The Italian's Wife

‘How are you feeling?’ Rio Lombardi asked quietly.

‘F-f-fine,’ Holly stammered helplessly, aghast at a mind that could throw up such inappropriate thoughts, terrified that he might somehow suspect the effect he was having on her. ‘But I’ve got a concussion.’

‘I know…’ As Rio Lombardi strolled over to the cot to gaze down at her son, Holly, her face burning like a bonfire, struggled to get a grip on herself. But it was no use, for she could not drag her magnetised attention from him. He was well over six feet tall, his impressive physique lean and muscular, and in spite of his size he moved with extraordinary grace. ‘Timmie looks happy, though.’

‘Yeah…nice cosy cot,’ Holly mumbled, feeling like an idiot as soon as the inane words escaped her.

Rio Lombardi glanced up from his scrutiny of Timmie’s slumbering and peaceful little face, a faint smile still softening the hard line of his sculpted lips. ‘You shouldn’t have been on the streets with him,’ he remarked with quiet assurance.

‘I…I know,’ Holly stressed jerkily, her dilated gaze clinging to the mesmeric tawny hold of his, her heart jumping as if she had just leapt off a cliff, pounding inside her so hard she could hardly squeeze the words out.

She was still blushing as fierily as a schoolgirl, Rio registered with reluctant amusement. He had switched his attention to Timmie to give her a moment in which to compose herself but his subtlety had been wasted. He turned her on and she couldn’t hide it. Yet there was something strangely touching about her lack of artifice, her total inability to conceal what she was feeling and thinking. Those big blue eyes were like windows and that lush pink mouth betrayed her tension.

Her slight, slender body barely made a decent impression in the bed. She had the most amazing hair, though, Rio acknowledged. Released from whatever had held it in temporary subjection, her hair now cascaded in snaking corkscrew ringlets halfway to her waist, catching the light like rich, gleaming bronze. His attention strayed lower and momentarily lingered on the surprising fullness of the rounded swells pushing against the hospital-issue gown as she sat forward, the prominence of her taut nipples visible even through the barrier of starched cotton. Nice breasts, he found himself thinking, and he was startled when he felt himself hardening in urgent response, startled that even exhaustion and stress could not stifle his most basic urges.

‘I’m going to sort me and Timmie out…I r-really am,’ Holly swore earnestly in the charged silence, desperate to make him think better of her. ‘When can I get out of here?’

‘You need a couple of days of R & R,’ Rio responded, recognising the naïvety of that question when she was free to walk out the door any time she wished. But he was relieved by it and did nothing to disabuse her of her notion that she had to pay heed to some superior authority.

‘R & R?’

‘Rest and recuperation. A lady is coming to see you tomorrow.’ Recognising the flash of instant panic in her wide eyes, Rio gave her a bland smile of reassurance. ‘Nobody is going to make any arrangements against your will, but I think you’ll agree that you need some professional advice and support right now.’

Holly’s tummy muscles contracted in a sickening spasm of alarm, her thin shoulders hunching as she lost colour. At last, she gained the strength to take her eyes from him, but only because fear and deep shame over her own failure to give her son a proper home made it impossible for her to continue meeting his level gaze.

‘You’ll both be fine,’ Rio asserted in conclusion, strolling back to the door.

For an instant he hesitated as he remembered that crazy thought he had had only a few minutes before Holly fell in front of his limo. She was, indisputably, the very first woman he had met since walking out on Christabel.

Just as well he wasn’t insane enough to marry a complete stranger, he told himself with grim amusement. After all, Holly Sansom might be green as grass but she was still an unmarried mother. While he was a male who prided himself on his open mind, his family background and traditional Italian upbringing had imbued him with certain values and expectations.

CHAPTER TWO

PALE as death, Holly flopped back against the pillows, feeling as weak as water and trembling.

She had gawped at Rio Lombardi like a bedazzled kid and had severely embarrassed herself. Since she had never felt that way around a man before, not even around Jeff, she could only put her behaviour down to the effects of concussion and total exhaustion. Fortunately a guy like Rio Lombardi, so rich and so important and so utterly above her in every way, wouldn’t have noticed how awkward and silly she had been, she told herself. In any case, she had a lot more to worry about than the poor impression she had made on some bloke she was never likely to see again!

From her bed she stared at her sleeping son, tears stinging her strained eyes in a blinding surge. She adored Timmie; she could not begin to imagine her life without him. But tomorrow authority, with all its unlimited power, was coming in the guise of that lady Rio Lombardi had smoothly mentioned. Why hadn’t she had the strength to get up and walk away after her fall in that street? Once officialdom became involved, the die would be cast.

Rio Lombardi had sworn that no arrangements would be made without her agreement. Did he really think that she was that stupid? She had had her baby out in the middle of the night. She had no home to go to and that doctor would confirm that she had been betraying signs of hypothermia. Those three facts were like three big extra nails being hammered into her coffin. The powers-that-be would decide that she was an unfit mother and would lose no time in removing Timmie from such inadequate care.

Just half an hour ago she had been telling herself that it was her duty to give Timmie up for adoption, but when it came to the crunch she could feel herself tearing apart inside at the prospect of never, ever again having the right to hold his sweet, trusting weight in her arms. Surely she could do better? Surely she had enough backbone to pull herself up out of the mess she was in and provide for her own child?

Couldn’t she allow herself one more chance? Was that so selfish? Tears streaming down her guilty face, she studied Timmie in despair. He was all she had, all the family she was ever likely to have. She would go to a shelter for the homeless, one of those places from which advice came without the price of remorseless, grinding officialdom. If it killed her, she would find them somewhere to live. Only if she was faced with another night on the streets would she acknowledge defeat and accept that adoption was the only solution. That was the pact she made with herself, the promise she knew she had to make for her son’s sake.

