Until she’d reached this door, that was. All the way through the crèche inquisition, she’d let the anger grow inside her. All the way through her eventual escape, and then the minutes she’d spent in the nearest ladies’ room attempting to make herself look and feel respectable again.
Feeling respectable again had been the most difficult part to grasp. After the use of a comb, her hair was back up in a scalp-stinging tight knot and secured by a couple of elastic bands filched from Cindy.
It was the moment when Cindy had gently pointed out that her jacket buttons were done up in the wrong order that had really thrown her.
She’d known then that they all knew what she’d been doing to get into such a dishevelled state. Or they thought they knew. She could only hope that their imaginations did not stretch as far as the real, unfettered, lustful, shameful truth.
Whatever. It would be all over the building by now—everything, from the juicy arrival of the shoeless Freya Jenson into the crèche with her hair wild about her shoulders and her jacket wrongly buttoned up, to the following entrance of the super-elegant Enrico Ranieri, looking as tall, dark and handsome and dauntingly formidable as his reputation said he was.
She could almost hear the squeals of scandalous delight shrilling down telephones lines and across e-mails as their witnesses relayed, ‘She looked ravished! And guess who did the ravishing? Our gorgeous new boss! Would you believe he’s Nicky’s father? Would you believe they’re getting married? Fast worker, hmm? I wish my shoes were hiding wherever her shoes are hiding…’
Freya wanted to shrivel up and die.
Now here she stood, about to face her persecutor and it had only just hit her that she had nothing to face him with. In just a few short hours he’d ripped her life apart and left her without a single weapon with which to fight.
Except for one…
Her top teeth buried themselves in her bottom lip. The mere hint that she could tell Enrico such a big, wicked lie was enough to make her cringe inside.
If she was wicked enough to claim that Nicky was Luca’s son, would it gain her anything other than the knowledge that she had landed one hit back at him?
She couldn’t do it. She only had to recall those fe
w heart-wrenching moments down in the crèche when Nicky had connected with Enrico to know she could no more murder that special moment than she could do away with her beautiful son.
The door suddenly swung open. Freya blinked as Enrico filled the gap. An instant, uncontrollable rush of sexual awareness ran right down through her.
‘If you stand there fighting with yourself for much longer you will take root,’ he mocked acidly.
‘But how did you—?’
‘Instinct,’ he clipped. ‘I could feel the vibrations of your angst reaching out to me through the solid wood.’
He stepped to one side in a grim indication for her to enter. She did so reluctantly and couldn’t control the small wince as she heard the door shut.
It was like revisiting the scene of a dreadful crime, she thought hollowly as she stared at the room where less than an hour ago she’d…
‘Take your hair down.’
‘No…’ She turned to look at him as he went past her on the way to the desk. Sitting on top of it was the box containing her personal stuff with her handbag beside it. Standing alongside was a zipped-up business case which had to contain Enrico’s laptop. On the floor by the chair, set neatly together, were her shoes.
He was ready to leave here.
He’d only been waiting for her to turn up.
Then what?
A trip to the nearest register office, then ten years or so of marital punishment until Nicky was old enough to cope without her around?
Freya’s stomach knotted. ‘Enrico…’ she murmured.
‘Shoes.’ He indicated with a flip of a hand as if it was perfectly normal to have a pair of women’s shoes standing neatly to attention by the chair.
‘Listen first,’ she insisted. ‘A-about Nicky…’
‘I’m a step ahead of you, Freya, so don’t bother to say it,’ he cut in yet again.
‘You can’t know what I was going to say!’ she snapped out.