Читать книгу The Platinum Collection: Affairs To Remember - Эбби Грин - Страница 14

CHAPTER FOUR

FOUR DAYS LATER it was Friday evening, and Sam was tense enough to crack in two, waiting for Rafaele’s appearance. He was moving in tonight, and all week his staff had been arriving at the house to prepare it for his arrival.

When she’d come home from his house the previous Monday evening she’d had to come clean and tell Bridie what had happened. The older woman had reacted with admirable nonchalance.

‘He’s his father, you say?’

‘Yes,’ Sam had replied, sotto voce, giving Bridie a look to tell her to be mindful of small ears nearby as Milo had been in the sitting room, watching a cartoon before bed.

Unfortunately Bridie had been enjoying this revelation far too much. She’d taken a sip of tea and then repeated, ‘His father... Well, I never, Sam. You’re a dark one, aren’t you? I always thought it might have been a waiter or a mechanic at the factory or something...but it’s actually himself—the Falcone boss...’

Sam had gritted out, ‘He’s only moving in temporarily. He’ll be bored within a week, believe me.’

Bridie had sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Well, let’s hope not for Milo’s sake.’

Sam’s hands stilled under the water now, as she washed the dinner dishes. She could hear Milo’s chatter to Bridie nearby. She was doing this for him. She had to stop thinking about herself and think of him. It was the only way she’d get through this, because if she focused for a second on what it meant for her to be thrown into such close proximity with Rafaele again she felt the urgent compulsion to run fast and far away.

Bridie bustled into the kitchen then, and Sam noticed her badly disguised expression of anticipation. She might have smiled if she’d been able.

‘You really don’t have to wait till he gets here.’

The housekeeper smiled at her sunnily and started drying dishes. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Sam. It’s better than the Pope’s visit to Dublin back in the seventies.’

Suddenly the low, powerful throb of an engine became obvious outside. To Sam’s chagrin she found that she was automatically trying to analyse the nuances of the sound, figuring out the components of the engine.

Milo’s ears must have pricked up, because he came into the kitchen excitedly and announced, ‘Car!’

They didn’t have a car themselves, much to his constant disappointment, and Sam couldn’t stop him running towards the door now. When the bell rang her palms grew sweaty. Before she could move, though, Bridie was beating her to it, and Sam only noticed then that Bridie, who never wore an apron, had put one on. She wanted to roll her eyes.

But then the door opened and Sam’s world condensed down to the tall dark figure filling the frame against the dusky evening. She hadn’t seen him since Monday and she hated the way her heart leapt in her chest.

Milo said with some surprise from beside Bridie, ‘It’s the man.’ And then, completely oblivious to the atmosphere, ‘Do you have a car?’

Rafaele’s gaze had zeroed in immediately on Sam, and she was glad now that she had the buffer of Bridie at the door. Bridie was doing her thing now, extending her hand, introducing herself, practically twinkling with Irish charm. Lots of ‘sure’ and ‘Won’t you come in out of that cold?’. Ridiculously, Sam felt betrayed.

Rafaele stepped in and Sam’s chest constricted. He looked so alien, foreign. Too gorgeous for this environment. Finally she found her legs and moved forward to pick Milo up. His eyes were huge as he took Rafaele in, again.

Milo repeated his question. ‘Do you have a car, mister?’

Rafaele looked at Milo and Sam could see how his cheeks flared with colour. His eyes took on a glow that she’d never seen before...or maybe she thought she had...once. Her arms tightened fractionally around Milo. Bridie had bustled off somewhere, saying something about tea and coffee. Now it was just the three of them.

His voice was so deep it resonated within Sam.

‘Yes, I do have a car... I’m Rafaele...and what’s your name?’

The fact that Rafaele’s voice had gone husky made Sam’s guilt rush to the fore again. Milo buried his head in Sam’s neck, his little arms tight around her neck.

