Secret Love-Child

Kept for Her Baby

Kate Walker

The Costanzo Baby Secret

Catherine Spencer

Her Secret,

His Love-Child

Tina Duncan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Kept for Her Baby

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Costanzo Baby Secret

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Her Secret, His Love-Child

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

Kept for Her Baby

Kate Walker

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading. You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com.

For Anne and Gerry, to celebrate this very special Caerleon Writers’ Holiday.

CHAPTER ONE

THE heat of the day was fading from the atmosphere and the warm air was slowly beginning to cool. The shadows of evening had started to gather as Lucy carefully brought the small, scruffy rowing boat up to the beach where the edge of the tiny island sloped down to the lake and jumped out.

The cool shallow water swirled around her bare feet, coming up ankle deep, just below the rolled up cuffs of her blue cargo pants, as she tugged the small craft onto the shore, biting her lip as she heard the raw, scraping sound its hull made in the sand.

Would anyone hear that? She couldn’t afford to be caught now, still too far away from the house to achieve her aim. If one of the small army of security guards that Ricardo employed had heard the noise and came to investigate then she was lost before she had even started. She would be escorted off the island, taken back on to the Italian mainland and dumped back into the tiny, shabby boarding house which was the only place she could afford to stay this week.

This vital, desperately important week.

If she managed stay in Italy at all. Once Ricardo knew she was back he was far more likely to decide that he wanted her out of the country as well. Out of Italy and out of his life for good. Just as he had believed that she was already.

‘Oh, help.’

Realising that she was holding her breath, she let it go again on a raw, despondent sigh, pushing a hand through the tumbled blonde hair that had escaped from the band she had fastened it back with as her clouded blue eyes flicked rapidly, urgently from side to side, trying to see if she could spot anyone approaching. If someone had been alerted by the sound of the boat on the sand then surely they should be here by now?

It had to be safe to move. Dipping into the boat, she snatched up her canvas shoes, carrying them to the edge of the beach before she sank down onto the grass to dust off her feet and pull on the footwear.

She wished she could pull the rowing boat up further on the shore. Perhaps even cover it with leaves or branches so that it was more fully concealed from view. But she didn’t have the strength to move it any further and the impatient, nervous thudding of her heart urged her to take other action, move on quickly.

Now that she was here, she really couldn’t delay any more. She’d waited and planned for this so long, making careful preparations, and she couldn’t do so any longer. From the moment that her letter to Ricardo had been returned to her unopened, she had known that this was her only way. She had to take matters into her own hands and do the only thing possible.

She’d tried the polite way, the civilised way and had been firmly rebuffed. She’d tried to appeal to Ricardo’s better nature but it seemed that he didn’t have one—at least not as far as she was concerned.

And so she’d been forced to come here like this, in secret. Like a thief in the night she had come back to the island in the gathering dusk, finding her way to the one spot where she knew that, tight as Ricardo’s security was, it was just possible to sneak up close when hidden behind some bushes that overhung the lake. Paddling rather than rowing so as to be as silent as she could, she’d managed to get onto the shore without being spotted and now she could only hope that her luck would hold as she made her way to the house.

Pausing under the shady protection of a big cypress tree, Lucy found that she was blinking back bitter tears as she stared up at the huge neo-Gothic villa that rose up before her at the top of the lushly green sloping gardens. Carefully shaped terraces with ornate stone balustrades linked by flights of steps led up to the sprawling white-painted building that had once been a monastery and then later a palace.

The glass in the Gothic windows reflected the glow of the setting sun, and in the south western corner a tall tower rose, crowned by battlements sculpted in stone with floral decorations. From those windows in the Villa San Felice she knew you could look out across the calm blue waters of Lake Garda and see the provinces of Verona to the south-east, and Brescia to the west. Directly opposite was San Felice del Benaco, which gave both the island and the villa its name.

This amazing place, this fantastic house had once been her home.

But it was her home no longer. Not for many months now. And it hadn’t ever felt like home in all the time she’d lived there…

Lucy shivered in spite of the mildness of the evening as memories assailed her. Distress made her skin prickle with cold goose bumps and she shuddered at the images that passed through her thoughts, reminding her of how it had once felt to be here. To live here and yet never feel that she belonged.

‘I can’t do this!’ she muttered aloud to herself. ‘I can’t go through with it. Can’t face…’

Abruptly she shook her head, fighting to drive away the unhappy thoughts. She had to face things, had to go through with it. Because inside that villa, as well as the terrible memories of some of the worst months of her life, there was also the one thing that mattered most to her in the world. The one thing that made her life now worth living.

Her feet followed the indistinct path with the ease of instinct built up in her time living on San Felice. She found the small gate into the private gardens in the same way, easing it open carefully and wincing in distress as the weathered wood creaked betrayingly.

‘Please don’t let anyone come,’ she prayed under her breath as she dashed across the soft grass and into the concealment of the lush shrubbery that grew beside the lowest level of the stone paved terraces.

‘Please don’t let anyone see me.’

She had barely hidden herself again when she heard the sound of a door opening above her. The patio doors that led from the big sitting room, she recalled. The same doors through which she had made her escape not quite seven months before when she had fled this house, not daring to look back, terrified of what might happen if someone realised what she was planning and stopped her.

‘Buona sera…’

The voice from inside the house floated down to her, making her heart stop dead in her chest so that she gasped in shock. A moment later it had kick-started into action again, setting her pulse racing.

Ricardo.

She recognised that voice instantly; would know it anywhere. Only one man possessed those dark, sultry tones or had that slightly husky note in every word he spoke.

How many times had she heard him speak her name in so many different ways? In amusement, in scorn, in anger. And yet, at other times—times she could no longer bear to remember—she had heard him speak to her in burning ardour, taking the simple ordinariness of her name and turning it into magic as he called her his Lucia, his delight, his passion…

…His wife.

Her heart flinched away from the memory of that word and the way that Ricardo Emiliani had once used it with a note of pride—or so she had thought at the time.

‘My wife,’ he had said as he took her hand to lead her away from the altar where the priest had just declared that they were married. ‘Mia moglie.’

And for a time she had gloried in the title. She had let herself enjoy being called Signora Emiliani. She had buried the doubts that assailed her deep under the cloak of happiness that shielded her from reality. She had smiled until her jaw ached and she had played the role of the happy young bride who had all that she could dream of.

When all the time, deep down inside, she had known the truth—the only reason why Ricardo had married her in the first place.

And love had had nothing to do with it.

‘If you hear anything more, then let me know…’

The once-loved voice came again, startling her because it spoke in English and not his first language of Italian.

So who was he talking to in English? And why?

A nervous shiver ran down Lucy’s spine as the sudden thought struck her that perhaps she might have made a fatal mistake in coming out of hiding and getting back in touch with Ricardo after so long. By writing to him, however desperate her need, she had let him know where she was. And Ricardo, being the hugely wealthy, hugely powerful man that he was, would have no difficulty in using that information to find out more. He had only to click his fingers and he had an army of men at his disposal—private detectives, investigators, ready to do anything needed to find out more, to track her down and…

And what?

What would the man who in one last dreadful row had declared to her face that marrying her had been the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life do once he found out where she was?

‘I want to see this matter sorted out and finished with.’

‘I’ll get on to it right away. The contracts will be ready for you to sign tomorrow.’

Somehow it was the other man’s voice that brought her back to reality with such a bump that she almost laughed out loud, only just catching herself in time before she gave herself away.

Who was she trying to kid? Why would Ricardo want anything to do with her? He had let her go without a second thought, hadn’t he? No one had come after her to try and drag her back to this house and all she had left behind in it. And hadn’t the message of the letter returned to her been loud and clear?

Contracts and signing—of course. What else would be on Ricardo’s mind other than his huge luxury car business?

Ricardo Emiliani wanted nothing to do with her. He would never forgive her for what she had done, so now he was glad that she was out of his life and he wanted it to stay that way. She was a fool if she allowed herself even to dream that it could be anything else.

She shrank back into the shadowed space between the shrubs and the stone wall of the terrace as slow, heavy footsteps brought Ricardo down the last flight of steps and into the garden. Watching him stroll away from her, Lucy felt as if something or someone had suddenly punched her hard in the chest, driving all the breath from her body and making her heart jump painfully in her throat.

Even from behind like this, he still had such a potent physical impact that it made her freeze and just stare, unable to look away.

He had been walking away from her when she had first seen him. So the first impression she had had been of that proud, black-haired head, held so arrogantly high on a strong, deeply tanned neck. Her eyes had been drawn to those broad, straight shoulders, the powerful length of his back sweeping down to narrow hips and long, long legs. Then, as now, he had been wearing denim jeans so worn and tight that they had clung to his powerful thighs like a second skin. But that day on the beach, two years before, he had been wearing no shirt, nothing to conceal the bronzed skin of his torso, stretched tight across honed muscles that flexed and tightened with every movement, making her mouth dry in sensual response as she’d watched. He’d been barefoot too, seeming nothing but the casual holidaymaker she was herself, his appearance giving no sign of the wealthy, powerful man he really was.

She had been halfway in love with him before she had found out the truth.

Today he wore a white polo shirt, untucked at the waist and hanging loose. But she knew what was under that shirt. She had let her hands slide underneath his clothing so many times, stroking hungry fingers over the warm satin of his skin, feeling his shuddering tension as he responded to her provocative caress. She had closed her palms over the tight muscles of his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh in yearning hunger as she had ridden his passion hard and hot until it had taken her right over the edge into ecstasy.

Oh, no, no, no, no! She must not think of that! She must not let herself remember how it had been, how she had once responded to him so fast, so easily. She couldn’t let herself remember that or she would be finished before she started, her plan ruined before it even began.

She had come here for one reason only and that was…

A sudden sound, new and unexpected, broke into her thoughts, stopping them dead. For a moment it was as if it was so much an echo of what was in her thoughts that she almost imagined that she had conjured it up inside her head, wishing—dreaming—that she had heard it, rather than actually catching it in reality.

But then the sound came again, a snuffling, choking sort of wail, not too far away, faintly muffled, as if being held against something soft.

The world jolted beneath her feet, swung round once, and then back again the opposite way, leaving her feeling weak and queasy. One hand went out to grab at a nearby low branch, hanging on for dear life while her thoughts swirled and her head spun sickeningly.

‘No…’

It was a low-voiced moan, one she had no hope at all of holding back. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. She had to have been imagining it, creating it in the hungry depths of her own thoughts.

But, as her clouded eyes cleared, she blinked hard and saw the way that Ricardo’s arms were bent at the elbow, held in front of him as if he was carrying something, cradling it close to his chest. And as she registered the care and concentration he was exerting to hold his small burden, the way his down-bent gaze was directed at it, concentrating only on what he held, her heart clenched once again, skipping several beats in agonizing shock.

‘Hush, caro…’

Once more that painfully familiar voice murmured huskily, the soft note in it tearing at her vulnerable heart. ‘Time to sleep, mio figlio…’

Oh, dear God!

Mio figlio…

Somehow the new angle of Ricardo’s body gave her a better view. Now she could see. And what she saw made her heart twist inside as if some cruel hand had just reached into her chest and wrenched it savagely, threatening to tear it right out of its assigned space.

Now she could see the way that Ricardo’s arms were bent at the elbow, the way they curved around the small body he held. She could see the shock of soft hair—jet-black like that of the man who held him—that was cushioned in the crook of one arm, where the small head rested, relaxed and totally at ease.

And why not? The small boy was safe in his father’s arms.

In a way that she once feared he would never be safe in his mother’s.

‘Oh, Marco…’

Her vision blurred, the harsh, bitter tears welling up at the back of her eyes, pushing against them until they ached and burned. An ache that was echoed deep inside her heart, tearing at her cruelly.

To her shock, she found that she had reached out a hand, stretching her arm towards the man who still stood with his back to her, oblivious to the fact that she was there.

No, not towards the man but towards the child he held. The reason why she was here at all. The one and only person for whom she would have braved Ricardo’s anger, the fury of hatred she knew would be in his eyes when he saw her.

She had thought that she would never see her husband again, and she had resigned herself to that. But what she had never managed to resign herself to was the fact that she would never again see the baby boy she adored with all her heart but hadn’t been strong enough to love properly.

His baby boy—and hers.

Her son.

CHAPTER TWO

HER son was no more than a few metres away from her.

And never before had the phrase ‘so near and yet so far’ meant so much to her. Never before had it slashed at her with the cruel truth that she was so near to Marco that all she had to do was to take a couple of steps forward and she could be close to him. She could look down at him and see how much he had grown, how he had changed—because he had to have changed, surely, in the time she had been away.

Perhaps she could even reach out and take him in her own arms…

No!

Even in her dreams that was just a step too far.

She knew that Ricardo would never let her touch their son. And deep inside she really knew that it would be just too much to bear if she did. How could she reconnect with her little boy after all this time? She knew how the world would look at her—how Ricardo would see her. What loving mother, what good mother, would abandon her baby, walk out on him, leaving him alone with his father?

It had taken her long enough to accept that she had been ill. To acknowledge that she hadn’t been able to find any alternative. The doctors said that she was well again now—but she didn’t know it, deep in her heart.

Cruel, bitter tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. All she knew was that she couldn’t stay in this hateful, appalling, ‘so near and yet so far’ situation and not give herself away.

She felt as if her already wounded heart would break, splintering into tiny pieces that scattered all over the paving stones at her feet. And yet this was what she had come this far for, after all. She had crept onto this island, sneaking past the security, just for this. The chance to see her little son.

But not like this. Not when she was not ready, not prepared.

And not with Ricardo Emiliani’s cold, dark eyes watching her, cruelly assessing everything she did.

Stumbling slightly, she turned away. Not looking where she was going, not caring, she headed in the vague direction of the way she had come, hoping that she would reach the shore, and the boat, before the pain got too much and she sank to the ground and howled like an animal.

The crack that came when her foot landed on a fallen branch sounded appallingly loud in the stillness of the evening. There was no way that Ricardo could not have heard it. Freezing, Lucy tensed, waiting for the inevitable.

‘Who’s there?’ Ricardo’s voice was sharp, harsh in contrast to the soft tones of just moments before.

Not daring to look back to see if he had actually spotted her, Lucy plunged on, dashing into the bushes in the hope of hiding from his sharp-eyed gaze.

‘Stop!’

There was no way she was going to respond to that…

‘Marissa! Here—now…’

Behind her, Lucy vaguely heard the sound of swift footsteps—female footsteps—hurrying down the stone steps to where he was in the garden.

‘Take Marco…’

That was the last thing she heard as she fled headlong, pushing aside branches that got in her way as she ran. Twigs snapped back, slapped her in the face, but she didn’t care. All she could think of was getting away, reaching the boat and heading back across the lake. Anything other than facing an angry and aggressive Ricardo.

‘Stop!’

How had he got to be so close behind her already? He had had to hand the baby over to Marissa—the nanny?—and then come after her but still it sounded as if he had made up so much ground that she could almost imagine that he would catch up with her at any moment. Heavy footsteps pounded behind her, making her heart race even faster in fear and apprehension.

‘Giuseppe…Frederico…’

Ricardo was speaking to someone else. A swift, desperate glance over her shoulder revealed that he had taken out his mobile phone and had flipped it open, speaking into it as he ran, not breaking stride or even adjusting his breathing. A string of curt, sharp commands in Italian were flung into the receiver and Lucy’s thudding heart lurched in even greater fear.

He was calling security. Summoning the trained bodyguards who watched the island boundaries for him, protecting his privacy—and making sure that his baby son was safe. And now he was setting his bloodhounds on to her.

And he was not pleased. There was no mistaking that tone of voice. She’d heard it often enough when she and Ricardo had been together. That tone meant that security had failed him and he was furious. Ricardo Emiliani didn’t countenance failure and heads would roll as a result of this.

A furious Ricardo was not someone she wanted to face. She had come here to try and talk to her husband, it was true, but she had planned to tackle him with the advantage of surprise on her side. Facing him now was quite a different matter. Seeing little Marco so unexpectedly had ripped away the flimsy protective shield she had built up around herself, taking with it several much needed layers of skin and leaving her raw and bleeding deep inside. She needed to get away, regroup and gather her strength again before she dared risk taking things any further.

The shore where she had left the boat was just around the corner. If she could just put on one last spurt, force her tiring and shaking legs into action, she might just do it. But whether she could get the boat onto the lake and actually get away was a very different matter.

Making a last effort, she pushed herself to breaking point, her breath coming in laboured gasps as a lack of fitness resulting from the past few months started to tell on her. She couldn’t look where she was going, caught her toe on a clump of grass, missed her footing and fell headlong.

Or, rather, started to fall.

Just as she felt herself totally lose her balance, convinced that the ground was coming up to meet her, she felt a hand grab her flailing arm, clamping tight around her wrist and holding firm.

‘Got you!’

With a jarring jolt she was jerked back from the fall, hauled upwards so that she balanced upright for just a moment, swaying precariously, before tumbling the other way. Straight into the arms of the man behind her.

