When Falcone′s World Stops Turning
When Falcone's World Stops Turning
ABBY GREEN
She has the power to change everything…Rafaele Falcone runs his luxury auto empire and his private life with the same ice-cold ruthlessness. Emotions play no part in his decisions and he always demands the best – so he doesn’t hesitate to ask brilliant engineer Samantha Rourke to join his company, even though he walked away from her years before.That sexy Italian accent still sends shivers down her spine, but gutsy Sam knows it’s not just about her impossible desire to feel his hands on her body once again. Because Falcone is about to discover her deepest secret – one that will send his world into a spin!‘Breathtaking writing, I can’t get enough of Abby Green’s characters!’ – Veronica, 45, LampeterDiscover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/abbygreen
‘Samantha.’ Rafaele smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’
Sam’s hand clenched tightly around the door. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally rousing her.
‘Now isn’t a good time. I thought I made it clear that I’m not interested.’
A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it when she heard the high-pitched, ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.
She felt Milo land at her legs and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. As if she were trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Now really isn’t a good time.’
Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly. Dazed, he glanced up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour.
Panicked. Guilty.
Just like that something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.
BLOOD BROTHERS
Power and passion run in their veins
Rafaele and Alexio have learned that to feel emotion is to be weak. Calculated ruthlessness brings them immense success in the boardroom and in the bedroom. But a storm is coming with the sudden appearance of a long-lost half-brother and three women who will change their lives for ever …
ReadRafaele Falcone’sstory in: WHEN FALCONE’S WORLD STOPS TURNING February 2014
Only one woman has come close to touching this brooding Italian’s cold heart, and he intends to have her once more. But Samantha Rourke has a secret that will rock his world in a very different way…
ReadAlexio Christakos’sstory in: WHEN CHRISTAKOS MEETS HIS MATCH April 2014
His legendary Greek charm can get him any woman he wants—and he wants Sidonie Fitzgerald for one, hot night. But when that night isn’t enough will he regret breaking his own rules?
And coming soon …
Cesar Da Silva’sstory June 2014
The prodigal son is tormented by his dark past.
Can one woman save this Spanish billionaire’s tortured soul, or is he beyond redemption?
When Falcone’s World Stops Turning
Abby Green
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABBY GREEN spent her teens reading Mills and Boon
romances. After repeatedly deferring a degree to study Social Anthropology (long story!) she ended up working for many years in the film and TV industry as an assistant director.
One day, while standing outside an actor’s trailer waiting for him to emerge, in the rain, holding an umbrella in gale force winds, she thought to herself, Surely there’s more than this and it involves being inside and dry?
Thinking of her love for Mills and Boon, and encouraged by a friend, Abby decided to submit a partial manuscript. After numerous rewrites, chucking out the original idea and starting again with a new story, her first book was accepted and an author was born.
She is happy to report that days of standing in the rain outside an actor’s trailer are a rare occurrence now. She loves creating stories that will put the reader through an emotional wringer (in a good way, hopefully!), and yet leave her feeling satisfied and uplifted.
She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and you can find out more about her and her books here: www.abby-green.com
Recent titles by the same author:
FORGIVEN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN?
EXQUISITE REVENGE
ONE NIGHT WITH THE ENEMY
THE LEGEND OF DE MARCO
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
This is for Gervaise Landy, without whose influence I would most likely still be speaking into a walkie-talkie outside an actor’s trailer in a car park somewhere, in the rain, trying to explain what the delay is. Thank you for all the great conversations about Mills & Boon, and that first memorable one in particular all those years ago. As soon as we recognised a fellow fanatic in each other we were kindred spirits. You were the one who put the idea in my head in the first place about writing for Mills & Boon, and you were the one with the tape on how to write one—which I still have, and which I will return to you as soon as you promise me you’re going to sit down and finish that manuscript. With much love and thanks for sowing the seed of a dream in my head!
In thanking Gervaise I also have to dedicate this book to Caitríona Ní Mhurchú, at whose party I first met Gervaise. From the age of sixteen I have idolised this glamorous, confident, sexy, intelligent woman, so if you see any of those traits in my heroines it comes from a deep well of inspiration.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#u9c10cb4d-746c-5db9-a5e6-5dc174881338)
CHAPTER ONE (#u000eb06b-3715-5419-9311-d588bee50253)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc9657bfb-cd5d-5772-b36b-00427187ef7e)
CHAPTER THREE (#uab10e389-5433-5949-aa8d-6563e6fa18d0)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
RAFAELE FALCONE LOOKED at the coffin deep inside the open grave. The earth they’d thrown in was scattered on top, along with some lone flowers left by departing friends and acquaintances. Some of them had been men, inordinately upset. Evidently there was some truth to the rumours that the stunning Esperanza Christakos had taken lovers during her third marriage.
Rafaele felt many conflicting emotions, apart from the obvious grief for his dead mother. He couldn’t say that they’d ever had a close relationship; she’d been eternally elusive and had carried an air of melancholy about her. She’d also been beautiful. Beautiful enough to send his own father mad with grief when she left him.
The kind of woman who’d had the ability to make grown men completely lose all sense of dignity and of themselves. Not something that would ever happen to him. His single-minded focus was on his career and rebuilding the Falcone motor empire. Beautiful women were a pleasant diversion—nothing more. None of his lovers were ever under any illusions and expected nothing more than the transitory pleasure of his company.
His conscience pricked at this confident assertion—there had only been one lover who had taken him close to the edge but that was an experience he didn’t dwell on...not any more.
His half-brother, Alexio Christakos, turned to him now and smiled tightly. Rafaele felt a familiar ache in his chest. He loved his half-brother, and had done from the moment he’d been born, but their relationship wasn’t easy. It had been hard for Rafaele to witness his brother growing up, sure in the knowledge of his father’s success and support—so different from his own experience with his father. He’d felt resentful for a long time, which hadn’t been helped by his stepfather’s obvious antipathy towards the son that wasn’t his.
They both turned and walked away from the grave, engrossed in their own thoughts. Their mother had bequeathed to both her sons her distinctive green eyes, although Alexio’s were a shade more golden than Rafaele’s striking light green. Rafaele’s hair was thicker and a darker brown next to his brother’s short-cut ebony-black hair.
Differing only slightly in height, they were both a few inches over six foot. Rafaele’s build was broad and powerful. His brother’s just as powerful, but leaner. Dark stubble shadowed Rafaele’s firm jawline today, and when they came to a stop near the cars Alexio observed it, remarking dryly, ‘You couldn’t even clean up for the funeral?’
The tightness in Rafaele’s chest when he’d stood at the grave was easing slightly now. He curbed the urge to be defensive, to hide the vulnerability he felt, and faced his brother, drawling with a definite glint in his eye, ‘I got out of bed too late.’
He couldn’t explain to his brother how he’d instinctively sought the momentary escape he would find in the response of an eager woman, preferring not to dwell on how his mother’s death had made him feel. Preferring not to dwell on how it had brought up vivid memories of when she’d walked out on his father so many years ago, leaving him a broken man. He was still bitter, adamantly refusing to pay his respects to his ex-wife today despite Rafaele’s efforts to persuade him to come.
Alexio, oblivious to Rafaele’s inner tumult, shook his head and smiled wryly. ‘Unbelievable. You’ve only been in Athens for two days—no wonder you wanted to stay in a hotel and not at my apartment...’
Rafaele pushed aside the dark memories and quirked a mocking brow at his brother, about to dish out some of the same, when he saw a latecomer arrive. The words died on his lips and Alexio’s smile faded as he turned to follow Rafaele’s gaze.
A very tall, stern-faced stranger was staring at them both. And yet...he looked incredibly familiar. It was almost like looking into a mirror. Or at Alexio...if he had dark blond hair. It was his eyes, though, that sent a shiver through Rafaele. Green, much like his and Alexio’s, except with a slight difference—a darker green, almost hazel. Another take on their mother’s eyes...? But how could that be?
Rafaele bristled at this stranger’s almost belligerent stance. ‘May we help you?’ he asked coolly.
The man’s eyes flickered over them both, and then to the open grave in the distance. He asked, with a derisive curl to his lip, ‘Are there any more of us?’
Rafaele looked at Alexio, who was frowning, and said, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’
The man looked at Rafaele. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
The faintest of memories was coming back: he was standing on a doorstep with his mother. A huge imposing door was opening and there was a boy, a few years older than him, with blond hair and huge eyes.
The man’s voice sounded rough in the still air. ‘She brought you to my house. You must have been nearly three. I was almost seven. She wanted to take me with her then, but I wouldn’t leave. Not after she’d abandoned me.’
Rafaele felt cold all over. In a slightly hoarse voice he asked, ‘Who are you?’
The man smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m your older brother—half-brother. My name is Cesar Da Silva. I came today to pay my respects to the woman who gave me life...not that she deserved it. I was curious to see if any more would crawl out of the woodwork, but it looks like it’s just us.’
Alexio erupted beside Rafaele. ‘What the hell—?’
Rafaele was too stunned to move. He knew the Da Silva name. Cesar was behind the renowned and extremely successful Da Silva Global Corporation. His mind boggled to think that he might have met him and not known that they were brothers. With a sickening sense of inevitability, he didn’t doubt a word this man had just said. Their fraternal similarities were too obvious. They could be non-identical triplets.
That half-memory, half-dream had always been all too real—he’d just never known for sure, because whenever he’d mentioned it to his mother she’d always changed the subject. Much in the way she had never discussed her life in her native Spain before she’d met his father in Paris, where she’d been a model.
Rafaele gestured to his brother, ‘This is Alexio Christakos...our younger brother.’
Cesar Da Silva looked at him with nothing but ice in his eyes. ‘Three brothers by three fathers...and yet she didn’t abandon either of you to the wolves.’
He stepped forward then, and Alexio stepped forward too. The two men stood almost nose to nose, with Cesar topping his youngest brother in height only by an inch.
Cesar, his jaw as rigid as Alexio’s, gritted out, ‘I didn’t come here to fight you, brother. I have no issue with either of you.’
Alexio’s mouth thinned. ‘Only with our dead mother, if what you say is true.’
Cesar smiled, but it was thin and bitter. ‘Oh, it’s true, all right — more’s the pity.’
He stepped around Alexio then, and walked to the open grave. He took something out of his pocket and dropped it down into the dark space, where it fell onto the coffin with a distant hollow thud. He stood there for a long moment and then came back, his face expressionless.
After a charged silent moment between the three men he turned to stride away and got into the back of a waiting dark silver limousine, which moved off smoothly.
Rafaele turned to Alexio, who looked back at him, gobsmacked.
‘What the...?’ he trailed off.
Rafaele just shook his head. ‘I don’t know...’
He looked back to the space where the car had been and reeled with this cataclysmic knowledge.
CHAPTER ONE
Three months later...
‘SAM, SORRY TO bother you, but there’s a call for you on line one...someone with a very deep voice and a sexy foreign accent.’
Sam went very still. Deep voice...sexy foreign accent. The words sent a shiver of foreboding down her spine and a lick of something much hotter through her pelvis. She told herself she was being ridiculous and looked up from the results she’d been reading to see the secretary of the research department at the London university.
Kind eyes twinkled mischievously in a matronly face. ‘Did you get up to something at the weekend? Or should I say someone?’
Again that shiver went down Sam’s spine, but she just smiled at Gertie. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. I spent all weekend working on Milo’s playschool nature project with him.’
The secretary smiled and said indulgently, ‘You know I live in hope, Sam. You and Milo need a gorgeous man to come and take care of you.’
Sam gritted her teeth and kept smiling, restraining herself from pointing out how well she and Milo were doing without a man. Now she couldn’t wait to take the call. ‘Did you say line one?’
Gertie winked and disappeared, and Sam took a deep breath before picking up the phone and pressing the flashing button. ‘Dr Samantha Rourke here.’
There was silence for a few seconds, and then came the voice. Low, deep, sexy—and infinitely memorable. ‘Ciao, Samantha, it’s Rafaele...’
The prickle of foreboding became a slap in the face. He was the only one apart from her father who had ever called her Samantha—unless it had been Sam in the throes of passion. All the blood in her body seemed to drain south, to the floor. Anger, guilt, emotional pain, lust and an awful treacherous tenderness flooded her in a confusing tumult.
She only realised she hadn’t responded when the voice came again, cooler. ‘Rafaele Falcone...perhaps you don’t remember?’
As if that was humanly possible!
Her hand gripped the phone and she managed to get out, ‘No... I mean, yes. I remember.’
Sam wanted to laugh hysterically. How could she forget the man when she looked into a miniature replica of his face and green eyes every day?
‘Bene,’ came the smooth answer. ‘How are you, Sam? You’re a doctor now?’
‘Yes...’ Sam’s heart was doing funny things, beating so hard she felt breathless. ‘I got my doctorate after...’ She faltered and the words reverberated in her head unspoken. After you came into my life and blew it to smithereens. She fought valiantly for control and said in a stronger voice, ‘I got my doctorate since I saw you last. How can I help you?’
Again a bubble of hysteria rose up in her: how about helping him by telling him he has a son?
‘I am here in London because we’ve set up a UK base for Falcone Motors.’
‘That’s...nice,’ Sam said, a little redundantly.
The magnitude of who she was talking to seemed to hit her all of a sudden and she went icy all over. Rafaele Falcone. Here in London. He’d tracked her down. Why? Milo. Her son, her world. His son.
Sam’s first irrational thought was that he must know, and then she forced herself to calm down. No way would Rafaele Falcone be calling her up sounding so blasé if he knew. She needed to get rid of him, though—fast. And then think.
‘Look...it’s nice to hear from you, but I’m quite busy at the moment...’
Rafaele’s voice took on a cool edge again. ‘You’re not curious as to why I’ve contacted you?’
That sliver of fear snaked down Sam’s spine again as an image of her adorable dark-haired son came into her mind’s eye.
‘I...well...I guess I am.’ She couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic.
Rafaele’s voice was almost arctic now. ‘I was going to offer you a position with Falcone Motors. The research you’re currently conducting is exactly in the area we want to develop.’
Sheer blind panic gripped Sam’s innards at his words. She’d worked for this man once before and nothing had been the same since. Her tone frigid, she said, ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m committed to working on behalf of the university.’
Silence for a few taut seconds and then Rafaele responded with a terse, ‘I see.’
Sam could tell that Rafaele had expected her to drop at his feet in a swoon of gratitude, even just at the offer of a job, if nothing more personal. It was the effect he had on most women. He hadn’t changed. In spite of what had happened between them.
The words he’d left lingering in the air when he’d walked away from her resonated as if it had happened yesterday: ‘It’s for the best, cara. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’
He’d so obviously wanted her to agree with him that Sam had done so, in a flat and emotionless voice. Her body had seemed drained of all feeling. Relief had been a tangible force around him. It was something that she hadn’t forgotten and which had helped her to believe she’d made the right decision to take full responsibility for Milo on her own. Even so, her conscience pricked her now: you should have told him.
Panic galvanised Sam, so that Rafaele Falcone’s offer of a job barely impinged on her consciousness. ‘Look, I really am quite busy. If you don’t mind...?’
‘You’re not even interested in discussing this?’
Sam recalled the bile that had risen within her when Rafaele had made his uninterest in her all too clear and bit out curtly, ‘No, I’m not interested. Goodbye, Signor Falcone.’
* * *
Goodbye, Signor Falcone, and this from a woman he knew intimately.
Rafaele looked at the phone in his hand for a long moment. Not comprehending the fact that she had just hung up on him. Women did not hang up on him.
Rafaele put the phone down and his mouth firmed. But Samantha Rourke had never been like other women. She’d been different from the start. He felt restless and got up from his seat to pace over to the huge window that overlooked operations at his new UK base on the outskirts of London. But for once his attention wasn’t on operations.