She said to Milo’s obscured face, ‘Don’t you remember me telling you that Mr Falcone would be moving in to live with us for a while?’ Milo nodded against her neck, still hiding. She looked back at Rafaele. ‘He’s just a bit shy with strangers at first.’

Rafaele’s eyes flashed dangerously at that reminder of his status and Sam said quickly, ‘You can leave your jacket and things in the hall.’

He started to divest himself of his expensive black coat, revealing a dark suit underneath. Bridie reappeared then, unusually pink in the cheeks, and took Milo from Sam’s arms, saying, ‘I think it’s bedtime for someone...there’s refreshments in the drawing room.’

Sam wanted to roll her eyes again. Since when had Bridie referred to the main reception room as the drawing room? Or said refreshments? Or got pink in the cheeks from preparing tea?

She called after them. ‘I’ll be up to read a story in a little while.’

All she could hear, though, was Milo’s plaintive, ‘I want to see the car,’ and Bridie reassuring him briskly that he could see it in the morning if he was a good boy and brushed his teeth before bed.

Hating Rafaele right then, for imposing himself on them like this and upsetting their equilibrium, Sam forced herself to look at him and bit out, ‘I’ll give you a tour, shall I?’

Rafaele smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘That would be lovely.’

As perfunctorily as she could, while uncomfortably aware of Rafaele breathing down her neck, Sam showed him around the ground floor of the house.

He stopped in the study and took in the impressive array of equipment set up for his benefit, surprising her by saying, ‘This was your father’s study?’

‘Yes,’ Sam answered, more huskily than she would have liked, caught by a sudden upsurge of emotion at remembering her scatty, absent-minded father spending hours on end in here, oblivious to everything. Her chest tightened. Oblivious to his daughter.

‘They should not have set up in here...it’s not appropriate.’

Sam looked at Rafaele, surprised by this assertion. By this evidence of sensitivity.

‘No...it’s fine. It’s been lying empty. It should be used.’ Her mouth twisted wryly. ‘Believe me, you could have set all this up here while he was still alive and he wouldn’t have even noticed.’

Feeling exposed under Rafaele’s incisive green gaze, Sam backed out of the room.

‘Upstairs. I’ll show you your room.’

She hurried up the stairs, very aware of Rafaele behind her, conscious of her drab work uniform. Again.

She opened and closed doors with almost indecent speed, and they passed where Milo was chattering nineteen to the dozen with Bridie as she helped him brush his teeth in the bathroom, standing on a little box so he could reach the sink.

Rafaele stopped outside for a long moment, and when he finally turned to keep following Sam she shivered at the look of censure in his eyes. That brief moment of sensitivity had evidently passed.

When she didn’t open the door to her bedroom, but just gestured at it with clear reluctance, Rafaele pushed past her and opened the door. He looked in for a long moment, before slanting her an unmistakably mocking look. She burned inside with humiliation and hated to imagine what he must think of the room. It hadn’t been redecorated since she’d left home for college and still sported dusky pink rose wallpaper.

The faded décor now seemed to scream out her innermost teenage fantasies of not being the school nerd, of her deeply secret wish to be just like all the other girls. No wonder Rafaele had seduced her so easily. He’d unwittingly tapped into the closet feminine romantic that Sam had repressed her whole life in a bid to be accepted by her father, turning herself into a studious tomboy.

Aghast to be thinking of this now, she swallowed her mortification, reached past Rafaele and pulled the door firmly closed in his face. Then she led him to his room.

Thankfully it was at the other end of the house from her room and Milo’s, which was opposite hers. And, even better, it had an en suite bathroom. After that cataclysmic moment in the university the other day she had no intention of running into a half-naked Rafaele on his way to the bathroom.

Rafaele barely gave the room a cursory once-over. As she led him back downstairs Sam sent up another silent prayer that he was already chafing to get back to his own rarefied world, where his every whim was indulged before he’d even articulated it out loud.

