The Platinum Collection: Affairs To Remember. Эбби Грин
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his hair, feeling constricted in his suit. He’d come straight here from a meeting in town. As soon as he’d walked in through the front door he’d felt the house closing in around him claustrophobically and he’d had a bizarre urge to turn on his heel, get back into his car and drive very fast in the opposite direction.
For a wild few seconds when he’d looked at Sam waiting in the hall the only thing he’d been able to remember was how he’d all but devoured her only days before. He’d assured himself that he could just send in his lawyers and have her dictated to, punished for not telling him about Milo.
But then he’d seen Milo, held in her arms, and the claustrophobia had disappeared. That was why he was here. Because he didn’t want more months to go by before he got a chance to let his son know who he was. More months added on top of the three years he’d already missed. Rafaele had never really forgiven his own father for falling apart and checking out of his life so spectacularly. For investing so much in a woman who had never loved him. For allowing himself to turn into something maudlin and useless.
For years Rafaele had been jealous of his younger brother, Alexio, who had grown up bathed in his father’s love and support. So much so, however, that Rafaele knew how stifling Alexio had found it, prompting him to turn his back on his own inheritance. He smiled grimly to himself. Maybe that just proved one could never be happy?
He made his way to the study and sat down behind the desk, firing up various machines. He stopped abruptly when he heard movement above his head. His heart twisted at the realisation that he must be underneath Milo’s room. Obeying an urge he couldn’t ignore, Rafaele stood up and walked out of the room and up the stairs, as silent as a panther.
He saw the half-open door of Milo’s room and stopped when he could see inside. The scene made him suck in a breath. Sam was leaning back against a headboard painted in bright colours with Milo in her embrace. She held a book open in front of them and was reading aloud, putting on funny voices, making Milo giggle.
Rafaele had forgotten that she wore glasses to read and write. They made her look seriously studious, but also seriously sexy. Her mouth was plump and pink. Even in the plain white shirt and trousers her slim curves were evident. This sight of her was hugely disconcerting. He’d never expected to see her in this situation. And yet something about it called to him—an echo of an emotion he’d crushed ruthlessly when she’d first told him she was pregnant. Before the shock had hit, and the cynical suspicion that she’d planned it, had come something far more disturbing. Something fragile and alien.
He hated her right then for still having an effect on him. For still making him want her. For invading his imagination when he’d least expected it over the last four years. He would find it hard to recall his last lover’s name right now, but Sam...her name had always been indelible. And this was utterly galling when she’d proved to be as treacherous as his own mother in her own way. When she’d kept the most precious thing from him. His son.
For a moment Rafaele questioned his sanity in deciding to take over funding the research programme at the university in a bid to get to Sam. But then he remembered looking down into Milo’s green eyes and recognising his own DNA like a beacon winking back at him.
As much as there was a valid reason behind his rationale, it had also come from that deeper place not linked solely to rationale and he hated to admit that.
His eyes went to his son and Rafaele put a hand to his chest, where an ache was forming. He would make it his life’s mission to keep Sam from sidelining him from his own son’s life. Whatever it took. Even if it meant spending twenty-four hours a day with her. He could resist her. How could he desire a woman who had denied him his most basic right of all? His own flesh and blood.
* * *
Later, when Sam was in bed, the familiar creakings of the old house which normally comforted her sounded sinister. Rafaele Falcone was separated from her only by some bricks and mortar. And reality was slowly sinking in. Her new reality. Living and working with Rafaele Falcone. She suspected that he’d flexed his muscles to get her to work for him as much to irritate her as for any bona fide professional reason, even if that was why he’d first contacted her.
The thought of going back into that factory environment made her feel clammy. Although she’d loved it the first time around—it had been so exciting, getting an internship with one of the most innovative and successful motor companies in the world.
Rafaele had made his initial fortune by devising a computer software program which aided in the design of cars, and that was how he’d first come onto the scene, stunning the world with its success. That was how he’d been able to fund getting Falcone Motors off the ground again—injecting it with new life, turning around the perception of the Falcone car as outdated and prehistoric. Now Falcone cars were the most coveted on the race track and on the roads.
And Sam had been in the thick of it, working on new cutting edge designs, figuring out the most fuel-efficient engine systems. From her very first day, though, she’d been aware of Rafaele. She’d gone bright red whenever she saw him, never expecting him to be as gorgeous in the flesh as he was in press photos.
He’d surprised her by being very hands-on, not afraid to get dirty himself, and invariably he knew more than all of them put together, displaying an awesome intelligence and intellect. And, in a notoriously male-dominated industry, she’d met more females working in his factory than she’d encountered in all her years as a student. Clearly when he said equal opportunities he meant it.
Sam had found that each day she was seeking him out...only to look away like a naive schoolgirl if he met her gaze, which he’d appeared to do more and more often. She’d been innocent—literally. A childhood spent with an emotionally distant father and with her head buried in books hadn’t made for a well-rounded adolescence. While her peers had been experimenting with boys Sam had been trying in vain to connect with her scatty but brilliant father. Bridie had been in despair, and had all but given up encouraging Sam to get out and enjoy herself, not to worry so much about studying or her father.
The irony of it all was that while the more predominantly masculine areas did appeal to her—hence her subsequent career—she’d always longed to feel more feminine. And it was this very secret desire that Rafaele had unwittingly tapped into so effectively. Just by looking at her, he had made Sam feel like a woman for the first time in her life.
One of their first conversations had been over an intricate engine. The other interns and engineers had walked away momentarily and Sam had been about to follow them when Rafaele had caught her wrist. He’d let her go again almost immediately but her skin had burned for hours afterwards, along with the fire in her belly.
‘So,’ he’d drawled in that sexy voice, ‘where did your interest and love for engines come from, Miss Rourke?’
The Miss Rourke had sounded gently mocking, as if some sort of secret code had passed between them. Sam had been mesmerised and it had taken a second for her to answer. She’d shrugged, looking away from the penetrating gaze that had seemed to see her in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying.
‘My father is a professor of physics, so I’ve grown up surrounded by science. And my grandmother...his mother...she was Irish, but she ended up in England during the Second World War, working in the factories on cars. Apparently she loved it and had a natural affinity for working with engines—so much so that she kept her job after the war for a few years, before returning home to marry.’ She’d shrugged again. ‘I guess it ran in the family.’
Sam looked back at her young naive self now and cringed. She’d been so transparent, so easy to seduce. It had taken one earth-shattering kiss in Rafaele’s office and she’d opened herself up for him, had forgotten everything her upbringing had taught her about protecting herself from emotionally unavailable people.
He’d whispered to her that she was sensual, sexy, beautiful, and she’d melted. A girl who had grown up denying her very sexuality had had no defence mechanism in place to deal with someone as practised and polished and seductive as Rafaele.
She’d fallen for him quicker than Alice in Wonderland