The Italian's Wife

‘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.

‘There aren’t any. The heating is under the floor.’

‘Oh…’

‘This bag is full of clothes left behind by other guests,’ Ezio continued. ‘There might be something which will fit you or Timmie.’

‘I can’t wear someone else’s things…they’d be furious—’

‘These are very rich people. They don’t miss what they overlook; they just buy more,’ the older man told her gently. ‘I’ll leave the bag outside the door.’

There was a horrid thickness in her throat. ‘Thanks, Ezio.’

‘No problem.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But, if you don’t mind a spot of advice, give the boss a wide berth. Off the record, he’s just not himself right now and you don’t want to get your feelings hurt.’

Not just himself? Her feelings hurt? What on earth was that supposed to mean? Holly’s face burned up scarlet. Oh, my goodness, had Ezio noticed her blushing and getting on like a teenybopper with a bad crush around Rio Lombardi? Was he warning her off? What else could he possibly be doing?

CHAPTER THREE

‘HOLLY’S doing…what?’ Rio ground out with rampant incredulity.

‘Almost finished cleaning the kitchen floor, boss,’ Ezio repeated with reluctance. ‘She’s been dusting and scrubbing and polishing all day and, short of physically restraining her, there was nothing I could do about it. She’s got a lot of grit but she’s on the brink of a collapse—’

‘The kitchen floor…’ Rio seethed, striding through the door that led down to the basement where all the household utilities were situated. His mood was not improved when he went through the wrong door on the lower floor and found himself in some sort of boiler room because it had been a very long time since he had visited the kitchen quarters.

When he finally located his own kitchen, the first sight that met his eyes was Timmie strapped into a high chair, slumped over fast asleep, curly dark head down on the tray, a feeding cup dangling from one tiny hand. He looked rather like a miniature drunken sailor, his little legs and feet clad in white…tights? And what was that frilly thing round his almost non-existent neck? Dio mio, Timmie was wearing a little girl’s woollen dress with a lace collar! Rio was truly appalled by that discovery.

He strode round the protruding unit to gaze down the length of a kitchen that stretched more than forty feet in depth. He settled his outraged gaze on the female behind weaving from side to side as Holly knelt on the floor with her bucket and scrubbed like a Victorian housemaid. He stilled, attention entrapped by the wholly feminine fullness of that derrière, every line defined by the fine fabric shaping its delicious curves.

Without warning, an attack of such powerful lust assailed Rio that his every muscle clenched in shaken resistance. Four weeks without sex and he was turning into an animal, ready to jump anything female, he decided in even darker fury. His lean hands clenched into fists as he willed the throb of his aching sex to dwindle to manageable proportions.

‘Get the hell up off that floor!’ Rio launched with wrathful bite.

Dredged from her concentrated efforts to deny her exhaustion until she had completed her work, Holly swivelled round on her knees in fright, collided with the bucket and tipped it noisily over. Her soft mouth opening in dismay, she gasped strickenly, ‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’

‘How dare you come here and start cleaning my floors?’ Rio demanded with savage censure.

Very slowly, Holly picked herself up, the over-large green dress with its wide neckline lurching off one bare white shoulder. But that shade was incredible against that fair skin of hers, Rio noted before he registered that she was swaying and literally grey with pallor.

Holly focused on him, butterflies breaking loose in her tummy. Snatching in a stark breath, she met his stunning golden eyes and felt the burn of reaction deep down in her pelvis, an enervating sensation that made her weld her slender thighs together in fierce embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, I thought—’

Rio strode through the grimy flood that had spilled from the bucket and lifted her off her feet before she fainted in front of him. ‘How could you be so foolish? Do you think I invited you here to slave for me?’

‘I only wanted to make myself useful…’ Holly drank in the scent of him that clung to the jacket beneath her cheekbone, her nostrils flaring with helpless eagerness on that fresh familiarity.

Holding her that close was doing nothing for Rio’s rampant arousal. He was furious with himself, furious with her. Lack of control was not a sensation he was accustomed to suffering around a woman. But he was hugely tempted to tell her that if she wanted to make herself useful he had a whole catalogue of undomestic distractions to offer, not one of which, he was ashamed to admit, would have been thwarted by a wet floor, a child within hearing distance or even a fire alarm. He had seen her susceptibility in her eyes, in the way she held her slender, shapely body and in the mood he was in, a don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything mood of intense bitterness, that awareness inflamed his libido even more.

Ezio was positioned by Timmie’s sleeping form when Rio strode for the kitchen exit. ‘Bring Timmie upstairs and get him out of that stupid dress,’ he instructed the older man.

‘I only put it on him to keep him warm until his own clothes dried. He doesn’t know it’s a dress,’ Holly protested. ‘It was all that was available—’

‘You could be damaging his sexual identity for life!’ Rio condemned fiercely.

‘Do you think so?’ she questioned, aghast, as Rio carried her into a lift that she had not known existed until that moment.

He set her down and hit the buttons, choosing not to wait for Ezio. The door buzzed shut. She slumped back against the cool wall. ‘The floor’s in a real mess now,’ she lamented. ‘I can’t leave it like that.’

‘Shut up.’ Rio closed his eyes and breathed in deep and slow. He had had one hell of a day, barring calls from Christabel, putting his social secretary in charge of cancelling the elaborate wedding arrangements, watching the slow ripple of awareness pass round his personal staff one by one, recognising the amazed speculation in the eyes of those too stupid to hide their curiosity. Rio Lombardi and Christabel Kent, the golden couple, had broken up. All his life he had been a private individual, who hated others to breach his reserve. Now he was a mass of raw emotion and seething bitterness and, to crown his intense sense of raging humiliation at being put in such a position, all he could think about was the wild, savage oblivion of sex!