Bridie had indeed set out tea and coffee in the front room. Sam poured coffee and handed it to him, watching warily as he sat down on the comfy but decidedly threadbare sofa.

He looked around, taking in the homely furnishings. ‘You have a nice house.’

Sam took a seat as far away from Rafaele as possible. She all but snorted. ‘Hardly what you’re used to.’

He levelled her a look that would have sent his minions running. ‘I’m not a snob, Samantha. I may have had a privileged upbringing, but when I set out to resurrect Falcone Industries I had nothing but the shirt on my back. I lived in an apartment the size of your porch and worked three jobs to put myself through college.’

Sam frowned, a little blindsided by this revelation. ‘But your stepfather—he was a Greek billionaire...’

Rafaele’s mouth twisted. ‘Who hated my guts because I wasn’t his son. The only reason he put me through school at all was because of my mother. He washed his hands of me as soon as he could and I paid him back every cent he’d doled out for my education.’

He’d never told her this before—had always shied away from talking about personal things. She’d always assumed that he’d been given a hand-out to restart Falcone Industries. It was one of the most well-documented resurrections of a company in recent times. Spectacular in its success. She recalled his mother ringing from time to time, and their clipped conversations largely conducted in Spanish, which was her first language.

At a loss to know what to say, Sam went for the easiest thing. ‘How is your mother?’

Rafaele’s face tightened almost imperceptibly but Sam noticed.

‘She died three months ago. A heart attack.’

‘I’m sorry, Rafaele,’ Sam responded. ‘I had no idea...’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I must have missed it in the papers.’

His Spanish mother had been a world-renowned beauty and feted model. Her marriages and lovers had been well documented. The rumour was that she had cruelly left Rafaele’s father when it had become apparent that he’d lost everything except his title. But this was only hearsay that Sam had picked up when she’d gone to Milan to work for Falcone Industries as an intern.

Rafaele shook his head, his mouth thin. ‘It was overshadowed by the economic crisis in Greece so it barely made the papers—something we welcomed.’

Sam could remember how much Rafaele had hated press intrusion and the constant glare of the paparazzi lens. He put down his cup and stood abruptly. Sam looked up, her breath sticking in her throat for a minute as he loomed so large and intimidating. Gorgeous. Lord, how was she going to get through even twenty-four hours of him living under the same roof, just down the hall? Did he still sleep naked—?

‘...will you tell him?’

Sam flushed hotly when she registered Rafaele looking at her expectantly. He’d just asked her a question and she’d been so busy speculating on whether or not he still slept naked that she hadn’t heard him.

She stood up so quickly her knees banged against the coffee table and she winced. ‘Tell who what?’

Rafaele looked irritated. ‘When are you going to tell Milo that I am his father?’

Sam crossed her arms over breasts that felt heavy and tingly. ‘I think...I think when he’s got used to you being here. When he’s got to know you a bit...then we can tell him.’ She cursed herself for once again proving that her mind was all too easily swayed by this man.

He nodded. ‘I think that’s fair enough.’

Sam breathed out, struck somewhere vulnerable at seeing Rafaele intent on putting Milo’s needs first, over his wish to punish her.

Just then Bridie put her head around the door. ‘I’m off, love, and Milo is waiting for his story. If you need me over the weekend just call me. Nice to meet you, Mr Falcone.’

Sam moved towards the door, more in a bid to get away from Rafaele than a desire to see Bridie out, but the older woman waved her back with a definite glint in her eyes.

‘Stay where you are.’

Rafaele murmured goodnight and then Bridie was gone. Sam heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. And now she really was alone in the house with the man she’d hoped never to see again and her son. Milo. The incongruity of Rafaele Falcone, international billionaire and playboy, here in her suburban house, was overwhelming to say the least.

She backed towards the door. ‘I should go to Milo. He’ll come looking for me if I don’t.’ Why did she suddenly sound as if she’d just been running?

Rafaele inclined his head. ‘I have some work to attend to, if you don’t mind me using the study?’