‘Oh, no!’

She hit him like a ton of bricks but, although he staggered back, he didn’t fall and the punishing grip around her arm didn’t loosen for a moment. If anything, it tightened bruisingly so that she had no hope of pulling away.

‘So who the devil are you?’

There was no way that Lucy could answer him. Her mouth seemed to have dried so much that her tongue couldn’t form a word and her throat felt as if it had tied itself into knots.

But Ricardo didn’t seem to need an answer. Instead, he adjusted his hold so that he could spin her round, bringing her to a position facing him where he could see her for himself.

‘I said…you!’

It took every nerve in Lucy’s body to force herself to look him in the face, though she flinched away from meeting his eyes, terrified of the darkness she would see there. She could almost feel the cold burn of his glare on her skin, flaying it from her bones.

‘Me,’ she managed and the uncomfortably jagged beat of her heart made her voice sound brittle and defiant.

The stunned silence that greeted her response stretched her nerves to near breaking point. In desperation, knowing he wasn’t going to be the one to break it, she pushed herself to say something—anything—to try to show that he didn’t totally have control of this situation.

‘Buona sera, Ricardo.’

The sound of Ricardo’s breath hissing in between his teeth told her that she’d caught him on the raw and the way his hand tightened about her arm betrayed the struggle he was having with himself to control the burning temper that she knew was flaring inside him.

But all he said was one word—

‘Lucia…’

Her name. Or rather the Italianised form of it that only he had ever used. The low, almost whispered syllables slid off his tongue in a way that could have been a verbal caress or then again might have been the hiss of an angry snake, preparing to strike. And not knowing which brought her eyes up in a rush to clash with his glittering black gaze, the ice in their burning depths making her shiver in uncontrolled response.

‘Lucia.’

He said it again and this time there was no doubting the way that he meant it. The venom injected into the syllables of her name made her quail inside, shrinking away from him as far as his cruel grip on her arm would let her.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Don’t tell him the truth.

The warning words slid into her thoughts as if spoken aloud.

Don’t say a word about Marco. If you put that weapon into his hands, then he will use it against you.

‘I said…’

‘What do you think I’m doing?’

Somehow she found the strength to answer him, to put a note of defiance into her tone. She even managed to lift her chin in an expression of rebellion that was a million miles from what she was actually feeling. And although she actually made a pretence of looking into his eyes, of meeting their savage glare head on, the truth was something so very different. Deliberately she let her gaze slip out of focus so that all she could see was the dark blur of his face up above her. The jet-black pools of his eyes were bleak hollows where no light, no hint of feeling showed in their depths.

‘I certainly haven’t come to try to renew our marriage.’

‘As if I’d think that was why you were here.’

Ricardo’s tone was rough but laced with a deadly control that refused to allow any real emotion into the words. And although he still held her, she felt that his attention was not on what he was doing but on the thoughts that were inside his head. The thoughts that his icy command refused to let show in his face.

‘Our marriage is over. It was over before it really started.’

From the moment he had accused her of trapping him into marriage. Of letting herself get pregnant purely to get her hands on some of the vast wealth he possessed.

‘Well, that’s something we both agree on, at least.’

Lucy tried an experimental tug to try to free her arm, recognising how much of a mistake the action was when Ricardo’s grip tightened, restraining her without any real effort.

‘If it’s not that—grazie a Dio—then what is it?’

He was finally starting to recover from the shock of seeing her, Ricardo admitted privately to himself. Finally coming to terms with the fact that she was here, in front of him—the woman he had never wanted to see again for the rest of his life. The woman who had deceived him, played him like a fool. The woman he had thought was gone for good, out of his life for ever, and that had suited him to perfection.

And yet here she was, standing before him, her arm tensed against the pressure of his, her head flung back, her small chin raised, and those blue, blue eyes glaring into his in wide, determined defiance.

She hadn’t changed much, he acknowledged unwillingly because he didn’t want to notice anything about her. He didn’t even want to look into her face, into that lying, devious face, and see the beauty that had once caught him, entrapped him—deceived him. A beauty that had once knocked him so off balance that he had forgotten all the careful rules by which he lived his life.

More than forgotten. He had ended up breaking every single one of them and had turned his life into a form of hell from which he had been only too glad to escape. The one and only time he’d broken his self-imposed rule, he’d been caught by a scheming gold-digger in the guise of an innocent lamb. And he was not about to let that happen again.

She had lost weight, it seemed, losing some of the softness of her face and her body. He wouldn’t be human—or male—if he didn’t feel a pang of regret at the loss of the soft swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips. But then she had been pregnant for so much of the time they had been together that naturally her figure had been more lush, the feminine parts of her body more emphasised. If she hadn’t been pregnant then he would never have married her, would never have rushed into the union that he had come to regret so badly. Would never have tied himself to a woman he had come to detest so savagely and so soon.

‘If you’ll let go of my arm, then maybe we can discuss this like civilised human beings!’

‘Civilised!’ Ricardo scorned. ‘That’s not the word that comes to mind when I think of how I’d like to be where you are concerned.’

Now there was a word he would never use to describe Lucy Mottram—Lucy Emiliani as she was now, though the thought of his family name being attached to someone like her brought a sour taste into his mouth. Civilised didn’t describe a woman who had deliberately let herself become pregnant just to trap herself a rich husband, and then walked out on her marriage when that baby had not even been two months old.

‘And it’s not the way I’d want to describe your behaviour in the past.’

Had she actually winced, flinching away in response to the taunt? If she had then she had recovered almost instantly, tossing her hair back and glaring defiance up into his face.

‘Equally, it’s hardly civilised to hold me prisoner like this—just because you’re stronger than me.’

‘Oh, si—and if I let go then you will run off again and I’ll never find out just what you’re up to.’

‘I’m not up to anything! And I promise I’ll stay still.’

He’d be a fool to believe that. But, all the same, he eased his grip on her arm just a little. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Giuseppe and Frederico, his damned inefficient security guards, had finally come up behind them, each one taking an approach from a different side, and he realised that he could at least afford to relax a little.

‘I’d be a fool to trust you,’ he declared, letting her hand drop in a gesture of deliberate distaste. ‘But there’s no way you can escape three of us.’

‘Three bully boys onto one little woman!’ Lucy flashed at him, her eyes sparking rebelliously. ‘That’s really balancing the odds.’

‘There will be no bullying,’ Ricardo tossed back. ‘And you’re hardly such a little woman!’

Deliberately he let his gaze slide over her tousled blonde head, her flushed face, and down the length of her body to where her narrow feet in the battered canvas shoes betrayed her mood in the way that they moved restlessly on the dusty path.

Her height had always been one of the things that he had liked most about being with her. The fact that he only had to bend his head just a little to meet her eye to eye had been a delight. The way that her mouth was just inches away from his when he did so had been a new and enjoyable experience after having to almost stoop in order to kiss the other women he had had relationships with.

Those eyes were what he remembered most about her in the past. The clear, bright blue that had seemed to reflect the colour of the sky on a summer’s day when she smiled, or sparkled in amusement like the warm waters of the lake that surrounded this private island. At other times they had flashed in deliberate provocation when she had thrown a challenge at him. And then at other, very different times darkened into cloudy sensuality, heavy lids drooping into an almost sleepy look when all the time he knew that she had never been further from sleep. That her senses were on high alert, her body warming with awakening desire, her…

No!

With a brutal mental effort he caught his thoughts back from the dangerous path they were on. They threatened to scramble his ability to think, heating his blood and sending his brain into meltdown at just the memories.

That was the way she had caught him the first time around. That was never ever going to happen again. Never, damn it.

‘So now…’ his voice was rough with the effort of control ‘…I’ve waited long enough. I want an explanation and I want it fast.’

For a couple of seconds Lucy’s mind hazed over as she struggled to find the words with which to answer him. Once again that warning voice sounded in her head and she acknowledged the fact that she couldn’t let Ricardo see into the real depths of her heart. To do so would be to make herself too vulnerable, too exposed and defenceless. And she knew that, hating her as he did, Ricardo would take great delight in using her deepest need against her. He would exploit the overwhelming longing to see her baby again like a weapon and he could hurt her terribly that way, wrenching her heart into so many little pieces that it would be impossible to put it back together again.

‘Lucia…’

Her name was a warning, a command and a threat all rolled into one and simply hearing it made her mouth dry in panic so that she had to swallow long and hard in order to find the strength to answer him.

‘I…’ she began, but he had already started to speak again, too impatient, too angry to wait for her to find the words.

‘Just tell me why you are here and what you want!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve wasted too long on you when I have better things to do.’

‘Better things like what?’ Lucy challenged, stung by his dismissive tone. ‘Signing more contracts? Making more millions? Or perhaps you have some hot babe waiting for you…’

The words shrivelled on her tongue as the image that they conjured up scorched her brain. She struggled to try to force away the memory of Ricardo in bed, as she had seen him so many times during their brief marriage, his jet-black hair ruffled and his bronzed skin dark against the whiteness of the sheets. She couldn’t allow herself to remember how it had been. To do so would destroy what little was left of her self control and she knew that if Ricardo spotted just the slightest chink in her carefully protective armour then he would pounce.

But she had reacted too slowly. He’d already seen it and he had no hesitation in taking advantage of it.

‘What’s the matter, cara?’ he drawled cynically. ‘You’re not jealous, surely?’

‘What would I have to be jealous about?’

‘What, indeed? After all, you were the one who declared that our marriage was over, and then walked out.’

Leaving your baby behind. He didn’t actually say the words but he didn’t have to. It was as if they hung there between them, big and dark and carved from ice.

And she knew that she was being a coward by avoiding them but she didn’t dare bring the subject out into the open. Certainly not in front of the two muscular security men who were hovering just within hearing distance, obviously waiting for Ricardo to give a command so that they could take whatever action he demanded.

‘And now you’re back. And I’m wondering why.’

‘Why not?’

Lucy aimed for bravado and missed it by a mile. She could only wince inside as she heard how sharp and brittle her voice sounded in the stillness of the evening, with just the faint lap of the lake water against the shore to break the almost total silence.

‘After all, this was my home…’

No, blustering had been a mistake. She knew it immediately from the way that those brilliant black eyes narrowed sharply, always a danger sign in this man who had once been her husband. When his face changed like that, sensual mouth clamping tight shut, eyes seeming like gleaming slits above his carved cheekbones, then she knew he was at his most ruthless, his most coldly furious.

‘My home,’ Ricardo corrected coldly. ‘A home that you only had a place in as my wife. A home you said you hated—a home you couldn’t wait to turn your back on.’

The coldly obdurate way that he had said my home seemed to sear across her skin, burning away all trace of caution and pushing her into a total change of mood. He couldn’t have made it plainer that she no longer had a place in his life, that he didn’t want her here. She had only been tolerated because she’d been pregnant with his child, the heir to his fortune. Once she had given birth to Marco, all the tenuous value she had possessed had vanished. After that Marco had become an Emiliani and she…she had become nobody—not needed, not wanted.

Her fingers itched to slap that coldly ruthless look from his face but she knew that any such action would be a mistake—if only because of the still watchful, wary presence of the two security guards.

But there was more than one way to skin this particular cat and a wicked imp of inspiration told her exactly what to say to have the same effect verbally if not physically.

‘Ah, but I’ve had a rethink since then and changed my mind. After all, I am still your wife, if only in name.’

‘And only in name is all you’ll ever be.’

‘Fine.’

Lucy forced herself to give sort of a smile, knowing very well that it brought no light to her eyes and so made her look distant and disdainful.

‘And as soon as I can arrange a divorce then I’ll get rid of your name with relief. But there’s one thing that came out of our marriage that I do want.’

‘Of course…’ Ricardo’s arrogant gesture seemed to throw her words back at her in savage dismissal. ‘I should have known that you’d come looking for the money you think you’re entitled to.’

The fact that he thought she had come for money—and only for money—incensed Lucy, making her want to lash out, hurt as she was hurting. She was glad that she hadn’t even mentioned Marco. Being the cold hearted man that he was, Ricardo was capable of flinging any request to see her son back in her face and walking away. But at least he had given her the opportunity to get in a few hits of her own before she revealed the truth.

‘Not think, Ricardo—know. As your wife, then legally I’m entitled to a decent settlement.’

Could those dark eyes narrow any more? Half-closed though the lids might be, they still seemed to have the burn and force of a laser as they were directed at her face.

‘Didn’t you spend enough when you were here? As I recall, you damaged my bank balance pretty badly just before you left.’

The cruel words slashed like a blade, slicing into her heart, into her control and destroying every bit of command she had over it.

‘I wasn’t myself then! I was ill!’

To her shock and horror, Ricardo’s reaction to her desperate admission was to throw his proud head back and laugh out loud. The sound echoed across the open space, seeming to swirl around the small bay and come back at them, dark, eerie and frighteningly cold.

‘Of course you were ill.’

Hearing the sudden quietness of his voice, the complete ebbing away of even the dark humour, Lucy felt her head spin as if someone had just slapped her hard in the face, knocking her for six.

Was it possible that he believed her? That he actually understood?

‘Oh, yes, you were ill, all right—you’d have to be sick to behave as you did. Sick to walk out and leave your baby behind.’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

She had to try to protest, even if she knew that he wasn’t listening. The deliberate way that he had changed the words around so that he had exchanged the word ‘sick’ for ‘ill’, with its very different emphasis and meaning, told her all that she needed to know.

Ricardo’s mind was totally closed against her. She could try to explain all she liked. She could offer any possible explanation to exonerate herself and he wasn’t going to believe her. He wasn’t going to listen and that was that.

But still she had to try.

‘I can explain!’

But Ricardo shook his head in total rejection of the appeal in her voice, in her eyes.

‘I don’t want to hear it. There is no explanation that would justify such behaviour—none at all.’

‘But Rico…’

Too late she realised the mistake she had made. In her fear and panic she had slipped into the shortened, softened form of his name that she had once been able to use. And the way that his face closed up told her that, if it was possible, he hated her for it even more than before.

‘Please…’

But he was already turning away. She was dismissed from his thoughts, and his mind was already on something else as he turned to head back to where the lights inside the house gleamed out through the Gothic windows, emphasising the way that dusk had fallen as they had talked.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ was his callous declaration, followed by an imperious flick of his hand towards the two security guards, still standing as silent, stolid observers of the scene before them.

‘Giuseppe…Frederico…escort Signora Emiliani off the island. Take her to wherever she is staying—and make sure she doesn’t come back.’

He paused just long enough to let the words sink in before adding with extra emphasis, ‘And this time make sure that you do the job properly. If she sets foot on this island ever again then you will both lose your jobs.’

Then he strode away, climbing up the slope towards the lights of the house without so much as a single glance back to make sure that his orders were carried out. He obviously had no doubt that they would be and that he could dismiss his soon-to-be ex-wife from his mind without a second thought.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY was back.

Ricardo paced restlessly around the elegant white and gold sitting room, the glass of wine he had poured and then forgotten about still untouched in his hand. His thoughts were too preoccupied to allow him to drink, or even to let go of the glass his hand was clenched around, almost as if it was the arm of his errant wife, which he had held so tightly a short time before.

Lucy was back and in just a short space of time she had managed to throw his life into chaos just by reappearing in it.

‘Dannazione!’

He slammed the glass down ferociously onto the nearby table, watching without a flicker of reaction as some of the ruby-coloured liquid slopped over the side and landed on the polished wood.

Lucy was back and he was damned if he knew what she wanted.

She had come looking for money, she had claimed.

Well, yes, of course she wanted money. What the hell else would bring her crawling back into his life when she had flounced out of it so carelessly and selfishly just over six months before?

She had to need money because she would be missing the more than generous allowance he had given her from the moment she had agreed to become his wife. The allowance that she had gone through with such speed and almost a compulsion in the weeks after Marco had been born. Then she had thrown money away on anything and everything that took her fancy, often buying half a dozen or more of the same item, in as many different colours as were available.

And then, more often than not, she’d discarded them when she’d grown tired of them, often without even wearing them, he recalled.

She must miss that allowance now that it was no longer hers. He’d cut off the supply of money as soon as he’d known that she’d left him—and the baby. At the time he’d foolishly thought that by cutting off her income he would bring her out of hiding more quickly, force her to come back to ask for more so that he could at least try to persuade her that her child needed her. But she had disappeared completely, vanished off the face of the earth, and even the extensive enquiries he had set in motion had been unable to track her down.

But she had to have lived somewhere and, with her bank account frozen, everything she had managed to stash away would soon have been used up so that she would have to come looking for more.

‘No.’

Speaking the word out loud in the silence of the empty room, Ricardo shook his head as he moved over to the huge, high window that looked out across the lake and over towards San Felice del Benaco.

No, she wanted more than money. She had declared that she wanted a divorce, that she was putting in a claim for a ‘decent settlement’. But, if that was what she wanted, why had she come creeping onto the island in secret, sneaking round to where he had been in the garden, watching him walking with Marco…

Marco!

