Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee
It reminded Sam painfully of Rafaele’s palazzo on the outskirts of Milan, where sometimes she had fooled herself into believing nothing existed beyond those four walls. And that she was one of those beautiful seductive women.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
Sam whirled around so abruptly when she heard his voice that she felt dizzy. She realised she was clutching her leather bag to her chest like a shield and lowered it.
She really wasn’t prepared to see Rafaele again so soon, and that swirling cauldron of emotions within her was spiked with a mix of anger and ever-present shame. And the memory of that angry kiss. Her lips were still sensitive. He looked like the Devil himself, emerging from the shadows of the doorway. Tall, broad, hard, muscled. And mean. His face was harsh, his mouth unsmiling. Making a mockery of his apology for keeping her waiting.
Nothing had changed from earlier. But despite her anger Sam’s conscience stung. Tightly, she said, ‘I’m sorry...for hitting you earlier. I don’t know what came over me...but what you said...it was wrong.’
Liar. She burned inside. She might as well have held her tongue. She was lying to herself as much as to him.
Rafaele came further in. Grim. ‘I deserved it. I provoked you.’
Sam blanched and looked at him. She hadn’t expected that, and somewhere treacherous a part of her melted.
He walked past her and over to a drinks board, helping himself to something amber that swirled in the bottom of a bulbous glass. He looked at her over his shoulder, making heat flood her cheeks. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been making a thorough inspection of his broad back, tapering down to lean hips and firm buttocks.
‘Drink?’
She shook her head hurriedly and got out a choked, ‘No. Thank you.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Sit down, Sam—and you can put down your bag. You look as if your fingers might break.’
She looked down stupidly to see white knuckles through the skin of her fingers where they gripped the leather. Forcing herself to take a breath, she moved jerkily over to the couch and perched on the edge, resisting the design of it, which wanted to seduce her into a more relaxed pose.
Rafaele came and sat down opposite her, clearly far more relaxed than her as he sank back into the couch, resting one arm across the top. Sam fought the desire to look and see how his shirt must be stretched across his chest.
‘What kind of a name is Milo anyway? Irish?’
Sam blinked. It took a minute for his words to sink in because they were so unexpected. ‘It’s...it was my grandfather’s name.’
Sam was vaguely surprised he remembered that detail of her heritage. She was one generation removed from Ireland, actually, having been born and brought up in England because her parents had moved there after her brilliant father had been offered a job at a London university.
Sam sensed his anger building again. ‘I did intend to tell you...some day. I would never have withheld that information from Milo for ever.’
Rafaele snorted a harsh laugh. ‘That’s big of you. You would have waited until he’d built up a childhood full of resentment about his absent father and I wouldn’t have even known.’
Rafaele sat forward and put down his glass with a clatter. He ran his hand impatiently through his hair, making it flop messily onto his forehead. Sam’s insides clenched when she remembered how she’d once felt comfortable running her hands through his hair, using it to hold him in place when he’d had his face buried between—
Shame flared inside her at the way her thoughts were going. She should be thinking of Milo and extricating them both from the threat that Rafaele posed, not remembering lurid X-rated memories.
In a smaller voice she admitted, ‘I’ve been living day to day...it didn’t seem to be urgent right now. He...he doesn’t ask about his father.’
Rafaele stood up, towering over her. ‘I’d say it became urgent about the time you gave birth, Sam. Don’t you think he must be wondering why other kids have fathers and he doesn’t?’
Words were locked in Sam’s throat. Milo mightn’t have mentioned anything yet, but she had noticed him looking at his friends in playschool when their fathers picked them up. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start asking questions.
She stood up too, not liking feeling so intimidated.
Rafaele bit back the anger that threatened to spill over and keep spilling. Looking as vulnerable, if not more so than she had earlier, Sam said tightly, ‘Look, I can’t stay too long. My minder is doing me a favour. Can we just...get to what we need to discuss?’
He’d been unable to get Sam’s pale face out of his mind all day. Or the way he’d hauled her into his arms like a Neanderthal, all but backing her up against that sink to ravish her in a tacky bathroom. The feel of her against him, under his mouth, had dragged him back to a place he’d locked away deep inside, unleashing a cavalcade of desire more hot and urgent than anything he’d ever encountered.
He struggled to curb some of the intense emotion he was feeling.
‘What’s going to happen is this: I am going to be a father to my son and you will do everything in your power to facilitate that—because if you don’t, Samantha, I won’t hesitate to use full legal force against you.’
Rafaele delivered his ultimatum and Sam just looked at him, trying not to let him see how his words shook her to her core. ‘I won’t hesitate to use full legal force against you.’
‘What exactly do you mean, Rafaele? You can’t threaten me like this.’
Rafaele came close to Sam—close enough for his scent to wind around her, prompting a vivid memory of how it had felt to have her mouth crushed under his earlier that day. He looked at her for such a long, taut moment that she stopped breathing. And then he moved back to the couch to sit down again and regarded her like a lounging pasha.
‘It’s not a threat. It’s very much a promise. I want to be in Milo’s life. I am his father. We deserve to get to know one another. He needs to know that I am his father.’
Panic boosted Sam’s adrenalin. She couldn’t have sat down if she’d wanted to. Every muscle was locked. ‘You can’t just barge in and announce that you’re his father. He won’t understand. It’ll upset him.’
Rafaele arched a brow. ‘And whose fault is that? Who kept this knowledge from him and from me? One person, Sam. You. And now you have to deal with the consequences.’
‘Yes,’ Sam admitted bitterly, ‘I recognise that, and you’ve already made your sphere of influence obvious—but not at the cost of my son’s happiness and sense of security.’
Rafaele leant forward. ‘You have cost our son his happiness and security already. You’ve wilfully cost him three years of knowing he had a father. You’ve already irreparably damaged his development.’
Our son. Sam’s insides contracted painfully. She was feeling shocked again at the very evident emotion on Rafaele’s face. Quickly masked, though, as if he was surprised by his own vehemence.
‘So what are you proposing, Rafaele?’
A part of Sam, deep down inside, marvelled at that moment that there had ever been intimacy between them. That she had ever lain beside him in bed and gazed deep into his eyes. On their last night together...before he’d gone on his business trip...she’d reached out and touched his face as if learning every feature. He’d taken her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, and there had been something she’d never seen before darkening his eyes, making her breath grow short and her heart pound...
‘What I’m proposing is that, as I’m due to be here in England for the foreseeable future, I want to be a part of Milo’s daily life so that he can get to know