She’d come to his factory in Italy as an intern after completing her Masters in Mechanical Automotive Engineering. The youngest and only woman in a group of men. Scarily bright and intelligent. He would have had no compunction hiring her on the spot and paying her whatever she asked just to keep her working for him...but he’d become distracted.
Distracted by her sexily studious air and her tall, slim body. Distracted by the mannish clothes she’d insisted on wearing which had made him want to peel them off to see the curves hinted at but hidden underneath. Distracted by her flawless pale Celtic skin and those huge almond-shaped eyes set in delicate features. Grey eyes...like a stormy sea.
Distracted by the way she would look at him and blush when he caught her eye, the way she would catch her lower lip between small white teeth. Distracted by that fall of inky black hair which she’d kept tucking behind her ear. And, as time had worn on, distracted by the slow-burning licking flames of desire that had grown hotter and stronger every time he saw her.
Rafaele had fought it. He hadn’t liked it—and especially not in the workplace. There were plenty of females working in his factory and yet none of them had ever turned his head. His life was run on strict lines and he’d always kept his personal life well away from his work. But she had been so far removed from the kind of woman he normally went for: polished, sophisticated. Worldly wise. Women who were sexy and knew it and knew what to do with it. Cynical, like him.
Sam had been none of those things. Except sexy. And he’d known she didn’t know that. She’d seemed to have absolutely no awareness of the fact that men’s gazes lingered on her as she passed by. It had enraged Rafaele. The hot spurt of possessiveness had been an alien concept to him. Before they’d even kissed!
In the end sexual frustration had been such a tight ball of need inside him that one day he’d called her to his office and, without being able to say a word, had taken her face in his hands and kissed her, drowning in an intoxicating sweetness he’d never tasted before.
Even now that memory alone had an effect on Rafaele’s libido and body. He cursed. He’d thought of her months ago, at his mother’s funeral. He thought of her more often than he liked to admit. Sam was the one who had taken him too close to the edge. They had shared more than just a brief sexual history. They had almost shared...a child.
Even now a shiver of fear snaked down Rafaele’s spine. How close he’d come to dealing with something he never wanted to deal with. That was what he needed to remember.
He swung around and stared blankly into his huge office. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with him, and he should want to have nothing to do with her.
He should not have given in to the compulsion to track her down. He should steer well clear of Samantha Rourke and put her out of his mind. For good.
* * *
Samantha woke up on Saturday morning when a small warm body burrowed into the bed beside her. She smiled sleepily and wrapped her arms around her sturdy son, breathing in his sweet scent.
‘Morning, handsome.’
‘Morning, Mummy, I love you.’
Sam’s heart clenched so hard for a second that she caught her breath. She kissed the top of his head. ‘I love you too, sweetheart.’
Milo pulled his head back and Sam cracked open an eye and grimaced at the morning light.
He giggled. ‘You’re funny.’
Sam started to tickle Milo and he screeched with glee. Soon they were both wide awake and he was scrambling back out of the bed to clatter down the stairs.
She shouted after him. ‘Don’t turn on the TV yet!’
She heard him stop and could imagine his thwarted expression, and then he called back, ‘Okay. I’ll look at my book.’
Sam’s heart clenched again. He would too. She knew when she went downstairs he’d be looking at his book studiously, even though he couldn’t really read yet. He was such a good boy. Such a bright boy. Sometimes it scared her, how intelligent he was, because she felt as if she didn’t have the means to handle it.
Bridie, her father’s housekeeper, who had stayed on after he’d died two years previously, would often look at her with those far too shrewd Irish eyes and say, ‘Well, where do you think he got it from? His grandfather was a professor of physics and you had your head in books from the age of two.’
Then she would sniff in that way she had and say, ‘Now, obviously, as I don’t know anything about his father, I can’t speculate on that side of things...’ which was Sam’s cue to give her a baleful look and change the subject.
If it hadn’t been for Bridie O’Sullivan, though, Sam reminded herself as she got out of bed, she would never have been able to get the PhD which had got her onto the lucrative research programme at the university, and which now helped pay for food, clothes and Bridie’s wonderful care for Milo five days a week.
Bridie lived in the granny flat that had been built onto the side of the house some years before.
As Sam tied the belt on her robe, and prepared to go downstairs to get breakfast ready for herself and Milo, she tried to suppress the resurgence of guilt. The guilt that had been eating at her insides all week since she’d had that phone call. The guilt that had been a constant presence for four years, if she was completely honest with herself.
It unsettled her so much that she slept badly every night, tortured with memories while awake and by dreams while asleep, full of lurid images. Hot images. She woke tangled in the sheets, her skin damp with sweat, her heart racing, her head aching.
Rafaele Falcone. The man who had shown her just how colourless her world had been before demonstrating how easily he could deposit her back into perpetual greyness. As if she’d had no right to experience such a lavish, sensual dream.
Even now she wondered what on earth it had been about her that had caught his eye. But whatever it had been, to her everlasting shame, she would never forgive herself for believing that it had been more. For falling for him like some lovestruck teenager.
She reassured herself for the umpteenth time that week that he didn’t deserve to know about Milo because he’d never wanted him in the first place. She would never forget how his face had leached of all colour when she’d told him she was pregnant.
Sam sagged back onto the side of the bed, the onslaught of memories coming too thick and fast to escape. He’d been away on a trip for three weeks and during that time Sam had found out she was pregnant. He’d asked to see her as soon as he’d returned, and after three weeks of no contact Sam hadn’t been able to stop her heart from pumping with anticipation. Maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said before he’d gone on the trip...
‘It might be no harm, cara, for us to spend some time apart. My work is beginning to suffer...you’re far too distracting...’
But when she’d walked into his office he’d looked stern. Serious. Before she could lose her nerve Sam had blurted out, ‘I have to tell you something.’
He’d looked at her warily. ‘Go on, then.’
Sam had blushed and nervously twisted her hands, suddenly wondering if she was completely crazy to have a feeling of optimism that he might welcome her news. They’d only spent a month together. One heady, glorious month. Four weeks. Was that really enough time—?
‘Sam?’
She’d looked at him, taken a deep breath and dived in. ‘Rafaele...I’m pregnant.’
The words had hung ominously between them and a thick silence had grown. Rafaele’s face had leached of all colour and Sam had known in that instant with cold clarity that she’d been a complete fool. About everything.
He’d literally gone white, his eyes standing out starkly green against the pallor. She’d thought he might faint and had moved towards him, but he’d put out a hand and asked hoarsely, ‘How?’
She’d stopped in her tracks, but hadn’t been able to halt the spread of ice in her veins. ‘I think...when we were careless.’
An understatement for the amount of times they had been careless...in the shower, in the living room of Rafaele’s palazzo when they’d been too impatient to make it to the bedroom, in the kitchen of her flat one evening, when he’d pushed her up against the counter and pulled down her trousers...
Sam had felt hot and mortified all at once. It felt so...lurid now. So desperate. It had been sex, not romance. Had she ever really known him? The vulnerability she’d felt in that moment was a searing everlasting memory.
He’d looked at her accusingly. ‘You said you were on the pill.’
Sam got defensive. ‘I was—I am. But I told you it was a low-dosage pill not specifically for contraception. And I had that twenty-four-hour bug a few weeks ago...’
Rafaele had sat down heavily into his chair. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in ten seconds. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he’d muttered, as if Sam weren’t even there.
She had tried to control her emotions, stop them from overwhelming her. ‘It’s as much of a shock to me as it obviously is to you.’
He’d looked up at her then and his face had tightened. ‘Are you sure it’s a shock? How do I know this wasn’t planned in some attempt to trap me?’
Sam had almost staggered backwards, her mouth open, but nothing had come out. Eventually she’d managed, ‘You think...you truly think I did this on purpose?’
Rafaele had stood up and started to pace, some colour coming back into his cheeks, highlighting that stunning bone structure. He’d laughed in a way that had chilled Sam right to her core, because she’d never heard him laugh like that before. Harsh.
He’d faced her. ‘It’s not unheard of, you know, for a woman who wants to ensure herself a lifetime of security from a rich man.’
The depth of this heretofore unrevealed cynicism had sent her reeling. Sam had stalked up to Rafaele’s desk, her hands clenched to fists. ‘You absolute bastard. I would never do such a thing.’
And then she’d had a flash of his expression and his demeanour when she’d come into the room, before she’d given him a chance to speak. A very bitter and dark truth had sunk in.
‘You were going to tell me it was over, weren’t you? That’s why you asked to see me.’
Rafaele had had the grace to avoid her eye for a moment, but then he’d looked at her, his face devoid of expression.
‘Yes.’
That was all. One word. Confirmation that Sam had been living in cloud cuckoo land, believing that what she’d shared with one of the world’s perennial playboys had been different.
She’d been so overcome with conflicting emotions and turmoil at his attitude to her news and his stark lack of emotion that she’d been afraid if she tried to speak she’d start crying. So she’d run out of his office. Not even caring that she’d humiliated herself beyond all saving.
She’d hidden in her tiny apartment, avoiding Rafaele, avoiding his repeated attempts to get her to open the door.
And then it had started. The bleeding and the awful cramping pain. Terrified, Sam had finally opened the door to him, her physical pain momentarily eclipsing the emotional pain.
She’d looked at Rafaele and said starkly, ‘I’m bleeding.’
He’d taken her to a clinic, grim and pale, but Sam hadn’t really noticed. Her hands had been clutching her belly as she’d found herself willing the tiny clump of cells to live, no matter what. For someone who hadn’t ever seriously contemplated having children, because she’d lost her own mother young and had grown up with an emotionally absent father, in that moment Sam had felt a primitive need to become a mother so strong that it had shaken her to her core.
At the clinic the kindly doctor had informed her that she wasn’t, in fact, miscarrying. She was just experiencing heavier spotting than might be normal. He’d said the cramps were probably stress-induced and reassured her that with rest and avoiding vexatious situations she should go on to have a perfectly normal and healthy pregnancy.
The relief had been overwhelming. Until Sam had remembered that Rafaele was outside the door, pacing up and down, looking grim. He was a ‘vexatious situation’ personified. She could remember feeling the cramps come back even then, at the very prospect of having to deal with him, and again that visceral feeling had arisen: the need to protect her child.
She’d dreaded telling him that she hadn’t miscarried after all.
And then a nurse had left the room, leaving the door ajar, and Rafaele’s voice had floated distinctly into the room from just outside.
Everything within her stilling, Sam had heard him say tightly, ‘I’m just caught up with something at the moment... No, it’s not important... I will resolve this as soon as I can and get back to you.’
And just like that the small, traitorous flame of hope she’d not even been aware she was pathetically harbouring had been extinguished. Obviously because of doctor/patient confidentiality Rafaele was none the wiser as to whether or not she’d actually miscarried. He believed that she had.
He’d terminated his conversation and come into the room. Sam had looked out of the window, feeling as if she was breaking apart inside. She’d forced herself to be calm and not stressed. The baby was paramount now.
Rafaele had stopped by the bed. ‘Sam...’
Sam hadn’t looked at him. She’d just answered, ‘What?’
She’d heard him sigh. ‘Look, I’m sorry...really sorry that this has happened. We should never have become involved.’
Sam had felt empty. ‘No,’ she’d agreed, ‘we shouldn’t have.’
Even then a small voice had urged her to put him straight, but she’d felt so angry in that moment and had already felt her stress levels rising, her body starting to cramp. Dangerous for the baby.
Feeling panicked, she’d finally turned her head to acknowledge Rafaele and said, ‘Look, what’s done is done. It’s over. I have to stay in for a night for observation but I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going home.’
Rafaele had been pale but Sam had felt like reaching up to slap him. He felt no more for her than he did for the fact that as far as he was aware he’d just lost a baby. He just wanted to be rid of her. ‘I will resolve this as soon as I can...’
‘Just go, Rafaele, leave me be.’ Please, she’d begged silently, feeling those stress levels rising. Her hands had tightened on the bedcover, knuckles white.
Rafaele had just looked at her, those green eyes unfathomable. ‘It’s for the best, cara. Believe me... You are young...you have your career ahead of you. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’
Sam’s mouth had twisted and she’d resolved in that moment to do her utmost to focus on her career...and her baby. No matter what it took. ‘Of course not. Now, please, just go.’
Sam’s control had felt so brittle she’d been afraid it would snap at any moment and he’d see the true depth of her agony.
Rafaele had stepped back a pace. ‘I will arrange for your travel home. You won’t have to worry about anything.’
Sam had stifled a semi-hysterical giggle at the thought of the monumental task and life-change ahead of her. She’d nodded abruptly. ‘Fine.’
Rafaele had been almost at the door by then, relief a tangible aura around him. ‘Goodbye, Sam.’
Feeling a sob rise, and choking it down with all of her will and strength, Sam had managed a cool-sounding, ‘Goodbye, Rafaele.’ And then she’d turned her head, because her eyes had been stinging. She’d heard the door close softly and a huge sob had ripped out of her chest, and tears, hot and salty, had flowed down her cheeks.
By the time Sam had been at home for a week she’d begun veering wildly between the urge to tell Rafaele the truth and the urge to protect herself from further pain. Then she’d seen on some vacuous celebrity TV channel that Rafaele was already out and about with some gorgeous Italian TV personality, smiling that devilishly sexy smile. As she’d looked at Rafaele, smiling for the TV cameras, his arm around the waist of the sinuous dark-haired Latin beauty, she’d known that she could never tell him because he simply wasn’t interested.
‘Mummy, I want Cheerios!’
Sam blinked and came back to reality. Milo. Breakfast. She pushed aside the memories, tried to ignore the guilt and got up to attend to her son.
* * *
That evening when the doorbell rang Sam looked up from washing the dinner things in the sink. Milo was playing happily on the floor in the sitting room with his cars, oblivious. As she went to answer it she assured herself it was probably just Bridie, who had forgotten her keys to the flat again.
But when she opened the door on the dusky late winter evening it wasn’t Bridie, who stood at five foot two inches in heels. It was someone over a foot taller and infinitely more masculine.
Rafaele Falcone.
For a long, breathless moment, the information simply wouldn’t compute. Suspended in time, Sam seemed to be able to take in details almost dispassionately. Faded jeans. Battered leather jacket. Thin wool jumper. Thick dark brown hair which still had a tendency to curl a little too much over his collar. The high forehead. The deep-set startling green eyes. The patrician bump of his nose, giving him that indelible air of arrogance. The stunning bone structure and that golden olive skin that placed him somewhere more exotic than cold, wet England.
And his mouth. That gorgeous, sculpted-for-wicked-things mouth. It always looked on the verge of tipping into a sexy half-smile, full of the promise of sensual nirvana. Unless it was pulled into a grim line, as it had been when she had seen him last.
Reality slammed into Sam like a fist to her gut. She actually sucked in a breath, only realising then that she’d been starving her lungs for long seconds while she gawped at him like a groupie.
‘Samantha.’
His voice lodged her even more firmly in reality. And the burning intensity of his green eyes as they swept down her body. Sam became acutely aware of her weekend uniform of skinny jeans, thick socks and a very worn plaid shirt. Her hair was scraped up into a bun and she wore no make-up.
Rafaele smiled. ‘Still a tomboy, I see. Despite my best efforts.’
A memory exploded into Sam’s consciousness. Rafaele, in his palazzo, presenting her with a huge white box. Under what had seemed like acres and acres of silver tissue paper a swathe of material had appeared.
Sam had lifted it out to reveal a breathtaking evening gown. Rafaele had stripped her himself and dressed her again. One-shouldered and figure-hugging, in black and flesh-coloured stripes, the dress had accentuated her hips, her breasts, and a long slit had revealed her legs. Then he’d taken her out to one of Milan’s most exclusive restaurants. They’d been the last to leave, somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, drunk on sparkling wine and lust, and he’d taken her home to his palazzo...
‘Still a tomboy, I see...’
The memory vanished and the backdrop of Sam’s very suburban street behind Rafaele came back into view.