Ricardo’s hands clenched into such tight fists that if he had still held the wineglass it would have shattered in his grip.

Was Marco the real reason that Lucy had come back? Was she in fact here to try to get her hands on the baby son she had abandoned so heartlessly?

He’d die rather than let her! And no court in the country would give her custody after the way she had walked out on her child before he was even old enough to know her.

I can explain!

Lucy’s voice sounded inside his head and in his thoughts he could see her face, pale in the gathering dusk, as she had turned to him. What explanation could justify her behaviour?

But what if there was some explanation—some justification that she could use against him? What if she had some story that she could take to court and try to claim custody of the baby—his son?

‘Dannazione, no!’

That was never going to happen. He’d make sure of that. There was one way he could ensure that his troublesome wife never got her hands on the baby she had abandoned so heartlessly. Lucy needed money and she would have as much as she wanted—more money than she could ever have imagined in her dreams…

…but at a price.

Snatching up the phone, Ricardo pressed a speed dial number and waited impatiently, long fingers tapping restlessly on the table top until someone answered.

‘Giuseppe…’ he snapped as soon as he heard the other man’s voice at the end of the line. ‘My wife—Signora Emiliani…’ His tongue curled in distaste as he made himself say the name. ‘When you escorted her home, where exactly did you take her?’

Lucy couldn’t sleep.

No, the truth was that she didn’t want to sleep or even try to. If she so much as lay down on the bed and closed her eyes then images of the evening floated in her mind.

Images of Ricardo, tall and dark and devastating as ever.

Ricardo walking down the stone steps, along the grass. His long lean body silhouetted against the distant lake, his voice carrying to her on the still air of the evening.

And then that other sound, the faint, whimpering cry…

Marco.

Her baby.

Pain lanced through her, cold and cruel. A choking sob escaped her as she wrapped her arms around her body, feeling that she had to hold herself together or she would fall apart completely.

‘Oh, Marco…’

The little boy’s name was a moan of despair. Lucy moved to the small, high window and leaned against the wall, staring out across the darkened lake.

‘So near and yet so far.’

Out there was her baby—her little son. Her arms felt empty and her heart ached with the longing to hold him. But if her visit to the island this evening had told her one thing it was that Ricardo was going to fight her every inch of the way.

You’d have to be sick to behave as you did. Sick to walk out and leave your baby behind.

Her husband’s voice echoed in the bleakness of her thoughts, black with cruel contempt. She would never get to see her baby again, not if he could help it. He clearly had no intention of ever forgiving her for what she had done.

And who could blame him?

Lucy swiped the back of her hand against her eye to wipe away the single tear that had welled up there, threatening to fall.

Why should Ricardo be able to forgive her when she couldn’t forgive herself? She had walked out on her baby. But she hadn’t known what she was doing. And she hadn’t left him alone. He had had his father and the trained nanny to care for him. The nanny that Ricardo had insisted on from the moment she had given birth, making her feel useless and inadequate in a way that must have contributed to her breakdown. In her thoughts, they had been so much better for her darling son than a mother who didn’t know her own mind well enough to know if she might be able to look after him—or if she would actually harm him.

She had hoped for a chance to tell Ricardo that. But he clearly wasn’t prepared to listen. He had sent her letter back to her and now he had had her escorted from the island without a chance to explain. He would never give her another opportunity. She had known that he must hate her, but until today she had never truly realised just how much.

A sudden sharp rap at the door broke into her thoughts, making her start, her head coming up and her eyes widening in surprise. No one knew she was here.

‘Who…?’ Her voice croaked, broke on the word. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Lucia…’

The husky male voice with its distinctive use of her name was too familiar, too disturbing. It was as if by thinking of Ricardo and their meeting earlier this evening she had conjured him up out of the air and brought him to her door. And that thought froze her in the middle of the room, unable to move forward, unable to think.

‘Lucia!’

It was louder now, more impatient, definitely Ricardo. So definitely Ricardo that, in spite of herself, it brought a wry, remembering smile to Lucy’s face as she recalled the times—the many times—that she had heard just that note in his voice.

‘We can’t have a conversation through the door. Everyone will hear us.’

Ricardo paused, obviously waiting, and in spite of the thickness of the wood between them Lucy felt that she could almost hear the irritated hiss of his breath in between clenched teeth as he waited for her answer.

‘Lucia!’

Once again his knuckles rapped hard on the door. Clearly he had no intention of leaving. Suddenly afraid that he would take his annoyance out on the door even further, or that he would disturb other guests in the boarding house, Lucy was pushed into action, hurrying to the door and unlocking it. Yanking it open, she glared at Ricardo as he stood in the corridor.

‘Are you determined to disturb everyone in the house?’ she flung at him. ‘Some of them may be sleeping.’

‘Not at this time,’ Ricardo dismissed with a swift glance at his watch.

‘There might be children asleep!’

‘And you care about that?’

‘Of course I do!’

Too late she saw his face change and knew the direction of his thoughts. How could she care about other people’s children, he was obviously implying, when she had walked out on her own son when he was barely a month and a half old? Didn’t he know that nothing he did or said could make her feel any worse than she already did?

‘I can’t afford to cause any trouble that might get me thrown out of here. I have nowhere else to go.’

‘So are you going to invite me in?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

Not if she wanted to keep this private and quiet, Ricardo’s burning glance said. And, knowing she had no other option, Lucy unwillingly stepped back, allowing Ricardo to stroll into her room. Those deep-set dark eyes subjected their surroundings to a swift, assessing scrutiny and his black brows drew together in a quick frown.

‘This is where you’re staying?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

It was pretty bad really, Lucy had to admit, suddenly seeing the room from his point of view. It was at least clean but it was definitely shabby, the flooring worn and the white covers dulled and thin from repeated washing.

‘Hardly what you’re used to.’

‘Not what you’re used to—or what you used to provide for me, you mean!’ Lucy snapped back. ‘I managed with worse before we met—how do you know what I’ve been used to while we’ve been apart? You stopped all my allowance, remember.’

Seeing the expression of dark satisfaction that crossed his face, she knew that she’d played right into his hands. He was thinking that the only reason she was here was because she was after his money. But then who could blame him? It was the impression she had set out to give in those few desperate moments on the island when she had been afraid to let him know her real reason for being there.

‘There is such a thing as work—paid employment.’

Ricardo’s scorn lashed at her like a cruel whip, the black contempt in his eyes seeming to flay her savagely.

‘Or have you decided that that’s beneath you?’

‘Why would I want to work when I have a filthy rich husband?’

Determined to give as good as she got, she laid a bitter emphasis on the word filthy, knowing that she’d stung him when she saw his mouth tighten into a thin hard line as if clamping down on some more violent expression that he didn’t want to let loose.

Just for a moment she feared—or was it hoped?—that he would actually turn on his heel and march away, walk out without another word. Instead, he pushed the door to with a bang, shutting them in the small room together.

A room that suddenly seemed so much smaller than ever before. Ricardo’s tall, strong form seemed to fill the confined space, his dark colouring in stark contrast to the white-painted walls. She had not been alone with him for over six months—and being here, like this, in the intimate surroundings of a bedroom made Lucy’s heart kick sharply, her pulse rate beating twice as fast.

In all her time apart from him she had never forgotten the sheer physical impact that Ricardo had on her. It was, after all, what had brought them together in the first place. That intense rush of burning awareness, the deep, hungry sexual attraction that had had her in Ricardo’s arms within an hour of meeting him, in his bed just a few short days later. Just being with him had seemed to lift her life on to another plane entirely. One in which every sense was heightened, every experience felt new and wonderful. And the months they had been apart had done nothing at all to diminish the way he made her feel.

Every nerve seemed to prickle with excitement. She was so sharply, stingingly aware of the height and strength of him, the burn of those deep, dark eyes, the golden tone of his skin and the gleam of his jet-black hair. In the confines of the room she could even catch the clean, totally personal scent of his skin that coiled around her like the most seductive of perfumes.

Feeling overwhelmed and unsettled, she wanted to move somewhere—anywhere—to put a bit of space between them but the size of the room made that impossible. The only place to sit was on the edge of the narrow, uncomfortable bed, and just the thought of that made her stomach twist and knot so painfully that she pushed the idea aside in a second.

‘I haven’t been able to work,’ she managed, keeping to the far side of the room while Ricardo paced restlessly around, making her think unnervingly of some big, sleek feline predator caged in a space that was too small for its size. ‘Even if I’d wanted to.’

‘No,’ Ricardo conceded unexpectedly. ‘You said you’d been ill.’

‘You believed me?’

After his response earlier, on the island, she’d assumed that he would think the story of her illness was just that—a story—with no truth behind it at all.

The look Ricardo slanted at her from those dark eyes said that he wished he didn’t have to believe her but he had no alternative.

‘You’ve changed since I saw you—lost weight. But you’re well now?’

‘Oh, yes.’

That, at least, she could say without fear of how he would judge her. She wouldn’t be here now, like this, if that wasn’t true. Having forced herself away from Marco once in her life, there was no way she was going to risk having to make that terrible decision ever again by coming back too early.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Fine didn’t really describe it, would never describe it. Not until she had her beloved baby boy back in her arms and could make reality of the assurances that the hospital had given her. But, before that could ever happen, she had to deal with his father. And, because she didn’t know why he was here, she didn’t know how to handle Ricardo.

But he was here—and he had accepted that she had been ill. So would she be a gullible fool to allow herself to hope for something from that?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, slipping into careful politeness in the hope of steering the situation into calmer waters so that they could at least talk civilly. ‘I should offer you a drink…or something. But, as you can see, I’m afraid this room doesn’t even boast a kettle.’

Her hand gesture, used to indicate the lack of facilities in the room, was a little too wild, a little too expansive. It gave away too much of the uncomfortable way she was feeling inside, the struggle she was having against the need to demand to know just what he wanted from her.

‘I didn’t come here for a drink.’

‘No? So what did you…’ Abruptly the courage to ask the most important question deserted her and she rushed on instead to a different distracting topic. ‘I think I could do with one…’

There was a bottle of water and a glass on her bedside table across the other side of the room, just near to where Ricardo was standing. Without thinking, she moved to reach for it, stretching out her hand in the same moment that he did just the same. Their fingers clashed at the top of the bottle, tangling, pausing, snatched back, only to pause again, just touching, as they froze, barely inches apart, staring deep into each other’s faces.

‘Lucia…’

‘Rico…’

Their voices clashed too, just for a second, then died away into stillness as silence reached out to enclose them, hold them.

It was as if they had both been struck by lightning. An electrical response had sizzled up her arm, fizzing along every nerve at just the feel of the heat of his body, the burn of his skin against hers.

Now she really did need that drink of water. Her throat was drying out completely in the wave of heat that seared her body, shrivelling her thoughts in its fire and setting alight the senses that she had barely kept under control from the moment that Ricardo had walked through the door.

‘Rico…’ she croaked again, unable to drag her eyes away from the burn of his glittering gaze, unable to move, unable to think, only able to feel.

And what she felt was the rush of awareness, of need that she had known from the first moment this man had touched her. A need and a hunger that had grown with each kiss, each caress. A hunger that she had convinced herself she could learn to live without as long as she was far away from him, never seeing him, never speaking to him, never touching him…

And she had managed it until now.

But she had only to touch him, have him touch her, and it had all sparked off again in the space of a single heartbeat. Nothing had vanished; it was all still there.

He felt it too. She could read it in his eyes, sense it in the change in his breathing, the way that a muscle jerked at his jaw line. It was still there, as strong, as sharp and as primitively intense as ever. Body speaking to body, sense to sense. Whatever had burned between them in the eleven months of their marriage, it was all still smouldering just below the surface, needing only a touch to make it flare into life all over again.

‘Oh, Ricardo…’

Acting purely at the demand of her instincts, Lucy finally moved. Twisting her hand around, she let her fingers brush his palm, watching fascinated as his own fingers jerked just once, convulsively, as if about to close around her teasing touch, but then were abruptly forced still again. Those gleaming black eyes were suddenly hooded, hidden from her, concealing any trace of his thoughts. But Ricardo couldn’t hide the way that his breath caught sharply in his throat, the deep swallow that struggled to ease the dry discomfort that matched her own.

Lucy let a small smile curl the corners of her mouth, grow until her lips curved upwards, wide and soft at the thought that at least in this one way she could still affect this hard, distant man as she had once been able to.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this. It really doesn’t.’

‘No?’ Ricardo’s voice was thick and rough, seeming to come from a throat that was so clogged with something raw that he could barely speak.

‘No.’

Softly she let her fingertips drift over the palm of his hand, watching the strong hand quiver in uncontrolled response. Circling his thumb, she caressed her way over the powerful bones in his wrist, watching as the sinews tightened, the muscles clenched. It was impossible to control the need to touch him, impossible to fight back the urge to provoke him to react in a way that revealed that he was no more immune to her than she was to him.

To feel him close like this, scent his skin, feel the heat of him, made her mind respond as if she had slipped back to the days when she had been free to touch him, to caress him whenever she had wanted. She had loved those days, adored that freedom—adored him. And she wanted to go back there—wanted it, needed it so much…

‘It never used to be this way.’

She didn’t deliberately pitch her voice to sound so breathy, so husky. It just came out that way naturally. And right now she couldn’t regret the way it revealed how the tiny physical contact had shaken her. How aware, how aroused it had made her. With her eyes fixed on Ricardo’s taut face, she could see how, just for a moment, his tongue slid out to moisten suddenly dry lips.

Perhaps he too recalled the softer times in their relationship. The times before suspicion had changed him, darkening his opinion of her.

‘It could still be…’

Moving her hand again, this time she curled it around Ricardo’s, fingers lacing with his, palm pressing to palm, deepening the contact, making it more intimate.

And she knew her mistake as soon as she’d done it.

‘Inferno—no!’

The harsh mutter was harder, more biting than if he had shouted. And the way that he froze, before deliberately, coldly uncoiling his hand from her gentle grip, pulling away almost in slow motion, was so obviously a deliberate insult that it stung like a slap in the face. With a flick of his wrist, he seemed to shake off even the last traces of her touch as he swung away from her, putting as much distance between them as it was possible to do in the small bedroom.

‘It could not “still be” anything,’ he declared, every word pure ice. ‘There is nothing left between us, nothing I want to revive. Certainly not how it used to be. That is not what I came here for.’

‘So what did you come here for?’

Determined not to show how his rejection of her had hurt, Lucy brought her head up defiantly, turning what she hoped were cold eyes on him as she injected every ounce of control possible into her voice.

‘I take it it wasn’t just to pass the time of day—renew an old…’ she hesitated deliberately over the word ‘…friendship?’

‘Hardly. We were never friends.’

‘Husband and wife.’

‘Legally, perhaps.’ Ricardo dismissed her pointed comment with an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘But I doubt if we were ever married in the true sense of the word.’

‘And just what, in your opinion, is the true sense of the word?’

‘For better, for worse, to love and to cherish,’ Ricardo quoted cynically, making her wince inside as the words stabbed at her.

‘For richer for poorer…’ she flung back, refusing to let herself think of the other words—the ones that said in sickness and in health.

If only she had been able to turn to Ricardo at a time when those words had meant so much, then how different things might have been. But she had known from the start that their marriage was never meant to be as long as we both shall live. If she had never become pregnant then he would never have married her at all. It was only because of his determination that his son would be legitimate that he had ever put a ring on her finger.

‘For richer, certainly, in your case. You played your virginity like a trump card, withholding it from the poor Italian fisherman you first thought I was but only too keen to lose it to the rich man you then discovered me to be.’

‘If that’s the way you want to read it.’

It was the only way he’d ever read what had happened. He had never understood the very real fear that had held her back at their first meeting, forcing her away from him even though she’d feared she would never see him again. He would understand even less the bitter regret that had eaten at her for days afterwards, so that when she had met him again, in the very different circumstances of an elegant society party, she had been unable to hold back and, buoyed up on an unwise glass of champagne, had practically thrown herself into his arms.

‘And I did not play…’

‘You sure as hell did,’ Ricardo tossed back at her. ‘You played with both our lives—and the life of the baby we unwisely created between us. You told me…’

The temptation to put her hands over her face and hide from his anger—his justifiable anger—was almost overwhelming but Lucy forced herself to brave it out. She knew what she’d said. That she’d given him the idea that she was protected. But the truth was that she had been so wildly, blindly lost in sensation, in the heat and hunger that his kisses, his touch had aroused, that when he had muttered, ‘Is this OK? Are you all right?’ in a voice so thick and rough it betrayed only too clearly how close to losing control he was, she had only thought that he was considering her inexperience. She couldn’t have said no if she’d tried. The only word in her head had been yes, the only need in her body, in her heart, had been to know the full reality of this man’s sensual possession. And so, ‘Yes, oh, yes!’ had been her only possible response.

She had thought she was safe. The time of her cycle should have made her safe. But in that she had been stupid and naïve too.

