The Italian's Wife

it that way. Or maybe I want to spoil you because you don't ask for

anything and I'm not used to that with a woman.'

'I'm not used to blokes buying me stuff,' Holly shared in a sudden rush

of confidence. 'Jeff used to borrow money off me all the time. He was

always running out. I've always paid my own way...well, until recently.'

'Jeff...Timothy's absent father? He sounds a treat,' Rio breathed with

perceptible scorn. 'Where is he?'

Holly repressed a shiver and studied her tightly linked hands. 'Don't

know...don't want to know,' she admitted shakily. 'He thumped me last

time I saw him-'

'I beg your pardon?' Rio curved lean, strong fingers round her slight

shoulder to turn her back to face him.

'Me and my big mouth,' Holly muttered, for she had never intended to

tell anyone that.

Rio raked her strained face with flaring golden eyes. 'He hit you?'

'It was my own fault-'

'How could it have been?' Rio demanded.

'I came up to London with Timmie to find Jeff. It took time because he

had changed jobs and moved on from his last address,' Holly explained

heavily. 'I was stupid. After

all, he always knew how to get in touch with me, but I couldn't accept

that what we'd had had fizzled out-'

'You had a child. Naturally you didn't want to accept it. Did he know

you were pregnant when he abandoned you?'

'Abandoned', she reflected, made what Jeff had done sound dramatically

worse than it had been. All he had actually done was stop phoning, and

had she had the wit to leave it at that she might never have sunk as

low. Following Jeff up to London and searching for him had been her

second biggest mistake, she conceded. With a child in tow she had found

it impossible to make ends meet in so expensive a city, but she had had

nowhere else to go and neither friends nor family to fall back on for

support.

'No. I was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to realising that I was

pregnant myself,' she confided in some discomfiture on that subject.

'So what happened when you traced him?'

'He was living in Notting Hill in a very smart flat,' she faltered, her

mind taking her back to that ghastly day of awakening to the discovery

that the father of her child was a creep of the lowest order and, worst

of all, a weak one. 'I had Timmie with me because I had nowhere else to

leave him. Jeff opened the door...'

'And?' Rio prompted impatiently.

'He said he had a friend visiting and he sort of yanked me into the

kitchen,' Holly whispered shakily. 'I told him that he was a father and

he just went berserk. Then his girlfriend came in...that was worse than

being hit because she felt sorry for me.'

Rio expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss.

'It was her flat and she threw him out to cool off. She was dead

sophisticated, much older than me and not at all embarrassed by the

situation,' Holly gulped. 'She even made me a cup of tea while she told

me that chasing after

50

Jeff with a baby was really dumb. She said Jeff had lost his head

because I had cornered him when she was home and he was desperate to get

rid of me without her finding out that my baby was his.'

'Charming.'

'She was right.' Holly swallowed hard and raised her sleeve, intending

to wipe her eyes. 'I was just too scared to face up to the fact that I

was on my own, so I clung to this stupid dream that it would all work

out once he saw...Timothy,' she pronounced with precision.

Releasing a groan, Rio Lombardi tilted up her chin to dry her damp eyes

with a fine lawn handkerchief. 'Jeff was no loss. You're lucky that you

and your son escaped a man so quick to use his fists in a crisis.'

Her drowning blue eyes gazed up into glittering gold and Jeff went out

of her mind so fast he might never have existed. She tried and failed to

swallow. Rio was so close that breathing was no longer an option. Lashes

lowered, she focused on that wide, sensual mouth of his and the tip of

her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip. Never in all her

life had she been so desperate, so shamelessly eager to feel a man's

mouth on hers. The craving was almost unbearably strong.

His fabulous bone-structure taut, proud cheekbones prominent beneath

smooth bronzed skin, Rio murmured with a fracturing edge to his

thickened drawl, 'It's not my fists you have to fear. I'm much more

inventive but probably more dangerous.'

Please, please, kiss me, I don't care, was running through her mind as

he set her back from him and turned to answer the car phone. She had not

even heard it buzzing and she sank back into her corner again like a

boneless doll, registering that she had just glanced into potent contact

with a male far more sexually charged than Jeff had ever been.

It had been there in the atmosphere between them, an instant, surging

awareness that shook her to her very depths.

Rio took her to an exclusive salon to get her hair done first.

'Cut it short?' Rio repeated on a rising note of disbelief when the

retro-clad stylist made that laconic suggestion after poking through

Holly's hair much as though it was beyond all human intervention.

Closing one hand over hers, Rio dragged her back out of the leather

chair and headed for the exit.

'What are you doing?' Holly gasped in embarrassment, horribly aware of

every head in the place turning in their direction.

'I'm not leaving you at the mercy of a scissor-happy lunatic, cara-'

'Rio!' A female voice intervened.

Rio halted, his lean, strong features tensing.

A stunning brunette with cat-like eyes and vampish burgundy lips surged

up to them, but, for all her elegant cool, she was exuding a definable

air of panic. 'That stupid lump on the desk didn't recognise you, did

she? You walking out of my salon with a big frown is very bad for

business, Rio.'

'Your top stylist wants to chop off her crowning glory!' Rio delivered.

Cheeks burning, Holly stood there while the brunette's shrewd gaze

flicked from Holly's cascading ringlets back to Rio. 'Obviously a guy

with no imagination. I'll do it. She just needs some shaping round her

face. One of your tribe of little cousins over from Italy?' she asked,

as if Holly were mute.

'She speaks hardly any English,' Holly heard Rio stated at that

startling announcement, she shot him a wide-eyed glance of incredulity,

barely able to credit her hearing.

52

'But I presume she has a name. I'm Sly.' The brunette extended a

manicured hand to Holly. 'And you're-'

'Fiammetta,' Rio slotted in with a perfectly straight face. 'She's

unbelievably shy. I'd like her made up as well-'

'What age is she?' Sly enquired of him with a cloying smile, both of

them now talking over the top of Holly's head as if she were a very

small child.

'Old enough to look like a woman,' Rio quipped huskily.

'Then I presume you're planning to do something about the clothes she's

wearing as well,' the salon owner remarked with a sp

eaking little giggle.

Fifteen minutes later, Holly was seated in front of a mirror while Sly

cut her hair with exaggerated care. 'What Rio wants, Rio always gets...'

Since Holly had not one Italian word at her disposal and did not trust

herself to emulate an accent, she compressed her lips and concealed her

discomfiture. When she got her hands on Rio in private, she was going to

scream at him for doing this to her. Why, though? Why deprive her of the

ability to talk?

'I do wish I spoke Italian,' Sly sighed. 'I bet you have the inside