why he had hired a nanny to take care of Timothy. And, if their marriage
did fall apart, she would be better off if she was already employed.
Rio phoned her every day, often twice a day. She lived for his calls,
woke up every time she turned over in bed and found him missing and just
counted the hours until he was due back. But, wanting to surprise him
with actual results, she told him nothing about the Italian lessons she
was already taking and kept her plans to find a job to herself. After
signing up with a couple of office recruitment agencies, she devoted the
remainder of the week to Timothy.
The evening of Rio's return, Holly went to the airport to meet him off
his flight. It was a last-minute decision and the limousine had already
left to pick him up, so she had to call a cab. The cab got caught up in
traffic and, fearing that she had missed him, Holly had a frantic rush
through the airport. Her heart leapt at first sight of Rio's lean, dark,
devastating features as he strode into view with Ezio in his wake, and
then, out of nowhere, it seemed, came
Christabel.
Holly fell to a stricken halt as the beautiful blonde surged forward to
intercept Rio and engage his attention. Holly stood there unnoticed,
shattered by Christabel's sudden appearance and the suspicion that such
an encounter could only have been prearranged.
With equal abruptness, Holly turned and walked away
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again. Still in shock, she went into a cafe, bought herself a cup of
coffee and sat over it, determined not to go home until she had calmed
down. Why had Christabel come to meet Rio off his flight? How had the
other woman known where he would be? Furious anger welled up in Holly
and festered into a rage like nothing she had ever known. Who was the
wife? Who was the 'other woman'? All Holly knew as she finally set off
home again was that throughout the week she had been made to feel more
like Rio's mistress than his wife!
By the time that Holly finally arrived back at the town house it was
getting late. As she crossed the hall Rio appeared in the doorway of the
library. Shorn of his jacket and tie, his black hair tousled, he looked
rather less smooth and self-assured than he had when she had seen him
earlier that evening. His lean, strong face was taut. His dark golden
eyes scorched over her like a flame thrower's.
'Where the hell have you been all evening?' Rio's opening demand
disconcerted her, for she had lost track of time while she had seethed
at the airport.
'Out...' Awarding him the most minimal glance, Holly threw her head
high, her gaze feverishly bright.
'Sarah told me that you went to meet me at the airport.'
'Well, I won't be making that mistake again,' Holly informed him from
between gritted teeth. 'Tell me, is this house a Christabel-free zone or
can I expect to trip over her here as well? After all, she appears to be
welcome everywhere else, certainly more welcome than I am!'
Rio tensed. 'So you did see Christabel with me at the airport.'
'My goodness...you are so quick on the uptake!' Holly fired back at him.
Rio straightened to his full commanding height, narrowed golden eyes
pinned to her furious and flushed face.
'Do you realise how worried I've been about you?' he condemned,
sidestepping the issue of Christabel with infuriating dexterity. 'I got
in at seven. It's now eleven!'
'You're lucky I came home at all!' Frustrated rage was climbing so high
inside Holly that she could hardly get the words out.
'Am I? I'm not going to stand here and argue with you in the hall,' Rio
breathed glacially, throwing wide the door of the library in invitation.
'Is the room soundproof?' Holly enquired sarcastically.
As Rio thrust the door closed he reached for her hand. 'What on earth
has got into you?'
Holly yanked her fingers free. 'I've had about all I can take for one
week. At your request I went to visit your mother, and do you know who
she had staying with her?'
'I haven't a clue,' Winged ebony brows pleated as he lounged in an
attitude of outrageous cool against the edge of his desk, Rio surveyed
her in expectation of receiving the answer.
'Your ex-fiancée, although there's not a lot of the "ex" about her this
week!' Holly snapped angrily. 'I don't feel like your wife. Your
mother's been entertaining Christabel as an honoured guest but I got the
frozen mitt, not to mention a lot of embarrassing questions that you
should have
foreseen-'
'Dio mio...Christabel was down at the Priory?' Rio queried in surprise.
'I want to know what she was doing at the airport tonight!' Holly
informed him.
'It was my fault that Christabel had to ambush me like that,' Rio stated
with flat emphasis, his beautiful mouth compressing. 'I refused to
accept her calls. But certain matters did have to be resolved.'
'Like what?' Holly could have done without knowing
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that Christabel had been bombarding him with phone calls as well.
