried to keep her voice calm but was not successful ‘—that you believe I met with your cousin behind your back only two days before I am due to marry you?’

‘Twice, that I know of.’ He pulled his sleeve free as if her touch offended.

Hell really does freeze over, Freya thought coldly as she felt it happen right there and then.

‘That’s a lie,’ she breathed out icily.

‘Don’t play that one again,’ Enrico denounced. ‘I have heard it before and I am no sucker for it. You met with him today.’

Freya didn’t answer.

His eyes flashed black murder. ‘You even took my son with you on the first occasion when you met with him last week!’

Folding her arms beneath her breasts, she faced him out. ‘You know that for a fact, do you?’

‘The evidence stacks up.’

‘It can only be circumstantial evidence,’ she declared. ‘But then you have always enjoyed thinking the very worst about me!’

‘Do you believe I enjoy being reacquainted with the real person behind the pretty face and honest green eyes?’ he demanded.

‘Don’t forget the I’ll-take-it-since-it’s-on-offer hot sex!’ she lashed back.

‘You are as turned on by the sex as I am,’ he derided.

Her chin went up. ‘You mean, like a cheap tramp?’

He frowned. ‘I did not say that.’

‘But you think it, Enrico, or you would not be saying these things to me at all!’

He turned his back on her again. ‘You should have stayed away from him.’

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Shaking badly now, she turned to walk back to the bed then bent to rummage in her shopping bags. ‘Luca is beginning to come out of this the better cousin all round. At least he knows he’s a piece of low-life! Whereas you dare to kid yourself you have a right to take the moral high ground!’

Straightening up, she threw something at him. It landed with a hard clunk against his back then dropped to the floor at the heels of his shoes. Enrico turned, frowning as he looked down and saw a flat gold-wrapped package tied up with a cream satin ribbon.

‘Open it,’ she instructed. ‘See for yourself what I was really doing while you believed I was screwing your cousin in a hotel room!’

The fine hairs at the back of his neck were on the rampage again as Enrico bent to pick up the package. The sound of broken glass crunched beneath his fingers—fingers that were not quite steady as he undid the ribbon and unfolded the paper to see what was contained inside.

Freya was trembling from head to foot as she watched him do it. Never in her life had she felt so angry or hurt by him. Suddenly Enrico went perfectly still, his eyelids hooded so she couldn’t gauge the expression in his eyes and her own blurred with hot, wounded tears.

‘I had to wait for two hours while the registrar reproduced that exact copy of Nicky’s birth certificate,’ she informed him unsteadily. ‘Then I spent another couple of hours trawling London looking for just the right frame to mount it in.’

The glass was broken now, split into several sharp-edged shards, but the gold-edged and mirrored frame was still intact, complete with its hand-etched inscription.

Thank you, it said, for our beautiful son.

‘You named me as his father.’ The statement arrived from Enrico flat and low.

‘Yes!’ Freya tried to laugh but didn’t quite make it. ‘Childish of me, I know, to keep on denying it when it’s been right there all the time in black and white, but you…’ She stopped to pull in a breath. ‘When I decided that you deserved to know the truth I came up with this…silly gesture. It was meant as my wedding gift to you but…’