The Italian's Wife

‘You’re hungry…OK.’ Rio rooted through the bags and discovered a packet of baby rusks but nothing of a liquid persuasion. Timmie wasn’t picky. He had no manners either. He snatched at the rusk and lodged his two tiny front teeth into it, got them stuck and then let out a mournful wail.

Rio was kept fully occupied all the way to the hospital. He discovered that affectionately dandling one of his friend’s babies while a fond mother hovered within reach to take care of all the necessities was a far different affair from actually trying to handle a real live squirming and complaining baby all on his own. With the aid of a glass tumbler and a bottle of mineral water from the built-in bar, however, he managed to quench Timmie’s thirst—but not without soaking Timmie and himself into the bargain.

He emerged from the limo at the entrance to the hospital looking something less than his usual sartorially splendid self, with rusk crumbs scattered all over him and clinging to the damp patches. He was also for the first time feeling the effects of too little sleep on top of a severe attack of jet lag.

Ezio attempted to relieve his employer of his baby burden but Timmie wasn’t impressed and lodged two frantic hands in Rio’s hair and screamed in naked panic.

‘If you don’t smile at him, he doesn’t like you,’ Rio shared wearily, rearranging Timmie in a somewhat unconventional drape over one broad shoulder, where the baby hung like a limp but relaxed sack, one large masculine hand pinned to his spine. ‘He’s a real little bag of nerves.’

Greeted like visiting royalty by the receptionist, Rio was ushered into his friend’s comfortable private office to wait and a nurse arrived at speed to remove Timmie.

‘He needs to be fed…and other things,’ Rio warned, wincing as Timmie tried to cling to his protector and then bawled blue murder at being detached from him. The high note of fear he could hear in the baby’s cry was traumatic to listen to, Rio reflected, riven with discomfiture at the child’s distress.

It was an hour before John Coulter, the senior physician at the hospital, came to join him and report back on his most recent patient.

‘I think you just saved a life tonight, Rio,’ the older man announced in his usual cheerful manner. ‘That young woman is suffering from the early stages of hypothermia. Falling in front of your car was the best thing that could’ve happened to her. She and that child might have been dead by morning—’

‘I noticed she had no coat on, but presumably she would’ve made it home before hypothermia got a grip on her,’ Rio slotted in, his tone one of casual dismissal.

‘But she was planning to spend the night walking round the streets…she’s homeless, didn’t you realise that?’

Rio frowned in surprise.

‘I’ll have to call in the duty social worker. I’ll feel a heel doing it, though,’ Dr Coulter confided ruefully. ‘She’s terrified that her baby will be put in care, and even though that is very unlikely, as Social Services work to keep mother and child together, I wasn’t able to convince her of that.’

‘How are they?’

‘The baby’s in fine fettle. But the mother’s another matter…skin and bone, needs feeding up and looking after, but there’s no sign of drug or alcohol abuse, which is something in her favour. That accent too…deepest Somerset,’ the older man remarked with a wry smile.

‘Somerset?’

‘Cider with Rosie and all that,’ John Coulter quipped, referring to the classic book set in a rural area. ‘Although, come to think of it, that wasn’t Somerset. I think it’s based on Gloucestershire—’

‘John,’ Rio groaned. ‘Never mind the book.’

The older man sighed. ‘Holly’s a country girl and hasn’t a clue how to go on in a city like London. I imagine that’s why she’s in such a fix—’

‘Holly? That’s her name? Can I see her?’

‘This is your hospital—’

‘It belongs to the Lombardi Foundation, not to me personally,’ Rio said drily.

Holly lay in her comfortable bed, scanning the elegant and luxurious layout of her private room and feeling as though she had dreamt it all up. But no, Timmie lay just feet away in the cot that had been provided. The kindly nurse had rustled up a proper feed for him, changed him and tucked him in. Her son was asleep now, snug and secure with a full tummy. Her eyes prickled with weak tears of shame over her own inadequacy. Timmie had a right to be snug and secure all the time.

