squeak of surprise at Rafaele’s guttural voice and saw the linen she’d just shoved at him sail over her head to land back on the pile haphazardly. Then she felt big hands swing her round until she was looking up in his grim face.
‘Sam, I—’ He stopped. His eyes went to her mouth and then he just said, ‘Dio!’ again, before muttering something else in Italian and then pulling her into him.
His mouth was on hers, branding her, and she was up in flames in an instant, every point of her body straining to be closer to his hard form.
With a moan of helpless need and self-derision Sam submitted to the practised and expert ministrations of Rafaele’s wicked mouth and tongue. Some tiny morsel of self-preservation eventually impinged on the heat and gave Sam the strength to pull free. She looked up into Rafaele’s face and almost melted there and then at the sight of the feral look in his eyes. She put a hand to his chest, but that was worse when she felt his heart pounding.
‘We can’t. Not here...’
Rafaele smiled, but it was humourless. ‘Maybe we’ll have to book a hotel as you’re partial to that kind of thing.’
That gave Sam the impetus to move, and she scooted out of the small space and rounded on Rafaele, arms crossed over the betraying throb of her breasts. Her voice was low with anger. ‘You have no right to judge me when you were jumping into bed with someone new barely a week after I left Italy.’
Rafaele frowned. He looked volcanic. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I wasn’t with anyone.’
Sam emitted a curt laugh and tried to hide the flare of something pathetic within her. Hope. ‘Well, that’s not what it looked like—you were photographed all over the place with some Italian TV personality.’
Rafaele opened his mouth to speak but Sam put up a hand, stopping him.
Fiercely, she said, ‘I don’t care, Rafaele.’ Liar.
Irrational guilt over her own liaison made her even angrier.
‘Even if I had told you about Milo, it wasn’t as if we were going to become some happy family. You told me what you thought of marriage and how you never wanted it in your life.’
Sam stopped, breathing heavily, and saw how Rafaele’s face had become shuttered. Clearly he didn’t like to be reminded of that.
‘I seem to recall you agreeing fervently, Sam. Something about how seeing your father weep over your mother’s picture had made you dread ever investing so much in one person only to lose them and be lonely for the rest of your life?’
Sam’s insides contracted. She felt dizzy for a second and then mortification rushed through her like a shameful tide. She’d been so open with him. Had told him every little thing. As if he’d even been interested! Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done, though? After a mere month in this man’s bed she’d been ready to invest everything in him, only to realise how far off-base she’d been.
Panicking, she said the first thing she could think of to try and get them off this topic. ‘What did you mean...about Milan?’
Rafaele’s jaw clenched, but to her intense relief he appeared prepared to let it go.
‘I want to take Milo to meet his grandfather—my father. It’s going to come out sooner or later in the press that I have a son and I’d like Umberto to meet him before that happens. Also, he is old and frail...I’m conscious of his mortality.’
The words were delivered dispassionately enough to shock Sam slightly. Rafaele had never spoken of his father much before, except to say that he lived in a place called Bergamo, not far from Milan, and that he’d moved away after the family business had disintegrated and they’d lost everything. Sam knew that one of the first things Rafaele had done was to buy back the Falcone palazzo just outside Milan, as that was where he’d lived four years ago.
She hadn’t met Umberto Falcone during the time she’d been with Rafaele, and against her better judgment her interest was piqued at the thought of seeing this tantalising glimpse of another aspect of Rafaele’s life. And also to acknowledge that Milo had one grandparent still alive.
Rafaele continued, ‘He’s coming to Milan next week for a routine medical check-up and he’s staying at the family palazzo just outside the city. I have to go back for a few days to attend a board meeting and drop in on the factory there. It would be a perfect opportunity to do this.’
She still resisted, despite being intrigued. ‘Perfect for you, maybe... Milo has playschool, a routine. And what about my work?’
Rafaele’s lip curled. ‘Please—do you really expect me to believe that Milo will be irreparably damaged by missing a few days of playschool? And...’ those laser-like eyes narrowed on her ‘...I think that your boss would be very amenable to you taking the time off.’
Looking smug, Rafaele delivered the final nail in the coffin of Sam’s hopes to escape.
‘I spoke with Bridie about it when we met her outside just a while ago and she said she’d be only too happy to come to Italy with us and help watch Milo. She confided that as a devout Catholic she’s always wanted to visit Rome, and I promised her we could make a stop there on the way back...’
Sam clenched her hands into fists at her sides. ‘That’s low-down and dirty manipulation, Rafaele.’
He shrugged lightly. ‘Call it what you want, Sam, but I believe I’m entitled to a little “manipulation”. You, Milo and Bridie are coming to Italy with me in two days’ time so you’d better get prepared.’
Sam watched Rafaele turn and walk out and welcomed the rush of anger. No doubt he’d been planning this all along, lulling her into a false sense of security by moving into the house, demonstrating his capacity to compromise for his son’s sake. Rafaele was just showing his true colours now: his desire to dominate.
But worse, much worse than that, was the prospect of how hard it would be to return to the place where it had all started. If she was barely holding it together here, how would she manage when she was face to face with the past?
* * *
Two days later, in accordance with Rafaele’s autocratic decree, they were on a private plane belonging to Rafaele’s younger half-brother, the Greek aviation and travel billionaire Alexio Christakos.
Bridie was in silent raptures over the plush luxuriousness of it all and Milo was like a bottle of shaken-up lemonade—about to fizz over at any moment. Every day for him at the moment seemed to bring nothing but untold treasures, and Sam looked at him kneeling on the seat beside her now, watching the world get smaller and smaller beneath them.
It was his first time on a plane and Milo automatically looked for his new favourite person on the planet: Rafaele. Pointing with a chubby finger, he said, ‘Look, Daddy, look!’
Sam’s heart squeezed so tight she had to put a hand there, as if that could assuage the bittersweet pain and the anxiety. How could she trust that Rafaele wouldn’t grow bored and disappear from their lives, leaving Milo bereft? And her... Sam didn’t even want to go there.
They were cruising now, and Rafaele stood up and managed to dwarf the very comfortable ten-seater plane. He held out a hand to Milo. ‘Do you want to see the cockpit?’
He’d