Holly shut up while the silence charged up. Rio opened eyes as bright as golden sunlight and dazzled her. The atmosphere was fraught, full of vibrations that skimmed along her nerve-endings, filling her with the strangest excitement in spite of her weary bewilderment. He was smouldering like a powder keg, she registered. She had no idea why but she had never been so aware of the potent magnetism of powerful masculinity.

In fact, she finally admitted, she was so hopelessly attracted to Rio Lombardi she could barely think straight, and that was a major shock to her system and her knowledge of herself. Jeff had never made her tremble just by looking at her. Jeff had never made her crave his touch. So, doubtless her ex-boyfriend had had good reason to call her a ‘lousy lay’. That humiliating recollection from the past steadied her and cooled her as nothing else could have done and made her drop her eyes from Rio Lombardi’s lean, strong face in shame.

‘I’m sorry I spoke to you like that,’ Rio murmured curtly as he stood back for her to precede him out of the lift.

She nodded with a bowed head.

‘Go to bed and rest,’ Rio advised harshly, stopping dead on the threshold of her bedroom but going not one step further. ‘I’ll have a supper tray sent up.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Holly whispered shakily, no longer able to look at him. She listened to him walk away, feeling the loss of his vibrant energy and despising herself for that sensitised awareness.

A bloke like Rio Lombardi would never look twice at her, which was just as well, she conceded dully. She was useless in bed. Frigid as a corpse. She stilled a shiver of revulsion at that unforgettable description of her less than adequate performance: Jeff had spelt out exactly why he had lost interest in her. She might not have enjoyed that single session of physical intimacy that had none-the-less resulted in Timmie’s conception, but Jeff had made it clear that he had enjoyed it even less. How could she have actually believed his drunken assertion that she was the girl he wanted to marry? That had just been a standard line to get her between the sheets.

‘Why the hell didn’t you get an abortion, you stupid cow?’ Jeff had railed at her before he’d hit her smack in the face with his fist. He’d knocked her right off her feet in his rage almost five months back and had terrified her with his violence. ‘If you think I’m forking out my hard-earned cash to keep you and your little bastard, you’d better think again! If you try to hang him round my neck, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born…’

She was sorriest of all that she had been so unforgivably stupid as not to see through Jeff’s superficial charm to the user and abuser of women that he was. He had slept with those girls he’d dumped her for twice over. He had lied about that, and in her heart of hearts she had always suspected that truth but had blindly refused to face the fact that a man who treated her that way could have no caring feelings for her. Jeff was the kind of creep whose ego could not bear female rejection. The instant he had taken her virginity, he had begun losing interest.

So she had got her punishment for being a silly, credulous doormat, dreaming of white dresses and the ‘Bridal March’. What she could not stand was that her parents, and now Timmie, seemed to be sharing that ongoing punishment with her. For of course her parents would be missing her, but she could never go home as long as she had her son and no ring on her finger. Farming communities were not liberal. An unwed daughter and fatherless grandchild would shame and mortify her parents.

As Holly slumped down on the bed, slight shoulders sagging, Ezio appeared in the doorway, clutching Timmie. ‘I got his clothes out of the drier but I’m afraid you’ll have to change him.’

‘Thanks…’ she said chokily, getting up to reclaim her son.

Ezio hovered on the threshold. ‘The boss is on a pretty short fuse at present. I did try to warn you.’

She was just no good at listening. Her stubborn pride had offended Rio Lombardi. She had slighted the one person who had tried to be kind to her in countless months of indifference. A rich, good-looking guy of Rio’s calibre could not have any ulterior motive in helping her and she was ashamed of the reality that she wished that he had, ashamed that she reacted as she did around him.

The phone ringing by the bed woke her the next morning.

It was Rio. ‘I’m taking you shopping and I don’t want to hear any arguments. The sight of you running round dressed like a bag lady embarrasses me.’

Holly was poleaxed. ‘But—’

‘I’ve hired a nanny to take care of Timmie. You got to sleep in because she’s already here. He’s now getting his morning constitutional in the garden. As soon as you’ve had breakfast, I want you downstairs.’

Click went the phone as Rio cut the connection. Even as Holly replaced the receiver in sleepy, shell-shocked bewilderment, a manservant was knocking on the door and entering with the promised breakfast. A nanny had been hired just to take care of her Timmie? For goodness’ sake, had Rio Lombardi gone mad? She could not possibly allow him to buy her clothes! It was out of the question.

However, hunger made her succumb first to the tempting dishes on the beautifully arranged bed tray. She explored the bruising at the base of her skull. The spot was still tender but she felt fine after a really good night of sleep. As soon as she had eaten she had a quick shower. Dressing in her clean jeans and shirt, she pulled on the man’s sweater that she had found at the very foot of the pretty-much useless bag of clothing which Ezio had brought to her.

Her bronze ringlets fanning wildly round her narrow shoulders after a too vigorous and impatient brushing, she hurried down the stairs. Rio was pacing the hall floor and her first glimpse of him just took her breath away. His superb tailored suit in palest grey set off his exotic darkness and bronzed skin to perfection. His black hair gleamed in the light coming through the windows and was so temptingly touchable to her dilated gaze that her fingertips actually tingled.