Sexy smile. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’
Sam’s hand clenched tight around the door. Milo. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally. Rousing her.
‘Now isn’t a good time. I don’t know why you’ve come here. I thought I made it clear the other day that I’m not interested.’
Sam forced herself to look at him. Four years had passed and in that time she’d changed utterly. She felt older, more jaded. Whereas Rafaele only looked even more gorgeous. The unfairness of it galvanised her. He’d known nothing of her life the last few years. Because you didn’t tell him, a voice pointed out.
‘Why did you come here, Rafaele? I’m sure you have more important things to do on a Saturday evening.’
The bitterness in Sam’s voice surprised her.
Rafaele’s jaw tightened, but he answered smoothly. ‘I thought if I came to see you in person you might be persuaded to listen to my offer.’
A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it as she heard a high-pitched ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.
She felt Milo land at her legs, clasping his arms around them, and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. Like trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Like I said, now really isn’t a good time.’
She could see awareness dawn on Rafaele’s face as he obviously took in the fact of a child. He started to speak stiltedly. ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought... Of course it’s been years...you must be married by now. Children...’
Then his eyes slid down and she saw them widen. She didn’t have to look to know that Milo was now standing beside her, one chubby hand clinging onto her leg. Wide green eyes would be staring innocently up into eyes the exact same shade of green. Unusual. Lots of people commented on how unusual they were.
Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly...dazed. He looked up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing as clearly as if she was standing apart, observing the interplay. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour. Pale as parchment. Panicked. Guilty.
And just like that, something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MUMMY, CAN WE watch the cars on TV now?’
Sam put her hand to Milo’s head and said faintly, ‘Why don’t you go on and I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’
Milo ran off again and the silence grew taut between Sam and Rafaele. He knew. She felt it in her bones. He’d known as soon as he’d looked into his son’s eyes. So identical. She hated that something about his immediate recognition of his own son made something soften inside her.
He was looking at her so hard she felt it like a physical brand on her skin. Hot.
‘Let me in, Samantha. Now.’
Feeling shaky and clammy all at once, Sam stepped back and opened the door. Rafaele came in, his tall, powerful form dwarfing the hallway. He smelt of light spices and something musky, and through the shock Sam’s blood jumped in recognition.
She shut the door and walked quickly to the kitchen at the end of the hall, passing where Milo sat cross-legged in front of the TV watching a popular car programme. His favourite.
She was about to pull the door shut when a curt voice behind her instructed, ‘Leave it.’
She dropped her hand and tensed. Rafaele was looking at Milo as he sat enraptured by the cars on the screen. He was holding about three of his favourite toy cars in his hands. If his eyes and pale olive skin hadn’t been a fatal giveaway then this might have been the worst kind of ironic joke.
Sam stepped back and walked into the kitchen. She couldn’t feel her legs. She felt sick, light-headed. She turned around to see Rafaele follow her in and close the door behind him, not shutting it completely.
Rafaele was white beneath his dark colouring. And he looked murderous.
He bit out, ‘This is where you tell me that by some extraordinary feat of genetic coincidence that little boy in there isn’t three years and approximately three months old. That he didn’t inherit exactly the same colour eyes that I inherited from my own mother. That he isn’t my son.’
Sam opened her mouth. ‘He is...’ Even now, at this last second, her brain searched desperately for something to cling onto. Some way this could be justified. He was his father. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the right any more. She’d never had the right. ‘He is your son.’
Silence, stretching taut and stark, and then he repeated, ‘He is my son?’
Sam just nodded. Nausea was churning in her belly now. The full implications of this were starting to hit home.
Rafaele emitted a long stream of Italian invective and Sam winced because she recognised some of the cruder words—they were pretty universal. Her belly was so tight she put a hand to it unconsciously. She watched as Rafaele struggled to take this in. The enormity of it.
‘No wonder you were so keen to get rid of me the other day.’
He paced back and forth in the tiny space. She could feel his anger and tension as it lashed out like a live electrical wire, snapping at her feet.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at her. ‘Are you married?’
Sam shook her head painfully. ‘No.’
‘And what if I hadn’t decided to pay you a visit? Would you have let me remain in blissful ignorance for ever?’
Stricken, Sam whispered, ‘I don’t...I don’t know.’ Even as she admitted that, though, the knowledge seeped in. She wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. She would have told him.
He pinned her to the spot with that light green gaze which had once devoured her alive and was now colder than the arctic.
‘You bitch.’
Sam flinched. He might as well have slapped her across the face. It had the same effect. The words were so coldly and implacably delivered.
‘You didn’t want a baby,’ she whispered, unable to inject more force into her voice.
‘So you just lied to me?’
Sam could feel her cheeks burning now, with shame. ‘I thought it was a miscarriage, as did you. But at the clinic, after the doctor had done his examination, he told me that I wasn’t miscarrying.’
Rafaele crossed his arms and she could see his hands clenched to fists. She shivered at the threat of violence even though she knew he would never hit her. But she sensed he wanted to hit something.
‘You knew then and yet you barefaced lied to me and let me walk away.’
Clutching at the smallest of straws, Sam said shakily, ‘I didn’t lie...you assumed...I just didn’t tell you.’
‘And the reason you didn’t inform me was because...?’
‘You didn’t...didn’t want to know.’ The words felt flimsy and ineffectual now. Petty.
‘Based on...?’
It was as if he couldn’t quite get out full sentences, Sam felt his rage strangling his words.
Her brain felt heavy. ‘Because of how you reacted when I told you in the first place...’
Sam recalled the indescribable pain of realising that Rafaele had been about to break it off with her. His abject shock at the prospect of her pregnancy. It gave her some much needed strength. ‘And because of what you said afterwards...at the clinic. I heard you on the phone.’
Rafaele frowned and it was a glower. ‘What did I say?’
Sam’s sliver of strength started to drain away again like a traitor. ‘You were talking to someone. You said you were caught up in something unimportant.’ Even now those words scored at Sam’s insides like a knife.
Rafaele’s expression turned nuclear. His arms dropped, his hands were fists. ‘Dio, Samantha. I can’t even recall that conversation. No doubt I just said something—anything—to placate one of my assistants. I thought you’d just miscarried. Do you really think I was about to announce that in an innocuous phone call?’
Sam gulped and had to admit reluctantly, ‘Maybe...maybe not. But how did I know that? All I could hear was your relief that you didn’t have to worry about a baby holding your life up and your eagerness to leave.’
He all but exploded. ‘Need I remind you that I was also in shock, and at that point I thought there was no baby!’
Sam was breathing hard and Rafaele looked as if he was about to kick aside the kitchen table between them to come and throttle her.
Just then a small, unsure voice emerged from the doorway. ‘Mummy?’
Immediately Sam’s world refracted down to Milo, who stood in the doorway. He’d opened it unnoticed by them and was looking from one to the other, his lower lip quivering ominously at the explosive tension.
Sam flew over and picked him up and he clung to her. Her conscience struck her. He was always a little intimidated by men because he wasn’t around them much.
‘Why is the man still here?’ he asked now, slanting sidelong looks to Rafaele and curling into Sam’s body as much as he could.
Sam stroked his back reassuringly and tried to sound normal. ‘This is just an old friend of Mummy’s. He’s stopped by to say hello, that’s all. He’s leaving now.’
‘Okay,’ Milo replied, happier now. ‘Can we look at cars?’
Sam looked at him and forced a smile, ‘Just as soon as I say goodbye to Mr Falcone, okay?’
‘Okey-dokey.’ Milo used his new favourite phrase that he’d picked up in playschool, squirmed back out of Sam’s arms and ran out of the kitchen again.
Sam watched Rafaele struggle to take it all in. Myriad explosive emotions crossing his face.
‘You’ll have to go,’ she entreated. ‘It’ll only confuse and upset him if you stay.’
Rafaele closed the distance between them and Sam instinctively moved back, but the oven was behind her. Rafaele’s scent enveloped her, musky and male. Her heart pounded.
‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
After a long searing moment, during which she wasn’t sure how she didn’t combust from the anger being directed at her, Rafaele turned on his heel and left, stopping briefly at the sitting room door to look in at Milo again.
He cast one blistering look back at Sam and then he was out through the front door and gone. Sam heard the powerful throttle of an engine as it roared to life and then mercifully faded again.
It was then that she started to shake all over. Grasping for a chair to hold onto, she sank down into it, her teeth starting to chatter.
‘Mummeeee!’ came a plaintive wail from the sitting room.
Sam called out, ‘I’ll be there in one second, I promise.’
The last thing she needed was for Milo to see her in this state. Her brain was numb. She couldn’t even quite take in what had just happened—the fact that she’d seen Rafaele again for the first time since those cataclysmic days.
When she was finally feeling a little more in control she went in to Milo and sat down on the floor beside him. Without even taking his eyes off the TV he crawled into her lap and Sam’s heart constricted. She kissed his head.
Rafaele’s words came back to her: ‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
She shivered. She didn’t even want to think of what she’d be facing when she heard from Rafaele again.
* * *
On Monday morning Sam filed into the conference room at the university and took a seat at the long table for the weekly budget meeting. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness. Unsurprisingly she hadn’t slept all weekend, on tenterhooks waiting for Rafaele to appear again like a spectre. In her more fanciful moments she’d imagined that she’d dreamt it all up: the phone call; his appearance at the house. Coming face to face with his son. A small, snide voice pointed out that it was no less than she deserved but she pushed it down.
Robustly she told herself that if she’d had to go back in time she would have done the same again, because if she hadn’t surely the stress of Rafaele being reluctantly bound to her and a baby would have resulted in a miscarriage for real?
Gertie, the secretary, arrived then and sat down breathlessly next to Sam. She said urgently, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened over the weekend...’
Sam looked at her, used to Gertie’s penchant for gossip. She didn’t want to hear some salacious story involving students and professors behaving badly, but the older woman’s face suddenly composed itself and Sam looked to see that the head of their department had walked into the room.
And then her heart stopped. Because right on his heels was another man. Rafaele.
For a second Sam thought she might faint. She was instantly light-headed. She had to put her hands on the edge of the table and grip it as she watched in mounting horror and shock as Rafaele coolly and calmly strode into the room, looking as out of place in this unadorned academic environment as an exotic peacock on a grubby high street.
He didn’t even glance her way. He took a seat at the head of the table alongside their boss, looking stupendously handsome and sexy. He sat back, casually undoing a button on his pristine suit jacket with a big hand, long fingers...
Sam was mesmerised.
This had to be a dream, she thought to herself frantically. She’d wake up any moment. But Gertie was elbowing her none too discreetly and saying sotto voce, ‘This is what I was about to tell you.’
The stern glare of their boss quelled any chat and then, with devastating inevitability, Sam’s stricken gaze met Rafaele’s and she knew it wasn’t a dream. There was a distinct gleam of triumph in those green depths, and a more than smug smile was playing around that firmly sculpted mouth.
Her boss was standing up and clearing his throat. Sam couldn’t look away from Rafaele, and he didn’t remove his gaze from hers, as if forcing her to take in every word now being spoken, but she only heard snippets.
‘Falcone Industries...most successful...honoured that Mr Falcone has decided to fund this research out of his own pocket...delighted at this announcement...funding guaranteed for as long as it takes.’
Then Rafaele got up to address the room. There were about thirteen people and, predictably, you could have heard a pin drop as his charismatic effect held everyone in thrall. He’d finally moved his gaze from Sam and she felt as if she could breathe again, albeit painfully. Her heart was racing and she took in nothing of what he said, trying to wrap her sluggish brain around the ramifications of this shocking development.
‘Samantha...’
Sam looked up, dazed, to see her boss was now addressing her, and that Rafaele had sat down. She hadn’t noticed, nor heard a word.
‘I’m sorry, Bill, what did you say?’ She was amazed she’d managed to speak.
‘I said,’ he repeated with exaggerated patience, clearly disgruntled that she appeared to be on another planet while in such illustrious company, ‘that as of next week you will be working from the Falcone factory. You’re to oversee setting up a research facility there which will work in tandem with the one here in the university.’
He directed himself to the others again while this bomb detonated within Sam’s solar plexus.
‘I don’t think I need to point out the significance of being allowed to conduct this research within a functioning factory, and especially one as prestigious as Falcone Motors. It’ll put us streets ahead of other research in this area and, being assured of Falcone funding for at least five years, we’re practically guaranteed success.’
Sam couldn’t take any more. She rose up in a blind panic, managed to mumble something vague about needing air and fled the room.
* * *
Rafaele watched Sam leave dispassionately. Since the other evening he’d been in shock. Functioning, but in shock. His anger and rage was too volcanic to release, fearsome in its intensity. And fearsome for Rafaele if he contemplated for a second why his emotions were so deep and hot.
Sam’s boss beside him emitted a grunt of displeasure at her hasty departure, but Rafaele felt nothing but satisfaction to be causing her a modicum of the turbulence in his own gut. Through his shock Rafaele had felt a visceral need to push Sam off her axis as much as she’d pushed him off his.
He recalled bitterly how reluctant she’d been to talk to him in the first place about the job he was offering, all the while knowing her secret. Harbouring his son. With one phone call to his team Rafaele had put in motion this audacious plan to take over the research programme at her university and had relished this meeting.
While Sam’s boss continued his speech Rafaele retreated inwardly, but anyone looking at him would have seen only fierce concentration.
He breathed in and realised that he hadn’t taken a proper breath since he’d seen Sam looking at him with that stricken expression on her face in the doorway of her house the other evening. The initial punch to his gut he’d received when he’d first thought that Sam was married, with someone else’s child, was galling to remember—and more exposing than he liked to admit.
Nothing excused her from withholding his son from him for more than three years. Rafaele had been about Milo’s age when his world had imploded. When he’d witnessed his father, on his knees, sobbing, prostrating himself at Rafaele’s mother’s feet, begging her not to leave him.
‘I love you. What am I if you leave? I am nothing. I have nothing...’
‘Get up, Umberto,’ she’d said. ‘You shame yourself in front of our son. What kind of a man will he be with a crying, snivelling wretch for a father?’
What kind of a man would he be?
Rafaele felt tight inside. The kind of man who knew that the most important things in life were building a solid foundation. Security. Success. He’d vowed never to allow anything to reduce him to nothing, as his father had been reduced, with not even his pride to keep him standing. Emotions were dangerous. They had the power to derail you completely. He knew how fickle women were, how easily they could walk away. Or keep you from your child.
Rafaele had driven back to Sam’s house on Sunday, fired up, ready to confront her again, but just as he’d pulled up he’d seen them leaving the house. Milo had been pushing a scooter. He’d followed them to a small local park and watched like a fugitive as they played. Dark emotions had twisted inside him as he’d watched Sam’s effortless long-legged grace and ease. He’d known that if he hadn’t reappeared in their lives this would have just been another banal Sunday morning routine trip to the park.
Seeing his son’s small sturdy body, watching him running around, laughing gleefully, something alien inside him had swelled. It was...pride. And something else that he couldn’t name. But it had reminded him of that day again—the darkest in his memory—when his mother had gripped his hand painfully tight and pulled him in her wake out of their family palazzo outside Milan, leaving his father sobbing uncontrollably on the ground. A pathetic, broken man.
That was one of the reasons Rafaele had never wanted to have children. Knowing how vulnerable they were had always felt like too huge a responsibility to bear. No one knew better than he how events even at that young age could shape your life. And so he’d never expected that, when faced with his son, there would be such a torrent of feelings within him, each one binding him invisibly and indelibly to this person he didn’t even know properly yet. Or that when he’d watched him running around the other day there would be a surge of something so primal and protective that he just knew without question, instantly, that he would do anything to prevent his son from coming into harm’s way.
From far too early an age Rafaele had been made aware that the absence of a father corroded at your insides like an acid.