'She's living in an apartment I own and hasn't yet found other
accommodation-'
'She's living in an apartment you own...?' Holly was aghast at that
news. 'But you broke up with her weeks ago. She's famous. She must earn
a fortune as a model and you're trying to tell me she can't find
somewhere to rent?'
'She hasn't had the time. She's been in Paris.'
'She should have been out flat-hunting, then, not sucking up to your
mother for sympathy! I'll be in one of your guest rooms until you've
thought up a better story!' Holly told him fierily, wrenching the door
open. 'And you still haven't explained how she knew where and when to
find you tonight.'
Rio released his breath in a long-suffering masculine hiss that set her
teeth on edge even more. 'It's common knowledge that I was in New York
this week...and I usually fly home on Fridays at that hour.'
Holly's usually generous mouth closed tight as a coffin lid and she set
off upstairs regardless, her slender back rigid. Of course, Christabel
would know his movements better than she did. The blonde had been in
Rio's life a lot longer. But Holly was fed up with being wrongfooted by
Christabel, first with Rio's mother, who had made it quite clear where
her loyalty lay, and then with Rio himself. Rio was acting as if she was
being unreasonable, but worst of all he had taken the blame for that
encounter at the airport himself. Holly would have been much happier had
he bestowed blame on his former girlfriend.
When Rio strode into their bedroom Holly was slamming through drawers in
search of a nightdress.
'You're not sleeping apart from me,' Rio told her.
'Watch me,' Holly advised.
'Do you have any idea how much I was looking forward to coming home to
you tonight?' Rio demanded in a roughened undertone.
Her eyes stung with sudden tears and she closed them tight. Could she
believe that? She had devoted the entire afternoon to beautifying
herself and getting all dressed up fo
r his benefit. And then she had
seen Christabel, gorgeous blonde mane trailing and legs as long as a
racetrack on display, and she had known she could not compete. But also
that she should not have to compete.
'Everywhere I turn she's there where she shouldn't be-' 'I'm amazed that
Christabel had the nerve to visit my mother,' Rio confessed, his anger
audible. 'That shouldn't have happened and, believe me, now that I know
it has, it won't happen again, bella mia.' Holly gulped. 'I don't know
what to believe any more-' Slowly Rio eased her round to face him and
scanned her shuttered face. He ran caressing fingers down the taut line
of her cheekbone, laced them gently into her hair and turned her
strained gaze up to his. 'You have to learn to trust me. Christabel's in
the past. I've started a new life with you and Timothy.'
Denying herself closer contact with the heat and strength of that hard,
muscular frame of his, Holly drew in a slow, sustaining breath. 'I can
only accept that if you promise me that you won't have anything more to
do with her.'
'No problem...' Appraising her with smouldering golden eyes, sculpted
mouth in a sensual curve, Rio backed her over to the bed with predatory
determination and an innate sense of good timing. 'Why would I want
another woman when I've got everything I want and need at home?'
Holly wondered why, if that was true, he still wouldn't talk about why
he had broken off his engagement. But then, perhaps from Rio's point of
view there had been no great
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drama involved and he genuinely had nothing more to say on the subject.
Possibly he had known for some time that the relationship wasn't working
out and giving up on it had not been a sudden decision on his part. Why
hadn't that possibility occurred to her before?
Having dealt with her own anxiety and triumphed, Holly concentrated
instead on the hammering acceleration of her own heartbeat and the knot
of enervating anticipation tightening low in her pelvis. She only had to
look at Rio to want him.
Rio laughed with vibrant amusement when she practically tore his shirt
getting it off him. 'You missed me,' he told her with immense satisfaction.
'Maybe...'
'I want to hear you admit it...' He took her readily parted lips in a
passionate demonstration of hunger and her senses leapt and her wanton
body flowed and surged under the powerful masculine demand of his. 'Well?'
'Can't talk right now...better things to do,' she confided, running a
provocative hand down over a taut, muscular male thigh, feeling him jerk
with a satisfaction as old as time itself and a knowledge of her own
feminine power.
'Who taught you to do that?' Rio groaned, straining against her with
unconcealed sexual need and extracting her from her dress with more
haste than cool.
'You did...'