The obvious solution to their predicament had been staring her in the face for many weeks now but she had been too much of a coward to confront it. She was not scared of social workers but she was scared of being made to look head-on at her own failings when set next to Timmie’s needs. Timmie had to come first. She had been horribly selfish. What kind of mother love put a baby on the streets in the middle of the night? She was twenty years old, and she might have left school early but she was not stupid. She knew right from wrong and she was finally accepting that all along her mother had known exactly what she was talking about…

‘If you give the baby up for adoption you can come home to us afterwards,’ her mother had promised with red-rimmed eyes full of strain and regret. ‘I won’t let you put your father through any more pain, Holly. You did what you shouldn’t have done and you’re paying the cost of it now. If you try to keep the kiddy there’ll be nothing but grief ahead of you.’

Over the past months Holly had learned the truth of words that had seemed so harsh to her at the time she had listened to them. Then she had still been foolish enough to hope that Jeff was making a home for them both in London, that he would want their child as much as she did and that he would go ahead and marry her just as he had promised. But Jeff had not made a home for them, had been outraged that she should’ve dared to give birth to a baby he did not want, and had never, ever had the smallest true intention of marrying her.

Timmie would be much better off adopted, Holly forced herself to concede. It would break her heart but it was cruel of her to keep him when she could not provide for him as he deserved. Her eyes stung with hot, prickling tears. There was no other choice available to her. She couldn’t earn enough in the employment market to pay for childcare or a proper home. Even living off the state in recent weeks, as she had been forced to do after a spate of ill health had seen her sacked from her last job, she had managed no better. Everything she had once owned had either been sold for cash or stolen. She now literally owned only what she stood up in. It was time to do the right thing for Timmie. He would have two caring parents and a decent home. How could she stand in her son’s way when she herself had so little to offer him?

The nurse bustled back in with a wide smile. ‘Mr Lombardi is planning to come and see you…now, aren’t you the lucky one?’

‘Mr…who?’

‘Saverio Lombardi. The man whose limousine you almost dented!’

‘A limousine…Lombardi? Isn’t that the same name as this hospital?’ Holly queried in confusion. Had he been in a limousine? He had certainly been travelling with an awful lot of people, she recalled dimly.

‘This hospital is run by the Lombardi Foundation. It’s a charitable trust set up by Mr Lombardi. We only take in local patients on emergency,’ the nurse explained. ‘People come here from all over the world for surgery that they can’t get in their home countries. The foundation covers the costs. Mr Lombardi is a very well-known philanthropist…surely you’ve heard of him?’

‘No…I didn’t notice the limo either.’ The nurse was talking about underprivileged people from less developed countries, Holly gathered in some discomfiture, charity cases. Although she had been taken aback by her luxurious surroundings, she had not realised that the hospital was private. Indeed, she had assumed that the hospital was simply brand-new and that she had got her own room either by sheer good fortune or because Timmie’s initial crying would have disturbed other patients. But now it was obvious that luck and Timmie’s lungs had had nothing to do with it. She was a charity case too.

‘Maybe you were too busy looking at those scorching tawny eyes of his,’ the other woman teased. ‘Not to mention the rest of him. Rio Lombardi is drop-dead gorgeous, and so fanciable you could kidnap him.’

On the other side of the ajar door, Rio hesitated in receipt of that unsought accolade and raised his brows in exasperation. Then, strong jawline squaring, he entered with a light warning knock on the door.

Holly jerked in dismay, her pale skin taking on instant discomfited colour as if she had been the one talking out of turn, while the night nurse scurried out with a bent head. But after just one look at the very tall, powerfully built dark male coming to a halt at the foot of her bed, Holly was challenged even to recall what had briefly embarrassed her. In all her life she had never seen a more breathtakingly handsome male and, no matter how hard she tried, she could not stop staring.

Drop-dead gorgeous had been no exaggeration. That lean, taut bone-structure, composed of flaring dark brows, proud cheekbones, wide narrow mouth and assertive jawline, was the very essence of raw masculinity. As she encountered his stunning dark golden eyes her mouth ran dry, and without any good reason at all she was suddenly very conscious that she was naked beneath the thin hospital gown she wore, suddenly hugely aware of her own female body. Her breasts seemed to ache and heat flickered deep in her pelvis, an oddly charged heat that drew her every muscle so taut that she could hardly breathe as he studied her.

