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it that way. Or maybe I want to spoil you because you don't ask for
anything and I'm not used to that with a woman.'
'I'm not used to blokes buying me stuff,' Holly shared in a sudden rush
of confidence. 'Jeff used to borrow money off me all the time. He was
always running out. I've always paid my own way...well, until recently.'
'Jeff...Timothy's absent father? He sounds a treat,' Rio breathed with
perceptible scorn. 'Where is he?'
Holly repressed a shiver and studied her tightly linked hands. 'Don't
know...don't want to know,' she admitted shakily. 'He thumped me last
time I saw him-'
'I beg your pardon?' Rio curved lean, strong fingers round her slight
shoulder to turn her back to face him.
'Me and my big mouth,' Holly muttered, for she had never intended to
tell anyone that.
Rio raked her strained face with flaring golden eyes. 'He hit you?'
'It was my own fault-'
'How could it have been?' Rio demanded.
'I came up to London with Timmie to find Jeff. It took time because he
had changed jobs and moved on from his last address,' Holly explained
heavily. 'I was stupid. After
all, he always knew how to get in touch with me, but I couldn't accept
that what we'd had had fizzled out-'
'You had a child. Naturally you didn't want to accept it. Did he know
you were pregnant when he abandoned you?'
'Abandoned', she reflected, made what Jeff had done sound dramatically
worse than it had been. All he had actually done was stop phoning, and
had she had the wit to leave it at that she might never have sunk as
low. Following Jeff up to London and searching for him had been her
second biggest mistake, she conceded. With a child in tow she had found
it impossible to make ends meet in so expensive a city, but she had had
nowhere else to go and neither friends nor family to fall back on for
support.
'No. I was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to realising that I was
pregnant myself,' she confided in some discomfiture on that subject.
'So what happened when you traced him?'
'He was living in Notting Hill in a very smart flat,' she faltered, her
mind taking her back to that ghastly day of awakening to the discovery
that the father of her child was a creep of the lowest order and, worst
of all, a weak one. 'I had Timmie with me because I had nowhere else to
leave him. Jeff opened the door...'
'And?' Rio prompted impatiently.
'He said he had a friend visiting and he sort of yanked me into the
kitchen,' Holly whispered shakily. 'I told him that he was a father and
he just went berserk. Then his girlfriend came in...that was worse than
being hit because she felt sorry for me.'
Rio expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss.
'It was her flat and she threw him out to cool off. She was dead
sophisticated, much older than me and not at all embarrassed by the
situation,' Holly gulped. 'She even made me a cup of tea while she told
me that chasing after
50
Jeff with a baby was really dumb. She said Jeff had lost his head
because I had cornered him when she was home and he was desperate to get
rid of me without her finding out that my baby was his.'
'Charming.'
'She was right.' Holly swallowed hard and raised her sleeve, intending
to wipe her eyes. 'I was just too scared to face up to the fact that I
was on my own, so I clung to this stupid dream that it would all work
out once he saw...Timothy,' she pronounced with precision.
Releasing a groan, Rio Lombardi tilted up her chin to dry her damp eyes
with a fine lawn handkerchief. 'Jeff was no loss. You're lucky that you
and your son escaped a man so quick to use his fists in a crisis.'
Her drowning blue eyes gazed up into glittering gold and Jeff went out
of her mind so fast he might never have existed. She tried and failed to
swallow. Rio was so close that breathing was no longer an option. Lashes
lowered, she focused on that wide, sensual mouth of his and the tip of
her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip. Never in all her
life had she been so desperate, so shamelessly eager to feel a man's
mouth on hers. The craving was almost unbearably strong.
His fabulous bone-structure taut, proud cheekbones prominent beneath
smooth bronzed skin, Rio murmured with a fracturing edge to his
thickened drawl, 'It's not my fists you have to fear. I'm much more
inventive but probably more dangerous.'
Please, please, kiss me, I don't care, was running through her mind as
he set her back from him and turned to answer the car phone. She had not
even heard it buzzing and she sank back into her corner again like a
boneless doll, registering that she had just glanced into potent contact
with a male far more sexually charged than Jeff had ever been.
It had been there in the atmosphere between them, an instant, surging
awareness that shook her to her very depths.
Rio took her to an exclusive salon to get her hair done first.
'Cut it short?' Rio repeated on a rising note of disbelief when the
retro-clad stylist made that laconic suggestion after poking through
Holly's hair much as though it was beyond all human intervention.
Closing one hand over hers, Rio dragged her back out of the leather
chair and headed for the exit.
'What are you doing?' Holly gasped in embarrassment, horribly aware of
every head in the place turning in their direction.
'I'm not leaving you at the mercy of a scissor-happy lunatic, cara-'
'Rio!' A female voice intervened.
Rio halted, his lean, strong features tensing.
A stunning brunette with cat-like eyes and vampish burgundy lips surged
up to them, but, for all her elegant cool, she was exuding a definable
air of panic. 'That stupid lump on the desk didn't recognise you, did
she? You walking out of my salon with a big frown is very bad for
business, Rio.'
'Your top stylist wants to chop off her crowning glory!' Rio delivered.
Cheeks burning, Holly stood there while the brunette's shrewd gaze
flicked from Holly's cascading ringlets back to Rio. 'Obviously a guy
with no imagination. I'll do it. She just needs some shaping round her
face. One of your tribe of little cousins over from Italy?' she asked,
as if Holly were mute.
'She speaks hardly any English,' Holly heard Rio stated at that
startling announcement, she shot him a wide-eyed glance of incredulity,
barely able to credit her hearing.
52
'But I presume she has a name. I'm Sly.' The brunette extended a
manicured hand to Holly. 'And you're-'
'Fiammetta,' Rio slotted in with a perfectly straight face. 'She's
unbelievably shy. I'd like her made up as well-'
'What age is she?' Sly enquired of him with a cloying smile, both of
them now talking over the top of Holly's head as if she were a very
small child.
'Old enough to look like a woman,' Rio quipped huskily.
'Then I presume you're planning to do something about the clothes she's
wearing as well,' the salon owner remarked with a sp
eaking little giggle.
Fifteen minutes later, Holly was seated in front of a mirror while Sly
cut her hair with exaggerated care. 'What Rio wants, Rio always gets...'
Since Holly had not one Italian word at her disposal and did not trust
herself to emulate an accent, she compressed her lips and concealed her
discomfiture. When she got her hands on Rio in private, she was going to
scream at him for doing this to her. Why, though? Why deprive her of the
ability to talk?
'I do wish I spoke Italian,' Sly sighed. 'I bet you have the inside