Resolve firmed like a ball of concrete inside him. There was no way on this earth that he was going to walk away from his son now and give him a taste of what he’d suffered.
Cutting off Sam’s boss curtly, Rafaele stood up and muttered an excuse, and left the room. There was only one person he wanted to hear talk right now.
* * *
Sam’s stomach felt raw after she’d lost her breakfast, minute as it had been, into a toilet in the ladies’ room. She felt shaky, weak, and looked as pale as death in the reflection of the cracked mirror. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth out, knowing that she had to go back out there and face—
The door suddenly swung open and Sam stood up straight, hands gripping the side of the sink. For once she prayed it might be Gertie, even though she knew it wasn’t when every tiny hair seemed to prickle on her skin.
She turned around and saw Rafaele, looking very tall and very dark as he leant back against the door, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Even now her body sang, recognising the man who had introduced her to her own sensuality, and she clamped down on the rogue response, bitterly aware that not even the harsh fluorescent lighting could strip away his sheer good looks.
Welcome anger rose up and Sam seized on it, crossing her arms over her chest. Her voice felt rough, raw. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Rafaele? How dare you come in here and use your might to get back at me? These are people you’re playing with—people who have invested long years of study into their area—and suddenly you sweep in and promise them a glimpse of future success when we both know—’
‘Enough.’
Rafaele’s voice sounded harsh in the echoing silence of the cavernous tiled ladies’ bathroom.
‘I am fully committed to following through on my promise of funding and support to this university.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Unless you’ve already forgotten, I had contacted you initially to ask you to work for me. I had every intention of using your expertise to further this very research for my own ends.’
He shrugged minutely. ‘There’s nothing new in that—any motor company worth its salt is on the lookout for new research and ways of beating the competition with new technology. You have single-handedly elevated this research to a far more advanced level than any other facility, in a university or otherwise.’
His words sent Sam no sense of professional satisfaction. She was still in shock. ‘That may be the case,’ she bit out tightly, ‘but now that you know about Milo you’re seeking to get back at me personally.’
She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
‘It just so happens that you have the means to be able to come in and take over the entire department to do your bidding.’
Fresh panic gripped her when she recalled her boss saying something about Sam herself going to work from his factory. Her arms grew tighter over her chest when she recalled the hothouse environment of working in Rafaele’s Milan factory four years ago and how easily he’d seduced her. The thought of going back into a similar environment, even if Rafaele would prefer to throttle her than sleep with her, made her clammy.
‘I will not be going to work for you. I will remain here at the university.’
Rafaele took a few paces forward and Sam saw the light of something like steel in his eyes and his expression. Her belly sank even as her skin tightened with betraying awareness.
‘You will be coming to work for me—or I will pull out of this agreement and all of your colleagues are back to square one. Your boss has informed me that if I hadn’t come along with the promise of funding he was going to have to let some people go. He can’t keep everyone on the payroll due to reduced projected funding this year. You would have been informed of that at this very meeting.’
Vaguely Sam was aware of the veracity of what he said. It had been rumoured for weeks. Once again she was struck by how little she’d appreciated how ruthless Rafaele was. ‘You bastard,’ she breathed.
Rafaele looked supremely unperturbed. ‘Hardly, when I’m saving jobs. It’s very simple if you do the right thing and accede to my wishes. And this is just the start of it, Samantha.’
Ice invaded her bloodstream. ‘Start of what?’
To her shock she realised belatedly how close Rafaele had come when he reached out a hand and cupped her jaw. She felt the strength of that hand, the faint calluses which reminded her of how he loved tinkering with engines despite his status. It was one of the things that had endeared him to her from the start.
In an instant an awful physical yearning rose up within her. Every cell in her body was reacting joyously to a touch she’d never thought she’d experience again. She was melting, getting hot. Damp.
Softly, he sliced open the wound in her heart. ‘The start of payback, Samantha. You owe me for depriving me of my son for more than three years and I will never let you forget it.’
* * *
For a moment Rafaele almost forgot where he was, who he was talking to. The feel of Sam’s skin under his hand was like silk, her jaw as delicate as the finest spun Murano glass. He had an almost overwhelming urge to keep sliding his hand around to the back of her neck, to tug her towards him so that he could feel her pressed against him and crush that pink rosebud mouth under his— Suddenly Rafaele realised what he was doing.
With a guttural curse he took his hand away and stepped back. Sam was looking at him with huge grey eyes, her face as pale as parchment with two pink spots in each cheek.
She blinked, almost as if she’d been caught in a similar spell, and then something in her eyes cleared. The anger was gone.
She changed tack, entreated him. She held out a hand and her voice was husky. ‘Please, Rafaele, we need to talk about this—’
‘No.’ The word was harsh, abrupt, and it cut her off effectively. Everything within Rafaele had seized at her attempt to try and take advantage of a moment when she might have perceived weakness on his part. To play on his conscience. With the shadows under her eyes making her look fragile and vulnerable.
He’d witnessed his mother for years, using her wiles to fool men into thinking she was vulnerable, fragile. Only to see how her expression would harden again once they were no longer looking and she’d got what she wanted. She’d been so cold the day she’d left his father, showing not an ounce of remorse.
Once, he mightn’t have believed Sam was like that, but that was before she’d kept his son from him, demonstrating equal, if not worse, callousness.
Rafaele took another step back and hated that he felt the need to do so. That volcanic anger was well and truly erupting now. He gritted out, ‘If you were a man...’
Sam tensed and her chin lifted. Gone was the soft look of before, the husky entreaty.
‘If I were a man...what? You’d thrash me? Well, what’s stopping you?’
Rafaele could see where her hands had clenched to fists by her side. He looked at her disgustedly. ‘Because I don’t raise my hands to women—or anyone, for that matter. But I felt like it for the first time when I realised that boy was my son.’
He couldn’t stop the words spilling out. That initial shock was infusing him all over again.
‘My son, Sam, my flesh and blood. He’s a Falcone. Dio. How could you have played God like that? What gave you the right to believe you had the answer? That you alone could decide to just cut me out of his life?’
Sam seemed to tense even more, her chin going higher. Those spots of red deepened, highlighting her delicate bone structure. ‘Do I need to remind you again that you practically tripped over your feet in your hurry to get out of the clinic that day? You could barely disguise your relief when you thought there was nothing to worry about. You just assumed the worst. It didn’t even occur to you to question whether or not I’d actually had a miscarriage, because you didn’t want a baby.’
Rafaele coloured, his conscience pricked by the reminder of how eager he’d been to get away from those huge bruised eyes, the raw emotion. The shock. The awareness that Sam had strayed too far under his skin.
Tightly he admitted, ‘I never had any intention of having children. But you gave me no reason to doubt the inevitable conclusion of what we’d both believed to be a miscarriage.’
Sam choked out, ‘You were quite happy to wash your hands of me, so don’t blame me now if I felt the best course was to leave you out of my decision-making process.’
Rafaele looked at Sam across the few feet that separated them and all he could see was her eyes. Huge, and as grey as the rolling English clouds. She was sucking him in again but he wouldn’t let her. She’d wilfully misdirected him into believing she’d miscarried when all the while she’d held the knowledge of their baby, living, in her belly.
He shook his head. ‘That’s just not good enough.’
Sam’s voice took on a defensive edge. ‘I was hardly encouraged to get in touch and tell you the truth when I saw you with another woman only a week after that day.’
She was breathing heavily under her shirt and he could see her breasts rise and fall. A flash of heat went straight to his groin and Rafaele crushed it ruthlessly. He focused on her face and tried to forget that he actually hadn’t slept with another woman for about a year after Sam had left, despite appearances and despite his best efforts. Every time he’d come close something inside him had shut down. And since then...? His experiences with women had been anything but satisfactory. To be reminded of this now was galling.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me now, just to deflect your own guilt.’
But the guilt that had struck Rafaele wouldn’t be banished, much as he wanted it to be. Damn her! He wouldn’t let her do this to him now. She’d borne his child. His son. And said nothing.
Sam’s voice was bitter. ‘God forbid that I would forget what our relationship was about. Sex. That was pretty much it, wasn’t it? Forget conversation, or anything more intimate than being naked in bed. It wasn’t as if you didn’t make that abundantly clear, Rafaele, telling me over and over again not to fall for you because you weren’t about that.’
‘But you did anyway, didn’t you?’ Rafaele couldn’t keep the accusing note out of his voice and he saw Sam blanch.
‘I thought I loved you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘After all, you were my first lover, and isn’t it normal for a virgin to develop an attachment to her first? Isn’t that one of the helpful warnings you gave me?’
Rafaele saw nothing right then but a memory of Sam’s naked and flushed body as she’d lain on his bed before him, her breasts high and round, her narrow waist, long legs. Skin so pure and white it had reminded him of alabaster—except she’d been living, breathing, so passionate. And she’d been innocent. He’d never forget how it had felt to sink into that slick, tight heat for the first time. It was his most erotic memory. Her gasp of shock turning to pleasure.
She continued, ‘But don’t worry. I soon got over it and realised how shallow those feelings were. Once I was faced with the reality of pregnancy and a baby.’
‘A reality,’ Rafaele gritted out, angry at that memory and at how easily it had slipped past his guard, ‘that you decided to face alone.’
Reacting against her ability to scramble his thought-processes, Rafaele changed tack.
‘Was it a punishment, Sam? Hmm?’ He answered himself. ‘Punishment for my being finished with you? For not wanting more? For letting you go? For not wanting to have a baby because that’s not what our relationship was about?’
Rafaele couldn’t stop the demon inside him.
‘I think the problem is that you fell for me and you were angry because I didn’t fall for you, so you decided to punish me. It’s so obvious...’
CHAPTER THREE
SAM CLOSED the distance between them, her hand lifted and she hit Rafaele across the face before she even registered the impulse to do so. She realised in the sickeningly taut silence afterwards that she’d reacted because he’d spoken her worst fears out loud. Here in this awful, stark, echoey room.
With a guttural curse, and his cheek flaring red where Sam had hit him, Rafaele hauled her into his arms and his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her angrily, roughly.
It took a second for Sam to get over the shock, but what happened next wasn’t the reaction she would have chosen if she’d had half a brain cell still working. Her reaction came from her treacherous body and overrode her brain completely.
She started kissing him back, matching his anger with her own. For exposing her. For saying those words out loud. For making her feel even more ashamed and confused. For being here. For making her want him. For making her remember. For kissing her just to dominate her and prove how much she still wanted him.
Her hands were clutching Rafaele’s jacket. She tasted blood and yet it wasn’t pain that registered. It was passion, and it sent her senses spiralling out of all control. Rafaele’s hands were bruisingly hard on her arms and tears pricked behind Sam’s eyelids at the tumult of desire mixed with frustration.
She opened her eyes to see swirling green oceans. Rafaele pulled away jerkily and Sam could hear nothing but the thunder of her own heartbeat and her ragged breathing. She was still clutching his jacket and she let go, her hands shaking.
‘You’re bleeding...’
The fact that Rafaele’s voice was rough was no comfort. He was just angry, not overcome with passion.
Sam reached up and touched her lip and winced when it stung slightly. Her mouth felt swollen. She knew she had to get out of there before he saw something. Before he saw that very close behind her anger in that exchange had been an awful yearning for something else.
‘I have to go. They’ll be wondering where we are.’ Her insides were heaving, roiling. She was terrified she might be sick again, and this time all over Rafaele’s immaculate shoes. She couldn’t look at him.
‘Sam—’
‘No.’ She cut him off and looked at him. ‘Not here.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Fine. I’ll send a car for you this evening. We’ll talk at my place.’
Sam was too much in shock to argue. Too much had happened—too much physicality. Too much of a reminder that he aroused more passion in her just by looking at him than she’d ever felt in her life with anyone else. She simply didn’t have it in her right then to say anything other than a very reluctant, ‘Fine.’ She needed to get away from this man before he exposed her completely.
* * *
That evening, Sam waited for Rafaele in an exclusive townhouse in the middle of Mayfair, demesne of the rich and famous. Anger and an awful sense of futility had simmered in her belly all day as she’d had to put up with her colleagues excitedly discussing the great opportunity Rafaele Falcone had presented them with while knowing that it was only to ensure he gained as much control of her life as he could.
She was afraid of the volatility of her emotions after what had happened in that bathroom earlier and, worse, at the thought of working for him again. She forced herself to take deep breaths and focused on her surroundings. Luxurious sofas and chairs, dressed in shades of grey and white and cream. Low coffee tables and sleek furnishings. Seriously intimidating.
She felt very scruffy as she was still in her work uniform of narrow black trousers, white shirt and black jacket. Flat shoes. Hair pulled back. No make-up. These surroundings were made for a much more sensual woman. A woman who would drape herself seductively on a couch in a beautiful silk dress and wait for her lover.
It reminded Sam painfully of Rafaele’s palazzo on the outskirts of Milan, where sometimes she had fooled herself into believing nothing existed beyond those four walls. And that she was one of those beautiful seductive women.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
Sam whirled around so abruptly when she heard his voice that she felt dizzy. She realised she was clutching her leather bag to her chest like a shield and lowered it.
She really wasn’t prepared to see Rafaele again so soon, and that swirling cauldron of emotions within her was spiked with a mix of anger and ever-present shame. And the memory of that angry kiss. Her lips were still sensitive. He looked like the Devil himself, emerging from the shadows of the doorway. Tall, broad, hard, muscled. And mean. His face was harsh, his mouth unsmiling. Making a mockery of his apology for keeping her waiting.
Nothing had changed from earlier. But despite her anger Sam’s conscience stung. Tightly, she said, ‘I’m sorry...for hitting you earlier. I don’t know what came over me...but what you said...it was wrong.’
Liar. She burned inside. She might as well have held her tongue. She was lying to herself as much as to him.
Rafaele came further in. Grim. ‘I deserved it. I provoked you.’
Sam blanched and looked at him. She hadn’t expected that, and somewhere treacherous a part of her melted.
He walked past her and over to a drinks board, helping himself to something amber that swirled in the bottom of a bulbous glass. He looked at her over his shoulder, making heat flood her cheeks. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been making a thorough inspection of his broad back, tapering down to lean hips and firm buttocks.
‘Drink?’
She shook her head hurriedly and got out a choked, ‘No. Thank you.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Sit down, Sam—and you can put down your bag. You look as if your fingers might break.’
She looked down stupidly to see white knuckles through the skin of her fingers where they gripped the leather. Forcing herself to take a breath, she moved jerkily over to the couch and perched on the edge, resisting the design of it, which wanted to seduce her into a more relaxed pose.
Rafaele came and sat down opposite her, clearly far more relaxed than her as he sank back into the couch, resting one arm across the top. Sam fought the desire to look and see how his shirt must be stretched across his chest.
‘What kind of a name is Milo anyway? Irish?’
Sam blinked. It took a minute for his words to sink in because they were so unexpected. ‘It’s...it was my grandfather’s name.’
Sam was vaguely surprised he remembered that detail of her heritage. She was one generation removed from Ireland, actually, having been born and brought up in England because her parents had moved there after her brilliant father had been offered a job at a London university.
Sam sensed his anger building again. ‘I did intend to tell you...some day. I would never have withheld that information from Milo for ever.’
Rafaele snorted a harsh laugh. ‘That’s big of you. You would have waited until he’d built up a childhood full of resentment about his absent father and I wouldn’t have even known.’
Rafaele sat forward and put down his glass with a clatter. He ran his hand impatiently through his hair, making it flop messily onto his forehead. Sam’s insides clenched when she remembered how she’d once felt comfortable running her hands through his hair, using it to hold him in place when he’d had his face buried between—
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ABBY GREEN
She has the power to change everything…Rafaele Falcone runs his luxury auto empire and his private life with the same ice-cold ruthlessness. Emotions play no part in his decisions and he always demands the best – so he doesn’t hesitate to ask brilliant engineer Samantha Rourke to join his company, even though he walked away from her years before.That sexy Italian accent still sends shivers down her spine, but gutsy Sam knows it’s not just about her impossible desire to feel his hands on her body once again. Because Falcone is about to discover her deepest secret – one that will send his world into a spin!‘Breathtaking writing, I can’t get enough of Abby Green’s characters!’ – Veronica, 45, LampeterDiscover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/abbygreen
‘Samantha.’ Rafaele smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’
Sam’s hand clenched tightly around the door. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally rousing her.
