Happy Mother's Day!

As the heaving upper slopes of her creamy breasts were exposed his control snapped and he pulled her roughly into his arms.

‘Thank God!’ she breathed into his mouth as they slid down in the seat.

She had been so totally uninhibited about expressing her pleasure at his touch that Francesco had not suspected until the actual moment he slid into her body and heard her tiny cry of shock that she had still been a virgin.

He was both appalled and aroused by the knowledge that he was her first lover.

‘Relax, let me make this good for you,’ he begged huskily as she arched beneath him and slid her hands across his bare shoulders, clinging on as though she feared she would fall.

‘Oh, my God, you’re just incredible, Francesco!’

The hoarse cries of astonished pleasure he was hearing in his head mingled with the more high-pitched sounds of laughter that drifted in through the window. Sucking in a deep breath through flared nostrils, Francesco dragged his thoughts kicking and screaming back to the present.

It took several moments for him to get the hunger that still roared like a furnace in his veins under control.

He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. Reaching inside the glove compartment, he pulled out Erin’s letter. He slowly tore it in half, then in half again before throwing it out the open window. The gesture was purely symbolic, but it made him feel better to watch the pieces scatter as a gust of wind caught them.

CHAPTER FIVE

FORGETTING about the phone call he had intended to answer, Francesco was about to turn the ignition when there was more laughter outside. And mingled with this laughter was a tearful cry that held an unmistakable note of fear.

Frowning, he turned his head at the same moment one of the youths moved and he saw the girl’s face; underneath the overdone make-up that caked her face she was very young. The terror he saw written clearly in the childish features radically changed the situation. This was not simply high spirits.

With a sigh he opened the door. The fact was he didn’t need any of this, but Francesco had not been brought up to turn a blind eye and ignore his duty and social responsibility.

The youths were too busy, and, if the beer cans discarded on the floor were any indicator, too drunk to register his presence until he was right upon them.

‘I think the lady would like to leave.’

As one they swung around to face him, their expressions uniformly smug and belligerent. The one who was obviously the self-appointed leader dug his thumbs into his belt and took a swaggering step towards Francesco who, rather than recoiling in horror as he was meant to, simply looked bored.

This reaction visibly troubled the glassy-eyed gang leader.

‘Who asked you?’

Francesco smiled. It was a smile that sent a cold shudder down the young boy’s spine.

‘Why don’t you boys just run along home, no harm done?’ Francesco suggested pleasantly.

The youth nearest raised a can to his mouth and drained it before mangling the tin in his hand and flinging it over his shoulder. ‘We’re not running no place, mate!’ he announced loudly. ‘So why don’t you mind your own business?’

The pathetic bravado was wasted on Francesco, who was fast losing his patience. He lifted one hand, flicked the cuff of his jacket and glanced at the metal-banded watch that glittered against his olive-toned skin. He had places to be and his plan to reach there before lunch was beginning to seem optimistic.

‘That is, of course, your choice, but the young lady—’ he nodded towards the scared-looking teenager ‘—would like to go home. Is that not so?’

The young girl nodded and eagerly ran into the shelter offered by his outstretched arm. ‘You are all right?’ Francesco asked softly.

The girl who looked up at him as though he was her saviour nodded and wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing mascara over her face in the process. Looking at her more closely, Francesco realised that beyond the vibrant hair she bore no resemblance whatsoever to his wife.

For a start the woman he had married would not have cringed in a corner while brainless thugs intimidated her. One corner of his mouth lifted into a wry half-smile as he contemplated her probable actions if she found herself in a similar situation.

His redhead would have stuck out her chin and ripped her attackers apart with her rapier-sharp tongue. And if that hadn’t been sufficient she would have aimed some kicks at their most vulnerable areas, and most likely landed a few.

Neither would she have welcomed his well-meant intervention. No, she would have told him in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

‘I think it’s time you went home,’ he suggested gently to the girl, who did not resent his interference.

She did not require a second bidding. Casting him one last look of supreme gratitude, she fled.