Luxuriant black lashes screened his gaze as his attention lingered on her soft full mouth. In that quick upward glance he made to connect with her scrutiny again, she met the flashburn effect of those intense eyes of his and was appalled to find herself wondering how that beautiful male mouth would feel on her own.

‘How are you feeling?’ Rio Lombardi asked quietly.

‘F-f-fine,’ Holly stammered helplessly, aghast at a mind that could throw up such inappropriate thoughts, terrified that he might somehow suspect the effect he was having on her. ‘But I’ve got a concussion.’

‘I know…’ As Rio Lombardi strolled over to the cot to gaze down at her son, Holly, her face burning like a bonfire, struggled to get a grip on herself. But it was no use, for she could not drag her magnetised attention from him. He was well over six feet tall, his impressive physique lean and muscular, and in spite of his size he moved with extraordinary grace. ‘Timmie looks happy, though.’

‘Yeah…nice cosy cot,’ Holly mumbled, feeling like an idiot as soon as the inane words escaped her.

Rio Lombardi glanced up from his scrutiny of Timmie’s slumbering and peaceful little face, a faint smile still softening the hard line of his sculpted lips. ‘You shouldn’t have been on the streets with him,’ he remarked with quiet assurance.

‘I…I know,’ Holly stressed jerkily, her dilated gaze clinging to the mesmeric tawny hold of his, her heart jumping as if she had just leapt off a cliff, pounding inside her so hard she could hardly squeeze the words out.

She was still blushing as fierily as a schoolgirl, Rio registered with reluctant amusement. He had switched his attention to Timmie to give her a moment in which to compose herself but his subtlety had been wasted. He turned her on and she couldn’t hide it. Yet there was something strangely touching about her lack of artifice, her total inability to conceal what she was feeling and thinking. Those big blue eyes were like windows and that lush pink mouth betrayed her tension.

Her slight, slender body barely made a decent impression in the bed. She had the most amazing hair, though, Rio acknowledged. Released from whatever had held it in temporary subjection, her hair now cascaded in snaking corkscrew ringlets halfway to her waist, catching the light like rich, gleaming bronze. His attention strayed lower and momentarily lingered on the surprising fullness of the rounded swells pushing against the hospital-issue gown as she sat forward, the prominence of her taut nipples visible even through the barrier of starched cotton. Nice breasts, he found himself thinking, and he was startled when he felt himself hardening in urgent response, startled that even exhaustion and stress could not stifle his most basic urges.

‘I’m going to sort me and Timmie out…I r-really am,’ Holly swore earnestly in the charged silence, desperate to make him think better of her. ‘When can I get out of here?’

‘You need a couple of days of R & R,’ Rio responded, recognising the naïvety of that question when she was free to walk out the door any time she wished. But he was relieved by it and did nothing to disabuse her of her notion that she had to pay heed to some superior authority.

‘R & R?’

‘Rest and recuperation. A lady is coming to see you tomorrow.’ Recognising the flash of instant panic in her wide eyes, Rio gave her a bland smile of reassurance. ‘Nobody is going to make any arrangements against your will, but I think you’ll agree that you need some professional advice and support right now.’

Holly’s tummy muscles contracted in a sickening spasm of alarm, her thin shoulders hunching as she lost colour. At last, she gained the strength to take her eyes from him, but only because fear and deep shame over her own failure to give her son a proper home made it impossible for her to continue meeting his level gaze.

‘You’ll both be fine,’ Rio asserted in conclusion, strolling back to the door.

For an instant he hesitated as he remembered that crazy thought he had had only a few minutes before Holly fell in front of his limo. She was, indisputably, the very first woman he had met since walking out on Christabel.

Just as well he wasn’t insane enough to marry a complete stranger, he told himself with grim amusement. After all, Holly Sansom might be green as grass but she was still an unmarried mother. While he was a male who prided himself on his open mind, his family background and traditional Italian upbringing had imbued him with certain values and expectations.

CHAPTER TWO

PALE as death, Holly flopped back against the pillows, feeling as weak as water and trembling.