‘And richer is what you really want me to discuss. So OK, let’s get to the real point. You wanted to know why I came here. I came to ask you just one question.’

‘And that is?’

‘How much will it cost me to get rid of you?’

‘Get…’

In the scrambled muddle of her thoughts, Lucy couldn’t decide if it was shock, fury or just plain horror that kept her tongue from being able to form an answer to his question. She could only stare at him in disbelief, her eyes wide.

‘It’s a simple question, Lucia.’ Ricardo’s voice was tight with impatience and exasperation. ‘Surely you can have no problem in understanding it. What I want to know is how much will you take to leave now, get out of here—and stay out of my life for good?’

CHAPTER FOUR

COMING here had been a mistake, Ricardo told himself furiously. A big mistake. A bad mistake.

And a mistake that he should have seen coming if he had any sense. Which he obviously didn’t. At least not where Lucy was concerned.

But then sense had never been part of the way that he had reacted to this woman. His senses, yes.

Maledizione, he had always been at the mercy of his senses from the moment they had met. His mindless senses had rushed him into taking her to his bed, making her his—making her pregnant in the sort of stupid, irresponsible slipup that he hadn’t made even as a teenager.

It was those damn senses that had trapped him into a marriage that had been a mistake from start to finish.

And those same damn senses had been on red alert ever since he had walked into this room.

‘How much will I take…?’

She was looking at him now as if he had suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. Those blue eyes were wide with what he would have described as shock if he hadn’t known better. But of course he did know better. He knew just what his precious, greedy little wife was after, and all the pretence of shock and disbelief in the world wasn’t going to make him think otherwise.

‘You want to know how much it will cost you to have me leave?’

‘That was the question.’

At least she had stopped the soft-voiced attempt at seductive persuasion. The it doesn’t have to be like this…that she’d tried earlier.

She’d damn nearly had him with that. With the breathy note on the words that had made it sound as if she was totally overwhelmed at being here with him like this. Never before had he been so aware of the slender, curving shape of her in the clinging, worn jeans, the faded T-shirt. The scent of her body had seemed to surround him as he had looked down into the wide, wide eyes that had seemed almost hazy with need. And the soft touch of her hand on his skin…

Dio santo, but he had found it hard to resist that. That gentle touch had raised so many memories in his mind. Erotic memories that had had his body hardening in spite of his furious attempts to divert his thoughts onto other, less dangerous pathways. She had touched him like that on their first night together. Tentative, almost hesitant. As if she was shy and nervous.

Well, that shyness had pretty soon disappeared. It had evaporated like the mist over the lake at the first touch of the summer sun. In his arms she’d turned into a wild and seductive temptress. In his bed she had been the fulfilment of every sensual dream he could ever have imagined.

But they couldn’t live out their lives in bed.

‘So you’re offering me a pay-off?’

‘A settlement,’ Ricardo amended. ‘A generous settlement in return for a quick and quiet divorce—I’ll even take the blame, provide you with grounds if you want it that way. And then you get out of my life for good. You go and you stay away. I never want to see you again.’

How could he ever want to see a woman who was capable of walking out on her own child, leaving behind just a frivolous, careless note that told him the marriage was over and the baby—Marco—was his responsibility now?

She was considering the proposition. Considering it seriously. That much was obvious from the way that her expression had changed, the softness vanishing from her eyes just before she let her pale eyelids drop down to cover them, concealing her thoughts from him.

‘You really must want to be rid of me.’ Her tone was flat, no emotion showing in it at all.

‘Oh, I do,’ he confirmed, his tone deep with harsh sincerity. ‘Believe me, I do.’

‘And you’d pay anything I asked?’

Her jaw had tightened so much that it drew in her cheeks, narrowing the whole look of her face and making the words come out as stiffly and as jerkily as if they had come from the carved wooden mouth of a painted marionette. Blue eyes lifted briefly to look into his face in a swift glance that was coolly assessing. ‘In English law I’d be entitled to half your fortune. You should have thought about getting me to sign a pre-nup.’

If he’d had any sense then he would have done just that. But at the time the only thing that he’d been thinking of was the child they had created between them. The child that had to be born in wedlock and with his name as the father on the birth certificate. No child of his was ever going to grow up illegitimate, with all the snubs and the social exclusion that he had endured. The barriers to belonging that had blighted his mother’s life as well as his own.

He had known that it was only his money that had convinced her to marry him in the end. But, if he was honest, then at that point he really hadn’t cared. All that had mattered was getting the ring on Lucy’s finger and ensuring that her name—and her child’s—were the same as his.

He had thought that he would have longer to see if the relationship between the two of them would grow into something so much stronger than the wild, fiery passion that had brought them together in the first place and had resulted in the creation of the tiny life that Lucy had carried within her.

‘And would you have signed one?’

At the time she would have done anything, Lucy acknowledged. Ricardo had only to ask and she would have said yes. She had been in so deep, so totally besotted so that she had been unable to think straight. She hadn’t even hesitated over his proposal, though common sense should have told her that he didn’t want her. All he had wanted was the child in her womb.

‘I don’t want marriage, Lucia,’ he’d said. ‘Never have. No woman has ever even made me think of it. But your news changes everything. We have a baby to consider and my child is not going to grow up illegitimate. That’s all that matters to me right now.’

‘It would have made sense—on your part, at least,’ Lucy answered now, covering the lacerations on her heart with an armour of control. ‘After all, neither of us was going into that marriage with any romantic stars in our eyes. We both knew it was just a business and legal arrangement.’

‘And now?’

‘Now? I wouldn’t sign anything you asked me to without having it thoroughly checked out first.’

‘Not even if it gave you everything you’d ever wanted—more than you ever dreamed of?’

‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

If she could have Marco in her life, then she would feel as if she had been given the world and would want nothing more. But, without her son, there was no amount of money or possessions that could compensate for the emptiness his loss would leave in her life. And she knew, deep in her soul, that Ricardo would never let her have Marco.

‘Try me.’

For the life of her, Lucy couldn’t bring her numbed, bruised brain to recognise whether there was pure challenge or invitation in the two words that Ricardo tossed at her. And she didn’t really dare to hope for the latter. Any invitation from Ricardo Emiliani came hung about with so many chains of doubt and risk, so many conditions, that it was like putting your head into a noose just to consider it. And a challenge was something she dreaded.

‘Tell me what you really want—and you can have it. Anything, so long as you get out of my life and never come back.’

‘You’ll never give me what I want so there’s no need to even ask.’

‘Why not? I—’ Ricardo broke off abruptly as a buzzing sound from his pocket drew his attention to his mobile phone. ‘Momento…’

Pulling it out, he checked the screen, frowning as he did so. ‘I have to take this.’

With the phone clamped to his ear, he swung away again, listening hard and then firing sharp, incisive questions into the receiver in rapid-fire Italian that was too fast for Lucy’s schoolgirl grasp of the language to allow her to keep up.

But she caught one word, clearly and distinctly, and that fastened onto her nerves, twisting and tugging with every second that passed.

‘Marco…’ he’d said. And, again, ‘Marco…’

Whoever was at the other end of the phone had rung him because of something that was happening with Marco and just to think of that pressed Lucy’s personal panic button, sending her thoughts into overdrive. Her heart was pounding, her breathing harsh and shallow. Something had happened to her little boy and she didn’t know what.

She couldn’t stand still, finding that only by pacing restlessly around the room could she keep herself from grabbing that phone from Ricardo and demanding to know what was happening. But the dimensions of the small space were restricted so that she found she had barely started before she was forced to turn and head back in the opposite direction. And still the conversation went on until she was ready to scream, only keeping a grip on herself by clenching her fists tight, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.

But then, at last, Ricardo thumbed off the phone and turned to her again.

‘What’s happened…?’

‘My apologies…’

Their voices clashed, froze, then, because Lucy couldn’t manage anything more, it was Ricardo who continued, his tone rough with impatience. ‘I have to go. My son…’

Catching the look she gave him, he at least had the grace to pause in faint acknowledgement but only for a second. Immediately he continued, emphasising that possessive claim once again. ‘My son has woken and is upset. I need to get back.’

‘Is he all right?’

The concern wouldn’t be held down. She didn’t care what Ricardo thought of her, how he might interpret her enquiry. She only knew that if Marco was distressed then she had to know more.

‘He will be when I can get to him.’

Once more the exclusion of her was deliberate, pointed. The words stung cruelly; as she was sure they were meant to.

‘You left him in that big house—out there on the island—on his own…’

‘Never on his own!’ Ricardo cut in furiously and Lucy flinched from the fire that flared in his eyes. ‘Of course he was well looked after. His nanny was with him.’

Of course, the nanny. How could she forget the nanny?

‘He was asleep when I left…but he woke and she thought he was too upset to settle. She felt he needed his papa.’

His papa. Another vicious put down, slapping her in the face with the fact that he was Marco’s father, the parent who cared for the little boy. While she was just an outsider. The woman who had given up her claim on her child when she had run out on him. For reasons she could explain if only she got the chance.

But now was not the time. Already Ricardo was turning towards the door.

‘I have to get back to him.’

‘Of course.’

But if she let him walk out of the door, let him walk away, would she ever get the chance to talk to him again? Would she ever even see his face again? And, much, much more important, how could she let him walk away when she knew that, back in the Villa San Felice, his baby son—their baby son—was awake and miserable and in need of comfort?

Not pausing to think, she snatched up the bag that was lying on the bed, stuffed her feet hastily into flat pumps and hurried after him. The speed and length of his strides had taken him out of the door and along the landing already and she had to push herself to follow him. She caught up just as Ricardo was about to let the main door swing to behind him.

‘What the…?’ The question was pushed from him as her hand clashed with his, catching the door before it slammed.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No way…’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t know how she managed to get such strength into her voice. Determination perhaps, or just plain desperation.

What she would do if he refused point-blank to let her go with him, she didn’t know. She could stamp her feet and demand that he let her—stand in the middle of the street and threaten to scream until he agreed. The problem was that, knowing Ricardo, he was more than capable of getting into his car and driving away, leaving her behind.

So she tried the opposite approach instead. She had nothing to lose, after all.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please, Ricardo, let me come with you.’

And watched his head go back in shock, his eyes narrowing sharply as he studied her face.

Please…

Ricardo felt as if he’d had a knock to his head, jarring his brain so that he couldn’t think straight.

Please. It was the last thing he had expected Lucy to say, at least in these circumstances and in that tone of voice. Correction, Lucy asking to go with him at all was the last thing that he had expected.

And she was asking. Making it sound as if it mattered to her. Making it sound as if she was actually concerned about Marco.

‘Ricardo…’ she said now, bringing his eyes to her face again.

In the light from the open door of the boarding house, she looked pale and drawn, forcing him to remember that she had said she’d been ill. What the hell had been wrong with her?

But he didn’t have time to hang about here any longer. He was needed back at the villa where, if the experience of the past few nights was anything to go by—and the sound of the nanny’s voice on the phone had certainly seemed to indicate that it was—at this moment Marco was wide awake and roaring his head off in protest at the discomfort of having another tooth come through.

Oh, yes, Donna Lucia would just love that…

And that was the thought that made up his mind for him.

‘OK,’ he said abruptly, expecting and seeing the shock and blank confusion that crossed Lucy’s face. ‘You can come. Get in the car.’

A wave of his hand indicated the vehicle parked at the roadside.

‘I…do you mean that?’

‘Lucy—’ his tone made his fierce impatience plain ‘—if you’re coming with me, get in the car or I’ll leave you behind.’

She moved then, hurrying to the car door and sliding into the seat as soon as he opened it for her.

Did she know what was ahead of her? Ricardo wondered. He doubted it. When Marco got into one of his crying jags then he made certain that the whole world knew that he wasn’t happy. And, as far as his father could see, a baby boy in a bad mood didn’t come with a volume control.

One thing was sure, if she hadn’t already had enough of being a mother, as she had declared in the cold-blooded note she had left behind when she’d walked out, then the next couple of hours were going to push her as far as she could go. For even the least reluctant mother, Marco’s screams could be positively the last straw.

And that was why he had finally agreed to let Lucy come back to the house with him.

If she needed any encouragement to persuade her to go, get out of his life and stay out of it for good, then the sight and sound of his baby son in a tantrum was probably the most likely thing to provide it.

Which suited him perfectly, Ricardo told himself, slanting a swift glance at the woman beside him as she fastened her seat belt and sat back. A faint cynical smile curled the corners of his mouth as he started the engine, put the car into gear and set off down the road.

This was going to be interesting.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE noise hit Lucy’s ears as soon as she stepped through the main door of the villa and into the huge tiled hallway from where the big marble staircase curved upwards towards the first floor. Even in a place the size of the Villa San Felice, the furious, distressed baby yells could be heard right through the house. And, hearing them, Lucy had a terrible fight with herself not to just forget everything that had happened, forget her ambiguous position in this house and run up the stairs as fast as she could, her arms outstretched to take her little son into them.

She had even moved part way to the foot of the staircase when Ricardo came past her, taking the steps two at a time, long legs covering the ground so fast that Lucy had to put on a burst of speed as she reached the wide landing in an attempt to catch up with him.

She only made it just in time as her husband pushed open the door to the nursery and strode inside.

‘Marco…mio figlio…’

The soft words should have been drowned out by Marco’s wails but somehow the quiet tones cut through his distress and had him pausing in the middle of his sobs to look up and see his father.

‘Marco…’ Ricardo said again, crooning the name, and immediately the baby recognised his father. The wailing paused and from his nanny’s arms Marco held out his hands.

Reaching for Ricardo, Lucy suddenly understood, knowing an appalling, terribly cruel sense of loss as she realised that she had been about to step forward. Only to recognise, painfully and belatedly, that she didn’t have the right to hold her son. Not here, not now.

And besides—wasn’t she fooling herself to imagine that there might be any chance that Marco would recognise her? She had been away from him for so long. And he had been just a tiny infant when she had left.

She had to force herself to stand back, putting her hands behind her on the wall as both a source of support and a way of keeping herself from reaching out as she watched Ricardo take on the responsibility of comforting their child.

Her heart was thudding violently, just as it had done from the moment that the call had come through that Marco was refusing to settle. Although Ricardo had made it plain that he didn’t think there was anything more seriously wrong with Marco than a bad night and cutting some teeth, she had still found herself imagining every possible worst thing that could happen as the car had made its way down to the shore where the boat was moored.

Luckily the speedy motorboat that Ricardo used to cross the lake made the trip in a tenth of the time that it had taken her earlier that evening in the heavy old-fashioned rowing boat that was all she had been able to hire for herself. But, all the same, the short journey had seemed endless as Lucy stood at the prow of the boat, hands clenched tightly together, watching the lights of the big house coming closer, willing it to move faster—faster—so that she could be sure.

And now she was sure. Although miserable and irritable, Marco was clearly not seriously unwell. But somehow, knowing that didn’t make her feel any better. Seeing him safe in Ricardo’s arms, the tones of a familiar voice reaching to him as his sobs eased, only made everything so much worse. She couldn’t help but imagine how many other times this had happened, as the result of a banged knee or a miserable cold. How many times had Marco woken in need of a cuddle and she—his mother—hadn’t been there? The doctors had said that she should forgive herself for that, but how could she forgive what she couldn’t bear to think of?

‘Calma, tesoro,’ Ricardo soothed, pacing slowly up and down the room, the little boy in his arms. ‘Calma…’

At last the wails stopped, the sobs subsiding to a low murmur and then a snuffling silence, broken occasionally by a faint hiccup, a slightly gasping breath. A small hand came out and patted Ricardo’s cheek, gently, lovingly. Seeing the gesture, Lucy caught back a moan of longing and loss.

She would barely have recognised him. He was not the tiny, hairless little doll she had last seen but a small boy. So clearly his father’s son, with the Emiliani jet-black hair and wide dark eyes. Eyes that stared up into his father’s face with total confidence, total devotion.

Another shaft of pain ripped through her, tearing at her heart. She couldn’t hold back a small choking sound as she struggled with her distress.

The noise brought the child’s head round towards her. From the safety of his father’s arms, his head pillowed on the man’s strong shoulder, the little boy regarded her with wide-eyed curiosity, his soft brown gaze focused directly on her face.

‘Oh, Marco…’ It was just a whisper.

Did he recognise her? Was it possible? She longed to be able to believe it, prayed he might show some sign—however small…

But then those heavy eyelids drooped, his head lowered, the small cheek, flushed with the effects of teething and his crying jag, pressed against Ricardo’s shirt. A small thumb was pushed into his mouth and sucked on hard.

It was the last thing that Lucy saw with any clarity. The tension that had been all that had been holding her upright suddenly seemed to evaporate, leaving her whole body sagging weakly. Her vision blurred as the stinging tears filmed her eyes and all the fierce blinking in the world wouldn’t clear it for her. Her head was swimming, there was a buzzing sound in her ears and she had to put a hand to the wall for support.

