The Ranieri Bride

It was a dismissal. He turned his back on the lot of them before he strode over to the carefully cleared and freshly polished desk that used to belong to Josh Hannard but now was his. Behind him the shuffle of a mass exit began to take place.

‘But we thought we were going to have a working lunch so we could introduce everybody,’ he heard someone mutter in hushed bewilderment.

‘If I were you, I would skip lunch and start boning up on what it is you do here to earn your salary,’ one of his own people advised.

‘But Mr Hannard—’

‘Mr Hannard is no longer in charge here, Mr Ranieri is. And he has a nasty habit of chewing on spare flesh and spitting out the bones.’

Enrico smiled as he heard that. Quite a character reference, he mused thinly. Then he lifted his eyes to the rooftop view of London he could see through the window and the smile died.

His son—his son!

‘Cagna,’ he muttered. She was going to pay for this!

He, Enrico Ranieri, was going to chew on Freya Jenson’s delectable flesh and spit out her deceiving, lying, cheating bones!

Freya sat on the grass in the park surrounded by ducks while her son fed them the remains of her uneaten sandwiches—and she shivered despite the heat of the summer sun.

Icy cold was how she always felt when she let herself think about Enrico. Hurt, hatred and contempt could turn a warm-blooded woman to a block of ice.

So could fear.

Of the unknown.

Of what Enrico was going to do next.

She shifted, blinking her green eyes as a hungry beak pecked at her fingers. Relinquishing the small crust to the greedy duck, she turned to Nicky, who was sitting there in his element, smiling—and looking so much more like his father than she’d ever let herself see before, that it came as a shock each time she gazed at him now.

Now that she had seen his father in the flesh again.

Now that she had seen the grown-up version of her son’s handsome face, those black eyes, the stubborn mouth and determined chin.

The fact that Enrico had been so quick to recognise himself in Nicky had shaken her to her very roots. How dared he—how dared he do that after all he’d said and done to disown responsibility?

She’d come to hate him for doing that.

‘Get out of my life,’ he’d ripped at her three years ago. ‘You are a cheat and a slut and I never want to see you again so long as I live.’

Bitter, cold, heartless. Arrogant, superior, judgemental; deaf…

She ran out of adjectives and made do with a sigh instead.

Maybe he’d had second thoughts about Nicky by now, she thought hopefully. He might have seen a miniature mirror image of himself in her little boy, but there again his cousin Luca was yet another reflection of those disgustingly handsome Ranieri features. A sly, mean, nasty mirror of Enrico, but the likeness was there, and Enrico would have remembered that by now and dismissed her and Nicky out of his nasty suspicious—

Then it hit her—the one thing she had been trying very hard not to think about.

What had he been doing in Hannard’s foyer, anyway?

He hadn’t bought Hannard’s—had he? He wasn’t about to become her boss again?

Her spine tensed up as nerve ends crashed together, her cold fingers twisting tightly on her lap. No, she thought—no! Don’t look for the worst-case scenario. He could have just been passing through. Maybe he was a friend of Josh Hannard and was only meeting him for lunch.

And maybe pigs can fly, she was then forced to tell herself. When Enrico Ranieri appeared in a company’s foyer with his faithful entourage stacking up behind him, then he was there for only one purpose.

It was a buy-out and, with his usual tactics, he was making a surprise hit on a new acquisition like a lethal bolt of lightning striking out of the blue.

A shiver ran down her back. Oh, no, she thought, and lowered her face to her knees because she just couldn’t face the idea of him having the power to ruin her life—again.

Once had been enough.

Once upon a time three years ago she’d had a wonderful job as his personal assistant. She’d lived a wonderful life as his live-in lover. They’d barely survived being out of each other’s sight. Two hot lovers with passionate and feverishly possessive temperaments, they’d matched each other, fire for sizzling fire.

Then she’d met his cousin and within weeks it was all over.

‘Monkey,’ Nicky said levelly.

‘We will see the monkeys tomorrow,’ Freya promised, lifting her head to look at this dark-haired little boy who was the most important thing in her life—whoever his father was.

‘No, monkey over there,’ he insisted, pointing with a finger.

Turning her head, Freya found her eyes fixing on the bulky shape of Fredo Scarsozi. He was standing beneath the shade of a tree not twenty feet from them. As she stared he sent her a brief nod in acknowledgement and she knew then, knew with every single fractured nerve she possessed that, far from dismissing them, Enrico was right there watching them from behind the steady gaze of his most trusted employee.

Well, this was one fight he was going to have with himself because she was not going to play any part in it, she decided as she clambered to her feet. Nicky was her son and only hers, and it was going to be up to Enrico to prove otherwise.

If he cared enough.

Bitterness welled, and anger—a hard, cold rod of contempt that straightened her spine as she held a hand out to her son.

‘Come on, sweetie,’ she murmured. ‘It’s time for us to go back now.’

Nicky came without argument. With no bread left, the ducks had scooted back into the pond. Plus her son was used to the routine he had been living with since he was three months old and she had been so very fortunate to land a job at Hannard’s with its crèche all ready and waiting to take in her son.

The job itself might be basic and the pay reflected the money it cost her to place Nicky in day care, but at least he was right there in the same building with her and she could see him whenever she needed to. Their little flat might be poky and erring towards shabby but they managed.

They were happy—content to have just each other. They did not need a man in their lives and once Enrico had recovered from the shock of seeing them he would realise that he could not want anything to do with them.

‘The monkey is following us,’ Nicky informed her.

‘He’s not a monkey, he’s a man,’ Freya corrected and refused to glance back at Fredo—refused.

But that cold chill was striking at her again, the grim knowledge that she was lying to herself if she dared to believe that Enrico was going to let her off the hook without knowing the truth.

He was ruthless and tenacious.

CHAPTER TWO

LYING, cheating, vindictive whore…