Free Sins of the Past by Elizabeth Power Page B

calls.
    ‘Look, it’s been a bad few days for me, all right?’ she disclosed, in an effort to vindicate herself, coming to a standstill to appeal to the implacable authority in his face. Doing so, though, made her stomach flip, as if she was riding a roller-coaster. Which working for him was—emotionally, at any rate, she thought, raking agitated fingers through her bright damp hair.
    She looked feisty, Damiano thought. And tousled, as though she’d only just clambered out of bed.
    And with that tunic gaping open, revealing the pale, delicate structure of her throat …
    He had to pull his thoughts up sharply to take in what it was she was saying.
    ‘I’m not usually such a mess.’ Riva felt herself growing hot under the dark intensity of his eyes. ‘But I’ve got a few problems going on in my life right now.’
    He dipped his head in the subtlest of acknowledgments. ‘Anything I can help you sort out?’ he offered.
    As if! Riva thought, smarting from his derisive impudence, and wondering how any man could be so indecently attractive. It was because of him that she and Ben were having such a tough time at the moment, if only he knew it! And if she was stupid enough to let Damiano D’Amico into her life it would only cause more havoc than she was experiencing now.
    ‘I think I can just about deal with it on my own.’
    I always have, she thought grievously, without any help from you. Even when her mother had been there to help she had always been concerned over what state of mind the woman might be in—whether her demanding little grandson might be too much for Chelsea to cope with.
    As she turned away again that velvet voice came after her, with inexorable authority this time. ‘Get rid of him, Riva.’
    She stopped dead in her tracks, clutching her phone to her breast, her shoulders pulled back, her spine so stiff she thought it might snap as she pressed her eyelids tight against the emotion she couldn’t let him see. He had meant the boyfriend who didn’t exist—not the son he had fathered whom he didn’t know, whom she was determined he would never meet. Yet the significance of his words took on a different meaning, one that immobilised her with a cruel and tearing speculation.
    Would he have asked her to do that if he’d known about her pregnancy from the beginning? Did he think her so fardown the social scale—so far removed from the circles he moved in—that it would have come easily to him to dismiss not only her but the child she was carrying? Buy her off with the money to pay for what to him would have been no more than a minor inconvenience?
    Emotion turned to hot tears in her eyes, ridiculing her for wanting to believe that he would have been too ethical to act in that way. She had never once considered having an abortion. Not even when her mother—strung with concern for her daughter—had once gently but firmly suggested that Riva might think about that option. A termination had never—ever—been on the cards.
    Mortifyingly, he was stepping in front of her, tilting her pain-scarred features with the aid of a forefinger.
    ‘I see,’ he said grimly. Because he did. Or thought he did! She was having boyfriend trouble and he wasn’t very pleased about it.
    She sniffed back a tear, feeling like a drenched clown, with rain dripping off her hair onto her cheeks and her mascara probably running down her face with it.
    ‘You don’t,’ she berated, pulling angrily away from him.

CHAPTER FIVE
    F ORTUNATELY Damiano hadn’t carried out his threat of insisting that Riva stayed at the Old Coach House, but she hadn’t ruled out the possibility that he might.
    Strung up as she had been since she had started working for him, she was glad to be able to spend the next few days in the office, gathering information for the materials she would need, working out time schedules for the various jobs, preparing a final brief for Damiano’s approval.
    The night before she was due for her next meeting with