Hours later, in the dawn light, she watched him sleep. Jet lag had
felled him where nothing else could. Jet lag, added to a couple hours of
insatiable lovemaking. Yes, he had definitely missed her. In bed. She
squashed the snipey little voice that came up with that unnecessary
addition. Instead she contemplated Rio, lying with one long bronzed,
hair-roughened thigh clear of the crumpled sheet, six feet four inches
of golden masculinity so gorgeous that she still could not quite credit
that he was her husband. She kissed a smooth brown shoulder, rubbed her
cheek there with sensuous pleasure, revelling in the familiar musky
scent and
feel of his skin.
Her own body ached and she smiled with sleepy pride in that reality.
Christabel was history. He had convinced her. If seeing his ex-fiancée
after so long had not upset him, what was she worrying about? He might
not love her but he certainly seemed happy with her, and in the early
hours he had still been demanding to know what she had been doing at the
airport to get back to the house so late. He had been worried about her,
worried that she had seen him with Christabel, worried that she, Holly,
might be upset. He always liked to know exactly where she was. Why
hadn't she noticed how possessive he could be, how protective?
When she woke up again Timothy was nestled up against her, fast asleep.
Fully dressed in tight-fitting black jeans and a husky sweater, Rio
absorbed her surprise at her son's presence from his stance at the foot
of the bed.
'I heard him crying and he stopped the minute he saw me. Sarah had
already fed him, so I brought him in here. I played with him for a while
and then I took him into the bathroom while I went for a shower. Never
again,' Rio groaned feelingly.
'What happened?'
then he pulled a drawer out and got his hand stuck in it...and, when I
took a peek out of the shower because I thought he was being too quiet,
he was trying to eat the box of plasters he must've sneaked out of the
drawer!'
Unconcerned by the furore he had caused, Timothy slept on, looking angelic.
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Rio came down on the side of the bed, lean, powerful face taut. 'He
really scared me. Suppose he had got his hands on something dangerous or
choked on the plasters?'
'But he didn't,' Holly soothed, touched that he had missed Timothy
enough after a week's absence to bring her son back to their room to
play with him. 'He's just at an age where he needs a lot of watching.'
'I'll be a lot more cautious in the future, cara mia,' Rio swore. 'But
it's just as well for him that nature made him cute and appealing
because I almost shouted at him.'
Holly killed a guilty smile at that assurance. She definitely would have
shouted out of sheer relief that Timothy had not got hold of anything
more dangerous.
Five days later, an hour after Rio had left for a meeting in the City,
Holly received a call from one of the recruitment agencies she had
signed up with. An insurance company was willing to interview her for a
receptionist's position. As the first agency Holly had approached had
pointed out the paucity of her qualifications, the implication being
that she was aspiring too high, Holly was thrilled just to be in line
for consideration.
The interview was set up for noon that day. But at a quarter to eleven
when Holly was coming downstairs, elegant in a fitted black suit, Rio
breezed through the door. 'How do you fancy going to the races, bella
mia?' he enquired.
Holly sighed. 'If you mean right now, I've got an appointment.'
'Reschedule it,' Rio told her carelessly.
'I can't-'
'Oh, yes, you can. You haven't learned how to be a Lombardi wife yet.'
Rio gave her a breathtaking smile of amusement that made her heart skip
a beat. 'With the sole
exception of Timothy, I expect you to drop everything to be with me when
I'm free.'
_ Holly worried at her lower lip for a second or two and hardened her
heart to the sheer vibrant appeal of him. 'So what was all that about me
needing to lead my own life when you're away on business?'
'I don't always practise what I preach. And you may not have noticed,
Mrs Lombardi, but I am not away. What are you fussing about?' Rio
mocked. 'A hair appointment?'
'I wasn't going to mention it yet but I have a job interview...that's
not something I can rearrange.' Holly gave him an apologetic smile.
Rio stilled. In fact, not only did he still, he also stared, dark golden
eyes fixing to her as if she had announced an intention of going
bungee-jumping with a frayed rope. 'An interview for a.. .job! If this
is a joke, where's the punchline?'
Holly stiffened. 'Why would it be a joke?' Rio regarded her levelly. 'I
don't want you to work. Why would you look for a job? It's not just a
question of what I want either. What about Timothy?'
'Most women work,' Holly replied defensively. 'Anyway, the position is
only part-time.'
'"Most women" are not my wife. What is this job?' 'Receptionist.'
'Are you even remotely aware of how wealthy we are?' Rio prompted in a
charged and incredulous undertone. 'I'm not wealthy...you are.'
'It would be quite inappropriate for you to take an employment
opportunity from someone else who really needs it, and that's my last
word on the subject.'