‘Y-yes,’ she whispered, wishing she knew what it was she was agreeing to.
Enrico cut the connection. He did it so abruptly that Freya blinked. Then they just stood there looking at each other, while the sound of the plastic wheels on their son’s truck scraped through the stillness of the late-afternoon air.
Freya spoke first. ‘What does he want?’ she questioned.
‘My head on a pole,’ Enrico said drily, then his mouth shifted into a kind of grimace. ‘You have just agreed to jilt me at the altar,’ he informed her.
‘Oh!’ Disconcerted, she did not know what else to say without losing her cool façade.
Enrico’s mouth shifted into a different expression. ‘How did Luca get hold of your mobile-phone number?’ he asked.
Freya instantly stiffened. The question pierced that sensitive spot called suspicion—Enrico’s persistent suspicion of her.
Did he think that she’d given her number to Luca?
She pulled in a deep breath, thought about telling a lie just for the hell of paying him back…but this was just too serious to lie about.
‘He stole Cindy’s mobile,’ she answered, then reached out to take her phone back and tilted up her chin to him. ‘Would you like to play snoop again while I call Cindy up to confirm that?’
His lips flat, he nodded.
Cold-eyed and tight-throated, Freya flipped through the phone’s directory until she found Cindy’s land-line number and hit dial. The sound of Nicky’s truck was coming closer. Any second now he was going to glance up and see his mother standing here.
‘Someone pinched my mobile phone while we were out!’ Cindy burst out indignantly before Freya could utter more than a husky, Hi, it’s me. ‘It had to be that red-haired bitch who sat next to me on the bus when I was on my way home,’ she ranted.
Ah, that other red-haired bitch who gets mistaken for me, Freya thought coldly.
‘She knocked all my bags off my lap when she sat down,’ Cindy was saying. ‘I thought she was being nice when she helped me pick up my stuff!’
‘Do me a favour, Cindy, and repeat all of that to Enrico. I’m just going to hand you over to him.’
With that Freya gave Enrico the handset again, then stepped round him to go and greet her son.
Enrico let her go without saying anything.
Cindy was soon explaining how her phone had been stolen. As Enrico listened, he reacted to her mention of the red-haired woman in exactly the same way that Freya had done. He was also aware of a deep-gut relief in accepting that Cindy was not guilty of helping Luca gain access to Freya.
Freya walked past him then, with their son straddling her hips as she carried him inside. They were laughing and chatting. No one would know from her voice and her smiling expression that she’d just been put through the emotional wringer—twice.
Just as no one would know by looking at him that he felt about as distanced from the laughing chatter as a man could feel when he was still coming to terms with the fact that he had made some big, maybe irreparable, mistakes.
Then—no, he would not think like that. The damage one short hour had wrought had to be and would be reversed.
‘Make sure you report the phone stolen to your provider,’ he instructed Cindy. ‘Freya has been receiving…nuisance calls. I will have a new phone sent around to your flat within the next hour.’
Pocketing Freya’s phone, he strode into the house. It was time to get tough again, time to do what he did best and be the ruthless troubleshooter who would take no prisoners in his quest to make Freya Jenson his wife.
His wife! Enrico noticed the change in emphasis from his son to his wife and actually managed a thin-lipped smile. Maybe it had always been like that, buried deep behind his blindness.
CHAPTER NINE
HIS expression set, Enrico followed the sound of his son’s chatter to the kitchen and found him with Sonny, helping to feed fresh pasta through the pasta machine—but no Freya.
The two chefs looked up and smiled at him. He sent a reasonably relaxed smile back by return, then lost it the moment he’d turned out of the kitchen to head for the stairs.
He found Freya in the bedroom, sitting with her back to him on the edge of the bed, surrounded by her day’s purchases as if the carnage during the hour in between had not happened.
Only this time, when Enrico got nearer, he realised her face was hidden in her hands.