Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee

resounded in his head before he could stop it. He kept his gaze on hers, slightly discomfited that it wasn’t harder to do so. Usually he avoided women’s probing looks. But not this one. Something solidified within him. He couldn’t not have Sam again after that passionate interlude. It was an impossible prospect.

      ‘No, Sam.’

      He lifted her resisting hand and brought it to his mouth, pressed his lips to her palm. Her scent made him harder. His tongue flicked out and he tasted her skin, fancying he could distinguish her musky heat—or was that just her arousal he could smell?

      Frustration at the prospect of the weekend ahead gripped him. He couldn’t make love to her in the house. Not while his son lay sleeping. The thought of Milo waking and witnessing how feral Rafaele felt around Sam was anathema after his own experience of being that small and witnessing his father’s breakdown.

      Sam’s eyes grew wide. Glittering. Pupils dilating. They were distracting him. Making him regret that he couldn’t make love with her again for at least a few days. It would not happen in his office again. Never again. But they weren’t done—not by a long shot.

      ‘I’m not letting you go. Not until this is well and truly burnt out between us. I let you go too soon once before and I won’t make that mistake again.’

      The lights went green and Rafaele let Sam’s hand go. He turned his attention to the road again and the car moved smoothly forward.

      * * *

      Sam clasped her tingling hand and turned her head, staring straight in front of her. Her whole body was still deeply sensitised after what had happened and yet she already felt ravenous for more. His words sank in: I let you go too soon. He’d said something earlier about trying to eclipse her memory... His admission made her heart race pathetically.

      And why on earth had she spilled her guts about her one very sad attempt at another relationship? To score points? To try and convince Rafaele that he hadn’t dominated her life so totally?

      But that was what she had attempted to do with the perfectly nice and normal Max. He’d caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment one day. Sam had seen a random newspaper report documenting the launch of a new Falcone car and there had been a picture of Rafaele with his arm around some gorgeous blonde model.

      More than upset, and disturbed that she was still affected by him and the memories which would not abate after so much time, Sam had recklessly taken Max up on his offer of dinner. After a few weeks of pleasant but not earth-shattering dating Sam had felt a need to try and prove to herself that her memory of Rafaele was a mirage. That surely any other man could match him in bed and then she would not feel such a sense of loss, that she’d never experience such heights again.

      It had been her suggestion to meet in a hotel one afternoon. As if they were both married and having an affair. But she’d thought it practical, considering their children were in their own homes, being minded. And Sam hadn’t felt at all comfortable with introducing Max to Milo...even though he’d been hinting that the time to do so had come.

      The afternoon had been awkward and horrendous from the first moment. Completely underwhelming. Disgusted with herself, because she had known that she’d acted out of weakness, Sam had called it off there and then.

      Something very dangerous and fragile fluttered in the vicinity of her heart, where she’d blocked off any emotions for Rafaele a long time ago. Sam had fancied for a second that he had appeared jealous when she’d mentioned Max...which was ridiculous. What right had he to be jealous? He’d given up that right when he’d been with a woman less than a week after letting her go.

      Sam took a deep breath and tried to crush the nebulous and very dangerous feeling growing within her. She would be the biggest fool on this planet if she was to read anything into Rafaele’s possessive gesture and demeanour just now. As he’d said himself, he was only interested in whatever this was between them until it burnt out.

      As Sam knew to her cost it was far more likely to burn out for him than for her, and she’d be left picking up the pieces again—except this time it would be so much worse because they were forever bound together now through Milo, and she had a very sick feeling that she was in danger of falling for him all over again. Or, more accurately, that she’d never stopped.

      She went cold inside to think that perhaps part of her reluctance to tell him about Milo had been to avoid this very selfish scenario.

      Rafaele smoothly drove the car into the space outside her front door and Sam blinked. She hadn’t even been aware of the journey. Just then a curtain moved and Sam saw Milo’s small face appear, wearing a huge grin. Her heart clenched hard. She could imagine him declaring excitedly, ‘Daddy’s home!’ as he’d been doing for the past few days according to an approving Bridie, who seemed to see nothing but good in Rafaele’s appearance in their lives.

      It was Friday. They had a weekend to get through now, and Sam had no expectation that Rafaele would be sneaking in through her bedroom door at night to pick up where they’d left off. She knew from experience that he liked to keep her a secret, on the periphery of his world.

      Sam took a deep breath and schooled her features, hoping that Rafaele would never guess the extent of her turbulence around him, or that even now she ached between her legs for one of his hands to press against her and alleviate her mounting frustration.

      The fact that she was back in a place she’d clawed her way out of four years before was not a welcome revelation. At all.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ON SUNDAY SAM was folding laundry in the little utility room off the kitchen. Rafaele had taken Milo swimming on his own earlier, and since they’d come home they’d played with Milo’s cars in the sitting room. Now he was putting him to bed.

      She’d felt like a cat on a hot tin roof all weekend. Lying in bed at night, aching with frustration. Locking her muscles to avoid walking down the hall to Rafaele’s room to beg him to make love to her. She refused to give herself away so spectacularly. And she’d been right. He’d treated her coolly all weekend, clearly reluctant to draw what had happened in his office into the domestic sphere.

      Sam was only good enough within an environment which suited him. Nothing had changed. The bitterness that scored her shocked her with its intensity. Her emotions were see-sawing all over the place.

      What hadn’t helped was the little surprise Rafaele had had lined up when they’d woken that morning. The sleek supercar Rafaele had been using since he’d appeared in their lives had been replaced, probably by some hardworking minion, with a far more sedate family car.

      ‘What’s this?’ Sam had asked faintly from the front door as Rafaele had deftly strapped Milo into his car seat to take him swimming.

      He’d cast her a quick dry glance. ‘It’s a car, Sam. A more practical car, I think you’ll agree, for a child...’

      Sam had felt as if she’d just tipped over the edge of a precipice. All she’d been able to think about after they’d left, with an ecstatic Milo in the back, was of how Rafaele—one of the most Alpha male men she’d ever met, if not the most—had segued from playboy with a fast car into man with a child and a safety-conscious car without turning a hair. And somehow that had made Sam more nervous than anything else. She was too scared to look at all the implications and what they might mean...

      She heard a noise then and tensed as she sensed Rafaele’s presence behind her in the kitchen. She felt far too vulnerable to face him right now.

      ‘I want you and Milo to come to Milan with me.’

      Sam went very still for a moment, and then proceeded to fold a sheet as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb from a great height. Irritation with herself, with him, at the sexual frustration clawing at her insides, laced her voice. ‘What are you talking about, Rafaele? We can’t just go to Milan with you.’

      Sounding