‘Now isn’t a good time. I thought I made it clear that I’m not interested.’
A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it when she heard the high-pitched, ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.
She felt Milo land at her legs and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. As if she were trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Now really isn’t a good time.’
Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly. Dazed, he glanced up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour.
Panicked. Guilty.
Just like that something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.
BLOOD BROTHERS
Power and passion run in their veins
Rafaele and Alexio have learned that to feel emotion is to be weak. Calculated ruthlessness brings them immense success in the boardroom and in the bedroom. But a storm is coming with the sudden appearance of a long-lost half-brother and three women who will change their lives for ever …
ReadRafaele Falcone’sstory in: WHEN FALCONE’S WORLD STOPS TURNING February 2014
Only one woman has come close to touching this brooding Italian’s cold heart, and he intends to have her once more. But Samantha Rourke has a secret that will rock his world in a very different way…
ReadAlexio Christakos’sstory in: WHEN CHRISTAKOS MEETS HIS MATCH April 2014
His legendary Greek charm can get him any woman he wants—and he wants Sidonie Fitzgerald for one, hot night. But when that night isn’t enough will he regret breaking his own rules?
And coming soon …
Cesar Da Silva’sstory June 2014
The prodigal son is tormented by his dark past.
Can one woman save this Spanish billionaire’s tortured soul, or is he beyond redemption?
When Falcone’s World Stops Turning
Abby Green
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABBY GREEN spent her teens reading Mills and Boon
romances. After repeatedly deferring a degree to study Social Anthropology (long story!) she ended up working for many years in the film and TV industry as an assistant director.
One day, while standing outside an actor’s trailer waiting for him to emerge, in the rain, holding an umbrella in gale force winds, she thought to herself, Surely there’s more than this and it involves being inside and dry?
Thinking of her love for Mills and Boon, and encouraged by a friend, Abby decided to submit a partial manuscript. After numerous rewrites, chucking out the original idea and starting again with a new story, her first book was accepted and an author was born.
She is happy to report that days of standing in the rain outside an actor’s trailer are a rare occurrence now. She loves creating stories that will put the reader through an emotional wringer (in a good way, hopefully!), and yet leave her feeling satisfied and uplifted.
She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and you can find out more about her and her books here: www.abby-green.com
Recent titles by the same author:
FORGIVEN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN?
EXQUISITE REVENGE
ONE NIGHT WITH THE ENEMY
THE LEGEND OF DE MARCO
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
This is for Gervaise Landy, without whose influence I would most likely still be speaking into a walkie-talkie outside an actor’s trailer in a car park somewhere, in the rain, trying to explain what the delay is. Thank you for all the great conversations about Mills & Boon, and that first memorable one in particular all those years ago. As soon as we recognised a fellow fanatic in each other we were kindred spirits. You were the one who put the idea in my head in the first place about writing for Mills & Boon, and you were the one with the tape on how to write one—which I still have, and which I will return to you as soon as you promise me you’re going to sit down and finish that manuscript. With much love and thanks for sowing the seed of a dream in my head!
In thanking Gervaise I also have to dedicate this book to Caitríona Ní Mhurchú, at whose party I first met Gervaise. From the age of sixteen I have idolised this glamorous, confident, sexy, intelligent woman, so if you see any of those traits in my heroines it comes from a deep well of inspiration.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#u9c10cb4d-746c-5db9-a5e6-5dc174881338)
CHAPTER ONE (#u000eb06b-3715-5419-9311-d588bee50253)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc9657bfb-cd5d-5772-b36b-00427187ef7e)
CHAPTER THREE (#uab10e389-5433-5949-aa8d-6563e6fa18d0)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
RAFAELE FALCONE LOOKED at the coffin deep inside the open grave. The earth they’d thrown in was scattered on top, along with some lone flowers left by departing friends and acquaintances. Some of them had been men, inordinately upset. Evidently there was some truth to the rumours that the stunning Esperanza Christakos had taken lovers during her third marriage.
Rafaele felt many conflicting emotions, apart from the obvious grief for his dead mother. He couldn’t say that they’d ever had a close relationship; she’d been eternally elusive and had carried an air of melancholy about her. She’d also been beautiful. Beautiful enough to send his own father mad with grief when she left him.
The kind of woman who’d had the ability to make grown men completely lose all sense of dignity and of themselves. Not something that would ever happen to him. His single-minded focus was on his career and rebuilding the Falcone motor empire. Beautiful women were a pleasant diversion—nothing more. None of his lovers were ever under any illusions and expected nothing more than the transitory pleasure of his company.
His conscience pricked at this confident assertion—there had only been one lover who had taken him close to the edge but that was an experience he didn’t dwell on...not any more.
His half-brother, Alexio Christakos, turned to him now and smiled tightly. Rafaele felt a familiar ache in his chest. He loved his half-brother, and had done from the moment he’d been born, but their relationship wasn’t easy. It had been hard for Rafaele to witness his brother growing up, sure in the knowledge of his father’s success and support—so different from his own experience with his father. He’d felt resentful for a long time, which hadn’t been helped by his stepfather’s obvious antipathy towards the son that wasn’t his.
They both turned and walked away from the grave, engrossed in their own thoughts. Their mother had bequeathed to both her sons her distinctive green eyes, although Alexio’s were a shade more golden than Rafaele’s striking light green. Rafaele’s hair was thicker and a darker brown next to his brother’s short-cut ebony-black hair.
Differing only slightly in height, they were both a few inches over six foot. Rafaele’s build was broad and powerful. His brother’s just as powerful, but leaner. Dark stubble shadowed Rafaele’s firm jawline today, and when they came to a stop near the cars Alexio observed it, remarking dryly, ‘You couldn’t even clean up for the funeral?’
The tightness in Rafaele’s chest when he’d stood at the grave was easing slightly now. He curbed the urge to be defensive, to hide the vulnerability he felt, and faced his brother, drawling with a definite glint in his eye, ‘I got out of bed too late.’
He couldn’t explain to his brother how he’d instinctively sought the momentary escape he would find in the response of an eager woman, preferring not to dwell on how his mother’s death had made him feel. Preferring not to dwell on how it had brought up vivid memories of when she’d walked out on his father so many years ago, leaving him a broken man. He was still bitter, adamantly refusing to pay his respects to his ex-wife today despite Rafaele’s efforts to persuade him to come.
Alexio, oblivious to Rafaele’s inner tumult, shook his head and smiled wryly. ‘Unbelievable. You’ve only been in Athens for two days—no wonder you wanted to stay in a hotel and not at my apartment...’
Rafaele pushed aside the dark memories and quirked a mocking brow at his brother, about to dish out some of the same, when he saw a latecomer arrive. The words died on his lips and Alexio’s smile faded as he turned to follow Rafaele’s gaze.
A very tall, stern-faced stranger was staring at them both. And yet...he looked incredibly familiar. It was almost like looking into a mirror. Or at Alexio...if he had dark blond hair. It was his eyes, though, that sent a shiver through Rafaele. Green, much like his and Alexio’s, except with a slight difference—a darker green, almost hazel. Another take on their mother’s eyes...? But how could that be?
Rafaele bristled at this stranger’s almost belligerent stance. ‘May we help you?’ he asked coolly.
The man’s eyes flickered over them both, and then to the open grave in the distance. He asked, with a derisive curl to his lip, ‘Are there any more of us?’
Rafaele looked at Alexio, who was frowning, and said, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’
The man looked at Rafaele. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
The faintest of memories was coming back: he was standing on a doorstep with his mother. A huge imposing door was opening and there was a boy, a few years older than him, with blond hair and huge eyes.
The man’s voice sounded rough in the still air. ‘She brought you to my house. You must have been nearly three. I was almost seven. She wanted to take me with her then, but I wouldn’t leave. Not after she’d abandoned me.’
Rafaele felt cold all over. In a slightly hoarse voice he asked, ‘Who are you?’
The man smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m your older brother—half-brother. My name is Cesar Da Silva. I came today to pay my respects to the woman who gave me life...not that she deserved it. I was curious to see if any more would crawl out of the woodwork, but it looks like it’s just us.’
Alexio erupted beside Rafaele. ‘What the hell—?’
Rafaele was too stunned to move. He knew the Da Silva name. Cesar was behind the renowned and extremely successful Da Silva Global Corporation. His mind boggled to think that he might have met him and not known that they were brothers. With a sickening sense of inevitability, he didn’t doubt a word this man had just said. Their fraternal similarities were too obvious. They could be non-identical triplets.
That half-memory, half-dream had always been all too real—he’d just never known for sure, because whenever he’d mentioned it to his mother she’d always changed the subject. Much in the way she had never discussed her life in her native Spain before she’d met his father in Paris, where she’d been a model.
Rafaele gestured to his brother, ‘This is Alexio Christakos...our younger brother.’
Cesar Da Silva looked at him with nothing but ice in his eyes. ‘Three brothers by three fathers...and yet she didn’t abandon either of you to the wolves.’
He stepped forward then, and Alexio stepped forward too. The two men stood almost nose to nose, with Cesar topping his youngest brother in height only by an inch.
Cesar, his jaw as rigid as Alexio’s, gritted out, ‘I didn’t come here to fight you, brother. I have no issue with either of you.’
Alexio’s mouth thinned. ‘Only with our dead mother, if what you say is true.’
Cesar smiled, but it was thin and bitter. ‘Oh, it’s true, all right — more’s the pity.’
He stepped around Alexio then, and walked to the open grave. He took something out of his pocket and dropped it down into the dark space, where it fell onto the coffin with a distant hollow thud. He stood there for a long moment and then came back, his face expressionless.
After a charged silent moment between the three men he turned to stride away and got into the back of a waiting dark silver limousine, which moved off smoothly.
Rafaele turned to Alexio, who looked back at him, gobsmacked.
‘What the...?’ he trailed off.
Rafaele just shook his head. ‘I don’t know...’
He looked back to the space where the car had been and reeled with this cataclysmic knowledge.
CHAPTER ONE
Three months later...
‘SAM, SORRY TO bother you, but there’s a call for you on line one...someone with a very deep voice and a sexy foreign accent.’
Sam went very still. Deep voice...sexy foreign accent. The words sent a shiver of foreboding down her spine and a lick of something much hotter through her pelvis. She told herself she was being ridiculous and looked up from the results she’d been reading to see the secretary of the research department at the London university.
Kind eyes twinkled mischievously in a matronly face. ‘Did you get up to something at the weekend? Or should I say someone?’
Again that shiver went down Sam’s spine, but she just smiled at Gertie. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. I spent all weekend working on Milo’s playschool nature project with him.’
The secretary smiled and said indulgently, ‘You know I live in hope, Sam. You and Milo need a gorgeous man to come and take care of you.’
Sam gritted her teeth and kept smiling, restraining herself from pointing out how well she and Milo were doing without a man. Now she couldn’t wait to take the call. ‘Did you say line one?’
Gertie winked and disappeared, and Sam took a deep breath before picking up the phone and pressing the flashing button. ‘Dr Samantha Rourke here.’
There was silence for a few seconds, and then came the voice. Low, deep, sexy—and infinitely memorable. ‘Ciao, Samantha, it’s Rafaele...’
The prickle of foreboding became a slap in the face. He was the only one apart from her father who had ever called her Samantha—unless it had been Sam in the throes of passion. All the blood in her body seemed to drain south, to the floor. Anger, guilt, emotional pain, lust and an awful treacherous tenderness flooded her in a confusing tumult.
She only realised she hadn’t responded when the voice came again, cooler. ‘Rafaele Falcone...perhaps you don’t remember?’
As if that was humanly possible!
Her hand gripped the phone and she managed to get out, ‘No... I mean, yes. I remember.’
Sam wanted to laugh hysterically. How could she forget the man when she looked into a miniature replica of his face and green eyes every day?
‘Bene,’ came the smooth answer. ‘How are you, Sam? You’re a doctor now?’
‘Yes...’ Sam’s heart was doing funny things, beating so hard she felt breathless. ‘I got my doctorate after...’ She faltered and the words reverberated in her head unspoken. After you came into my life and blew it to smithereens. She fought valiantly for control and said in a stronger voice, ‘I got my doctorate since I saw you last. How can I help you?’
Again a bubble of hysteria rose up in her: how about helping him by telling him he has a son?
‘I am here in London because we’ve set up a UK base for Falcone Motors.’
‘That’s...nice,’ Sam said, a little redundantly.
The magnitude of who she was talking to seemed to hit her all of a sudden and she went icy all over. Rafaele Falcone. Here in London. He’d tracked her down. Why? Milo. Her son, her world. His son.
Sam’s first irrational thought was that he must know, and then she forced herself to calm down. No way would Rafaele Falcone be calling her up sounding so blasé if he knew. She needed to get rid of him, though—fast. And then think.
‘Look...it’s nice to hear from you, but I’m quite busy at the moment...’
Rafaele’s voice took on a cool edge again. ‘You’re not curious as to why I’ve contacted you?’
That sliver of fear snaked down Sam’s spine again as an image of her adorable dark-haired son came into her mind’s eye.
‘I...well...I guess I am.’ She couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic.
Rafaele’s voice was almost arctic now. ‘I was going to offer you a position with Falcone Motors. The research you’re currently conducting is exactly in the area we want to develop.’
Sheer blind panic gripped Sam’s innards at his words. She’d worked for this man once before and nothing had been the same since. Her tone frigid, she said, ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m committed to working on behalf of the university.’
Silence for a few taut seconds and then Rafaele responded with a terse, ‘I see.’
Sam could tell that Rafaele had expected her to drop at his feet in a swoon of gratitude, even just at the offer of a job, if nothing more personal. It was the effect he had on most women. He hadn’t changed. In spite of what had happened between them.
The words he’d left lingering in the air when he’d walked away from her resonated as if it had happened yesterday: ‘It’s for the best, cara. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’
He’d so obviously wanted her to agree with him that Sam had done so, in a flat and emotionless voice. Her body had seemed drained of all feeling. Relief had been a tangible force around him. It was something that she hadn’t forgotten and which had helped her to believe she’d made the right decision to take full responsibility for Milo on her own. Even so, her conscience pricked her now: you should have told him.
Panic galvanised Sam, so that Rafaele Falcone’s offer of a job barely impinged on her consciousness. ‘Look, I really am quite busy. If you don’t mind...?’
‘You’re not even interested in discussing this?’
Sam recalled the bile that had risen within her when Rafaele had made his uninterest in her all too clear and bit out curtly, ‘No, I’m not interested. Goodbye, Signor Falcone.’
* * *
Goodbye, Signor Falcone, and this from a woman he knew intimately.
Rafaele looked at the phone in his hand for a long moment. Not comprehending the fact that she had just hung up on him. Women did not hang up on him.
Rafaele put the phone down and his mouth firmed. But Samantha Rourke had never been like other women. She’d been different from the start. He felt restless and got up from his seat to pace over to the huge window that overlooked operations at his new UK base on the outskirts of London. But for once his attention wasn’t on operations.
She’d come to his factory in Italy as an intern after completing her Masters in Mechanical Automotive Engineering. The youngest and only woman in a group of men. Scarily bright and intelligent. He would have had no compunction hiring her on the spot and paying her whatever she asked just to keep her working for him...but he’d become distracted.
