The Italian's Wife

Rio settled Timmie into the baby seat. After tightening everything up, he snapped the harness into place with a definite air of satisfaction at his own efficiency.

‘Your home?’ Holly watched his manoeuvres in bewildered stillness, quite unable to react with any greater volubility. Her head was pounding fit to burst and her brain felt like mush, for she had had little sleep during what had remained of the night hours while she fretted and waited for an opportunity to steal out of the hospital without being noticed.

‘Why not?’ Suppressing the faint suspicion that once again he was reacting in an impulsive manner that was quite unlike him, Rio told himself that rescuing Holly would be his good deed for the year and he warmed to the concept at similar speed. He would soon get them sorted out. He might have given millions to humanitarian causes but when had he ever become personally involved in someone else’s problems? But intervention was definitely required. Without a helping hand, there was an all too real possibility that Holly Sansom would end up selling her body for the price of her next meal. A pervert would spot her from a distance of a hundred yards, Rio reflected with distaste. She had victim written all over her. As for Timmie…well, Timmie was already measuring up to follow faithfully in his mother’s footsteps.

‘Why…not?’ Holly echoed, pressing a weak hand to the bruising that still throbbed at the back of her skull. ‘Because people don’t do stuff like that for people they don’t know.’

Rio settled brilliant, dark, deep-set eyes on her. ‘Make your mind up.’

Holly tensed at that demand. He was offering them a lifeline. A roof, a bed, no worries about food or the future for a few days. He was an incredible guy. He was just so kind. She could not believe how kind he was being when he had been so furious with her only minutes earlier. ‘OK.’

‘I’ll make the arrangements.’ Rio swept up the phone and watched Ezio answer from the front seat. At one point during that conversation, Ezio twisted round to frown in amazement through the glass panel separating him from his employer. Rio ignored that pointed reaction.

That deep, dark, sexy drawl of his just seemed to shimmy down her spine, Holly thought absently. She loved his voice even though she hadn’t a clue what he was saying. Catching herself up on that mortifying train of thought, Holly reddened fierily.

‘As soon as I’ve been dropped off for my meeting, my security chief will take you to my town house. Any problems, speak to Ezio. He speaks English but most of my household staff don’t,’ Rio warned her.

Holly nodded uncertainly, momentarily attempting to picture the kind of world where a person had household staff, and then watching the gold in Rio’s eyes reflect the light, her mouth running dry and her breath catching in her throat.

Rio sprang out of the limo outside Lombardi Industries.

Ezio cleared his throat. ‘Miss Kent won’t like another woman in the house, boss.’

Rio froze. ‘The wedding’s off, Ezio.’

Leaving the older man gazing after him in consternation, Rio strode on into the building, inclining his proud dark head in acknowledgement of the doorman’s respectful greeting and concentrating his mind on the challenging business meeting ahead with considerable relief.

The limo nosed its way with all the arrogant assurance of its owner back into the flow of traffic. Holly breathed in slowly and deeply and then pinched the back of her hand. The stinging sensation of that small hurt convinced her that she was not dreaming. She was really and truly sitting in Rio Lombardi’s fabulous limousine. For potentially the next forty-eight hours she could stop worrying. He had taken pity on her.

Inwardly, Holly squirmed, the self-esteem that had been battered to ground-level in recent months burning at the wretched awareness that she was just a charity case to a male like Rio Lombardi. Well, she had never let anyone do her favours for free. She would make herself useful round his house, repaying his generosity the only way she could. But at that moment the simple knowledge that she needed to worry neither about food nor shelter in the immediate future was like a giant weight rolling off her shoulders.

Just how had she contrived to sink so low that she was prepared to accept such charity? It had happened by degrees, she conceded. But undoubtedly her biggest and worst mistake had been getting involved with Jeff Danby…

Holly had grown up on a hill farm on Exmoor where her father was the tenant farmer. Her parents had married late in life and her mother had been forty when Holly was born. That her mother never conceived again had been a source of deep disappointment to her parents, for it had meant that there would be no son to help out when her father became too old to cope alone with the harsh winters and the lambing season and that eventually he would have to give up the tenancy.

She had had a happy childhood and she had enjoyed school. But possibly, as an only and much loved child, she had been a little spoilt, she conceded with pained hindsight. For, while her parents had urged her to aim at a college education, Holly had been more eager to find a job so that she could have her own money and spend more time with her friends who lived in the nearest town.

Working in a dead-end job that hadn’t struck her as a dead-end job had been fine the first couple of years when all that had been in her head was buying the latest cheap fashions and finding a boyfriend. But, although boys had made her plenty of offers, they had all come with the price tag of casual sex attached. And, for all that she had liked to pretend to be as cool in her outlook as her peers, Holly had been raised in a home where that kind of behaviour was just not acceptable and had shrunk from doing anything likely to distress her parents.

And then Jeff had come along in her eighteenth year, Jeff, with his ancient sports car and cheeky grin and impressive aura of sophistication. He had been a pool attendant at the local leisure centre, much admired by all her friends and seven years older. So she had been thrilled when he had asked her out and infatuated by the end of the first week, but not so foolish as to jump into bed with him. In any case, if she was honest, the sex side of things had never appealed to her much, even with Jeff. She had liked the romantic stuff better, holding hands, just listening to him talk about his plans to become an instructor at some trendy fitness club in London and admiring the fact that he had a goal and ambition.

