to know.’ The words felt flimsy and ineffectual now. Petty.
‘Based on...?’
It was as if he couldn’t quite get out full sentences, Sam felt his rage strangling his words.
Her brain felt heavy. ‘Because of how you reacted when I told you in the first place...’
Sam recalled the indescribable pain of realising that Rafaele had been about to break it off with her. His abject shock at the prospect of her pregnancy. It gave her some much needed strength. ‘And because of what you said afterwards...at the clinic. I heard you on the phone.’
Rafaele frowned and it was a glower. ‘What did I say?’
Sam’s sliver of strength started to drain away again like a traitor. ‘You were talking to someone. You said you were caught up in something unimportant.’ Even now those words scored at Sam’s insides like a knife.
Rafaele’s expression turned nuclear. His arms dropped, his hands were fists. ‘Dio, Samantha. I can’t even recall that conversation. No doubt I just said something—anything—to placate one of my assistants. I thought you’d just miscarried. Do you really think I was about to announce that in an innocuous phone call?’
Sam gulped and had to admit reluctantly, ‘Maybe...maybe not. But how did I know that? All I could hear was your relief that you didn’t have to worry about a baby holding your life up and your eagerness to leave.’
He all but exploded. ‘Need I remind you that I was also in shock, and at that point I thought there was no baby!’
Sam was breathing hard and Rafaele looked as if he was about to kick aside the kitchen table between them to come and throttle her.
Just then a small, unsure voice emerged from the doorway. ‘Mummy?’
Immediately Sam’s world refracted down to Milo, who stood in the doorway. He’d opened it unnoticed by them and was looking from one to the other, his lower lip quivering ominously at the explosive tension.
Sam flew over and picked him up and he clung to her. Her conscience struck her. He was always a little intimidated by men because he wasn’t around them much.
‘Why is the man still here?’ he asked now, slanting sidelong looks to Rafaele and curling into Sam’s body as much as he could.
Sam stroked his back reassuringly and tried to sound normal. ‘This is just an old friend of Mummy’s. He’s stopped by to say hello, that’s all. He’s leaving now.’
‘Okay,’ Milo replied, happier now. ‘Can we look at cars?’
Sam looked at him and forced a smile, ‘Just as soon as I say goodbye to Mr Falcone, okay?’
‘Okey-dokey.’ Milo used his new favourite phrase that he’d picked up in playschool, squirmed back out of Sam’s arms and ran out of the kitchen again.
Sam watched Rafaele struggle to take it all in. Myriad explosive emotions crossing his face.
‘You’ll have to go,’ she entreated. ‘It’ll only confuse and upset him if you stay.’
Rafaele closed the distance between them and Sam instinctively moved back, but the oven was behind her. Rafaele’s scent enveloped her, musky and male. Her heart pounded.
‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
After a long searing moment, during which she wasn’t sure how she didn’t combust from the anger being directed at her, Rafaele turned on his heel and left, stopping briefly at the sitting room door to look in at Milo again.
He cast one blistering look back at Sam and then he was out through the front door and gone. Sam heard the powerful throttle of an engine as it roared to life and then mercifully faded again.
It was then that she started to shake all over. Grasping for a chair to hold onto, she sank down into it, her teeth starting to chatter.
‘Mummeeee!’ came a plaintive wail from the sitting room.
Sam called out, ‘I’ll be there in one second, I promise.’
The last thing she needed was for Milo to see her in this state. Her brain was numb. She couldn’t even quite take in what had just happened—the fact that she’d seen Rafaele again for the first time since those cataclysmic days.
When she was finally feeling a little more in control she went in to Milo and sat down on the floor beside him. Without even taking his eyes off the TV he crawled into her lap and Sam’s heart constricted. She kissed his head.
Rafaele’s words came back to her: ‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’
She shivered. She didn’t even want to think of what she’d be facing when she heard from Rafaele again.
* * *
On Monday morning Sam filed into the conference room at the university and took a seat at the long table for the weekly budget meeting. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness. Unsurprisingly she hadn’t slept all weekend, on tenterhooks waiting for Rafaele to appear again like a spectre. In her more fanciful moments she’d imagined that she’d dreamt it all up: the phone call; his appearance at the house. Coming face to face with his son. A small, snide voice pointed out that it was no less than she deserved but she pushed it down.
Robustly she told herself that if she’d had to go back in time she would have done the same again, because if she hadn’t surely the stress of Rafaele being reluctantly bound to her and a baby would have resulted in a miscarriage for real?
Gertie, the secretary, arrived then and sat down breathlessly next to Sam. She said urgently, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened over the weekend...’
Sam looked at her, used to Gertie’s penchant for gossip. She didn’t want to hear some salacious story involving students and professors behaving badly, but the older woman’s face suddenly composed itself and Sam looked to see that the head of their department had walked into the room.
And then her heart stopped. Because right on his heels was another man. Rafaele.
For a second Sam thought she might faint. She was instantly light-headed. She had to put her hands on the edge of the table and grip it as she watched in mounting horror and shock as Rafaele coolly and calmly strode into the room, looking as out of place in this unadorned academic environment as an exotic peacock on a grubby high street.
He didn’t even glance her way. He took a seat at the head of the table alongside their boss, looking stupendously handsome and sexy. He sat back, casually undoing a button on his pristine suit jacket with a big hand, long fingers...
Sam was mesmerised.
This had to be a dream, she thought to herself frantically. She’d wake up any moment. But Gertie was elbowing her none too discreetly and saying sotto voce, ‘This is what I was about to tell you.’
The stern glare of their boss quelled any chat and then, with devastating inevitability, Sam’s stricken gaze met Rafaele’s and she knew it wasn’t a dream. There was a distinct gleam of triumph in those green depths, and a more than smug smile was playing around that firmly sculpted mouth.
Her boss was standing up and clearing his throat. Sam couldn’t look away from Rafaele, and he didn’t remove his gaze from hers, as if forcing her to take in every word now being spoken, but she only heard snippets.
‘Falcone Industries...most successful...honoured that Mr Falcone has decided to fund this research out of his own pocket...delighted at this announcement...funding guaranteed for as long as it takes.’
Then Rafaele got up to address the room. There were about thirteen people and, predictably, you could have heard a pin drop as his charismatic effect held everyone in thrall. He’d finally moved his gaze from Sam and she