Distracted by her sexily studious air and her tall, slim body. Distracted by the mannish clothes she’d insisted on wearing which had made him want to peel them off to see the curves hinted at but hidden underneath. Distracted by her flawless pale Celtic skin and those huge almond-shaped eyes set in delicate features. Grey eyes...like a stormy sea.
Distracted by the way she would look at him and blush when he caught her eye, the way she would catch her lower lip between small white teeth. Distracted by that fall of inky black hair which she’d kept tucking behind her ear. And, as time had worn on, distracted by the slow-burning licking flames of desire that had grown hotter and stronger every time he saw her.
Rafaele had fought it. He hadn’t liked it—and especially not in the workplace. There were plenty of females working in his factory and yet none of them had ever turned his head. His life was run on strict lines and he’d always kept his personal life well away from his work. But she had been so far removed from the kind of woman he normally went for: polished, sophisticated. Worldly wise. Women who were sexy and knew it and knew what to do with it. Cynical, like him.
Sam had been none of those things. Except sexy. And he’d known she didn’t know that. She’d seemed to have absolutely no awareness of the fact that men’s gazes lingered on her as she passed by. It had enraged Rafaele. The hot spurt of possessiveness had been an alien concept to him. Before they’d even kissed!
In the end sexual frustration had been such a tight ball of need inside him that one day he’d called her to his office and, without being able to say a word, had taken her face in his hands and kissed her, drowning in an intoxicating sweetness he’d never tasted before.
Even now that memory alone had an effect on Rafaele’s libido and body. He cursed. He’d thought of her months ago, at his mother’s funeral. He thought of her more often than he liked to admit. Sam was the one who had taken him too close to the edge. They had shared more than just a brief sexual history. They had almost shared...a child.
Even now a shiver of fear snaked down Rafaele’s spine. How close he’d come to dealing with something he never wanted to deal with. That was what he needed to remember.
He swung around and stared blankly into his huge office. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with him, and he should want to have nothing to do with her.
He should not have given in to the compulsion to track her down. He should steer well clear of Samantha Rourke and put her out of his mind. For good.
* * *
Samantha woke up on Saturday morning when a small warm body burrowed into the bed beside her. She smiled sleepily and wrapped her arms around her sturdy son, breathing in his sweet scent.
‘Morning, handsome.’
‘Morning, Mummy, I love you.’
Sam’s heart clenched so hard for a second that she caught her breath. She kissed the top of his head. ‘I love you too, sweetheart.’
Milo pulled his head back and Sam cracked open an eye and grimaced at the morning light.
He giggled. ‘You’re funny.’
Sam started to tickle Milo and he screeched with glee. Soon they were both wide awake and he was scrambling back out of the bed to clatter down the stairs.
She shouted after him. ‘Don’t turn on the TV yet!’
She heard him stop and could imagine his thwarted expression, and then he called back, ‘Okay. I’ll look at my book.’
Sam’s heart clenched again. He would too. She knew when she went downstairs he’d be looking at his book studiously, even though he couldn’t really read yet. He was such a good boy. Such a bright boy. Sometimes it scared her, how intelligent he was, because she felt as if she didn’t have the means to handle it.
Bridie, her father’s housekeeper, who had stayed on after he’d died two years previously, would often look at her with those far too shrewd Irish eyes and say, ‘Well, where do you think he got it from? His grandfather was a professor of physics and you had your head in books from the age of two.’
Then she would sniff in that way she had and say, ‘Now, obviously, as I don’t know anything about his father, I can’t speculate on that side of things...’ which was Sam’s cue to give her a baleful look and change the subject.
If it hadn’t been for Bridie O’Sullivan, though, Sam reminded herself as she got out of bed, she would never have been able to get the PhD which had got her onto the lucrative research programme at the university, and which now helped pay for food, clothes and Bridie’s wonderful care for Milo five days a week.
Bridie lived in the granny flat that had been built onto the side of the house some years before.
As Sam tied the belt on her robe, and prepared to go downstairs to get breakfast ready for herself and Milo, she tried to suppress the resurgence of guilt. The guilt that had been eating at her insides all week since she’d had that phone call. The guilt that had been a constant presence for four years, if she was completely honest with herself.
It unsettled her so much that she slept badly every night, tortured with memories while awake and by dreams while asleep, full of lurid images. Hot images. She woke tangled in the sheets, her skin damp with sweat, her heart racing, her head aching.
Rafaele Falcone. The man who had shown her just how colourless her world had been before demonstrating how easily he could deposit her back into perpetual greyness. As if she’d had no right to experience such a lavish, sensual dream.
Even now she wondered what on earth it had been about her that had caught his eye. But whatever it had been, to her everlasting shame, she would never forgive herself for believing that it had been more. For falling for him like some lovestruck teenager.
She reassured herself for the umpteenth time that week that he didn’t deserve to know about Milo because he’d never wanted him in the first place. She would never forget how his face had leached of all colour when she’d told him she was pregnant.
Sam sagged back onto the side of the bed, the onslaught of memories coming too thick and fast to escape. He’d been away on a trip for three weeks and during that time Sam had found out she was pregnant. He’d asked to see her as soon as he’d returned, and after three weeks of no contact Sam hadn’t been able to stop her heart from pumping with anticipation. Maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said before he’d gone on the trip...
‘It might be no harm, cara, for us to spend some time apart. My work is beginning to suffer...you’re far too distracting...’
But when she’d walked into his office he’d looked stern. Serious. Before she could lose her nerve Sam had blurted out, ‘I have to tell you something.’
He’d looked at her warily. ‘Go on, then.’
Sam had blushed and nervously twisted her hands, suddenly wondering if she was completely crazy to have a feeling of optimism that he might welcome her news. They’d only spent a month together. One heady, glorious month. Four weeks. Was that really enough time—?
‘Sam?’
She’d looked at him, taken a deep breath and dived in. ‘Rafaele...I’m pregnant.’
The words had hung ominously between them and a thick silence had grown. Rafaele’s face had leached of all colour and Sam had known in that instant with cold clarity that she’d been a complete fool. About everything.
He’d literally gone white, his eyes standing out starkly green against the pallor. She’d thought he might faint and had moved towards him, but he’d put out a hand and asked hoarsely, ‘How?’
She’d stopped in her tracks, but hadn’t been able to halt the spread of ice in her veins. ‘I think...when we were careless.’
An understatement for the amount of times they had been careless...in the shower, in the living room of Rafaele’s palazzo when they’d been too impatient to make it to the bedroom, in the kitchen of her flat one evening, when he’d pushed her up against the counter and pulled down her trousers...
Sam had felt hot and mortified all at once. It felt so...lurid now. So desperate. It had been sex, not romance. Had she ever really known him? The vulnerability she’d felt in that moment was a searing everlasting memory.
He’d looked at her accusingly. ‘You said you were on the pill.’
Sam got defensive. ‘I was—I am. But I told you it was a low-dosage pill not specifically for contraception. And I had that twenty-four-hour bug a few weeks ago...’
Rafaele had sat down heavily into his chair. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in ten seconds. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he’d muttered, as if Sam weren’t even there.
She had tried to control her emotions, stop them from overwhelming her. ‘It’s as much of a shock to me as it obviously is to you.’
He’d looked up at her then and his face had tightened. ‘Are you sure it’s a shock? How do I know this wasn’t planned in some attempt to trap me?’
Sam had almost staggered backwards, her mouth open, but nothing had come out. Eventually she’d managed, ‘You think...you truly think I did this on purpose?’
Rafaele had stood up and started to pace, some colour coming back into his cheeks, highlighting that stunning bone structure. He’d laughed in a way that had chilled Sam right to her core, because she’d never heard him laugh like that before. Harsh.
He’d faced her. ‘It’s not unheard of, you know, for a woman who wants to ensure herself a lifetime of security from a rich man.’
The depth of this heretofore unrevealed cynicism had sent her reeling. Sam had stalked up to Rafaele’s desk, her hands clenched to fists. ‘You absolute bastard. I would never do such a thing.’
And then she’d had a flash of his expression and his demeanour when she’d come into the room, before she’d given him a chance to speak. A very bitter and dark truth had sunk in.
‘You were going to tell me it was over, weren’t you? That’s why you asked to see me.’
Rafaele had had the grace to avoid her eye for a moment, but then he’d looked at her, his face devoid of expression.
‘Yes.’
That was all. One word. Confirmation that Sam had been living in cloud cuckoo land, believing that what she’d shared with one of the world’s perennial playboys had been different.
She’d been so overcome with conflicting emotions and turmoil at his attitude to her news and his stark lack of emotion that she’d been afraid if she tried to speak she’d start crying. So she’d run out of his office. Not even caring that she’d humiliated herself beyond all saving.
She’d hidden in her tiny apartment, avoiding Rafaele, avoiding his repeated attempts to get her to open the door.
And then it had started. The bleeding and the awful cramping pain. Terrified, Sam had finally opened the door to him, her physical pain momentarily eclipsing the emotional pain.
She’d looked at Rafaele and said starkly, ‘I’m bleeding.’
He’d taken her to a clinic, grim and pale, but Sam hadn’t really noticed. Her hands had been clutching her belly as she’d found herself willing the tiny clump of cells to live, no matter what. For someone who hadn’t ever seriously contemplated having children, because she’d lost her own mother young and had grown up with an emotionally absent father, in that moment Sam had felt a primitive need to become a mother so strong that it had shaken her to her core.
At the clinic the kindly doctor had informed her that she wasn’t, in fact, miscarrying. She was just experiencing heavier spotting than might be normal. He’d said the cramps were probably stress-induced and reassured her that with rest and avoiding vexatious situations she should go on to have a perfectly normal and healthy pregnancy.
The relief had been overwhelming. Until Sam had remembered that Rafaele was outside the door, pacing up and down, looking grim. He was a ‘vexatious situation’ personified. She could remember feeling the cramps come back even then, at the very prospect of having to deal with him, and again that visceral feeling had arisen: the need to protect her child.
She’d dreaded telling him that she hadn’t miscarried after all.
And then a nurse had left the room, leaving the door ajar, and Rafaele’s voice had floated distinctly into the room from just outside.
Everything within her stilling, Sam had heard him say tightly, ‘I’m just caught up with something at the moment... No, it’s not important... I will resolve this as soon as I can and get back to you.’
And just like that the small, traitorous flame of hope she’d not even been aware she was pathetically harbouring had been extinguished. Obviously because of doctor/patient confidentiality Rafaele was none the wiser as to whether or not she’d actually miscarried. He believed that she had.
He’d terminated his conversation and come into the room. Sam had looked out of the window, feeling as if she was breaking apart inside. She’d forced herself to be calm and not stressed. The baby was paramount now.
Rafaele had stopped by the bed. ‘Sam...’
Sam hadn’t looked at him. She’d just answered, ‘What?’
She’d heard him sigh. ‘Look, I’m sorry...really sorry that this has happened. We should never have become involved.’
Sam had felt empty. ‘No,’ she’d agreed, ‘we shouldn’t have.’
Even then a small voice had urged her to put him straight, but she’d felt so angry in that moment and had already felt her stress levels rising, her body starting to cramp. Dangerous for the baby.
Feeling panicked, she’d finally turned her head to acknowledge Rafaele and said, ‘Look, what’s done is done. It’s over. I have to stay in for a night for observation but I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going home.’
Rafaele had been pale but Sam had felt like reaching up to slap him. He felt no more for her than he did for the fact that as far as he was aware he’d just lost a baby. He just wanted to be rid of her. ‘I will resolve this as soon as I can...’
‘Just go, Rafaele, leave me be.’ Please, she’d begged silently, feeling those stress levels rising. Her hands had tightened on the bedcover, knuckles white.
Rafaele had just looked at her, those green eyes unfathomable. ‘It’s for the best, cara. Believe me... You are young...you have your career ahead of you. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’
Sam’s mouth had twisted and she’d resolved in that moment to do her utmost to focus on her career...and her baby. No matter what it took. ‘Of course not. Now, please, just go.’
Sam’s control had felt so brittle she’d been afraid it would snap at any moment and he’d see the true depth of her agony.
Rafaele had stepped back a pace. ‘I will arrange for your travel home. You won’t have to worry about anything.’
Sam had stifled a semi-hysterical giggle at the thought of the monumental task and life-change ahead of her. She’d nodded abruptly. ‘Fine.’
Rafaele had been almost at the door by then, relief a tangible aura around him. ‘Goodbye, Sam.’
Feeling a sob rise, and choking it down with all of her will and strength, Sam had managed a cool-sounding, ‘Goodbye, Rafaele.’ And then she’d turned her head, because her eyes had been stinging. She’d heard the door close softly and a huge sob had ripped out of her chest, and tears, hot and salty, had flowed down her cheeks.
By the time Sam had been at home for a week she’d begun veering wildly between the urge to tell Rafaele the truth and the urge to protect herself from further pain. Then she’d seen on some vacuous celebrity TV channel that Rafaele was already out and about with some gorgeous Italian TV personality, smiling that devilishly sexy smile. As she’d looked at Rafaele, smiling for the TV cameras, his arm around the waist of the sinuous dark-haired Latin beauty, she’d known that she could never tell him because he simply wasn’t interested.
‘Mummy, I want Cheerios!’
Sam blinked and came back to reality. Milo. Breakfast. She pushed aside the memories, tried to ignore the guilt and got up to attend to her son.
* * *
That evening when the doorbell rang Sam looked up from washing the dinner things in the sink. Milo was playing happily on the floor in the sitting room with his cars, oblivious. As she went to answer it she assured herself it was probably just Bridie, who had forgotten her keys to the flat again.
But when she opened the door on the dusky late winter evening it wasn’t Bridie, who stood at five foot two inches in heels. It was someone over a foot taller and infinitely more masculine.
Rafaele Falcone.
For a long, breathless moment, the information simply wouldn’t compute. Suspended in time, Sam seemed to be able to take in details almost dispassionately. Faded jeans. Battered leather jacket. Thin wool jumper. Thick dark brown hair which still had a tendency to curl a little too much over his collar. The high forehead. The deep-set startling green eyes. The patrician bump of his nose, giving him that indelible air of arrogance. The stunning bone structure and that golden olive skin that placed him somewhere more exotic than cold, wet England.
And his mouth. That gorgeous, sculpted-for-wicked-things mouth. It always looked on the verge of tipping into a sexy half-smile, full of the promise of sensual nirvana. Unless it was pulled into a grim line, as it had been when she had seen him last.
Reality slammed into Sam like a fist to her gut. She actually sucked in a breath, only realising then that she’d been starving her lungs for long seconds while she gawped at him like a groupie.
‘Samantha.’
His voice lodged her even more firmly in reality. And the burning intensity of his green eyes as they swept down her body. Sam became acutely aware of her weekend uniform of skinny jeans, thick socks and a very worn plaid shirt. Her hair was scraped up into a bun and she wore no make-up.
Rafaele smiled. ‘Still a tomboy, I see. Despite my best efforts.’
A memory exploded into Sam’s consciousness. Rafaele, in his palazzo, presenting her with a huge white box. Under what had seemed like acres and acres of silver tissue paper a swathe of material had appeared.
Sam had lifted it out to reveal a breathtaking evening gown. Rafaele had stripped her himself and dressed her again. One-shouldered and figure-hugging, in black and flesh-coloured stripes, the dress had accentuated her hips, her breasts, and a long slit had revealed her legs. Then he’d taken her out to one of Milan’s most exclusive restaurants. They’d been the last to leave, somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, drunk on sparkling wine and lust, and he’d taken her home to his palazzo...
‘Still a tomboy, I see...’
The memory vanished and the backdrop of Sam’s very suburban street behind Rafaele came back into view.
Sexy smile. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’
Sam’s hand clenched tight around the door. Milo. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally. Rousing her.
‘Now isn’t a good time. I don’t know why you’ve come here. I thought I made it clear the other day that I’m not interested.’