‘Excuse me…’

She didn’t know if Ricardo heard her, but the truth was that she was past caring. If she stayed she would be a problem. She had to get out of the room, get some air. She didn’t dare to look back at Marco for fear that seeing him would finish her completely and she would collapse in an abject, miserable heap right at Ricardo’s feet.

She doubted if anyone saw her go.

At the far end of the corridor was a sliding glass door that she remembered led to a balcony that looked out over the lake. A place where on a fine day you could see the shore so clearly that it almost seemed as if there was no lake. As if you could simply step off the balcony and walk straight into the village without getting your feet wet. It was all in darkness now, of course, and as she leaned on the carved stone balustrade and gulped in much-needed breaths of the cool evening air the lights of the houses seemed to dance before her eyes.

The silence behind her told her that Marco was no longer crying, that he had calmed, perhaps even now was falling asleep.

Falling asleep in Ricardo’s arms.

A sobbing gasp escaped her as she wrapped her arms around her body, feeling the need to stop her heart from breaking apart. She had longed for this day, had dreamed of it for so many weeks. And yet, when it had happened, it had been almost more than she could bear.

She had so wanted to come back here, had so needed to see her baby. And yet now, when she was here, the only thing she could think was—did she really have the right to come back into her little boy’s world? Did she have the right to stay, to disturb the routine he had obviously settled into with his father?

Ricardo was so good with him. She couldn’t doubt the evidence of her eyes on that. It was so clear that this was not the first time he had comforted the baby through a disturbed night, soothed the little boy’s distress when something hurt or he didn’t feel well. Every movement, every touch, every caressing sound of his husky voice, carefully gentled to calm and reassure, made it clear that he had done this so many times before.

She didn’t have a place here. She had given it up when she had fled from the villa, abandoning her baby. And wouldn’t it be kinder, fairer…?

‘So this is where you’re hiding.’

Ricardo’s voice came from behind her, making her jump. Clenching her hands tightly over the edge of the stone balcony, she tried to suppress the betraying start, only managing it by continuing to stare fixedly out across the bay rather than turning to respond.

‘I’m not hiding! I just had to get out of the room.’

‘Couldn’t take it, hmm?’ The cynicism in his voice had deepened. ‘Who would have thought that such a small person could make so much noise? He has a strong pair of lungs.’

Lucy could only nod, not trusting her voice to say anything about Marco. A mist seemed to have descended over the lake and it was only when she blinked her eyes firmly that she realised her vision was again blurred by the film of tears that she was determined not to let fall.

‘Not quite your image of a pretty little baby lying sweetly in a crib?’

That brought Lucy swinging round, her eyes going to Ricardo’s face as he stood in the opening of the door out onto the balcony. The unwise movement made her head spin sickeningly and it was a moment or two before she could focus properly. When she did, her heart lurched to see his dark and shuttered expression, the tightness in his jaw that drew his beautiful mouth into a thin, hard line.

‘I knew he was not going to be totally quiet—you said he was unsettled. So I thought I’d better leave you to it. I’d have gone back to the boarding house but there isn’t any way I can get a boat.’

‘So you were running away again.’ Ricardo’s cynicism stung like a whip.

Moving suddenly, he strolled across the terrace to stand beside her, his back to the lake, lean hips propped against the stonework. Positioned like this, his face was in shadow and all she could see was the cold gleam of his eyes in the moonlight.

‘I was not running…’

‘Only because you could not find someone to take you over the lake.’

‘I didn’t know who to ask.’

‘And it would not have done you any good if you’d tried.’

He leaned even more negligently against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. Lucy supposed that the position was meant to make him look more relaxed, totally at his ease. Instead, it had exactly the opposite impression. A shiver ran down her spine at the feeling that he was watching her intently, waiting for her to take a false step, make some mistake that she had no idea would actually be a mistake.

Or perhaps she had already made it and didn’t even realise it. With Ricardo standing there in the darkness, looking like judge and jury all rolled into one, she had the terrible feeling that she had been tried and found guilty and she didn’t know quite what she had done.

‘No one would have taken you. My staff have been told not to take you anywhere. Not unless I give them specific instructions.’

Not just tried and found guilty, but tried, condemned—and imprisoned. The shiver at Lucy’s spine turned into a full blown shudder and she grabbed at the balcony as her legs felt suddenly unsteady beneath her.

‘Are you saying I can’t leave?’

‘That is exactly what I’m saying. Until I give permission for you to go, then you stay here.’

‘I thought you wanted me out of your life.’

She might be worried—definitely on the verge of nervous—but she was damned if she was going to let it show. So she put the note of challenge back into her voice, lifted her chin as high as it would go and made herself meet the cold darkness of his eyes.

‘After all, wasn’t that the reason why you came to find me in the first place? “Tell me what you really want—and you can have it.”’ She quoted his own words back at him. ‘“Anything, so long as you get out of my life”.’

‘…and never come back,’ Ricardo completed, making her wince inwardly at the sound of the words. ‘Remember? That was the important bit. This time I want you gone—out of my life for good.’

He really must hate her, Lucy reflected miserably. And it was shockingly disturbing to find such revulsion directed at her, spiced with bitter venom.

‘Hate you?’ Ricardo echoed and, to her horror, she realised that she had actually spoken her thoughts out loud.

‘Hate you?’ he repeated. ‘No, cara, not hate. I don’t care enough about you to do that. But I do know a mistake when I see one and you—’

He unfolded his arms and one long finger came up, gesturing to indicate her slender form with a controlled savagery that made a nonsense of his denial of hatred.

‘You are one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If not my absolute worst.’

The shaking in Lucy’s legs was growing worse. Surreptitiously, she pressed her hand down harder on the rough stone of the balcony, needing the extra support to keep her upright. After a day of emotional shocks and changes, it seemed that her strength had been drained away, leaving her fuzzy-headed and unsteady on her feet.

‘You know, that really doesn’t make any sense,’ she managed.

‘No?’ Ricardo scorned. ‘And why not?’

‘If I’m—’ she had to drag in a gasping breath in order to give herself the strength to speak the hurtful words. ‘—the biggest mistake of your life. One you want out of here for good. Then why—why—are you keeping me a prisoner here?’

‘Hardly a prisoner…’

‘But you’re making sure that I can’t leave! Which amounts to the same thing. And why would you do that if you feel I was such a mistake in your life?’

It was the question he’d been asking himself all day long, Ricardo acknowledged privately. And the fact that she was asking it now too didn’t make it any easier to answer.

He had never seen his relationship with Lucy as going anything beyond the hot, passionate nights they’d shared in his bed. But once he had found out she was pregnant then everything had changed. Their marriage had been for the baby and nothing more.

No, correction, their marriage had been for the baby and the hot blazing sex that had led them to create that baby. The hot, passionate sex that was the glue that had held them together in the place of anything else. And that he had thought would hold them together until they could put something else in its place.

Because, OK, they had rushed into marriage purely for convenience and to ensure that Marco was legitimate. But surely, when the baby was born, they could have taken some time to get to know each other properly. To find out if there was anything more than that blazing passion that had yoked them together from the start.

But Lucy hadn’t stayed around long enough to find out if that was the case. No sooner had Marco been safely delivered than she had launched herself into a lifestyle from which he—and the baby—were totally excluded. She had been out on the town every day, spending money like water, bringing home innumerable carrier bags of clothes, shoes, make-up. Most of which she had never worn or used. She had moved into a separate room, had had to be cajoled into seeing her son, was blatantly reluctant to care for him, leaving him instead to the care of his nanny almost twenty-four hours a day.

Then, within six weeks, she had simply walked out. Leaving a heartless note that made it plain just what she had wanted out of the marriage. It hadn’t been Marco—and it most definitely hadn’t been a life with Ricardo. All she had wanted was the lifestyle, the luxury, that his wealth had brought.

I gave you the son you wanted and almost a year of my life. Think that’s quite long enough. You can have Marco—after all, he’s the only reason we went through this farce of a marriage—and I’ll have my freedom. I’ll be in touch about the divorce.

And now here she was. Just as she had promised. She had come back into his life for the sole purpose of doing just that—talking about the divorce. And, of course, just how much she was going to get in her settlement.

He detested her. He hated who she was, what she’d done. So why in the devil’s name would he try to keep her with him any longer than he had to?

‘We haven’t talked about the divorce. About what you want out of it.’

Had he actually touched a nerve there? Was it possible that she could be affected by what he had said? Certainly it looked as if some sort of a light—the light of challenge and defiance had gone out of her eyes. Or was it merely some trick of the moon that had taken that from her gaze in the same way that it seemed to have drained the colour from her face?

‘When we have an agreement, then you can go. I’ll have Enzo bring the launch around and you can be back on the shore in less than fifteen minutes. I’ll even give you an advance on your settlement so that you can book yourself into a decent hotel—providing you get the first plane from Verona Airport tomorrow morning.’

Once again it seemed that he had caught her on the raw. She actually flinched, wincing away from his words. A frown creased the space between his brows but, just as he was leaning forward in some concern, her head came back up again, blue eyes flashing defiance.

‘No!’

Just for a moment she looked almost as if the force of her refusal had taken her by surprise as much as him. Those clear, bright eyes seemed to go out of focus for a second, then came back to clarity again as she blinked hard. She swayed suddenly as if buffeted by an unexpectedly strong wind that had blown up out of nowhere but then straightened again, fixing her furious gaze on his face once more.

‘That isn’t going to happen! I won’t go!’

‘Won’t?’

Ricardo frowned his deep confusion, trying to read just what sort of mood she was in.

‘Now you’re the one who’s not making sense. A moment ago you couldn’t wait to get away.’

‘Yes…but…I can’t go like this.’

‘Yes. you can. It’s quite simple—all you have to do is to tell me what you want and I’ll give…’

‘But you won’t!’ Lucy cut in, her voice sharp and shaking, her hands coming up in a wild gesture to emphasise her words. ‘You won’t give it to me.’

‘I gave my word.’

She was shaking her head violently, sending her hair flying out around her in a crazily flurried halo.

‘But you won’t keep it!’

‘I will—damn it, Lucia—I promise…’

‘Don’t promise what you can’t…won’t…’

It was as she shook her head again, clearly on the edge of losing things completely, that Ricardo felt his own control crack. That swirling hair had brushed against his face, the feel, the scent of it bringing so many memories rushing to the surface of his mind.

How could he ever forget the fresh, clean scent of it, perfumed by some herbal shampoo that tantalised his senses? Or how it had felt to know the silken slither of that long blonde hair over his skin as she knelt above him, his body sheathed in hers? As his groin tightened in instant response he almost felt again the slow, sensual movements that had driven him to the edge of his control, keeping him there in subtle torture until he could take no more.

‘Lucia—stop…’ he growled, reaching for her flailing hands. ‘Stop it, now! This isn’t doing you any good.’

The rough little shake was just meant to force her to rethink, to come back to herself. But when she threw back her head, drawing in a ragged breath, ready to speak again, he knew that touching her had been a mistake. A big mistake.

A mistake he had been heading towards all evening. Ever since that moment when she had touched his arm earlier in the shabby little room in the boarding house. No—earlier than that, when she had been about to fall and he had caught her, yanking her upright so that she had slammed hard against him. Her body pulled into close and intimate contact with his.

Just recalling that made his heart kick up a pace, his breath coming raw and uneven into his lungs. His hands tightened even more about her arms, moving upwards, towards her shoulder, stilling her, holding her…

And, in that moment, she looked up into his face, her soft pink mouth half open, her breath coming as unevenly as his. Their eyes caught and clashed, held and…

And all control left him as he saw her eyes widen, saw the shocked response and then the sensual awareness that clouded them. It clouded his mind too, leaving him no ability to think. He could only feel.

And hunger.

And that hunger drove him into mindless action, pushing him into hauling her hard up against him, wrenching her chin up towards him and clamping his mouth down hard on hers. Letting loose a rough grunt of satisfaction as he felt her lips give, opening instinctively under the hard, fierce pressure of his kiss.

A small murmur of distress got through to him, ripping apart the clouds of burning sensuality that clouded his mind, bringing a flash of rational clarity to his heated brain. Immediately he gentled his kiss, easing the pressure on her mouth, using softness, enticement, seduction to counter the brute force he had subjected her to just moments before.

It started out hard to silence her, control her. He had snatched at her lips, trying to crush back the cries of distress, stop them from pouring from her mouth. He didn’t understand why she should be so upset, why she was in such a state, but there would be no talking to her until she had calmed down.

‘Hush, Lucia, hush…There’s no need for this. Whatever you need—whatever you want—whatever trouble you’ve got yourself into—I’ll deal with it.’

That stopped her, froze her. She could only stare mutely into his face, her expression white and strained, huge eyes colourless in the moonlight. With a devastating sense of shock, Ricardo realised that the strange glitter on their surface was not the effect of the pale, cold moonlight but the glisten of unshed tears.

‘Lucia?’ It was a shocked whisper. And his next kiss was soft, gentle, wanting to wipe the upset from her lips. He took her mouth slowly, carefully, and his heart seemed to stop dead, then start up again in double-quick time, ragged and uneven as he felt the tiny, involuntary, almost automatic softening of her lips in response, the gentle pressure of her mouth against his.

The scent of her skin was all around him. The slide of her hair was against his hands. The softness of her body was in his arms, tight against him. And deep inside the hunger was waking, starting to grow.

But, even as he slid his hands down her back, he knew that something had changed. Lucy had hesitated, drawn back faintly, then a little more strongly, putting her hands on his chest to push him away from her.

‘You mustn’t do this. You shouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Trying to make light of it, he even tried a rough laugh deep down in his throat. ‘You were becoming hysterical. Something had to be done—and there are only two traditional ways to calm a hysterical woman. You surely wouldn’t have wanted me to slap you.’

Numbly she shook her head, her eyes glazed with something that looked close to despair. ‘You might wish you’d done that when I tell you.’

‘When you tell me what? Damnation, Lucia, what the hell are you talking about? What is it that you want? And why are you so sure that I won’t give it to you?’

Her hesitation caught him on the raw, tugging on nerves that suddenly felt painfully exposed, desperately vulnerable. A terrible sense of oppression shot through him, a prediction of something that was coming that he wasn’t going to like at all.

‘Because you won’t give me Marco. And that’s what…who I want…nothing else. The only thing in the world that I want is my son.’

If she had spat right in his face he couldn’t have been more appalled. As it was, he felt the sense of dark shock reverberate through him so that he released her at once, almost dropping her to the ground as if she had turned into a poisonous snake in his arms. From wanting to hold her so close, he jumped to the sense that holding her would contaminate him in the space of a single devastated heartbeat.

‘Marco? You came here for Marco? To take him…’

Unable to find the words, Lucy just nodded, then immediately realised that that was just what she should not have done. She hadn’t come to take Marco, not in the way that Ricardo meant. But it was already too late. She had nodded and she watched Ricardo’s face close down, the tightness of his jaw and the darkness in his eyes making her shiver.

‘Never,’ he said and the word was disgust, an ultimatum, a warning and a threat all rolled into one. ‘After what you did? Not in my lifetime.’

‘But—’ Lucy’s voice broke on the word. ‘I can explain…’

‘You can try. But I cannot imagine that anything you say will ever convince me.’

He paused, waited, head slightly tilted to one side, giving her such a pointed look that she practically felt it scrape over her skin like the sharp end of a needle, raising a raw, red weal.

He would listen, that look said, but he would not believe. He was already armoured against her. Even if she mentally beat her fists hard against his unyielding defences until they were raw and bleeding, he would not let her reach him.

‘So…’ he goaded when she still didn’t speak, couldn’t find a way to start ‘…explain.’

She wished she could. But how could she say anything when those cold black eyes seemed to probe her skull as her brain frantically tried different ways of beginning and discarded each one as unusable? At least that was what she thought she was doing but her thoughts seemed so completely unfocused that she found that nothing she tried made sense. And nothing would form clearly so that she could follow it through for herself, let alone explain it to Ricardo so that he would understand and believe her.

Because he had to believe her.

‘You can’t, can you? Because there isn’t an explanation. Not one that would satisfy anyone else. And certainly not someone who loves Marco.’

‘I love him…’

Her voice sounded frail, just a thin thread of sound—what she could hear of it over the buzzing inside her skull. It was as if a swarm of bees had suddenly invaded her head and were swirling round and round inside it.

‘Love him!’ Ricardo scorned ‘How can you say that? How dare you say that? You left him! Abandoned him…’

‘I know and that was wrong—but I was ill. I’m back now. And I want…’

‘You want?’ Ricardo echoed, his voice a vicious snarl. ‘You want—always what you want! Well, let me tell you, cara, that what you want is not going to happen—never. Not while I live. Not while I can stop you. And if “I love him” is the best damn explanation that you can come up with then, to be honest, lady, I don’t want to hear it.’

He was turning away as he spoke, using his body as well as his face, which was set hard and cold against her, to express the way he felt.

