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Rafaele looked at his son and again Sam noticed the way something in his face and eyes softened. He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table near Milo. ‘Oh, really? What should I say, then?’
Milo was embarrassed now with the attention and started squirming in his chair. ‘Aunty Bridie says she sleeps like a baby, and babies sleep all the time.’
‘Okay,’ Rafaele said. ‘I slept like a baby. Is that right?’
Milo was still embarrassed and avoided Rafaele’s eyes, but then curiosity got the better of him and he squinted him a look. ‘You sound funny.’
Rafaele smiled. ‘That’s because I come from a place called Italy...so I speak Italian. That’s why I sound funny.’
Milo looked at Sam. ‘Mummy, how come we don’t sound like the man?’
Sam avoided Rafaele’s eyes. She put Milo’s bowl of cereal down in front of him and chided gently, ‘His name is Rafaele.’ And then, ‘Because we come from England and we speak English. To some people we would sound funny.’
But Milo was already engrossed in his food, oblivious to the undercurrents between the two adults in the small kitchen. Sam risked a glance at Rafaele and blanched. His look said it all: The reason he thinks I sound funny is because you’ve denied him his heritage.
Sam turned to the coffee machine as if it was the most interesting thing on the planet and said, too brightly, ‘Would you like some coffee?’
She heard a chair scrape and looked around to see Rafaele standing up. ‘I had some earlier. I have to go to the factory for a while today but I’ll be back later. Don’t worry about dinner or anything like that—I have to go out tonight to a function.’
‘Oh.’ Sam rested her hands on the counter behind her. She hated the sudden deflated feeling in her solar plexus. But hadn’t she expected this? So why was she feeling disappointed? And angry?
The words spilled out before she could stop them. ‘I forgot that weekends for you are just as important as any other day.’ Except for when he’d spent that whole last weekend in bed with her, and diverted his phone calls.
Rafaele’s eyes flashed. ‘We’re taking in delivery of some specially manufactured parts today and I need to make sure they’re up to spec because we start putting them into new cars next week. Something,’ he drawled, with that light of triumph in his eyes, ‘you’ll be dealing with next week when you come to work.’
Sam’s insides clenched hard even as a treacherous flicker of interest caught her. She’d forgotten for a moment.
Before she could respond, Rafaele had dismissed her and was bending down to Milo’s eye level. His ears had inevitably pricked up at the mention of cars. ‘I was thinking that maybe tomorrow you’d like to come for a drive in my car?’
Milo’s eyes lit up and he immediately looked at Sam with such a pleading expression that she would have had to be made of stone to resist.
‘Okay...if Rafaele still feels like it tomorrow. He might be tired, though, or—’
He cut her off with ice in his voice. ‘I won’t be tired.’
‘But you’re going out tonight,’ Sam reminded him.
Immediately her head was filled with visions of Rafaele and some blonde—of him creeping back into the house like a recalcitrant student at dawn, dishevelled and with stubble lining his jaw.
But he was shaking his head and the look in his eye was mocking, as if he could read her shameful thoughts. ‘I won’t be tired,’ he repeated.
He was walking out of the kitchen when Sam thought of something and followed him. He looked back at her as he put on his leather coat and she held out a key. ‘The spare front door key.’
He came and reached for it and their fingers touched. A sizzle of electricity shot up Sam’s arm and she snatched her hand back as if burnt, causing the key to drop to the ground. Cheeks burning with humiliation, she bent and picked it up before Rafaele could and handed it to him again, avoiding his eye.
And then, to her everlasting relief, he was out of the door. She turned around and breathed in deep, barely aware of Milo running to the reception room window so he could see the car pull away. She had to get a hold of herself around this man or she’d be a quivering wreck by the end of a week.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN SAM HEARD the telltale purr of a powerful engine as she lay in bed that night she looked at her clock in disbelief. It was before midnight and Rafaele was home? Home. She grimaced at how easily that had slipped into her mind.
Feeling like a teenager, but unable to help herself, she got out of bed and went to her window, pulling back the curtain ever so slightly. Her heart was thumping. Rafaele hadn’t got out of the car yet, and even from here she could see his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.
Sam had the uncanny feeling that he was imagining the wheel was her neck. Then suddenly the door opened and he got out, unfolding his huge frame from the sleek low-slung vehicle. In any other instance Sam would have sighed in sheer awe at the stunningly designed lines.
She stopped breathing as she took in Rafaele, just standing there for a moment. He wore a tuxedo. Sam knew from past experience that he had a dressing room and fully stocked wardrobe at his office. His shirt was open at the throat, his bow tie hanging rakishly undone.
Rafaele shut the car door and then surprised her by leaning back against the car and putting his hands deep in his pockets, crossing his long legs at the ankle. He looked down, and something about him was so intensely lonely that Sam felt like a voyeur. She hated the way her heart clenched.