Sam forced herself to look at him. Four years had passed and in that time she’d changed utterly. She felt older, more jaded. Whereas Rafaele only looked even more gorgeous. The unfairness of it galvanised her. He’d known nothing of her life the last few years. Because you didn’t tell him, a voice pointed out.
‘Why did you come here, Rafaele? I’m sure you have more important things to do on a Saturday evening.’
The bitterness in Sam’s voice surprised her.
Rafaele’s jaw tightened, but he answered smoothly. ‘I thought if I came to see you in person you might be persuaded to listen to my offer.’
A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it as she heard a high-pitched ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.
She felt Milo land at her legs, clasping his arms around them, and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. Like trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Like I said, now really isn’t a good time.’
She could see awareness dawn on Rafaele’s face as he obviously took in the fact of a child. He started to speak stiltedly. ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought... Of course it’s been years...you must be married by now. Children...’
Then his eyes slid down and she saw them widen. She didn’t have to look to know that Milo was now standing beside her, one chubby hand clinging onto her leg. Wide green eyes would be staring innocently up into eyes the exact same shade of green. Unusual. Lots of people commented on how unusual they were.
Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly...dazed. He looked up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing as clearly as if she was standing apart, observing the interplay. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour. Pale as parchment. Panicked. Guilty.
And just like that, something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MUMMY, CAN WE watch the cars on TV now?’
Sam put her hand to Milo’s head and said faintly, ‘Why don’t you go on and I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’
Milo ran off again and the silence grew taut between Sam and Rafaele. He knew. She felt it in her bones. He’d known as soon as he’d looked into his son’s eyes. So identical. She hated that something about his immediate recognition of his own son made something soften inside her.
He was looking at her so hard she felt it like a physical brand on her skin. Hot.
‘Let me in, Samantha. Now.’
Feeling shaky and clammy all at once, Sam stepped back and opened the door. Rafaele came in, his tall, powerful form dwarfing the hallway. He smelt of light spices and something musky, and through the shock Sam’s blood jumped in recognition.
She shut the door and walked quickly to the kitchen at the end of the hall, passing where Milo sat cross-legged in front of the TV watching a popular car programme. His favourite.
She was about to pull the door shut when a curt voice behind her instructed, ‘Leave it.’
She dropped her hand and tensed. Rafaele was looking at Milo as he sat enraptured by the cars on the screen. He was holding about three of his favourite toy cars in his hands. If his eyes and pale olive skin hadn’t been a fatal giveaway then this might have been the worst kind of ironic joke.
Sam stepped back and walked into the kitchen. She couldn’t feel her legs. She felt sick, light-headed. She turned around to see Rafaele follow her in and close the door behind him, not shutting it completely.
Rafaele was white beneath his dark colouring. And he looked murderous.
He bit out, ‘This is where you tell me that by some extraordinary feat of genetic coincidence that little boy in there isn’t three years and approximately three months old. That he didn’t inherit exactly the same colour eyes that I inherited from my own mother. That he isn’t my son.’
Sam opened her mouth. ‘He is...’ Even now, at this last second, her brain searched desperately for something to cling onto. Some way this could be justified. He was his father. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the right any more. She’d never had the right. ‘He is your son.’
Silence, stretching taut and stark, and then he repeated, ‘He is my son?’
Sam just nodded. Nausea was churning in her belly now. The full implications of this were starting to hit home.
Rafaele emitted a long stream of Italian invective and Sam winced because she recognised some of the cruder words—they were pretty universal. Her belly was so tight she put a hand to it unconsciously. She watched as Rafaele struggled to take this in. The enormity of it.
‘No wonder you were so keen to get rid of me the other day.’
He paced back and forth in the tiny space. She could feel his anger and tension as it lashed out like a live electrical wire, snapping at her feet.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at her. ‘Are you married?’
Sam shook her head painfully. ‘No.’
‘And what if I hadn’t decided to pay you a visit? Would you have let me remain in blissful ignorance for ever?’
Stricken, Sam whispered, ‘I don’t...I don’t know.’ Even as she admitted that, though, the knowledge seeped in. She wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. She would have told him.
He pinned her to the spot with that light green gaze which had once devoured her alive and was now colder than the arctic.
‘You bitch.’
Sam flinched. He might as well have slapped her across the face. It had the same effect. The words were so coldly and implacably delivered.
‘You didn’t want a baby,’ she whispered, unable to inject more force into her voice.
‘So you just lied to me?’
Sam could feel her cheeks burning now, with shame. ‘I thought it was a miscarriage, as did you. But at the clinic, after the doctor had done his examination, he told me that I wasn’t miscarrying.’
Rafaele crossed his arms and she could see his hands clenched to fists. She shivered at the threat of violence even though she knew he would never hit her. But she sensed he wanted to hit something.
‘You knew then and yet you barefaced lied to me and let me walk away.’
Clutching at the smallest of straws, Sam said shakily, ‘I didn’t lie...you assumed...I just didn’t tell you.’
‘And the reason you didn’t inform me was because...?’
‘You didn’t...didn’t want to know.’ The words felt flimsy and ineffectual now. Petty.
‘Based on...?’
It was as if he couldn’t quite get out full sentences, Sam felt his rage strangling his words.
Her brain felt heavy. ‘Because of how you reacted when I told you in the first place...’
Sam recalled the indescribable pain of realising that Rafaele had been about to break it off with her. His abject shock at the prospect of her pregnancy. It gave her some much needed strength. ‘And because of what you said afterwards...at the clinic. I heard you on the phone.’
Rafaele frowned and it was a glower. ‘What did I say?’
Sam’s sliver of strength started to drain away again like a traitor. ‘You were talking to someone. You said you were caught up in something unimportant.’ Even now those words scored at Sam’s insides like a knife.
Rafaele’s expression turned nuclear. His arms dropped, his hands were fists. ‘Dio, Samantha. I can’t even recall that conversation. No doubt I just said something—anything—to placate one of my assistants. I thought you’d just miscarried. Do you really think I was about to announce that in an innocuous phone call?’
Sam gulped and had to admit reluctantly, ‘Maybe...maybe not. But how did I know that? All I could hear was your relief that you didn’t have to worry about a baby holding your life up and your eagerness to leave.’
He all but exploded. ‘Need I remind you that I was also in shock, and at that point I thought there was no baby!’
Sam was breathing hard and Rafaele looked as if he was about to kick aside the kitchen table between them to come and throttle her.
Just then a small, unsure voice emerged from the doorway. ‘Mummy?’
Immediately Sam’s world refracted down to Milo, who stood in the doorway. He’d opened it unnoticed by them and was looking from one to the other, his lower lip quivering ominously at the explosive tension.
Sam flew over and picked him up and he clung to her. Her conscience struck her. He was always a little intimidated by men because he wasn’t around them much.
‘Why is the man still here?’ he asked now, slanting sidelong looks to Rafaele and curling into Sam’s body as much as he could.
Sam stroked his back reassuringly and tried to sound normal. ‘This is just an old friend of Mummy’s. He’s stopped by to say hello, that’s all. He’s leaving now.’
‘Okay,’ Milo replied, happier now. ‘Can we look at cars?’
Sam looked at him and forced a smile, ‘Just as soon as I say goodbye to Mr Falcone, okay?’
‘Okey-dokey.’ Milo used his new favourite phrase that he’d picked up in playschool, squirmed back out of Sam’s arms and ran out of the kitchen again.
Sam watched Rafaele struggle to take it all in. Myriad explosive emotions crossing his face.
‘You’ll have to go,’ she entreated. ‘It’ll only confuse and upset him if you stay.’
Rafaele closed the distance between them and Sam instinctively moved back, but the oven was behind her. Rafaele’s scent enveloped her, musky and male. Her heart pounded.
‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
After a long searing moment, during which she wasn’t sure how she didn’t combust from the anger being directed at her, Rafaele turned on his heel and left, stopping briefly at the sitting room door to look in at Milo again.
He cast one blistering look back at Sam and then he was out through the front door and gone. Sam heard the powerful throttle of an engine as it roared to life and then mercifully faded again.
It was then that she started to shake all over. Grasping for a chair to hold onto, she sank down into it, her teeth starting to chatter.
‘Mummeeee!’ came a plaintive wail from the sitting room.
Sam called out, ‘I’ll be there in one second, I promise.’
The last thing she needed was for Milo to see her in this state. Her brain was numb. She couldn’t even quite take in what had just happened—the fact that she’d seen Rafaele again for the first time since those cataclysmic days.
When she was finally feeling a little more in control she went in to Milo and sat down on the floor beside him. Without even taking his eyes off the TV he crawled into her lap and Sam’s heart constricted. She kissed his head.
Rafaele’s words came back to her: ‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
She shivered. She didn’t even want to think of what she’d be facing when she heard from Rafaele again.
* * *
On Monday morning Sam filed into the conference room at the university and took a seat at the long table for the weekly budget meeting. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness. Unsurprisingly she hadn’t slept all weekend, on tenterhooks waiting for Rafaele to appear again like a spectre. In her more fanciful moments she’d imagined that she’d dreamt it all up: the phone call; his appearance at the house. Coming face to face with his son. A small, snide voice pointed out that it was no less than she deserved but she pushed it down.
Robustly she told herself that if she’d had to go back in time she would have done the same again, because if she hadn’t surely the stress of Rafaele being reluctantly bound to her and a baby would have resulted in a miscarriage for real?
Gertie, the secretary, arrived then and sat down breathlessly next to Sam. She said urgently, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened over the weekend...’
Sam looked at her, used to Gertie’s penchant for gossip. She didn’t want to hear some salacious story involving students and professors behaving badly, but the older woman’s face suddenly composed itself and Sam looked to see that the head of their department had walked into the room.
And then her heart stopped. Because right on his heels was another man. Rafaele.
For a second Sam thought she might faint. She was instantly light-headed. She had to put her hands on the edge of the table and grip it as she watched in mounting horror and shock as Rafaele coolly and calmly strode into the room, looking as out of place in this unadorned academic environment as an exotic peacock on a grubby high street.
He didn’t even glance her way. He took a seat at the head of the table alongside their boss, looking stupendously handsome and sexy. He sat back, casually undoing a button on his pristine suit jacket with a big hand, long fingers...
Sam was mesmerised.
This had to be a dream, she thought to herself frantically. She’d wake up any moment. But Gertie was elbowing her none too discreetly and saying sotto voce, ‘This is what I was about to tell you.’
The stern glare of their boss quelled any chat and then, with devastating inevitability, Sam’s stricken gaze met Rafaele’s and she knew it wasn’t a dream. There was a distinct gleam of triumph in those green depths, and a more than smug smile was playing around that firmly sculpted mouth.
Her boss was standing up and clearing his throat. Sam couldn’t look away from Rafaele, and he didn’t remove his gaze from hers, as if forcing her to take in every word now being spoken, but she only heard snippets.
‘Falcone Industries...most successful...honoured that Mr Falcone has decided to fund this research out of his own pocket...delighted at this announcement...funding guaranteed for as long as it takes.’
Then Rafaele got up to address the room. There were about thirteen people and, predictably, you could have heard a pin drop as his charismatic effect held everyone in thrall. He’d finally moved his gaze from Sam and she felt as if she could breathe again, albeit painfully. Her heart was racing and she took in nothing of what he said, trying to wrap her sluggish brain around the ramifications of this shocking development.
‘Samantha...’
Sam looked up, dazed, to see her boss was now addressing her, and that Rafaele had sat down. She hadn’t noticed, nor heard a word.
‘I’m sorry, Bill, what did you say?’ She was amazed she’d managed to speak.
‘I said,’ he repeated with exaggerated patience, clearly disgruntled that she appeared to be on another planet while in such illustrious company, ‘that as of next week you will be working from the Falcone factory. You’re to oversee setting up a research facility there which will work in tandem with the one here in the university.’
He directed himself to the others again while this bomb detonated within Sam’s solar plexus.
‘I don’t think I need to point out the significance of being allowed to conduct this research within a functioning factory, and especially one as prestigious as Falcone Motors. It’ll put us streets ahead of other research in this area and, being assured of Falcone funding for at least five years, we’re practically guaranteed success.’
Sam couldn’t take any more. She rose up in a blind panic, managed to mumble something vague about needing air and fled the room.
* * *
Rafaele watched Sam leave dispassionately. Since the other evening he’d been in shock. Functioning, but in shock. His anger and rage was too volcanic to release, fearsome in its intensity. And fearsome for Rafaele if he contemplated for a second why his emotions were so deep and hot.
Sam’s boss beside him emitted a grunt of displeasure at her hasty departure, but Rafaele felt nothing but satisfaction to be causing her a modicum of the turbulence in his own gut. Through his shock Rafaele had felt a visceral need to push Sam off her axis as much as she’d pushed him off his.
He recalled bitterly how reluctant she’d been to talk to him in the first place about the job he was offering, all the while knowing her secret. Harbouring his son. With one phone call to his team Rafaele had put in motion this audacious plan to take over the research programme at her university and had relished this meeting.
While Sam’s boss continued his speech Rafaele retreated inwardly, but anyone looking at him would have seen only fierce concentration.
He breathed in and realised that he hadn’t taken a proper breath since he’d seen Sam looking at him with that stricken expression on her face in the doorway of her house the other evening. The initial punch to his gut he’d received when he’d first thought that Sam was married, with someone else’s child, was galling to remember—and more exposing than he liked to admit.
Nothing excused her from withholding his son from him for more than three years. Rafaele had been about Milo’s age when his world had imploded. When he’d witnessed his father, on his knees, sobbing, prostrating himself at Rafaele’s mother’s feet, begging her not to leave him.
‘I love you. What am I if you leave? I am nothing. I have nothing...’
‘Get up, Umberto,’ she’d said. ‘You shame yourself in front of our son. What kind of a man will he be with a crying, snivelling wretch for a father?’
What kind of a man would he be?
Rafaele felt tight inside. The kind of man who knew that the most important things in life were building a solid foundation. Security. Success. He’d vowed never to allow anything to reduce him to nothing, as his father had been reduced, with not even his pride to keep him standing. Emotions were dangerous. They had the power to derail you completely. He knew how fickle women were, how easily they could walk away. Or keep you from your child.
Rafaele had driven back to Sam’s house on Sunday, fired up, ready to confront her again, but just as he’d pulled up he’d seen them leaving the house. Milo had been pushing a scooter. He’d followed them to a small local park and watched like a fugitive as they played. Dark emotions had twisted inside him as he’d watched Sam’s effortless long-legged grace and ease. He’d known that if he hadn’t reappeared in their lives this would have just been another banal Sunday morning routine trip to the park.
Seeing his son’s small sturdy body, watching him running around, laughing gleefully, something alien inside him had swelled. It was...pride. And something else that he couldn’t name. But it had reminded him of that day again—the darkest in his memory—when his mother had gripped his hand painfully tight and pulled him in her wake out of their family palazzo outside Milan, leaving his father sobbing uncontrollably on the ground. A pathetic, broken man.
That was one of the reasons Rafaele had never wanted to have children. Knowing how vulnerable they were had always felt like too huge a responsibility to bear. No one knew better than he how events even at that young age could shape your life. And so he’d never expected that, when faced with his son, there would be such a torrent of feelings within him, each one binding him invisibly and indelibly to this person he didn’t even know properly yet. Or that when he’d watched him running around the other day there would be a surge of something so primal and protective that he just knew without question, instantly, that he would do anything to prevent his son from coming into harm’s way.
From far too early an age Rafaele had been made aware that the absence of a father corroded at your insides like an acid.
Resolve firmed like a ball of concrete inside him. There was no way on this earth that he was going to walk away from his son now and give him a taste of what he’d suffered.
Cutting off Sam’s boss curtly, Rafaele stood up and muttered an excuse, and left the room. There was only one person he wanted to hear talk right now.
