Читать книгу Modern Romance - The Best of the Year - Ким Лоренс, Miranda Lee - Страница 24

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.