boasts about their lifestyle could have been true. Clearly he was rich and successful, which meant he was used to getting whatever he wanted. She knew he headed the family textile business, with masses of exclusive outlets all over the world. So we’re talking about dynasties, she mused gloomily.
Even if she hadn’t seen the Mantezzini name above adverts for impossibly glamorous and expensive clothes, she could have recognised his wealth in the cut of his quiet, classy, soft-textured suit. It fitted him like a glove and had obviously been hand-made. Shoes, too. Probably the cream shirt and expensive silk tie had been laboured over with loving care as well. Yes, the playboy Italian looked groomed to the last immaculate inch.
Smelling of money. Smelling gorgeous, as a matter of fact, drat him! She scowled. He’d give Lio a fabulous life—far better in material terms than the one she’d envisaged for them. No doubt Lio would take over the business eventually. What a future.
But would her nephew have what truly mattered: total, unconditional love? She went cold, envisaging the kind of loveless existence she’d been subjected to at home. Without her friends at school, she would have been utterly miserable.
And who would offer Lio a mother’s love? Would he find an ever-changing string of women in his father’s bed? And…would he be farmed out to nannies and be visited by his father only at teatime?
Her fists clenched. That wouldn’t be good enough! Bewildered, frightened little Lio needed affection and love like a fish needs water. And he needed Vittore’s rotten kind of fathering like a hole in the head.
But…what was she going to do? Start a siege? And look what a bag of nerves she was! She was trembling all over!
Time she dived into a warm shower. And found the courage to persuade Vittore that he couldn’t take Lio away right now.
She dared not fail. Her stomach lurching uncomfortably, she checked that Lio was all right. Looking down on his sweet face, her heart somersaulted at the thought of the next hour or so which would decide his fate as well as hers. Her finger stroked his fair cheek.
‘Oh, Lio,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I love you so very much!’
A sob escaped in a wobbly kind of sound through her trembling lips and she hurried to peel off her sopping wet dress. Shakily she stepped into the shower, where tears mingled with the water that poured over her head and where all the daisy petals from that lovely, blissful afternoon were swept away, to sit in a limp and miserable heap blocking the shower drain.
Still only half-dry, her hair wrapped in a virgin white towel, she wriggled into the first pair of briefs that came to hand and yanked what she thought was her cotton turquoise dress from the wardrobe, her fingers shaking so much she could hardly cope with the tiny buttons which ran from neckline to hem.
Too late, she discovered it was a similar one of Linda’s: too late, too short and too tight, she thought moodily, diving for the buttons in order to take it off again. Just then, the gate buzzer rang shrill and loud, and she jumped, fearing that Lio would wake.
‘Damn whoever forgot to make you waterproof!’ she muttered, glaring at the ruined entry phone remote control which she’d flung on the bed. ‘Where were you when I needed you?’ she demanded.
The wretched thing might have let Vittore in without any further risk of awakening the sleeping Lio. As it was, Vittore had apparently decided to lean on the buzzer till she answered and it was screaming through the silence of the house like a banshee.
And so, barefoot and muttering all the rude words she knew, she hitched up the pelmet skirt to hip level and hurtled down the stairs to punch in the code that opened the gates. Remembering, of course, to snuggle the skirt back as far as it would go—which wasn’t far. Not that she cared.
All she could think of was that Vittore could destroy her happiness and turn a bewildered, distressed child into a total wreck. Her heart leapt erratically, her mind focussed only on Lio. His interests came above everything else.
Wiping her clammy hands on her hips, she opened the front door and drew in a horribly shaky breath as the scowling threat to Lio’s welfare came up the drive and strode grimly up the wide steps towards her, his intention crystal clear.
He’d demand to see Lio. Order baby things to be packed.
And there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to stop him.
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