* * *
Sam’s stomach felt raw after she’d lost her breakfast, minute as it had been, into a toilet in the ladies’ room. She felt shaky, weak, and looked as pale as death in the reflection of the cracked mirror. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth out, knowing that she had to go back out there and face—
The door suddenly swung open and Sam stood up straight, hands gripping the side of the sink. For once she prayed it might be Gertie, even though she knew it wasn’t when every tiny hair seemed to prickle on her skin.
She turned around and saw Rafaele, looking very tall and very dark as he leant back against the door, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Even now her body sang, recognising the man who had introduced her to her own sensuality, and she clamped down on the rogue response, bitterly aware that not even the harsh fluorescent lighting could strip away his sheer good looks.
Welcome anger rose up and Sam seized on it, crossing her arms over her chest. Her voice felt rough, raw. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Rafaele? How dare you come in here and use your might to get back at me? These are people you’re playing with—people who have invested long years of study into their area—and suddenly you sweep in and promise them a glimpse of future success when we both know—’
‘Enough.’
Rafaele’s voice sounded harsh in the echoing silence of the cavernous tiled ladies’ bathroom.
‘I am fully committed to following through on my promise of funding and support to this university.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Unless you’ve already forgotten, I had contacted you initially to ask you to work for me. I had every intention of using your expertise to further this very research for my own ends.’
He shrugged minutely. ‘There’s nothing new in that—any motor company worth its salt is on the lookout for new research and ways of beating the competition with new technology. You have single-handedly elevated this research to a far more advanced level than any other facility, in a university or otherwise.’
His words sent Sam no sense of professional satisfaction. She was still in shock. ‘That may be the case,’ she bit out tightly, ‘but now that you know about Milo you’re seeking to get back at me personally.’
She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
‘It just so happens that you have the means to be able to come in and take over the entire department to do your bidding.’
Fresh panic gripped her when she recalled her boss saying something about Sam herself going to work from his factory. Her arms grew tighter over her chest when she recalled the hothouse environment of working in Rafaele’s Milan factory four years ago and how easily he’d seduced her. The thought of going back into a similar environment, even if Rafaele would prefer to throttle her than sleep with her, made her clammy.
‘I will not be going to work for you. I will remain here at the university.’
Rafaele took a few paces forward and Sam saw the light of something like steel in his eyes and his expression. Her belly sank even as her skin tightened with betraying awareness.
‘You will be coming to work for me—or I will pull out of this agreement and all of your colleagues are back to square one. Your boss has informed me that if I hadn’t come along with the promise of funding he was going to have to let some people go. He can’t keep everyone on the payroll due to reduced projected funding this year. You would have been informed of that at this very meeting.’
Vaguely Sam was aware of the veracity of what he said. It had been rumoured for weeks. Once again she was struck by how little she’d appreciated how ruthless Rafaele was. ‘You bastard,’ she breathed.
Rafaele looked supremely unperturbed. ‘Hardly, when I’m saving jobs. It’s very simple if you do the right thing and accede to my wishes. And this is just the start of it, Samantha.’
Ice invaded her bloodstream. ‘Start of what?’
To her shock she realised belatedly how close Rafaele had come when he reached out a hand and cupped her jaw. She felt the strength of that hand, the faint calluses which reminded her of how he loved tinkering with engines despite his status. It was one of the things that had endeared him to her from the start.
In an instant an awful physical yearning rose up within her. Every cell in her body was reacting joyously to a touch she’d never thought she’d experience again. She was melting, getting hot. Damp.
Softly, he sliced open the wound in her heart. ‘The start of payback, Samantha. You owe me for depriving me of my son for more than three years and I will never let you forget it.’
* * *
For a moment Rafaele almost forgot where he was, who he was talking to. The feel of Sam’s skin under his hand was like silk, her jaw as delicate as the finest spun Murano glass. He had an almost overwhelming urge to keep sliding his hand around to the back of her neck, to tug her towards him so that he could feel her pressed against him and crush that pink rosebud mouth under his— Suddenly Rafaele realised what he was doing.
With a guttural curse he took his hand away and stepped back. Sam was looking at him with huge grey eyes, her face as pale as parchment with two pink spots in each cheek.
She blinked, almost as if she’d been caught in a similar spell, and then something in her eyes cleared. The anger was gone.
She changed tack, entreated him. She held out a hand and her voice was husky. ‘Please, Rafaele, we need to talk about this—’
‘No.’ The word was harsh, abrupt, and it cut her off effectively. Everything within Rafaele had seized at her attempt to try and take advantage of a moment when she might have perceived weakness on his part. To play on his conscience. With the shadows under her eyes making her look fragile and vulnerable.
He’d witnessed his mother for years, using her wiles to fool men into thinking she was vulnerable, fragile. Only to see how her expression would harden again once they were no longer looking and she’d got what she wanted. She’d been so cold the day she’d left his father, showing not an ounce of remorse.
Once, he mightn’t have believed Sam was like that, but that was before she’d kept his son from him, demonstrating equal, if not worse, callousness.
Rafaele took another step back and hated that he felt the need to do so. That volcanic anger was well and truly erupting now. He gritted out, ‘If you were a man...’
Sam tensed and her chin lifted. Gone was the soft look of before, the husky entreaty.
‘If I were a man...what? You’d thrash me? Well, what’s stopping you?’
Rafaele could see where her hands had clenched to fists by her side. He looked at her disgustedly. ‘Because I don’t raise my hands to women—or anyone, for that matter. But I felt like it for the first time when I realised that boy was my son.’
He couldn’t stop the words spilling out. That initial shock was infusing him all over again.
‘My son, Sam, my flesh and blood. He’s a Falcone. Dio. How could you have played God like that? What gave you the right to believe you had the answer? That you alone could decide to just cut me out of his life?’
Sam seemed to tense even more, her chin going higher. Those spots of red deepened, highlighting her delicate bone structure. ‘Do I need to remind you again that you practically tripped over your feet in your hurry to get out of the clinic that day? You could barely disguise your relief when you thought there was nothing to worry about. You just assumed the worst. It didn’t even occur to you to question whether or not I’d actually had a miscarriage, because you didn’t want a baby.’
Rafaele coloured, his conscience pricked by the reminder of how eager he’d been to get away from those huge bruised eyes, the raw emotion. The shock. The awareness that Sam had strayed too far under his skin.
Tightly he admitted, ‘I never had any intention of having children. But you gave me no reason to doubt the inevitable conclusion of what we’d both believed to be a miscarriage.’
Sam choked out, ‘You were quite happy to wash your hands of me, so don’t blame me now if I felt the best course was to leave you out of my decision-making process.’
Rafaele looked at Sam across the few feet that separated them and all he could see was her eyes. Huge, and as grey as the rolling English clouds. She was sucking him in again but he wouldn’t let her. She’d wilfully misdirected him into believing she’d miscarried when all the while she’d held the knowledge of their baby, living, in her belly.
He shook his head. ‘That’s just not good enough.’
Sam’s voice took on a defensive edge. ‘I was hardly encouraged to get in touch and tell you the truth when I saw you with another woman only a week after that day.’
She was breathing heavily under her shirt and he could see her breasts rise and fall. A flash of heat went straight to his groin and Rafaele crushed it ruthlessly. He focused on her face and tried to forget that he actually hadn’t slept with another woman for about a year after Sam had left, despite appearances and despite his best efforts. Every time he’d come close something inside him had shut down. And since then...? His experiences with women had been anything but satisfactory. To be reminded of this now was galling.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me now, just to deflect your own guilt.’
But the guilt that had struck Rafaele wouldn’t be banished, much as he wanted it to be. Damn her! He wouldn’t let her do this to him now. She’d borne his child. His son. And said nothing.
Sam’s voice was bitter. ‘God forbid that I would forget what our relationship was about. Sex. That was pretty much it, wasn’t it? Forget conversation, or anything more intimate than being naked in bed. It wasn’t as if you didn’t make that abundantly clear, Rafaele, telling me over and over again not to fall for you because you weren’t about that.’
‘But you did anyway, didn’t you?’ Rafaele couldn’t keep the accusing note out of his voice and he saw Sam blanch.
‘I thought I loved you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘After all, you were my first lover, and isn’t it normal for a virgin to develop an attachment to her first? Isn’t that one of the helpful warnings you gave me?’
Rafaele saw nothing right then but a memory of Sam’s naked and flushed body as she’d lain on his bed before him, her breasts high and round, her narrow waist, long legs. Skin so pure and white it had reminded him of alabaster—except she’d been living, breathing, so passionate. And she’d been innocent. He’d never forget how it had felt to sink into that slick, tight heat for the first time. It was his most erotic memory. Her gasp of shock turning to pleasure.
She continued, ‘But don’t worry. I soon got over it and realised how shallow those feelings were. Once I was faced with the reality of pregnancy and a baby.’
‘A reality,’ Rafaele gritted out, angry at that memory and at how easily it had slipped past his guard, ‘that you decided to face alone.’
Reacting against her ability to scramble his thought-processes, Rafaele changed tack.
‘Was it a punishment, Sam? Hmm?’ He answered himself. ‘Punishment for my being finished with you? For not wanting more? For letting you go? For not wanting to have a baby because that’s not what our relationship was about?’
Rafaele couldn’t stop the demon inside him.
‘I think the problem is that you fell for me and you were angry because I didn’t fall for you, so you decided to punish me. It’s so obvious...’
CHAPTER THREE
SAM CLOSED the distance between them, her hand lifted and she hit Rafaele across the face before she even registered the impulse to do so. She realised in the sickeningly taut silence afterwards that she’d reacted because he’d spoken her worst fears out loud. Here in this awful, stark, echoey room.
With a guttural curse, and his cheek flaring red where Sam had hit him, Rafaele hauled her into his arms and his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her angrily, roughly.
It took a second for Sam to get over the shock, but what happened next wasn’t the reaction she would have chosen if she’d had half a brain cell still working. Her reaction came from her treacherous body and overrode her brain completely.
She started kissing him back, matching his anger with her own. For exposing her. For saying those words out loud. For making her feel even more ashamed and confused. For being here. For making her want him. For making her remember. For kissing her just to dominate her and prove how much she still wanted him.
Her hands were clutching Rafaele’s jacket. She tasted blood and yet it wasn’t pain that registered. It was passion, and it sent her senses spiralling out of all control. Rafaele’s hands were bruisingly hard on her arms and tears pricked behind Sam’s eyelids at the tumult of desire mixed with frustration.
She opened her eyes to see swirling green oceans. Rafaele pulled away jerkily and Sam could hear nothing but the thunder of her own heartbeat and her ragged breathing. She was still clutching his jacket and she let go, her hands shaking.
‘You’re bleeding...’
The fact that Rafaele’s voice was rough was no comfort. He was just angry, not overcome with passion.
Sam reached up and touched her lip and winced when it stung slightly. Her mouth felt swollen. She knew she had to get out of there before he saw something. Before he saw that very close behind her anger in that exchange had been an awful yearning for something else.
‘I have to go. They’ll be wondering where we are.’ Her insides were heaving, roiling. She was terrified she might be sick again, and this time all over Rafaele’s immaculate shoes. She couldn’t look at him.
‘Sam—’
‘No.’ She cut him off and looked at him. ‘Not here.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Fine. I’ll send a car for you this evening. We’ll talk at my place.’
Sam was too much in shock to argue. Too much had happened—too much physicality. Too much of a reminder that he aroused more passion in her just by looking at him than she’d ever felt in her life with anyone else. She simply didn’t have it in her right then to say anything other than a very reluctant, ‘Fine.’ She needed to get away from this man before he exposed her completely.
* * *
That evening, Sam waited for Rafaele in an exclusive townhouse in the middle of Mayfair, demesne of the rich and famous. Anger and an awful sense of futility had simmered in her belly all day as she’d had to put up with her colleagues excitedly discussing the great opportunity Rafaele Falcone had presented them with while knowing that it was only to ensure he gained as much control of her life as he could.
She was afraid of the volatility of her emotions after what had happened in that bathroom earlier and, worse, at the thought of working for him again. She forced herself to take deep breaths and focused on her surroundings. Luxurious sofas and chairs, dressed in shades of grey and white and cream. Low coffee tables and sleek furnishings. Seriously intimidating.
She felt very scruffy as she was still in her work uniform of narrow black trousers, white shirt and black jacket. Flat shoes. Hair pulled back. No make-up. These surroundings were made for a much more sensual woman. A woman who would drape herself seductively on a couch in a beautiful silk dress and wait for her lover.
It reminded Sam painfully of Rafaele’s palazzo on the outskirts of Milan, where sometimes she had fooled herself into believing nothing existed beyond those four walls. And that she was one of those beautiful seductive women.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
Sam whirled around so abruptly when she heard his voice that she felt dizzy. She realised she was clutching her leather bag to her chest like a shield and lowered it.
She really wasn’t prepared to see Rafaele again so soon, and that swirling cauldron of emotions within her was spiked with a mix of anger and ever-present shame. And the memory of that angry kiss. Her lips were still sensitive. He looked like the Devil himself, emerging from the shadows of the doorway. Tall, broad, hard, muscled. And mean. His face was harsh, his mouth unsmiling. Making a mockery of his apology for keeping her waiting.
Nothing had changed from earlier. But despite her anger Sam’s conscience stung. Tightly, she said, ‘I’m sorry...for hitting you earlier. I don’t know what came over me...but what you said...it was wrong.’
Liar. She burned inside. She might as well have held her tongue. She was lying to herself as much as to him.
Rafaele came further in. Grim. ‘I deserved it. I provoked you.’
Sam blanched and looked at him. She hadn’t expected that, and somewhere treacherous a part of her melted.
He walked past her and over to a drinks board, helping himself to something amber that swirled in the bottom of a bulbous glass. He looked at her over his shoulder, making heat flood her cheeks. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been making a thorough inspection of his broad back, tapering down to lean hips and firm buttocks.
‘Drink?’
She shook her head hurriedly and got out a choked, ‘No. Thank you.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Sit down, Sam—and you can put down your bag. You look as if your fingers might break.’
She looked down stupidly to see white knuckles through the skin of her fingers where they gripped the leather. Forcing herself to take a breath, she moved jerkily over to the couch and perched on the edge, resisting the design of it, which wanted to seduce her into a more relaxed pose.
Rafaele came and sat down opposite her, clearly far more relaxed than her as he sank back into the couch, resting one arm across the top. Sam fought the desire to look and see how his shirt must be stretched across his chest.
‘What kind of a name is Milo anyway? Irish?’
Sam blinked. It took a minute for his words to sink in because they were so unexpected. ‘It’s...it was my grandfather’s name.’
Sam was vaguely surprised he remembered that detail of her heritage. She was one generation removed from Ireland, actually, having been born and brought up in England because her parents had moved there after her brilliant father had been offered a job at a London university.
Sam sensed his anger building again. ‘I did intend to tell you...some day. I would never have withheld that information from Milo for ever.’
Rafaele snorted a harsh laugh. ‘That’s big of you. You would have waited until he’d built up a childhood full of resentment about his absent father and I wouldn’t have even known.’
Rafaele sat forward and put down his glass with a clatter. He ran his hand impatiently through his hair, making it flop messily onto his forehead. Sam’s insides clenched when she remembered how she’d once felt comfortable running her hands through his hair, using it to hold him in place when he’d had his face buried between—
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Эбби Грин
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: She has the power to change everything…Rafaele Falcone runs his luxury auto empire and his private life with the same ice-cold ruthlessness. Emotions play no part in his decisions and he always demands the best – so he doesn’t hesitate to ask brilliant engineer Samantha Rourke to join his company, even though he walked away from her years before.That sexy Italian accent still sends shivers down her spine, but gutsy Sam knows it’s not just about her impossible desire to feel his hands on her body once again. Because Falcone is about to discover her deepest secret – one that will send his world into a spin!‘Breathtaking writing, I can’t get enough of Abby Green’s characters!’ – Veronica, 45, LampeterDiscover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/abbygreen