She had gawped at Rio Lombardi like a bedazzled kid and had severely embarrassed herself. Since she had never felt that way around a man before, not even around Jeff, she could only put her behaviour down to the effects of concussion and total exhaustion. Fortunately a guy like Rio Lombardi, so rich and so important and so utterly above her in every way, wouldn’t have noticed how awkward and silly she had been, she told herself. In any case, she had a lot more to worry about than the poor impression she had made on some bloke she was never likely to see again!

From her bed she stared at her sleeping son, tears stinging her strained eyes in a blinding surge. She adored Timmie; she could not begin to imagine her life without him. But tomorrow authority, with all its unlimited power, was coming in the guise of that lady Rio Lombardi had smoothly mentioned. Why hadn’t she had the strength to get up and walk away after her fall in that street? Once officialdom became involved, the die would be cast.

Rio Lombardi had sworn that no arrangements would be made without her agreement. Did he really think that she was that stupid? She had had her baby out in the middle of the night. She had no home to go to and that doctor would confirm that she had been betraying signs of hypothermia. Those three facts were like three big extra nails being hammered into her coffin. The powers-that-be would decide that she was an unfit mother and would lose no time in removing Timmie from such inadequate care.

Just half an hour ago she had been telling herself that it was her duty to give Timmie up for adoption, but when it came to the crunch she could feel herself tearing apart inside at the prospect of never, ever again having the right to hold his sweet, trusting weight in her arms. Surely she could do better? Surely she had enough backbone to pull herself up out of the mess she was in and provide for her own child?

Couldn’t she allow herself one more chance? Was that so selfish? Tears streaming down her guilty face, she studied Timmie in despair. He was all she had, all the family she was ever likely to have. She would go to a shelter for the homeless, one of those places from which advice came without the price of remorseless, grinding officialdom. If it killed her, she would find them somewhere to live. Only if she was faced with another night on the streets would she acknowledge defeat and accept that adoption was the only solution. That was the pact she made with herself, the promise she knew she had to make for her son’s sake.

But she had to get out of the hospital before that lady came to call in a few hours’ time, she told herself frantically. However, Timmie needed his sleep and she still felt too dizzy to walk, so she had to be sensible and stay in her bed as long as possible.

On his way to a business meeting at eight that morning, Rio found the memory of Holly Sansom’s frightened face continually flashing up between him and the figures he was scrutinising.

In one of the snap decisions that invariably threw his employees off-balance, Rio swept up the phone to communicate with his chauffeur and told him to head for the hospital instead of the Lombardi Industries building. Impatience tightening his sculpted mouth as he checked his watch, he questioned his sense of responsibility. He had done all that he could reasonably do. However, he should have kept quiet about the social worker’s visit. Forewarning Holly had been careless, and he had only made that mistake because he had gone without sleep for too long.

The limo drew to a halt in the busy car park of the foundation hospital. Waiting with a sigh for his chauffeur to walk round the bonnet in his usual dignified fashion, which he knew was simply a ploy to ensure that his security team alighted from their car behind in advance of himself, Rio caught a glimpse of a bright bronze head moving behind the line of cars parked about forty feet away. In a sudden movement, a vicious swear word impelled from his lips, Rio thrust the door of his limo open for himself and sprang out to stride in the same direction.

‘Holly!’

Hearing that shout just when she had believed she was free and clear of having attracted any adverse notice almost gave Holly a heart attack. Her blood literally chilling in her veins with fright, she spun round, her arms automatically tightening round her child.

Rio Lombardi stepped up onto the pavement ahead of her. ‘Where the blazes do you think you’re going?’

He was the very last person she had expected to see, and for the first time she was facing him upright and he was an incredibly intimidating figure. She was five feet four but he had to be almost twelve inches taller, and he had shoulders like a rugby player that even his fancy dark business suit could not conceal. He also looked…livid, shimmering dark golden eyes flaming over her, telegraphing anger and strong censure.

‘I…I’m g-going to find a shelter for the homeless—’

‘Like bloody hell you are!’ Rio interrupted, lean strong face set in steely lines as he closed the distance between them in a couple of strides. ‘Where’s his pushchair?’

‘I c-couldn’t find it—’

Holly was trembling, her own guilty conflict over her decision to give herself one more chance intensified by the disapproval Rio Lombardi was emanating in powerful waves. Just twenty-four hours, only twenty-four hours, that was all she had wanted.

