The Ranieri Bride

‘It is not silly.’

‘W-whatever,’ she dismissed. ‘As you see, you don’t really need to marry me to secure a place for yourself in our son’s life. You’ve always had it. I was going to give you that on our wedding night as a…’

Token to show my commitment to our marriage. But she couldn’t say it, not now, because it was no longer relevant. There was not going to be a marriage.

‘Who called you this morning before you went out to do this?’

He had to ask that, didn’t he? He just couldn’t let the Luca thing go! And he hadn’t looked

at her once since he’d bent to pick up the gift. Was that because he was too busy kicking himself for not bothering to check out Nicky’s birth certificate before now? If he had done, he would not be stuck in this bedroom with a woman he could not trust as far as he could spit!

‘Cindy,’ she answered, her voice hardening now as the tears turned cold and her chest closed up. ‘We’d arranged to spend the day together doing…’ What any bride and her bridesmaid would do before the wedding, shopping for frivolous things like the sexy underwear and the sheer nightdress that lay in one of the shopping bags and…‘So if you require a witness to confirm how I spent my escape time—refer to her.’

Enrico moved then, jerkily. He lifted his head to look at Freya, only to find that she had already turned away. His throat was working, his eyes felt sunken into his head beneath a remorse that was tearing his insides to shreds.

‘I’m—sorry,’ he uttered inadequately.

Freya just shook her head. His apology was too little and too late for her to want to accept it.

She heaved in another thick breath. ‘I’ve tried to see everything from your point of view. I even understood why you believe what you do about me.’ It had been damning evidence, after all—first-hand evidence. ‘I h-hoped that this time we could make a go of it and put the past behind us for Nicky’s sake, if not for our own. But this thing with Luca has shown me that it’s useless. You will always despise and resent and suspect me of being a cheap little tramp who trips from cousin to cousin without a single twinge of guilt.’

‘I don’t see you like that.’

‘You do see me like that,’ she rounded on him. ‘And you know what, Enrico? I feel like the tramp who sold herself cheap to you!’

‘You had a thing going with my own damn cousin!’ He went on the attack again.

‘I had a stronger thing going with you until you well and truly put it to death,’ she threw back.

‘You expect me to ignore what you did three years ago?’

‘Three years ago I was lied about, falsely accused and given no chance to answer the charges. I was insulted and humiliated, then thrown out of your life! Do you remember how I begged you to believe me, Enrico, how I told you I was pregnant with your baby, wept all over you? Do you recall how disgusted you were that I dared to put on such an unseemly display in front of your oh-so-righteous self? And how you removed me from your person like I was something a passing bird had dared to drop on you, then had me escorted—escorted,’ she shrilled at him, ‘from your presence by the ever-faithful Fredo, who had to witness my final indignity when I threw up in the nearest loo?’

Enrico had grown paler by the second, and so he should do, Freya thought bitterly, taking his discomfort as her due.

‘I wasn’t even allowed time to pack my own things,’ she continued thickly. ‘They were sent to me in a cardboard box marked “Personal Effects of Freya Jenson” as if I were a dead woman.’

Eyes stinging, mouth wobbling, Freya had to turn her back on him again and so missed the way he stiffened in shock.

‘I did not organise the return of your belongings.’ His voice came to her like a dark cloak being thrown over her.

‘Well, that absolves you, of course. Good for you.’

‘Per Dio,’ he rasped. ‘I was upset! You cannot begin to imagine how I was feeling at that time!’

‘Fooled, wounded, betrayed?’ she twisted round to lance at him.

‘Si—si–si!’ He threw out his hands. ‘Deeply fooled, deeply wounded, deeply betrayed!’

‘Well, hey!’ Freya cried, throwing open her own arms in a matching gesture. ‘Look at me, Enrico, standing here feeling all of those rotten things, too! And you want me to feel sorry for you?’

He made a move like a man at war with himself now. ‘I still see it,’ he admitted harshly. ‘Each time I let myself think about Luca, I see what you were doing with him!’

‘And I still see the man I loved standing there condemning me instead of trying to defend me,’ Freya shook out, ‘which kind of says it all about what we were intending to do here.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ His head came up, eyes like black diamonds glittering inside the pale mask of his face.

She wanted to hate him. Oh, how badly Freya needed to hate him! But she loved him! And that was the most tragic part of all of this.