Sam was relieved at the prospect of some space. ‘Of course not.’

And then she fled, taking the stairs two at a time as she had when she’d been a teenager.

Rafaele heard Sam take the stairs at a gallop and shook his head. He looked around the room again. Definitely not the milieu he was accustomed to, in spite of his defence to Sam. Those gruelling years when he’d done nothing but work, study, sleep and repeat were a blur now.

He felt slightly shell-shocked at how easily he’d told Sam something he never discussed. It was no secret that he’d turned his back on his stepfather to resurrect his family legacy, but people invariably drew their own conclusions.

His mouth tightened. He’d resisted the urge to spill his guts before—had been content to distract them both from talking by concentrating on the physical. Avoiding a deeper intimacy at all costs.

Rafaele cursed and ran his hands through his hair, feeling constricted in his suit. He’d come straight here from a meeting in town. As soon as he’d walked in through the front door he’d felt the house closing in around him claustrophobically and he’d had a bizarre urge to turn on his heel, get back into his car and drive very fast in the opposite direction.

For a wild few seconds when he’d looked at Sam waiting in the hall the only thing he’d been able to remember was how he’d all but devoured her only days before. He’d assured himself that he could just send in his lawyers and have her dictated to, punished for not telling him about Milo.

But then he’d seen Milo, held in her arms, and the claustrophobia had disappeared. That was why he was here. Because he didn’t want more months to go by before he got a chance to let his son know who he was. More months added on top of the three years he’d already missed. Rafaele had never really forgiven his own father for falling apart and checking out of his life so spectacularly. For investing so much in a woman who had never loved him. For allowing himself to turn into something maudlin and useless.

For years Rafaele had been jealous of his younger brother, Alexio, who had grown up bathed in his father’s love and support. So much so, however, that Rafaele knew how stifling Alexio had found it, prompting him to turn his back on his own inheritance. He smiled grimly to himself. Maybe that just proved one could never be happy?

He made his way to the study and sat down behind the desk, firing up various machines. He stopped abruptly when he heard movement above his head. His heart twisted at the realisation that he must be underneath Milo’s room. Obeying an urge he couldn’t ignore, Rafaele stood up and walked out of the room and up the stairs, as silent as a panther.

He saw the half-open door of Milo’s room and stopped when he could see inside. The scene made him suck in a breath. Sam was leaning back against a headboard painted in bright colours with Milo in her embrace. She held a book open in front of them and was reading aloud, putting on funny voices, making Milo giggle.

Rafaele had forgotten that she wore glasses to read and write. They made her look seriously studious, but also seriously sexy. Her mouth was plump and pink. Even in the plain white shirt and trousers her slim curves were evident. This sight of her was hugely disconcerting. He’d never expected to see her in this situation. And yet something about it called to him—an echo of an emotion he’d crushed ruthlessly when she’d first told him she was pregnant. Before the shock had hit, and the cynical suspicion that she’d planned it, had come something far more disturbing. Something fragile and alien.

He hated her right then for still having an effect on him. For still making him want her. For invading his imagination when he’d least expected it over the last four years. He would find it hard to recall his last lover’s name right now, but Sam...her name had always been indelible. And this was utterly galling when she’d proved to be as treacherous as his own mother in her own way. When she’d kept the most precious thing from him. His son.

For a moment Rafaele questioned his sanity in deciding to take over funding the research programme at the university in a bid to get to Sam. But then he remembered looking down into Milo’s green eyes and recognising his own DNA like a beacon winking back at him.

As much as there was a valid reason behind his rationale, it had also come from that deeper place not linked solely to rationale and he hated to admit that.

His eyes went to his son and Rafaele put a hand to his chest, where an ache was forming. He would make it his life’s mission to keep Sam from sidelining him from his own son’s life. Whatever it took. Even if it meant spending twenty-four hours a day with her. He could resist her. How could he desire a woman who had denied him his most basic right of all? His own flesh and blood.