‘Give Timmie to me…’ he demanded.

And, so shaken and ashamed was Holly as she stood there with tears filling her anguished eyes, she found herself instinctively obeying that authoritarian note of absolute command. As Rio Lombardi reached out she let him take her son from her. A split-second later she could not credit what she had done and she stared up at Rio Lombardi in dismay, her distraught face pale as parchment. ‘Give him back to me!’

‘Not until you agree to go back inside and wait to see the social worker, who is going to help you,’ Rio stressed, watching her begin to tremble and recognising her fear. Striving not to feel like a bully, he reminded himself that he was doing the best thing for both mother and child.

‘I can’t do that!’ Holly suddenly sobbed.

As Rio removed his frustrated attention from her he caught a glimpse of Ezio’s face. His security chief was positioned about twenty feet away, watching him in frank astonishment. Rio’s high cheekbones fired with a slight rise of colour.

‘You must be sensible about this…’ Rio stated as the baby in his arms went all stiff and loosed an anxious little moan of fright at the sound of his mother’s distress. Timmie was just about to blow. Indeed, any moment now, mass hysteria was going to break out and spread like a disease, Rio recognised with a very male sense of discomfiture. Dio mio, they were in a public place and he didn’t know what had got into him. He could only recall the savage jolt of pure rage he had felt at the sight of Holly trying to sneak away from the safety of the hospital.

‘Please…give him back!’ Holly cried.

An older man unlocking his car just yards away had now halted the activity to openly stare, his expression already that of someone thinking that perhaps he ought to intervene. Rio threw his proud head back and murmured in a tone calculated to soothe, ‘My car’s just over there. We’ll discuss this calmly in private.’

Holly was totally disconcerted when Rio just strode away from her. But she raced after him in a panic. As the chauffeur yanked open the door of the gleaming silver limousine Rio broke the habit of a lifetime and, instead of standing back politely to allow Holly first access, climbed in ahead of her, thereby forestalling any possibility of further debate in public.

Holly shot in after him like a mouse in stricken pursuit of a cat. The passenger door closed on her. Rio Lombardi had her son clasped under one arm while he spoke to someone in his own language on the car phone.

In a daze of confusion, Holly absorbed the startling sight of Timmie smiling up at Rio. Timmie, who never smiled at anyone but her! Her head ached even more. She felt clammy and sick and scared. ‘Please give him back to me…’

‘Look, I haven’t got time for this right now. I have a very important meeting to get to,’ Rio imparted, leaning forward to make some curious adjustment to the rear of the leather seat facing them. Before her bemused eyes, a child’s travelling seat complete with safety restraint folded down out of the once flat surface.

‘Mr Lombardi—er—?’

‘You can stay at my home for a few days until you feel stronger,’ Rio cut in flatly. ‘You’re in no fit state to make decisions right now. It’ll give you a breathing space.’

‘Your…home?’ Holly was so taken aback by that offer coming at her out of the blue that she could only stare at his bold bronzed profile with wide shaken eyes.

Rio settled Timmie into the baby seat. After tightening everything up, he snapped the harness into place with a definite air of satisfaction at his own efficiency.

‘Your home?’ Holly watched his manoeuvres in bewildered stillness, quite unable to react with any greater volubility. Her head was pounding fit to burst and her brain felt like mush, for she had had little sleep during what had remained of the night hours while she fretted and waited for an opportunity to steal out of the hospital without being noticed.

‘Why not?’ Suppressing the faint suspicion that once again he was reacting in an impulsive manner that was quite unlike him, Rio told himself that rescuing Holly would be his good deed for the year and he warmed to the concept at similar speed. He would soon get them sorted out. He might have given millions to humanitarian causes but when had he ever become personally involved in someone else’s problems? But intervention was definitely required. Without a helping hand, there was an all too real possibility that Holly Sansom would end up selling her body for the price of her next meal. A pervert would spot her from a distance of a hundred yards, Rio reflected with distaste. She had victim written all over her. As for Timmie…well, Timmie was already measuring up to follow faithfully in his mother’s footsteps.