Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ able to say a word, had taken her face in his hands and kissed her, drowning in an intoxicating sweetness he’d never tasted before.

      Even now that memory alone had an effect on Rafaele’s libido and body. He cursed. He’d thought of her months ago, at his mother’s funeral. He thought of her more often than he liked to admit. Sam was the one who had taken him too close to the edge. They had shared more than just a brief sexual history. They had almost shared...a child.

      Even now a shiver of fear snaked down Rafaele’s spine. How close he’d come to dealing with something he never wanted to deal with. That was what he needed to remember.

      He swung around and stared blankly into his huge office. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with him, and he should want to have nothing to do with her.

      He should not have given in to the compulsion to track her down. He should steer well clear of Samantha Rourke and put her out of his mind. For good.

      * * *

      Samantha woke up on Saturday morning when a small warm body burrowed into the bed beside her. She smiled sleepily and wrapped her arms around her sturdy son, breathing in his sweet scent.

      ‘Morning, handsome.’

      ‘Morning, Mummy, I love you.’

      Sam’s heart clenched so hard for a second that she caught her breath. She kissed the top of his head. ‘I love you too, sweetheart.’

      Milo pulled his head back and Sam cracked open an eye and grimaced at the morning light.

      He giggled. ‘You’re funny.’

      Sam started to tickle Milo and he screeched with glee. Soon they were both wide awake and he was scrambling back out of the bed to clatter down the stairs.

      She shouted after him. ‘Don’t turn on the TV yet!’

      She heard him stop and could imagine his thwarted expression, and then he called back, ‘Okay. I’ll look at my book.’

      Sam’s heart clenched again. He would too. She knew when she went downstairs he’d be looking at his book studiously, even though he couldn’t really read yet. He was such a good boy. Such a bright boy. Sometimes it scared her, how intelligent he was, because she felt as if she didn’t have the means to handle it.

      Bridie, her father’s housekeeper, who had stayed on after he’d died two years previously, would often look at her with those far too shrewd Irish eyes and say, ‘Well, where do you think he got it from? His grandfather was a professor of physics and you had your head in books from the age of two.’

      Then she would sniff in that way she had and say, ‘Now, obviously, as I don’t know anything about his father, I can’t speculate on that side of things...’ which was Sam’s cue to give her a baleful look and change the subject.

      If it hadn’t been for Bridie O’Sullivan, though, Sam reminded herself as she got out of bed, she would never have been able to get the PhD which had got her onto the lucrative research programme at the university, and which now helped pay for food, clothes and Bridie’s wonderful care for Milo five days a week.

      Bridie lived in the granny flat that had been built onto the side of the house some years before.

      As Sam tied the belt on her robe, and prepared to go downstairs to get breakfast ready for herself and Milo, she tried to suppress the resurgence of guilt. The guilt that had been eating at her insides all week since she’d had that phone call. The guilt that had been a constant presence for four years, if she was completely honest with herself.

      It unsettled her so much that she slept badly every night, tortured with memories while awake and by dreams while asleep, full of lurid images. Hot images. She woke tangled in the sheets, her skin damp with sweat, her heart racing, her head aching.

      Rafaele Falcone. The man who had shown her just how colourless her world had been before demonstrating how easily he could deposit her back into perpetual greyness. As if she’d had no right to experience such a lavish, sensual dream.

      Even now she wondered what on earth it had been about her that had caught his eye. But whatever it had been, to her everlasting shame, she would never forgive herself for believing that it had been more. For falling for him like some lovestruck teenager.

      She reassured herself for the umpteenth time that week that he didn’t deserve to know about Milo because he’d never wanted him in the first place. She would never forget how his face had leached of all colour when she’d told him she was pregnant.

      Sam sagged back onto the side of the bed, the onslaught of memories coming too thick and fast to escape. He’d been away on a trip for three weeks and during that time Sam had found out she was pregnant. He’d asked to see her as soon as he’d returned, and after three weeks of no contact Sam hadn’t been able to stop her heart from pumping with anticipation. Maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said before he’d gone on the trip...

      ‘It might be no harm, cara, for us to spend some time apart. My work is beginning to suffer...you’re far too distracting...’

      But when she’d walked into his office he’d looked stern. Serious. Before she could lose her nerve Sam had blurted out, ‘I have to tell you something.’

      He’d looked at her warily. ‘Go on, then.’

      Sam had blushed and nervously twisted her hands, suddenly wondering if she was completely crazy to have a feeling of optimism that he might welcome her news. They’d only spent a month together. One heady, glorious month. Four weeks. Was that really enough time—?

      ‘Sam?’

      She’d looked at him, taken a deep breath and dived in. ‘Rafaele...I’m pregnant.’

      The words had hung ominously between them and a thick silence had grown. Rafaele’s face had leached of all colour and Sam had known in that instant with cold clarity that she’d been a complete fool. About everything.

      He’d literally gone white, his eyes standing out starkly green against the pallor. She’d thought he might faint and had moved towards him, but he’d put out a hand and asked hoarsely, ‘How?’

      She’d stopped in her tracks, but hadn’t been able to halt the spread of ice in her veins. ‘I think...when we were careless.’

      An understatement for the amount of times they had been careless...in the shower, in the living room of Rafaele’s palazzo when they’d been too impatient to make it to the bedroom, in the kitchen of her flat one evening, when he’d pushed her up against the counter and pulled down her trousers...

      Sam had felt hot and mortified all at once. It felt so...lurid now. So desperate. It had been sex, not romance. Had she ever really known him? The vulnerability she’d felt in that moment was a searing everlasting memory.

      He’d looked at her accusingly. ‘You said you were on the pill.’

      Sam got defensive. ‘I was—I am. But I told you it was a low-dosage pill not specifically for contraception. And I had that twenty-four-hour bug a few weeks ago...’

      Rafaele had sat down heavily into his chair. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in ten seconds. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he’d muttered, СКАЧАТЬ