‘Ricardo, please…’

She had to stop him; had to make him listen. Lurching forward, she tried to grab at his arm, to hold him back, but missed. Her hand, aiming for the hard strength of his arm, found instead only empty air and waved wildly, frantically. The awkward movement threw her right off balance, jarring her head nastily.

The buzzing in her head grew louder, wilder and a burning haze seemed to rise before her eyes, blinding her completely.

‘Ricardo!’ she cried on a very different note as the world swung round her, lurching violently. Her hand groped for support, found it for a moment in the feel of muscle under warm, hair-hazed skin.

Then she lost it again as her grip loosened completely. A wave of darkness broke over her and she slid to the ground in a total faint.

CHAPTER SIX

‘ARE you awake?’

The voice, huskily male and disturbingly familiar, broke through the clouds of sleep that filled Lucy’s head, making her stir in the bed, frowning slightly as her head moved on the pillows.

Softer pillows than she remembered. She must have got used to the conditions in the boarding house. The first night they had felt so rough and lumpy, but now…

‘Lucy! It is time to wake up.’

The voice came again, rough and impatient now. It broke into the wonderful oblivion of much needed sleep that had hidden everything from her, almost wiping her memory clear of all that had happened.

Until the sound of Ricardo’s voice brought it all back in a way that had her bolting upright in the bed, staring wide-eyed at the figure standing in the middle of the room.

‘What has happened? Where am I?’

‘Buon giorno, bella Lucia,’ Ricardo drawled lazily, strolling across the room to lounge at the end of the bed.

Propping one hip against the ornately carved wooden bed frame, he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the jeans he wore with a deep red polo shirt, open at the throat.

‘You have no need to panic; you are quite safe. You are in the Villa San Felice, just as you were last night. So one might say that in fact you have come home.’

‘Home is not a word I associate with this place!’ Lucy tossed at him as she tried to collect her scrambled thoughts, feeling that panicking was exactly what she should be doing. ‘Nowhere where you are could ever be home to me.’

She was more aware of her surroundings now. Aware enough to recognise and be thankful for the fact that at least this was just one of the smaller bedrooms in the east wing of the villa. To her intense relief, the heavy wooden furniture and the soft blue curtains and carpet were not the ones she remembered from the room she had shared with Ricardo in her time as his wife. She didn’t feel that she would have been able to hold herself together if she had woken to find herself in their suite.

‘So how did I get here? What happened?’

Ricardo pushed a long hand through the darkness of his hair, disturbing its sleek black strands and his piercing eyes never left her flushed face as he observed every change of expression, every fleeting emotion that crossed it.

‘You were taken ill—you passed out. Do you not recall?’

‘No…I…’

But then she did remember everything in a rush. From the moment she had set out on her attempt to get onto the island, to see Marco…

Marco…

‘I fainted,’ she managed, piecing the events back together in her thoughts. ‘And you…’

The memory of Ricardo’s voice, his cruel words, swirled inside her head, making her feel dizzy just from the thought of it.

You are one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If not my absolute worst.

‘How did I get to be here? Who brought me…’

‘I brought you here,’ Ricardo inserted calmly, the smooth tones of his voice sliding into the rising hysteria of hers. ‘And yes—before you ask, I put you to bed.’

‘You…’

If he had slapped her across the face he couldn’t have brought her up sharp any more forcefully than that. Suddenly she became aware of the fact that she was sitting upright against the pillows with the soft comfort of the downy quilt slipping down to fall around her waist, exposing the top half of her body.

The top half of her body that was now wearing only the thin, plain bra that cupped her breasts.

‘You undressed me!’

Hot blood rushed into her cheeks, then ebbed away again almost at once as she snatched at the coverings, yanking them up to her neck to conceal herself, protect her body from those probing eyes. But just too late to erase the sensation of his searching gaze raking over her skin, flaying off a much-needed protective layer. It was impossible not to remember how he had once used to undress her—undress her so softly, so gently, or at other times almost ripping the clothes from her with such a wild urgency that her heart threatened to burst with just the memory of it.

‘I undressed you,’ Ricardo confirmed.

His beautiful mouth twitched, just once, in an expression that could have been anything—amusement, annoyance, contempt or just plain triumph. Lucy had no idea which, and the hot embarrassment that was flooding her thoughts left her incapable of even trying.

‘And why should that disturb you? Surely it was better…’

‘Better!’ Lucy interrupted, still struggling with the uncomfortable feeling of being…violated was the only word that came to mind. She knew that Ricardo would dismiss it as being exaggerated and overblown, and deep down she knew that it was. But it was how she felt all the same at just the thought of those long tanned hands unbuttoning her shirt, sliding it from her, taking her jeans…

‘And tell me just why it’s better to have you manhandle me…’

‘I did not manhandle you!’

She’d caught him on the raw there, sending sparks into the darkness of his eyes and making him bite out the words in a tone of barely controlled fury that had her flinching back against the pillows and pulling the duvet even more tightly around her in spite of the warmth of the sun that was coming in through the narrow arched window. Beyond that window she could hear the calm blue waters of the lake lapping lazily against the stony shore and then ebbing back again with a faint sucking sound as they pulled against the tiny pebbles. It seemed unnaturally loud in the dangerous silence that descended before Ricardo drew in a long harsh breath.

‘I have never ‘manhandled’ a woman in my life and I do not intend to start with my wife. Because surely that is the point here—that I—as your husband—performed this duty for you myself rather than leave it to a stranger.’

‘You are not my husband!’

Lucy wouldn’t have believed that it was possible for Ricardo’s expression to grow any more glacial or for the cold anger in his eyes to burn any more savagely but clearly her words had provoked him into darker fury as he flung a glance of bitter recrimination in her direction.

‘We took the vows,’ he declared icily. ‘We were married.’

‘But only to make sure that our son was born legitimate with two married parents to be named on his birth certificate. Beyond that, the whole thing meant nothing—and the vows less than nothing. I didn’t want to marry you and you…’

‘I wanted you as my wife.’

‘Because I was Marco’s mother. Oh, come on, Ricardo, are you telling me that if I hadn’t got pregnant you would still have asked me to marry you?’

‘No…’

‘No.’ She tried to make it sound as if his answer satisfied her, but the truth was that there was no satisfaction to be found in the single word. ‘I thought not.’

‘I wanted you…’

‘Oh, I know…’ She couldn’t keep the bleakness, the bitterness from her voice. ‘You made that only too plain. But you could have had me in your bed without tying yourself—without tying both of us—down to marriage. But I got pregnant and that trapped us, Ricardo. Trapped us in a marriage that neither of us wanted.’

It was weak, it was foolish—it was downright masochistic—but all the same she couldn’t stop herself from pausing, waiting just a second, just long enough for her stupidly vulnerable heart to give a couple of unsteady, jerky beats just in case Ricardo actually thought about denying that statement.

Well, if she’d hoped it might happen then she was destined for disappointment. He remained stubbornly silent, forcing her to go on.

‘And now I want to get out of it. We both want to get out of it. Which is why it’s not…appropriate…for you to…’

‘For me to do what?’ Ricardo cut in, satire burning in the words. ‘Not appropriate for me to help a woman who is evidently unwell and who has fainted at my feet? Not appropriate to pick her up and carry her inside, put her into a comfortable bed—and perhaps remove her outer clothing so that she may sleep more comfortably? I think that only you would assign some sort of sexual motive to that.’

His cynicism lashed at her, making her flinch inwardly. Her face was burning once more but this time with a very different sort of embarrassment. Hearing it like that, it did sound so perfectly innocent. Did she really think that she was so sexually irresistible that he was unable to keep his hands off her?

If she had been foolish enough to even consider any such thought then his tone and the blazing fury in his eyes would have very soon disillusioned her. Ricardo might have once been so determined and so hungry to get her into his bed that he had broken what he had told her was normally an indestructible rule and made love to her without using a condom, but it clearly was not the case any more. He had seen her as nothing more than some woman who needed help and he had acted accordingly.

‘You did that?’ Her whole body was burning with embarrassment so that the words quavered on her tongue. ‘Thank you—and I’m sorry.’

A swift, curt nod was Ricardo’s only acknowledgement of her response and almost immediately it seemed that his mind had moved on to something else.

‘Someone had to take care of you. You obviously weren’t taking care of yourself. Tell me, Lucia—when did you last eat?’

The question was unexpected, catching her off guard and forcing her to consider.

‘Yesterday…’ she said slowly, still thinking about it.

‘Are you sure?’

No, she wasn’t sure. Yesterday morning she had known that she was going to try to get onto the island. That she was going to try to see Marco. And that had left her nerves so tightly strung that her stomach had clenched painfully from the moment that she had woken up, and it had stayed like that all day. And the day before…

‘You told me that you had been ill.’

She’d told him but, if he was honest, he hadn’t considered that it was serious, Ricardo admitted to himself. But when she had collapsed at his feet then he had had to take notice. And picking her up to carry her indoors had sent a sensation like a brutal kick straight to his guts.

She had lost so much more weight than he had realised. In his arms she had felt as fragile and vulnerable as a lost bird, one that had fallen from the nest before it had quite learned how to fly. Beneath the protection of her clothing, she was skin and bone, and the way that stabbed at his conscience was uncomfortable and disturbing.

‘But you didn’t say what was wrong with you.’

He’d touched on a raw nerve there. Those concealing eyelids flickered up, fast but hesitant, and the blue eyes flashed one swift, wary and defensive look in his direction before she stared down again, focusing on where her hands were twisting in the protection of the quilt, revealing an uncertainty she didn’t want him to know about.

Yesterday he had wanted to hate her. It had been easy to hate her when she had come sneaking onto the island like a thief in the night, invading the world he had built around Marco since she had walked out on them. He hadn’t wanted to listen then.

And hatred—hatred and rejection—had been uppermost in his mind when she had declared to his face the truth of why she was here. That she had come to try to claim Marco. Then his rage had been like a red mist in front of his eyes and he had had to turn away from her rather than give in to the murderous fury that boiled inside him.

He wished he still felt like that. To stay feeling that way would have been so much simpler. It would have made things so much more easy and straightforward. This woman had walked out on their marriage, their child so carelessly and selfishly, without even a backward look. Now she was back, walking into the life he had made without her.

And demanding her son.

No!

Even now the roar of rejection was wild and savage inside his head. It obliterated every other consideration in a storm of savage feeling. It felt wonderful, simple, strong—and right.

But then she had fainted. She had turned white, all the blood draining from her face, had just seemed to shrivel up at his feet. She had lain there unconscious and he had had to kneel beside her, checking her pulse, her breathing, her temperature. Knowing that he had to take her somewhere more comfortable, he had had to bend to lift her up…

And that was when everything had changed.

‘No, I didn’t say,’ Lucy flung at him now. ‘Are you saying you want to know what happened? Do you really…’

She had to break off the question as a knock came at the door. Of course—Tonia with the food he had told her to prepare for Lucy. Food it was obvious she needed.

‘Eat your breakfast,’ he commanded gruffly. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

‘I want to talk now…’ Lucy protested, struggling to sit up enough to take the tray on her knees without letting the covers fall down at the same time.

The sudden pretence of modesty set his teeth on edge so that with a muttered imprecation under his breath, he strode to the wardrobe and wrenched open the door. Snatching a white robe from a hanger inside, he tossed it in Lucy’s direction, gesturing to the maid to leave at the same time.

‘You need to eat.’

Now she was trying to pull on the robe while still balancing the tray.

‘Dio santo!’

Clamping his jaw tight shut against the irritation that almost escaped him, he lifted the tray again, carrying it to the small table set in the bay window and dumping it down. Then he moved back to the bed, taking the robe from her while she still struggled with it and holding it open for her to get into it.

‘If it will speed up the process, I assure you I am not looking,’ he told her satirically when she still hesitated.

He didn’t have to look—the memory of every inch of her body was etched onto his brain. And not just from last night, when he had taken the shirt and jeans from her unconscious body. No, the memories he had were from the time when they had been together. When her warm, smooth skin and long slender limbs had been a source of endless delight. When he had known the scent of her, the taste of her, every intimate inch of her.

Six months had not been long enough to erase the memories that could still torment him. And last night just knowing that she was back in his life had badly disturbed his sleep, making him twist and turn in the grip of erotic dreams. Eventually he had woken in a tangle of bedclothes, soaked in sweat and breathing as hard as if he had run a marathon.

So now, even with his closed lids concealing his eyes, he could still see her in his thoughts, still feel the heat of her body as she slipped into the robe he held for her. And the soft slide of her hair over his fingers as she flicked it back, the clean, deeply personal scent of her skin, intensified by the warmth of the bed she had just left, was a sensual torment, hardening his body into tight and aching demand in an instant. He couldn’t stay in the room a moment longer and not give in to the hot demands of his body.

As soon as Lucy had shrugged the robe up over her shoulders and was reaching for the belt he seized the opportunity to head back to the table, pulling out the chair with an unnecessary flourish.

‘Eat,’ he commanded. ‘And then get dressed.’

He knew that he had stunned her, could feel the focus of her eyes on the back of his neck as he headed for the door.

‘But you said that we have to talk.’

‘Later,’ he tossed over his shoulder at her. ‘Get some food inside you and get dressed, then we’ll take things from there.’

‘Dressed?’

Her voice was sharp in a way that was disturbingly close to the edge on his own tongue, shaking him right to the core with the suspicion that she too might have felt the fiercely heated tug on her senses that he had experienced just a few moments before.

‘Dressed in what? At least have the courtesy to tell me where you’ve put my clothes.’

‘You’ll find all you need in there…’

A wave of his hand indicated the large, carved wooden wardrobe set against the far wall but he still did not let himself pause, didn’t even glance back to see if she had registered his response. He needed to get out of here, get himself back under control. Giving in to his most primitive male urges right now would be the worst possible mistake he could make.

But, madre di Dio, he was tempted…

‘I’ll be back in twenty minutes,’ he warned on his way out of the door. ‘Be ready.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

I’LL be back in twenty minutes, Ricardo had said. Be ready.

And the be ready had been a command, one that his tone had told her that he expected to have obeyed without question.

A swift glance at the clock told Lucy that well over half of that time was already up and she was no nearer to obeying that autocratic command to be ready than she had been in the moment that Ricardo had strode from the room, obviously not wanting to spend a moment longer in her company than he had to.

At first she’d done as she was told and eaten her breakfast—rather mutinously perhaps, but she’d been really hungry and the savoury frittata had looked and smelled wonderful, as had the coffee and freshly baked bread. It had been too long since she had eaten and after just one bite even the concern over just what Ricardo had planned for her faded in the face of her appetite and she’d wolfed down everything that was on her plate.

She would have liked to have lingered over a second cup of coffee, but already the time was passing and she still had to shower and dress. Just the thought of Ricardo arriving while she was still in the shower was enough to send her rushing into the bathroom and switching on the water.

She felt so much better when she was washed and refreshed, her hair clean and combed clear of the knotty tangles that the wind on the lake yesterday had whipped it into.

She must have looked a real sight, she reflected as she fastened a towel around her and padded back into the bedroom, glaring at her reflection in the big mirror on the door of the wardrobe. With her tangled hair and too pale face without even a trace of make-up, it was no wonder that Ricardo had barely spared her a glance.

She looked nothing like the woman he had married. The woman who, well aware of the fact that she was not the sort of woman that Ricardo Emiliani was usually seen with in the gossip columns of the celebrity magazines, had made sure that she always looked her best for him.

And, if she had needed any extra push in that direction, then the conversation she had overheard in the Ladies at a party shortly after her wedding had made certain that she stuck to her resolve. Hidden in one of the cubicles, she had heard the sneering tones of one of the female guests.

‘Not his usual type, is she?’

‘Not at all,’ another woman had answered. ‘But she’s been clever. She trapped him by getting pregnant. He’d never have married her otherwise.’

‘Not clever enough. Everyone knows he’s just waiting till the baby’s born and then he’ll divorce her. I mean—what does she have to offer a man like Ricardo? She’s too plain, too unsophisticated, way too clingy. I give her a year max after she’s delivered before he’s back playing the field.’

Lucy had made a vow right then and there that she wouldn’t cling—ever. She had also vowed that she would always be as groomed and glamorous as the women Ricardo was usually seen with. She…

But that was where her thoughts stopped dead, dying in the moment that she flung open the wardrobe door. Her hands shook, her heart seemed to stop beating as she stared at the contents in horror, her whole body trembling in the rush of bitter memories.

‘You’ll find all you need in there…’ Ricardo had said, and all she had expected to find inside the wardrobe was the clothing he had taken off her. Just the cotton shirt and jeans, looking lost inside the vast space of the cupboard.

But nothing looked lost. On the contrary, the wardrobe was stuffed full of clothing—skirts, trousers, dresses, tops, even shoes, all crammed into the available space without an inch to spare. So many—most—of the items were still in their cellophane wrapping or the plastic bags that had protected them in the shop, the shoes in their boxes. And all still with the price labels attached, just as they had been brought home after a wild spending spree.