* * *

Later, when Sam was in bed, the familiar creakings of the old house which normally comforted her sounded sinister. Rafaele Falcone was separated from her only by some bricks and mortar. And reality was slowly sinking in. Her new reality. Living and working with Rafaele Falcone. She suspected that he’d flexed his muscles to get her to work for him as much to irritate her as for any bona fide professional reason, even if that was why he’d first contacted her.

The thought of going back into that factory environment made her feel clammy. Although she’d loved it the first time around—it had been so exciting, getting an internship with one of the most innovative and successful motor companies in the world.

Rafaele had made his initial fortune by devising a computer software program which aided in the design of cars, and that was how he’d first come onto the scene, stunning the world with its success. That was how he’d been able to fund getting Falcone Motors off the ground again—injecting it with new life, turning around the perception of the Falcone car as outdated and prehistoric. Now Falcone cars were the most coveted on the race track and on the roads.

And Sam had been in the thick of it, working on new cutting edge designs, figuring out the most fuel-efficient engine systems. From her very first day, though, she’d been aware of Rafaele. She’d gone bright red whenever she saw him, never expecting him to be as gorgeous in the flesh as he was in press photos.

He’d surprised her by being very hands-on, not afraid to get dirty himself, and invariably he knew more than all of them put together, displaying an awesome intelligence and intellect. And, in a notoriously male-dominated industry, she’d met more females working in his factory than she’d encountered in all her years as a student. Clearly when he said equal opportunities he meant it.

Sam had found that each day she was seeking him out...only to look away like a naive schoolgirl if he met her gaze, which he’d appeared to do more and more often. She’d been innocent—literally. A childhood spent with an emotionally distant father and with her head buried in books hadn’t made for a well-rounded adolescence. While her peers had been experimenting with boys Sam had been trying in vain to connect with her scatty but brilliant father. Bridie had been in despair, and had all but given up encouraging Sam to get out and enjoy herself, not to worry so much about studying or her father.

The irony of it all was that while the more predominantly masculine areas did appeal to her—hence her subsequent career—she’d always longed to feel more feminine. And it was this very secret desire that Rafaele had unwittingly tapped into so effectively. Just by looking at her, he had made Sam feel like a woman for the first time in her life.

One of their first conversations had been over an intricate engine. The other interns and engineers had walked away momentarily and Sam had been about to follow them when Rafaele had caught her wrist. He’d let her go again almost immediately but her skin had burned for hours afterwards, along with the fire in her belly.

‘So,’ he’d drawled in that sexy voice, ‘where did your interest and love for engines come from, Miss Rourke?’

The Miss Rourke had sounded gently mocking, as if some sort of secret code had passed between them. Sam had been mesmerised and it had taken a second for her to answer. She’d shrugged, looking away from the penetrating gaze that had seemed to see her in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying.

‘My father is a professor of physics, so I’ve grown up surrounded by science. And my grandmother...his mother...she was Irish, but she ended up in England during the Second World War, working in the factories on cars. Apparently she loved it and had a natural affinity for working with engines—so much so that she kept her job after the war for a few years, before returning home to marry.’ She’d shrugged again. ‘I guess it ran in the family.’

Sam looked back at her young naive self now and cringed. She’d been so transparent, so easy to seduce. It had taken one earth-shattering kiss in Rafaele’s office and she’d opened herself up for him, had forgotten everything her upbringing had taught her about protecting herself from emotionally unavailable people.

He’d whispered to her that she was sensual, sexy, beautiful, and she’d melted. A girl who had grown up denying her very sexuality had had no defence mechanism in place to deal with someone as practised and polished and seductive as Rafaele.

She’d fallen for him quicker than Alice in Wonderland had fallen down the rabbit hole. And her world had changed as utterly as Alice’s: beautiful dresses, intoxicating dates—one night he’d even flown them to Venice in his helicopter for dinner.