‘He’s too flash,’ her mother had said when she’d finally met Jeff.

‘He’s a big-head,’ her father had sighed. ‘He’s a lot older than you are too. You’d be better off with a boy your own age.’

Jeff had ditched her a couple of times and gone off with other girls. Each time he’d come back to her, and she had been so grateful she’d repressed her hurt and forgiven him. Then he had got the job he had always wanted in London and, struggling to conceal her breaking heart, she had gone out with him and his friends for a last-night celebration. The drinks had been lined up in front of her and Jeff had kept on urging her not to be a killjoy and drink up. He had talked about how she was ‘his’ girl and how he would send for her once he got a place of his own. Hearing him talk like that, including her in his lofty plans, she had almost cried with relief.

‘I really do care about you, Holly,’ he had said fondly. ‘You’re the girl I want to marry, so surely you can come home with me tonight.’

And she had, and she had gritted her teeth in the darkness, tears running down her face at the roughness, embarrassment and pain of the experience. She had wanted to please him, had so wanted to prove that she was not the silly little girl still tied to parental dictums he had often accused her of being but a real adult woman capable of loving her man and being loved.

True to his word, Jeff had phoned her while city life was still strange to him. She had written great, long, adoring screeds to him and had been four months pregnant before she’d even realised that she had conceived. During his final phone call, she had begged him to visit for a weekend. She had needed to see him face-to-face to share her news. But he had complained that it would cost too much and he had not phoned again. Weeks afterwards, when she had been climbing the walls with panic over his silence and trying to conceal her changing shape from her parents, one of her many letters had been returned to her with ‘Not known at this address’ written across it. She had not seen Jeff again until she’d finally tracked him down in London many months later.

Emerging from those unwelcome memories, Holly felt cool air on her face and only then realised that the passenger door was open. The chauffeur was waiting for her to vacate the limo.

The most enormous house lay before her. It had a gravel turning circle in front and tall shaped evergreen trees in fancy metal troughs.

‘Miss Sansom…I’m Ezio Farretti.’

Holly focused shyly on the heavily built older man with his steady dark eyes. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Ezio engaged the employee positioned at the front door in a flood of foreign speech, and motioned Holly into the house. Feeling like a third wheel, Holly followed him inside and skimmed an intimidated glance round the huge hall, the fantastic staircase and the big pictures adorning the walls.

‘Come this way, Miss Sansom,’ Ezio urged.

‘What’s that language you speak?’ she asked to fill the silence.

‘Italian.’

He showed her into what appeared to be a drawing room. Well, she adjusted, what she would call a drawing room, because the opulent sofas and marble fireplace were way too grand to belong in a humble sitting room. A fire glowed in the iron grate. Holly had not seen a real fire since leaving home, and without warning her eyes smarted as she pictured the cosy farmhouse kitchen where her parents sat by the fire on cold nights.

Ezio extended a notepad and pen. ‘Will you make a list of supplies for you and your son?’

‘Supplies?’

‘Anything you require.’

She reddened to the roots of her hair. ‘I don’t have any money.’

‘That’s not a problem.’

The waiting silence that followed embarrassed her into making up a list. Nappies, a feeding cup and baby juice were really all she had to have. She was down on her luck but she was not a freeloader, and she was sure to get the chance to wash their clothes.

‘You should put down a few more things.’ Ezio’s voice was gruff.

Holly shook her head. Having to put down even the necessities had hurt. Rio Lombardi was putting them up and he would be feeding them as well. The very last thing she wanted to do was cost him money into the bargain.

Ezio led her up the imposing staircase. The magnificent landing was adorned with gilded furniture that looked as if it belonged in a palace. But then, Rio Lombardi’s home was just like a palace, Holly conceded in a daze. She was shown into a fabulous guest room, complete with an adjoining bathroom, and then into the smaller room next door which contained a cot. The cot, which contained several very new-looking toys, surprised her. Belatedly it occurred to her that perhaps Rio Lombardi was or had been married and had children. Tensing, tummy suddenly feeling hollow, she asked Ezio right out.

‘The boss is…single,’ the older man stated after a slight hesitation. ‘But he often has relatives with kiddies to stay. The Lombardis are a big family and very close.’

As Ezio departed Holly glimpsed her reflection in a mirror and a mortified gasp left her lips. The backside of her jeans was filthy, probably from the road the night before. Fetching a couple of the toys from the cot, she took Timmie into the bathroom, set him down with them on a bathtowel and then stripped down to her skin. Everything she wore went into the bath to steep in hot water. She stepped into the separate shower cubicle but could only run the water in bursts because she couldn’t close the door properly while she watched over Timmie. Her son could not yet crawl but he could cover a surprising amount of distance by rolling.

It was such bliss, such utter bliss to feel truly scrubbed clean again. Making use of the luxury toiletries in the corner shower compartment, she shampooed her hair and then conditioned it for the first time in many months. Having pounded her clothes back to cleanliness with soap, she then realised in dismay that there were no radiators in which to dry them. At that point, a knock sounded on the bedroom door.

Wrapped in a towel, she peered round the edge of the door. It was Ezio Farretti and he had a large cotton sack in his arms.

‘Where are the radiators?’ she queried.