A wild, crazy, mindless speeding spree.

‘Oh, my—’

Lucy clamped her hands hard over her mouth to hold back the choking cry of despair that almost escaped her, stinging tears burning at the back of her eyes. But the truth was that she was beyond crying, beyond thinking. She could only stare in horror at the evidence of just how out of her mind she had been.

The shopping expeditions were a blur in her mind. She knew she’d been on them, of course; she hadn’t completely lost her memory of that appalling time—she only wished she could. But the details had been gently hazed by the passage of time until now, when she was confronted with the physical evidence of the truth.

Had she really bought all these clothes—hundreds, thousands of pounds’ worth of clothes? More clothing than she could ever wear in a year—a decade! Some of the items were almost identical—the same style, the same shape—except that they were in a wide variety of colours, one of each in the whole range the shop would have stocked. And not even everything had been unpacked. There were still bags and carriers stuffed in at the bottom of the cupboard, bearing the names of the exclusive stores in which they had been bought, brought home—and left unopened and untouched.

‘Oh, dear heaven…’

What had she really been like in those dark, desperate days? And what had it been like for Ricardo, living with her, watching her crazy behaviour? He had already thought she wanted his money—these wild spending sprees could only have confirmed his darkest suspicions.

She slumped against the door, shaking her head in despair.

If she needed any proof of the fact that she had been right to go, to leave when she had done, then it was here before her, with no room for doubt. She had been out of her mind, totally incapable of managing her own life, let alone taking care of her precious baby son.

And did she have any right to stay here now? To come back into Marco’s life and turn it upside down when he was so obviously settled and happy with Ricardo? She knew what it was like to be at the centre of a parental custody battle, to be torn and unsettled, tugged this way and that between her father and her mother like a bone between two dogs when they had been going through a bitter divorce. She couldn’t do that to her little boy.

Still half-blinded by tears, she reached out and grabbed the first clothes that came to hand, pulling on underwear, a deep pink skirt and a pink and white top without even noticing what she was wearing. If she could get out of here before Ricardo came back…

She was at the door when it swung open in her face, forcing her to step back hastily.

‘So you’re ready—good…’

Ricardo’s dark eyes swept over her assessingly, and she knew the moment that something of the truth hit him from the way that his black brows snapped together in an angry frown and his whole expression changed from approval to forbidding in the space of a single heartbeat.

‘Leaving, cara?’ he questioned sharply, the tone of his voice and the icy glare that accompanied it sending a shiver down her spine. ‘I think not.’

‘And why not?’ Lucy was determined not to let him see how much he was getting to her. ‘You can’t keep me here.’

‘I think you’ll find I can.’

‘So you’re still determined to keep me a prisoner?’

‘Not a prisoner, tesoro…’

Ricardo’s wickedly sensual mouth curled over the word in a way that took it to a point light-years from the term of affection it was supposed to be.

‘You’ll find no locked doors here, no bolts—no chains.’

To Lucy’s amazement he actually stood back, pushing the door wide open and leaving it that way so that she could get past him—and out—if she wanted to.

‘I just think you would find it very difficult to get off the island. But, if you want to try, then be my guest. You were always a strong swimmer, as I recall.’

Coming to an abrupt halt, Lucy had a nasty little fight with herself not to sink back against the wall in admission of defeat. She couldn’t quite believe it herself, but she had genuinely forgotten that the villa was set on its own little island. The distance between here and the shore was far too great for her to want to risk trying to swim it.

‘All right,’ she said, her lips and throat stiff with tension. ‘You’ve made your point. But I still don’t see why you want me here when earlier you were so keen to get rid of me. Oh, of course…’ Realisation dawned as she remembered. ‘You’re waiting for that explanation. No?’ she questioned when Ricardo shook his head.

‘No,’ he confirmed. ‘There is something we have to see first.’

‘Something you’ve decided I must see, you mean,’ Lucy shot back and watched as he sighed his exasperation.

‘Do not look at me like that. I promise you that this is important.’

‘Important in what way?’

‘Lucia!’ Ricardo raked both his hands through the black silk of his hair, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Must you argue with everything? Can you not trust me on this?’

‘Trust you?’ Lucy scorned. ‘So tell me why I should trust you when you have trapped me here, made sure I can’t leave unless I swim for it and…’

Her voice trailed off as she suddenly looked into Ricardo’s deep dark eyes and caught something there. Something that stilled and held her frozen.

‘Trust me,’ he said again and the words tugged on something deep inside, twisting around Lucy’s heart just when she was least expecting it.

It wasn’t rational, it was totally unwise, probably very naïve, but just in that moment she did trust him. So much so that when he took her arm and turned her in the opposite direction, she didn’t pull away from his grasp but allowed herself to be directed down the corridor again, towards the other side of the house.

The part of the villa where their suite had been when they had lived here as man and wife.

That set her nerves tingling in apprehension. Not at the thought of what Ricardo might do but the fear of just how she might react if she was forced to go back to that part of the Villa San Felice where she had lived with him as his wife. The part of the villa where she had been at her happiest, she admitted to herself, fighting against the slash of pain that the memories brought. How would she feel if she had to look into the room where she and Ricardo had spent so many wonderful, blissful nights?

Only physically blissful, stern reality forced her to remind herself. Any emotional contentment she had felt had been based on a lie. A lie she had told herself just to keep from facing up to the truth. She might have fallen head over heels for her husband, but for Ricardo the marriage had just been one of pure convenience. The fact that it had also put a willing and passionate sexual partner into his bed every night had just been a bonus in his eyes.

‘Ricardo…’ she tried but he either didn’t hear her or refused to acknowledge that he had.

But the twisting nerves in her stomach eased as they rounded a corner and Ricardo took the opposite direction to the one she had been anticipating with dread. The next moment he stopped before a closed door, turned the handle and pushed it open.

Immediately Lucy knew what he was doing and, if she had felt fearful before, now a terrible sense of panic rushed at her with the emotional force of a tsunami. She froze in the doorway, unable to move back or forwards, though she knew from the way that Ricardo’s hand gripped her elbow that he was not going to let her escape.

The room was decorated with all the bright pictures, the blue and white carpet and curtains that she had chosen with such joyful anticipation before the birth of her baby. The same huge soft cushions were set on the floor, the same mobile with the cheerful painted animals hung from the ceiling. All this Lucy took in in a single glance. But then her gaze went to the big cot standing against the far wall and every other thought left her head.

‘Marco…’

It was just a whisper, barely a thread of sound, and she was amazed that she could get that out past the knot in her throat. Her heart, which had stopped dead in the moment she had recognised the room as the nursery, was now beating so fast and so wildly that she couldn’t catch her breath. If it got any worse, then she feared that it might actually burst out of her chest in the rush of emotion that made her head swim viciously.

At her side she was barely aware of Ricardo making a silent gesture with one hand. In response a young woman in a neat uniform, clearly the nanny hired to look after the baby, slipped silently from the room, leaving them alone. And all the time Lucy couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. She could only stare wide-eyed at the small person lying under the quilt in the cot, his black hair startling against the white sheet.

Marco’s eyes were closed and he was fast asleep. One small hand was flung up outside the coverings and his deep breathing made soft snuffling noises as he exhaled.

‘Marco…’

It was all that she could manage and she swayed towards him where she stood but didn’t dare to try to make a move towards the cot. It was what she wanted most in all the world and yet what she feared in the same moment as she longed for it. Tears blurred her eyes but they were too hot and too bitter to give release to them. She almost felt as if they would burn down her cheeks like acid if she actually let them fall and flow.

And all the time she was so desperately aware of Ricardo standing next to her, still and silent, just watching her, his dark eyes observing and noting everything.

She didn’t know what he was thinking and, quite frankly, she didn’t care. All she knew was that her son—her baby—was just across the room from her and she didn’t know how she could get to him, or even if she dared to try.

‘Marco…’ she said yet again. Then, as Ricardo’s stillness and silence got through to her once more, she cleared her throat and forced the words out.

‘“Something we have to see”, you said,’ she croaked in reproach.

‘This is what you came for, isn’t it? You wanted to see Marco.’

Lucy could only nod silently, the one accusing outburst she’d managed seemed to have drained all her strength so that she couldn’t find any words to answer him.

What was happening here? What was in Ricardo’s mind? Why had he brought her here like this—to see her baby—and yet once again be so near and yet so far? How had he come from Not while I live to actually leading her to the nursery, dismissing the nanny?

He couldn’t be so cruel as to let her see Marco, come within touching distance of the baby and…

‘Then go and see him,’ Ricardo said, stunning her.

He wasn’t touching her, wasn’t doing anything to push her forward or to hold her back either. The hand that had been on her arm had dropped to his side and he was standing back, waiting—and watching. She could feel the burn of his gaze on her face so fiercely that she didn’t dare to turn to meet the darkness of his eyes.

‘I can’t…’

This couldn’t be happening. Not after she had dreamed of it for so many weeks, ever since the doctors had told her that she was fine now. That they were sure she could handle things, and that she was no longer a danger to her baby or to herself. Without that assurance she would never have dared even to try to make contact. But she had wanted this moment so much that now she could not believe it was actually real.

‘Yes, you can.’ Ricardo’s voice was surprisingly soft, though still without any trace of emotion in it. ‘He’s real, Lucia. Our baby—our son. You can…’

‘No, I can’t!’ It was a cry of raw pain, dragged from her as if it was tearing her soul out by the roots, leaving her bruised and bleeding deep inside. ‘I can’t—’

‘Have you come all this way to give up now? Whatever else I thought of you, Lucia, I never considered you a coward.’

Coward! If he had meant to sting her into action—and Lucy strongly suspected that he had—then it worked. Before she had time to think, rejection of that accusation had pushed her forward, the impetus driving her to the side of the cot before she had time to think.

And from the moment that she looked into her baby’s face there was nowhere else she could look at all. Nothing else that mattered.

‘Oh, Marco…’

Sinking down onto the floor beside the cot, she curled her fingers around the white-painted bars and just stared, seeing the way that the baby’s chest rose and fell, the curl of his lashes onto the soft cheeks, the faint bubble that formed at his lips as he breathed.

‘Darling…sweetheart…’

And looking was just not enough. Slowly one hand uncurled itself from the bars, then slid between them, reaching out towards where Marco lay. With soft fingers she touched his cheek, then curved her palm around the top of his small head, resting gently on the fuzz of jet-black hair. It seemed to fit so perfectly, and yet it was so different from the times that she had held him before that it made a terrible sorrow at all that she had missed clog up her throat.

‘He’s so big…’ she choked out, fighting the tears.

The silence that greeted her words tugged hard on her nerves, making her tense suddenly where she sat. Ricardo still stood in the doorway; he didn’t seem to have moved a muscle. And it was the fact that he was so very still, so totally, dangerously still that tightened every muscle in her body, made the tiny hairs at the back of her neck lift in a shivering, fearful moment.

He was as still as some fierce hunting predator might be while watching his prey wander innocently on the plains before him. He was just waiting, poised ready to move—ready to pounce.

‘Strange…’ he said now, and for all it was so quiet, so apparently calm, his tone did nothing to ease the sensation of being hunted down. If anything, it made it so much worse, twisting her nerves in a sense of intuitive terror, though of what she had no idea. ‘He still seems so small to me. But then I see him every day—so I expect that the difference between when you saw him last and now is so much more pronounced.’

Could what he said be any more pointed? Could he do anything more to drive home the point that he had been here with Marco all the time, while she had abandoned their baby when she had walked out?

Slowly she raised her head, lifted her eyes to meet his, and when she saw the dark opaqueness of his gaze she knew what was happening.

He was testing her. She was under total scrutiny, like some small defenceless creature dissected on a laboratory table and then placed under the microscope. He was testing her, and she had no idea whether what she was doing was the right thing in his eyes or exactly the opposite.

As she fought to control the fearful shudder that took her body by storm, she saw the sudden change in his face and knew that the predator had finally grown tired of watching and waiting. He had decided to pounce.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘ALL right…’

Ricardo had thought that he would have to force himself to keep his voice calm, his body still. He had anticipated that at this point he would have to struggle with himself not to lose the tight grip he had on his emotions and to control the rising rage that was welling up inside him. But instead it all seemed suddenly so much easier than he had ever anticipated.

It was as if the time he had spent standing unmoving, just waiting and watching, had fixed his limbs in place so that he couldn’t move them even if he wanted to. And at the same time a storm of ice had entered his mind, his veins—his heart—freezing them so that there was no feeling, no response in any of them.

He didn’t even feel anger any more. Only the icy certainty that there was something he really needed to know here. The suspicion had been planted in his thoughts yesterday and it had taken root there, growing stronger overnight, with each moment of today. On some deep, instinctive gut level he had known that there was something missing in the story Lucy had told him. And what he had just seen had confirmed it.

He had had to see Lucy with Marco. Had to see if the callous indifference she had displayed in her leaving note had been true. And so he had brought her here to see how she reacted.

And she hadn’t behaved at all as he had expected.

‘I think it’s time we got to the truth. The real truth—nothing else. You said you were ill—but there’s more to it than that.’

Her behaviour had not been that of the monster mother he had created in his mind. There had been real pain, real fear in that I can’t…And the way that she had cradled the baby’s head had been so needy and yet so desperately gentle, making it plain that she was anxious not to disturb the little boy’s sleep.

So what the hell had driven her away, leaving only that appalling note behind?

‘What happened to you, Lucia?’

‘I—’

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, looking from his face to that of the sleeping baby and then back again. And the way that she had lost all colour from her face until her skin looked bloodless pushed him forward into the room, holding out his hand to her to help her up.

‘There is a sitting room just through here—we can talk there. That way we will hear Marco if he stirs.’

‘Thank you.’

Did she know what it did to him when she looked up into his face like that, with those soft blue eyes so wide and clear? And the touch of her hand in his had a kick that tightened every nerve in his body, sending stinging electrical sparks running up his arm straight to his heart so that it jerked in instinctive reaction.

Just who was this woman who had been his wife? Still was, on paper. It seemed as if in the single day since she had come back into his life she had been half a dozen diverse characters, none of whom he recognised from the Lucy he had first met. The Lucy he had married. Here and now she was like a completely different person from the hard-faced creature who only yesterday had flung in his face her certainty that she would walk away with a large proportion of everything he possessed.

That, and Marco too.

The nanny’s sitting room was a small, comfortable area off the main nursery. There was a settee and armchairs, a tiny kitchenette at the far side of the room. Lucy followed him silently into it, not hesitating or pulling away, though her head turned back towards the cot where the baby lay.

‘You will see him again,’ Ricardo told her gruffly.

‘You promise?’

When she looked at him like that he would promise her anything. But that was the way he had been caught before, when he had let what he had believed was her innocent beauty lure him into her bed.

It would do no harm to promise this much. She would see Marco again; he could guarantee that. Any more would depend on what she told him now.

‘I promise,’ he said and watched some of the tension seep from her body, the tight mouth loosening, the way she held her shoulders easing.

‘Thank you,’ she said again and the faint tentative smile that accompanied the words caught on something raw deep inside and twisted hard.

‘Save your thanks,’ he muttered roughly, ‘until I’ve done something to deserve them. Would you like a drink? Coffee?’

‘Some water, perhaps.’

A drink would be a good idea, Lucy acknowledged. Her voice had croaked embarrassingly on her words. If she had to tell him the whole of her story, she was going to need some help.

She did have to tell him, she knew that. There was no going back now. For better or for worse, everything had to come out.

‘Your water.’

Ricardo’s voice sounded harshly from close by, startling her eyes open so that she looked up and straight into his darkly watchful face, seeing herself reflected, tiny and palefaced in the polished blackness of his eyes. Blank, unreadable eyes. Eyes that gave nothing away.

And suddenly it was as if she had slipped back through time, back to the moment when she had first arrived at this villa after their wedding. The speedboat had ferried them from the shore across to the island and as they’d stepped ashore she had slipped and almost lost her footing. Immediately Ricardo had moved forward and caught her before she could fall, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her along the wooden jetty that led to the wide stone steps up to the house. As he’d lifted her over the threshold into the villa itself he had suddenly looked down into her eyes, his own deep and dark and totally inscrutable, revealing nothing at all about his thoughts or his feelings.

‘Welcome home, wife,’ he had said.

Then, as he had let her slip to the floor, he had pressed the palms of his hands, big and warm and strong, to the front of her dress, below which the baby she was carrying—the baby that would eventually become Marco—was as yet just a tiny curve to her belly.

‘Welcome, mother of my child.’

It had been in that moment that she had realised that she had fallen desperately, irrevocably in love with this man who was now her husband. But only her husband of convenience, married purely for the sake of that baby.

As the mother of his child, she was welcome in his home. As the mother of his child, his home became her home. But only as the mother of his child. For herself, and in herself she had no place here at all.

‘Lucia—your water.’