But she had to get out of the hospital before that lady came to call in a few hours’ time, she told herself frantically. However, Timmie needed his sleep and she still felt too dizzy to walk, so she had to be sensible and stay in her bed as long as possible.

On his way to a business meeting at eight that morning, Rio found the memory of Holly Sansom’s frightened face continually flashing up between him and the figures he was scrutinising.

In one of the snap decisions that invariably threw his employees off-balance, Rio swept up the phone to communicate with his chauffeur and told him to head for the hospital instead of the Lombardi Industries building. Impatience tightening his sculpted mouth as he checked his watch, he questioned his sense of responsibility. He had done all that he could reasonably do. However, he should have kept quiet about the social worker’s visit. Forewarning Holly had been careless, and he had only made that mistake because he had gone without sleep for too long.

The limo drew to a halt in the busy car park of the foundation hospital. Waiting with a sigh for his chauffeur to walk round the bonnet in his usual dignified fashion, which he knew was simply a ploy to ensure that his security team alighted from their car behind in advance of himself, Rio caught a glimpse of a bright bronze head moving behind the line of cars parked about forty feet away. In a sudden movement, a vicious swear word impelled from his lips, Rio thrust the door of his limo open for himself and sprang out to stride in the same direction.

‘Holly!’

Hearing that shout just when she had believed she was free and clear of having attracted any adverse notice almost gave Holly a heart attack. Her blood literally chilling in her veins with fright, she spun round, her arms automatically tightening round her child.

Rio Lombardi stepped up onto the pavement ahead of her. ‘Where the blazes do you think you’re going?’

He was the very last person she had expected to see, and for the first time she was facing him upright and he was an incredibly intimidating figure. She was five feet four but he had to be almost twelve inches taller, and he had shoulders like a rugby player that even his fancy dark business suit could not conceal. He also looked…livid, shimmering dark golden eyes flaming over her, telegraphing anger and strong censure.

‘I…I’m g-going to find a shelter for the homeless—’

‘Like bloody hell you are!’ Rio interrupted, lean strong face set in steely lines as he closed the distance between them in a couple of strides. ‘Where’s his pushchair?’

‘I c-couldn’t find it—’

Holly was trembling, her own guilty conflict over her decision to give herself one more chance intensified by the disapproval Rio Lombardi was emanating in powerful waves. Just twenty-four hours, only twenty-four hours, that was all she had wanted.

‘Give Timmie to me…’ he demanded.

And, so shaken and ashamed was Holly as she stood there with tears filling her anguished eyes, she found herself instinctively obeying that authoritarian note of absolute command. As Rio Lombardi reached out she let him take her son from her. A split-second later she could not credit what she had done and she stared up at Rio Lombardi in dismay, her distraught face pale as parchment. ‘Give him back to me!’

‘Not until you agree to go back inside and wait to see the social worker, who is going to help you,’ Rio stressed, watching her begin to tremble and recognising her fear. Striving not to feel like a bully, he reminded himself that he was doing the best thing for both mother and child.

‘I can’t do that!’ Holly suddenly sobbed.

As Rio removed his frustrated attention from her he caught a glimpse of Ezio’s face. His security chief was positioned about twenty feet away, watching him in frank astonishment. Rio’s high cheekbones fired with a slight rise of colour.

‘You must be sensible about this…’ Rio stated as the baby in his arms went all stiff and loosed an anxious little moan of fright at the sound of his mother’s distress. Timmie was just about to blow. Indeed, any moment now, mass hysteria was going to break out and spread like a disease, Rio recognised with a very male sense of discomfiture. Dio mio, they were in a public place and he didn’t know what had got into him. He could only recall the savage jolt of pure rage he had felt at the sight of Holly trying to sneak away from the safety of the hospital.

‘Please…give him back!’ Holly cried.

An older man unlocking his car just yards away had now halted the activity to openly stare, his expression already that of someone thinking that perhaps he ought to intervene. Rio threw his proud head back and murmured in a tone calculated to soothe, ‘My car’s just over there. We’ll discuss this calmly in private.’

Holly was totally disconcerted when Rio just strode away from her. But she raced after him in a panic. As the chauffeur yanked open the door of the gleaming silver limousine Rio broke the habit of a lifetime and, instead of standing back politely to allow Holly first access, climbed in ahead of her, thereby forestalling any possibility of further debate in public.

Holly shot in after him like a mouse in stricken pursuit of a cat. The passenger door closed on her. Rio Lombardi had her son clasped under one arm while he spoke to someone in his own language on the car phone.

In a daze of confusion, Holly absorbed the startling sight of Timmie smiling up at Rio. Timmie, who never smiled at anyone but her! Her head ached even more. She felt clammy and sick and scared. ‘Please give him back to me…’

‘Look, I haven’t got time for this right now. I have a very important meeting to get to,’ Rio imparted, leaning forward to make some curious adjustment to the rear of the leather seat facing them. Before her bemused eyes, a child’s travelling seat complete with safety restraint folded down out of the once flat surface.

‘Mr Lombardi—er—?’

‘You can stay at my home for a few days until you feel stronger,’ Rio cut in flatly. ‘You’re in no fit state to make decisions right now. It’ll give you a breathing space.’

‘Your…home?’ Holly was so taken aback by that offer coming at her out of the blue that she could only stare at his bold bronzed profile with wide shaken eyes.