And then there had been the sex. He’d taken her innocence with a tenderness she never would have expected of a consummate seducer. It had been mind-blowing, addictive. Almost overwhelming for Sam, who had never imagined her boring, almost boyish body could arouse someone—never mind a man like Rafaele Falcone, who had his pick of the world’s most beautiful women.

During their short-lived affair, even though he’d told her, ‘Samantha...don’t fall for me. Don’t hope for something more because I have nothing to give someone like you...’ she hadn’t listened. She’d told herself that he had to feel something, because when they made love it felt as if they transcended everything that bound them to this earth and touched something profound.

At the time, though, she’d laughed and said airily, belying her own naivety, ‘Relax, Rafaele! It is possible, you know, for not every woman you meet to fall in love with you. I know what this is. It’s just sex.’

She’d made herself say it out loud, even though it had been like turning a knife towards her own belly and thrusting it deep. Because she’d been so far out of her depth by then she might as well have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She’d been lying, of course. She’d proved to be as humiliatingly susceptible to Rafaele’s lethal charm as the next hapless woman.

If anything, he’d given her a life lesson and a half. For a brief moment she’d lost her head and forgotten that if it looked like a dream and felt like a dream, then it probably was a dream. Her real world was far more banal and she’d always been destined to return to it. Milo or no Milo.

Punching the pillow beneath her head now, as if she could punch the memories away too, Sam closed her eyes and promised herself that not for a second would she ever betray just how badly that man had hurt her.

* * *

‘Mummy, the man is still here. He’s downstairs in the book room.’

Sam responded to the none-too-gentle shaking of her son and opened her eyes. She’d finally fallen asleep somewhere around dawn. Again. Milo’s eyes were huge in his face and Sam struggled to sit up, pulling him into her, feeling her stomach clench at the reminder of who was here.

‘I told you that he’d be moving in with us for a while, don’t you remember?’ she prompted sleepily.

Milo nodded and then asked, ‘But where’s his house?’

Sam smiled wryly. Little did her son know that his father had a veritable portfolio of houses around the world.

‘He doesn’t have a house here in London.’

‘Okay.’ Milo clambered out of the bed and looked at her winsomely. ‘Can we get Cheerios now?’

Sam got out of bed and reached for her robe—and then thought better of it when she imagined Rafaele giving its threadbare appearance a caustic once-over. No doubt he would wonder what on earth he’d ever seen in her.

Hating to be so influenced by what he might think, Sam reached for jeans and a thin sweatshirt and yanked her sleep-mussed hair into a ponytail. No make-up. She cursed herself. She wasn’t trying to seduce Rafaele, for crying out loud.

Milo was jumping around now and then stopped. ‘Do you...do you think he’ll eat Cheerios too?’ He looked comically stricken. ‘What if he eats my Cheerios?’

Sam bent down and tweaked Milo’s nose. ‘He won’t touch your Cheerios while I’m around. Anyway, I happen to know for a fact that he only likes coffee for breakfast.’

Something poignant gripped her as she remembered lazy mornings when Rafaele would take great pleasure in feeding her but not himself, much to her amusement.

‘Ugh,’ declared Milo, already setting off out of the room, ‘Coffee is yuck.’

Sam heard him go downstairs, sounding like a herd of baby elephants, and took a deep breath before following him. The study door was ajar, and as she passed she could hear the low deep tones that had an instant effect on her insides.

Milo was pointing with his finger and saying in a very loud stage whisper, ‘He’s in there.’

Sam just nodded and put a finger to her lips, then herded Milo towards the kitchen, where he quickly got distracted helping to set the table.

And even though she knew Rafaele was in the house she still wasn’t prepared when she turned around and saw him standing in the doorway, looking dark and gorgeous in faded jeans and a thin jumper. It did little to disguise the inherent strength of his very powerful masculine form, akin to that of an athlete. He was so sexy. With that unmistakable foreign edge that no English man could ever hope to pull off.

The memory of his initial effect on her four years ago was still raw, but she forced herself to say civilly, ‘Good morning. I hope you slept well?’

