The Ranieri Bride. Michelle Reid

he muttered. By the end, she’d been so good at a lot of things that he had barely been able to look at her without wanting her to try her newly acquired whiles out on him some more.

      What he had not envisaged was her wanting to try those whiles out elsewhere—and especially not on his own cousin.

      One-time cousin, Enrico grimly amended. The day he had kicked Freya out of his life, he’d kicked Luca out of it, too.

      Luca, with the same dark good looks that the Ranieri family were known for, he thought cynically. He had not needed to hit on Freya when he could have had any other woman he desired.

      Or was it Freya who’d hit on him?

      Enrico didn’t know, had refused to discuss it with either of them. All he did know was that he’d gone away on business vaguely aware that she’d not been happy about something and had promised himself he would find out what was bothering her when he got home again. What he’d found when he’d got home had finished him as a loyal cousin and as a loyal lover.

      And if you want to replay old memories, he told himself cynically, then replay the one where you walked in on the two of them sprawled half-naked on your own damn bed, with her legs splayed wide and his tight, tanned backside about to make its urgent thrust home.

      It was a good point in his thoughts for Freya’s knock to sound at the door, he mused grimly as he turned around.

      Moving back to his chair, he sat down in it before calling a cold, ‘Come in.’

      Freya took a deep breath before reaching for the door handle, all too aware that Enrico’s PA was watching her and that he, like everyone else in this building, was wondering what was going on between her and his boss.

      Her face was flushed due to her mad rush up here, eyes actually sparking with a mixture of fired-up aggression and fear. Stroking a hand over her hair in a nervous gesture at the same time as she turned the handle, she pressed her trembling lips together and stepped through the door.

      The first thing to hit her was the bright light flooding into the room from all angles. The next thing to hit her was the sight of Enrico himself. He was seated behind a desk and looking exactly the same as he had done four years ago, when she’d first met him on the day he’d taken over the company she’d been working for then.

      All sleek, smooth elegance and stunning good looks, wrapped around a truly rampant sex appeal. Memories flooded her of the way she’d tried so hard to appear professional and efficient back then, smiling nervously while blushing shyly and feeling generally like an awkward child in the presence of some great, awesome power.

      That great, awesome power had been her first encounter with her own sexual stirrings. Until that moment she’d always laughed at friends who went all fluttery when they talked about new boyfriends and said silly things like, ‘Oh, you should see him! He made me so hot I wanted to drag off my clothes!’

      Well, Enrico had made her feel like that. She’d been ready to drag off her clothes for this too-gorgeous-to-be-real new boss she’d been handed like one of those gifts you did not know what to do with or how to deal with.

      The same crazy sensations washed right over her now as she stood there just inside the closed door and stared down the room at his seated, undeniably sexy but intimidating bulk, and she felt hot feelings spark into life, though they had no right—not for this man, who might be an amazing lover but had proved beyond a doubt that he was good for nothing else.

      Her chin went up on that final denunciation. Enrico’s insides knotted as he watched it happen, felt the challenge in the gesture hit low in his gut and remain there taunting him, as he watched her toss fear and defiance at him in equal doses like some unruly employee dragged before the big boss because her work attitude was unsatisfactory.

      What a joke, he thought as he studied the red flags highlighting her smooth, creamy cheeks and the ice-over-fear glazing her sea-green eyes. According to her personal records, Freya Jenson was so super-efficient it would take lies to make out she was incompetent. She was never late in, never sick and never left a minute earlier than she should do. She never moaned or complained about her frankly lousy working environment or the mindless job that she did. And she had never asked for more money, though she’d worked at Hannard’s for over two years and had never been given a single pay rise.

      Why, Enrico asked himself, when it was perfectly obvious from the clothes she was wearing that she barely had enough money on which to exist? Why, when he could see even from here that that unflattering knot her hair was contained in needed a pair of scissors taken to it? And he liked her twisting, spiraling, glorious waist-length hair.

      The boy had been dressed well. His head of black curls had been carefully cut and shaped into a fashionable style, and the shoes on his feet had not looked as if they’d seen better days in a scrap bin at a charity shop.

      She had a good brain in her head, but she was working here as some nonentity filing clerk hidden away in the bowels of the building, while the boy lived it up on the second floor, in a nursery to beat all nurseries complete with a wide-open terrace and a veritable array of toys and care staff to entertain him.

      The child was tough and unruly—loved his mamma to death and only responded to a scolding if it came from her. The nursery staff despaired of ever gaining control of him but adored him anyway because—apparently—he could make them fall about laughing just when they believed they were in danger of killing him.

      He had a sense of humour, in other words. As Fredo had reminded him he used to have, when he drove everyone insane only to win them over at the last minute by some inner instinct that turned him from obnoxious brat to clown.

      And Freya loved him, this boy they had made together. Everyone knew how much she loved him. Everyone knew she was the best mother in the entire world.

      But she’d still kept her son from his father. Was that the move of a loving mother?

      ‘Come and sit down,’ he instructed coldly.

      ‘I prefer to stand,’ she refused.

      ‘Sit,’ he incised and felt his blood begin to race around his system while he waited for her to deny him once more.

      She didn’t. It was almost a disappointment. At this precise moment he would have loved any excuse to tear her into shreds with his bare hands.

      With eyes carefully lowered now she moved forwards, a reed-slender thing of five feet seven with hidden treasures lurking beneath the bad suit. Lounging there in his chair, Enrico let his eyelids sweep downwards over his eyes as he looked her over in a slow, cold study that did not reflect the burn of sexual anger taking place in his gut.

      Wouldn’t she just love to know that his body had not forgotten her, even if his brain had done until a few short hours ago?

      The dusky pink mouth was tense, he noted, though the way she was holding it like that did not hide the revealing little tremor which told him just how frightened she was.

      Good, he thought as he watched her take the chair positioned on the other side of the desk, then sit down with a stiff spine and knees pressed modestly together.

      Another joke, since she had proved she was perfectly happy to open those legs for anybody.

      Including his cousin.

      ‘Do you think it is appropriate to hold a conversation with your employer via the telephone at the same time as you were relieving yourself in the lavatory?’ he asked.

      That brought her eyes shooting upwards. Enrico received the full blast of her green stare. ‘I explained that,’ she said. ‘And I had finished relieving myself, for your information,’ she added. ‘But it is up to you to decide if you found my call offensive.’

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed without elaborating on the single comment.

      She lowered her eyes again, those golden-tipped eyelashes fluttering down against her cheeks. Something else stung inside him, the desire to run his tongue across those satin-smooth cheekbones and