AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘OK, gratzi.’
The thanks doubled as a dismissal. After a final glance levelled at Freya, Sonny was nodding his dark head and disappearing back behind the door through which he’d appeared.
Enrico’s hand arrived at the base of Freya’s spine, making it stiffen in rejection. Ignoring her reaction, he applied pressure to make her move forward. The tension between them only helped to cleave her dry tongue to the roof of her mouth.
A few moments later and she was discovering that in there was a large drawing-room with French windows that opened onto a walled garden. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the glass, making the crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling sparkle its rainbow patterns across the pale walls.
How the other half lived, Freya thought bleakly as she froze in the doorway to allow her gaze to drift over a designer’s dream of a room, with its luxurious soft furnishings and spotless French-polished pieces of European antique furniture.
Enrico’s old apartment had looked nothing like this. That had been luxurious, of course, but state-of-the-art modern and relatively easy for her to get used to, whereas this…
She tried to imagine letting loose a barely housetrained two-year-old in here and just couldn’t. She was beginning to feel like a bag lady herself.
Enrico propelled her a few more steps forward, oblivious to his surroundings because he had always lived surrounded by the best. In fact, this room could have been picked up and transferred to here from his beautiful country estate outside Milan.
It was when he moved away from her to stride across the room that she saw the packing boxes stacked behind the door and froze yet again. For there stood her life, packed in what amounted to half a dozen boxes, plus a bright red-and-yellow child’s rider-truck that looked so out of place she felt as if the room were glaring at it for daring to show itself.
‘We can’t live here,’ she heard herself whisper.
In the process of pushing open the French windows, Enrico swung around then went perfectly still when he too saw the boxes and the red-and-yellow truck.
Something hit him hard in the mid-section of his body, insight into what Freya had been seeing when she’d whispered those words: her life packed into six damn boxes. Her small flat, the whole of which, he recalled, would fit into half of this room. She had no family left to call upon, no one but herself on whom to rely. Her cheap grey suit, scuffed shoes and hair that was in need of professional attention all seemed to make a mockery of the display of wealth that was on show here.
Then there was that brightly coloured truck; he could actually visualise his son sitting on it and careering across aged oak floors and priceless rugs, and knocking into finely tooled legs belonging to priceless tables and chairs.
Was the boy Luca’s?
The question seeped like acid into his blood.
Was he in the process of making one of the biggest mistakes in his life?
Then—no, he thought, no.
‘It is what I want.’
He said it oddly, as if the statement came to his lips directly from his suddenly aching gut. Maybe she heard it come from that deep place because she turned to look at him, green eyes big and so vulnerable he couldn’t make his mind up whether to curse her for making his insides crease up the way they were doing, or to curse her for bringing Luca back into this.
‘I have to go out…’ The decision arrived out of nowhere. Enrico was already crossing back to the door when Freya’s stare altered to one of surprise.
‘But you said—’
‘Get Sonny to show you around,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘Choose some rooms to sleep in, unpack or—whatever. I will be back—later.’
The door shut behind him, leaving Freya standing there and wondering what had caused his sudden change of mind and his couldn’t-escape-quick-enough exit.
Was he feeling their presence as an intrusion already? Had he looked across at her and seen the bag lady with the penchant for taking other men to her bed and wondered what the hell it was he was getting himself into?
Sonny appeared then, carrying a coffee tray and looking very wary.
‘If you have something to say to me about this situation, then say it and get it over with,’ Freya snapped at him. ‘If not, then don’t say anything at all and just—go away!’
With that she sat down in the nearest chair and burst into tears.
Sonny was good with tea and sympathy, though he probably thought privately she didn’t deserve either, if he believed what he thought he knew about her and Luca.
And the tea was coffee…
But he mopped her up in his own unique, offhand manner. Made her drink some coffee, eat a small piece of his famously delicious home-made chocolate cake, then picked up one of her boxes and offered to show her around.