He smiled faintly but she noticed it barely touched those luminous green eyes. ‘Like a log.’

Milo piped up, ‘That’s silly. Logs can’t sleep.’

Rafaele looked at his son and again Sam noticed the way something in his face and eyes softened. He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table near Milo. ‘Oh, really? What should I say, then?’

Milo was embarrassed now with the attention and started squirming in his chair. ‘Aunty Bridie says she sleeps like a baby, and babies sleep all the time.’

‘Okay,’ Rafaele said. ‘I slept like a baby. Is that right?’

Milo was still embarrassed and avoided Rafaele’s eyes, but then curiosity got the better of him and he squinted him a look. ‘You sound funny.’

Rafaele smiled. ‘That’s because I come from a place called Italy...so I speak Italian. That’s why I sound funny.’

Milo looked at Sam. ‘Mummy, how come we don’t sound like the man?’

Sam avoided Rafaele’s eyes. She put Milo’s bowl of cereal down in front of him and chided gently, ‘His name is Rafaele.’ And then, ‘Because we come from England and we speak English. To some people we would sound funny.’

But Milo was already engrossed in his food, oblivious to the undercurrents between the two adults in the small kitchen. Sam risked a glance at Rafaele and blanched. His look said it all: The reason he thinks I sound funny is because you’ve denied him his heritage.

Sam turned to the coffee machine as if it was the most interesting thing on the planet and said, too brightly, ‘Would you like some coffee?’

She heard a chair scrape and looked around to see Rafaele standing up. ‘I had some earlier. I have to go to the factory for a while today but I’ll be back later. Don’t worry about dinner or anything like that—I have to go out tonight to a function.’

‘Oh.’ Sam rested her hands on the counter behind her. She hated the sudden deflated feeling in her solar plexus. But hadn’t she expected this? So why was she feeling disappointed? And angry?

The words spilled out before she could stop them. ‘I forgot that weekends for you are just as important as any other day.’ Except for when he’d spent that whole last weekend in bed with her, and diverted his phone calls.

Rafaele’s eyes flashed. ‘We’re taking in delivery of some specially manufactured parts today and I need to make sure they’re up to spec because we start putting them into new cars next week. Something,’ he drawled, with that light of triumph in his eyes, ‘you’ll be dealing with next week when you come to work.’

Sam’s insides clenched hard even as a treacherous flicker of interest caught her. She’d forgotten for a moment.

Before she could respond, Rafaele had dismissed her and was bending down to Milo’s eye level. His ears had inevitably pricked up at the mention of cars. ‘I was thinking that maybe tomorrow you’d like to come for a drive in my car?’

Milo’s eyes lit up and he immediately looked at Sam with such a pleading expression that she would have had to be made of stone to resist.

‘Okay...if Rafaele still feels like it tomorrow. He might be tired, though, or—’

He cut her off with ice in his voice. ‘I won’t be tired.’

‘But you’re going out tonight,’ Sam reminded him.

Immediately her head was filled with visions of Rafaele and some blonde—of him creeping back into the house like a recalcitrant student at dawn, dishevelled and with stubble lining his jaw.

But he was shaking his head and the look in his eye was mocking, as if he could read her shameful thoughts. ‘I won’t be tired,’ he repeated.

He was walking out of the kitchen when Sam thought of something and followed him. He looked back at her as he put on his leather coat and she held out a key. ‘The spare front door key.’

He came and reached for it and their fingers touched. A sizzle of electricity shot up Sam’s arm and she snatched her hand back as if burnt, causing the key to drop to the ground. Cheeks burning with humiliation, she bent and picked it up before Rafaele could and handed it to him again, avoiding his eye.

And then, to her everlasting relief, he was out of the door. She turned around and breathed in deep, barely aware of Milo running to the reception room window so he could see the car pull away. She had to get a hold of herself around this man or she’d be a quivering wreck by the end of a week.