Cold moisture beaded the sides of the glass Ricardo held out to her and as she took hold her fingers slipped, sliding up against his hand where he held it. The contrast between the coldness of the glass and the warmth of his skin was a shock, startling her and making her nerves fizz as if a bolt of electricity had shot up her arm.

And from the way that those dark eyes burned into hers it was obvious that Ricardo had felt it too. Just for a moment as their gazes locked she felt that he was about to say something—she could almost feel the words in the air. But then he apparently had second thoughts and stepped away again to move to the door and check on Marco. The baby was still sleeping soundly so Ricardo turned back, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers as he leaned against the wall.

‘So,’ he said flatly. ‘The truth…’

Which was guaranteed to tighten Lucy’s throat even more.

Lifting the glass to her mouth, she took a swift, deep gulp of the cooling water as she tried to collect her thoughts. She wished that Ricardo would move somewhere else or that he would come and sit down. Standing there, so tall and lean and dark, he seemed to tower over her oppressively, dominating the room and tightening every one of her muscles just to look at him.

‘Why…’ Her throat clenched and she had to take another gulp of water. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

The look he gave her said that that was a question that didn’t need answering but all the same he drew in a long, deep breath and then looked her straight in the eyes.

‘I wanted to see you with Marco—how you would react. How you would be when you met him for real.’

So she had been right. He had been testing her. The atmosphere she had sensed in the room earlier had been real and not the product of her overheated imagination.

‘And what did you find out?’

‘That you lied.’

It was the last thing she had expected but as she opened her mouth to refute the accusation he ignored her attempt at protest.

‘You lied in that note you left when you said you wanted your freedom—at least when you said you wanted your freedom from Marco. So something else took you away. You said you were sick—what was wrong?’

‘I wasn’t exactly sick…’ Lucy hedged. ‘It was more like a…a breakdown.’

She had his attention now. Those dark eyes couldn’t have burned any stronger, or been more fixed on her face.

‘A mental breakdown?’

If there had been any hint of shock or horror in his voice then she might not have been able to answer him but the truth was that his tone was completely controlled, totally matter-of-fact. So much so that it was only just a reaction.

‘Yes…’

She nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his. That steady black gaze never wavered, never moved. Instead, it stayed fixed on her, probing deeper and further with every breath that she took.

‘You were depressed.’

‘You could say that.’ Lucy’s voice was shaky, her weak attempt at laughter even more so. She knew from his quick frown that her laughter seemed out of place but she just couldn’t hold it back. Depressed seemed such an inadequate word for what she had been through. She had barely known who she was or what she was doing. And the world had seemed like a dark, empty cavern, one that she couldn’t find her way out of, no matter how she’d tried. ‘Though depressed sounds like the way you’d describe it if you lost a job or your dog died.’

‘Not true depression. And if you had a breakdown, then that’s what you must have suffered.’

Looking up into Ricardo’s face, Lucy blinked hard at the unexpected note in his voice. She hadn’t anticipated such sympathy. Was it possible that he might understand after all?

‘It was horrible.’ She shivered at the memory. ‘The whole world seemed black and I didn’t know how to make myself get out of bed every day.’

And knowing what she had done to Marco, that by running away she had probably lost him, and the man she’d loved, for ever, had made things so, so much worse. The future had stretched ahead of her, bleak and cold and empty, and she hadn’t known how she was going to cope. If it hadn’t been for the care of a kind and understanding doctor, the support of therapists, she didn’t know how she would have survived.

‘There didn’t seem to be any point in going on. Any reason to—’

She broke off sharply, startled into awareness of the way that Ricardo had suddenly abandoned his position against the wall and had come close, his fingertips resting lightly on her arm.

‘Don’t…’ he said quietly, pulling her out of the dark fog of her memories.

‘Ricardo…’ Her voice was all over the place, shaking and quavering in a way that she just couldn’t control. And she felt so cold…so horribly cold. She was shivering as if she were in the grip of some horrible fever.

‘Give that to me.’

It was only when Ricardo’s hand came out and eased the glass from her clenched fingers that she realised how tightly she had been gripping it. She had been holding it so firmly that when her hand had started to shake the water inside the glass had swirled around, slopping over the side and splashing onto the pink linen of her skirt, marring the fine material with ugly dark patches.

She remembered buying this skirt—at least, she thought she did. It had been one of the things she had found on one of the first trips she had made away from the villa a couple of weeks after Marco had been born. She had left him with his nanny and had called Enzo, who took care of and piloted the motorboat, to take her across the lake to the shore. And there she had taken the car into Verona, where she had shopped, hunting for something—anything—that would make her feel more human. Something that would make her feel more alive, more in control of herself and her life.

And something that would make Ricardo look at her like a woman he desired once again.

Without the glass to hold, her hands were shaking even more and when she clasped both of them together on her lap they still kept shaking, shuddering where they lay on the pink skirt. With a terrible effort she twisted them together even more tightly, whimpering faintly when it had no effect.

‘Lucia…’

Ricardo’s hand, cool from the cold glass, came over both of hers, holding them, stilling them. But he still couldn’t calm the waves of despair that were taking her body by storm, making it tremble and shake convulsively.

‘Lucia, no,’ Ricardo said quietly, calmly. So calm in contrast to the way she was feeling that it stopped her heart for a moment as she tried to take it in. ‘There is no need for this.’

‘You don’t understand…’

Somehow she managed to get the words out, though her voice was as jerky and uneven as her heart.

It was his closeness that was doing that to her. He had slid down now from where he had been sitting on the arm of the settee and onto the cushions beside her. She could feel the warmth of his body, of the long, strong thigh that was pressed close up against hers. And she drew in the scent of his skin with each uneven, ragged breath. The width of his chest in the deep red shirt, the buttons opened at the throat, was level with her eyes, just a hint of dark curling hair revealed in the open neck, and she longed to be able to rest her head against his strength, draw new courage from him. But the distance between them, the yawning emotional chasm that separated her, would always hold her back.

‘Oh, but I do.’

To her consternation, she found that Ricardo had somehow seemed to read her mind, to know just exactly what she needed. His strong arms folded round her, drawing her close. At first she tensed, trying to resist. But then the sense of loneliness overwhelmed her and she yielded, soft and yearning, against him.

Her head rested on the hard wall of his ribcage, the steady, thudding beat of his heart pounding under her cheek. She could feel his chest rise and fall with every breath he took and she felt, dangerously, as if she had come home.

Ricardo smoothed one hand over the length of her hair, sliding down her back, raising every tiny nerve in response. The warmth of his palm against the skin of her neck made her heart jolt at the feel of it and a moment when those caressing fingers slid briefly in at the scooped neck of her shirt had her breath catching sharply in her throat. The hard strength of his body was against one breast and as the stroking arm brushed against the other with every slow, gentle movement her nipples tightened in stinging response to the sudden waking need low down between her legs.

‘I understand so much better than you could ever believe,’ Ricardo murmured, the deep rumble of his voice drowning out the involuntary sigh of longing she had been unable to hold back. ‘There’s just one thing I want to know.’

Lucy froze against Ricardo’s chest. An edge to his voice made her tense in sudden apprehension. The growing sense of warmth and comfort that had been seeping through her body, driving away the chill that had invaded her blood, suddenly seemed to stop and then, shockingly, started to fade again, allowing the shivering cold to start to creep back again.

‘I want to know his name.’

She hadn’t been wrong about the alteration in his tone, the difference in his mood. It was there too in the sudden change in his position and the way he held her. She was still in his arms, still held close, but it no longer felt like home.

Hard fingers suddenly clamped around her arms, moving her away from him, away from the secure warmth of his lean, hard frame. He held her so that he could look down into her eyes, his dark burning gaze searing her clouded blue one.

‘Who the hell is he, Lucia? What’s the name of the man who did this to you? The man who drove you to a breakdown when he left you.’

CHAPTER NINE

WHO the hell is he, Lucia?…The man who drove you to a breakdown when he left you.

For the first few spinning seconds she hadn’t been able to understand what had happened. Ricardo’s sharply snapped questions made no sense. She couldn’t understand where they came from or why he was even asking them. But then, slowly, reluctantly, she looked back over the conversation and realised the train of thought that Ricardo had been following, the conclusions he had jumped to.

He thought that she had had the breakdown after she had left the villa. He really believed—the only way he could possibly see it happening—was that she had run off with another man, leaving him and Marco behind in her determination to start a new life with her lover—his rival.

And then he believed that when that lover had walked out on her, leaving her as she had left him, then and only then had Lucy had the breakdown she had talked about.

‘You think that…’

She had stiffened in his arms, pulling away from the warmth and support of his body. And just the tiny movement seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort, bring with it a wrenching pain that was out of all proportion to the distance she put between the two of them.

‘You really believe that the only reason I could possibly leave Marco was because there was another man!’

Ricardo didn’t need to answer. It was there in his eyes, stamped into the lines of his face. Suddenly, disturbingly, she was seeing her erratic behaviour through his eyes. The excessive spending, the way she had disappeared for most of the day, with no explanation. Had he really thought that she was meeting someone else? That she was having an affair? The thought that she might have put him through that made her shiver inwardly. How could she blame him for thinking so badly of her if that was what he had suspected?

‘I can see now that the way I behaved might have made you think that,’ she admitted shakily. ‘And you don’t know how much I regret it if it did. But you have to believe me—there never was anyone else.’

She saw his frown, the way his dark eyes dropped to lock with her own clouded gaze.

‘Then why…’

‘I wasn’t ill—didn’t break down after I left here.’

Though leaving Marco had been the last straw. The one that had broken this particular camel’s back and driven her in despair and desperation to find a doctor.

‘You’re saying…’

Ricardo’s face changed as realisation dawned. This time his eyes went to the cot where Marco still slept, then came back to her.

‘Are you telling me that it was post-natal depression that caused your breakdown? That was why you left?’

Lucy could only nod, her throat too clogged for speech. It was impossible to read the rush of feelings that flashed in Ricardo’s eyes, but she saw the questions there and straightened her spine, waiting for them to come. And now he was the one to move away, putting more distance between them.

‘That was like no depression I’ve ever seen.’

‘No,’ Lucy admitted.

She couldn’t hold it against him that he hadn’t recognised what even she hadn’t known. She had had the doctor to explain it to her. Ricardo had been looking in from the outside.

When he had been there, which wasn’t often.

‘You were out all the time. Spending money like water.’

‘I know—I was hyper. Manic.’

Post-natal psychosis, the doctor had called it. Not just depression but the more severe form of the illness, which had literally driven her almost out of her mind. So much so that she had been unable to think straight enough to recognise what was happening to her.

It hadn’t helped that her relationship with her own mother had been so difficult. The only time that Janet Mottram had shown any real interest in her daughter had been when she had used the child as a pawn in her personal battle with her exhusband. And, looking back, Lucy knew that what she had feared most was being as distant and unloving a mother to Marco as Janet had been to her.

And, without anyone to confide in, she had been trapped with her own thoughts. Thoughts that had so frightened and appalled her that there was no way she could have admitted them to Ricardo.

So she had put on a front. A cold, distant front that had driven him away from her even more. And she had succeeded so much better than she could have hoped. From the time that Marco had been born, she and Ricardo had barely spoken to each other. It had been what she wanted but at the same time it had added to the aching inside her, creating a spiral of despair from which she had felt that she would never break free.

‘You bought clothes, perfume—clothes you never wore when you were with me.’

And he had thought that she had bought them to make herself look good for someone else.

‘All that spending—it was just an attempt at distraction. I didn’t even want the clothes half the time.’

And the other half she had wanted them to boost her image, to make Ricardo look at her with the desire he had once shown her. But it had seemed that the women she had overheard had been right. She was not the sort of wife who could hold a man like Ricardo. A man who didn’t do commitment. Who was used to having his pick of the most glamorous, most sophisticated women of the world.

If only he would speak—say something. Anything, other than subjecting her to the dark, silent stare that seemed to want to probe right into her eyes, burn its way into her head.

‘Heaven knows what you must have thought of me!’

‘It was only what I expected,’ Ricardo stated flatly. ‘Normal female behaviour. Every woman I’ve known has been out for what I could give her. Why should you be any different?’

How could she fight such cynicism? She hadn’t been able to do so when they had been together, so why should anything be different now? Besides which the thought that she still hadn’t told him absolutely everything, that there were still things she was holding back, things she could hardly bear to think of herself, sat like a leaden weight in her heart, closing off her throat so that there was no way she could make herself speak.

‘And you are well now?’ he asked, an edge to his voice that she couldn’t interpret and she felt too emotionally adrift even to try.

‘The doctors say I am,’ she managed stiffly. ‘They think all should be well and that I’m not likely to relapse. I would never have come back here if I’d thought…’

‘I believe you,’ Ricardo said when her voice broke too much for her to go on. He was still so very distant, his deep-set eyes hooded and hidden, but his tone gave her a little cause for hope.

‘So if you could see your way to letting me spend some time with Marco…’

And, just at that moment, with amazing timing so that it was almost as if he had heard his name spoken, in the other room the baby stirred and started to whimper faintly, still half asleep.

‘Marco…’

Instinct drove Lucy to her feet but she was only halfway there when realisation struck and she froze, grabbing at the settee arm for support as she looked back at Ricardo, meeting the deliberately blanked out expression in his narrowed gaze.

‘I…I’m sorry…’

She regretted that as soon as she’d said it. She wasn’t sorry at all for reacting automatically to the sound of her child’s cry. She might not have been the best mother in the world—she knew she hadn’t—but that didn’t mean that her maternal instincts had died, swamped by the tidal wave of foul stuff that that rushed over her in the depths of those darkest days. After all, she’d only left because of what she was afraid of. Because of the fear that she might do something dreadful to her little boy. That was those mother’s instincts working overtime, not losing their way. And now she was doing exactly the same—responding to the way that her baby most needed her.

The memory of that cry had never left her. In her sleep she would hear it and come jerking awake, sitting up in a rush, eyes wide with horror and fear, needing to find Marco…and knowing he wasn’t there. That had been the worst, the most terrible moment of all. The thought that somewhere her baby was crying and she couldn’t go to him.

Here and now, she could respond to his call. But at the same time she didn’t quite dare to. Not with Ricardo watching and not knowing how he would react if she followed her instincts. He had sworn that she would never take the baby from him, so would he let her comfort the little boy—or would he grab at her arm, to hold her back? Or would he, worst of all, wait until she was at the cot’s side, about to take her son into her arms and then snatch the little boy away from her—so near and yet so desperately far again.

‘I doubt that you’ll understand…but…’ Her voice trailed off as she met the burning darkness of his eyes, felt herself flinch under their scorching force.

From the other room came a second more wakeful cry, louder this time, drawing Lucy’s eyes in a glance of yearning anxiety towards the door.

‘I’ll call the nanny,’ Ricardo said and the words brought back such a rush of memory that it pushed her response from her mouth before she had had a moment to consider if it was wise.

‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘No nanny! Not now.’

‘You were happy enough to leave him in her care before.’

‘Did you give me any choice?’ Lucy flung at him. ‘Did you even discuss it with me? No—you made a unilateral declaration that Marco was going to be looked after by a nanny. It may be the way you were brought up—the norm in your wealth driven world to have your children farmed out to the hired help, but it wasn’t what I wanted.’

‘I had no intention of having him “farmed out”,’ Ricardo snapped coldly. ‘And it certainly wasn’t the way that I was brought up. My mother barely had enough money to feed and clothe me, never mind hire a nanny.’

‘Then why did you hire one for Marco? Did you think I wasn’t good enough to look after your son, the precious Emiliani heir?’

She didn’t believe that his eyes could close up any more, or become any more opaque, but it was like looking into the immovable face of a statute. One that was carved from cold, hard marble.

‘That was never my aim,’ he said at last and if a statue could have spoken then it would have had just that same stiff, icy voice. ‘If you want the truth, I was fool enough to think that you might appreciate some help.’

That cold comment twisted a knife in Lucy’s already tender conscience. She’d been so caught up in her own misery that she’d never looked at it from this angle. Now she was forced to face the fact that her own lack of self-esteem had turned what had been an attempt to do the right thing into the exact opposite.

‘I’m sorry…’ she began but as she spoke Marco whimpered again.

‘Your son needs you,’ Ricardo said.

‘What?’

She hadn’t quite caught what he had said. Or, if she had, then she wasn’t at all sure that she could possibly have heard right.

‘Your son needs you,’ he repeated, calm, coldly controlled and totally unmistakable this time. ‘You had better go to him.’

She knew that look, that assessing scrutiny. He was testing her again. But which was the right way to react? How could she prove herself to him? And just what did he want her to prove?

She could only go with her instincts. There was no way of second-guessing him.

And, as the whimper turned into a wail and then an outraged cry, she was left with no choice. She no longer gave a damn what Ricardo thought or felt. It was what Marco needed that mattered. She was out of the sitting room in a rush, bending down over the cot before Ricardo could say a word. And she knew that if he had spoken, if he’d tried to stop her, then she would have ignored him completely.

‘Hush little one…it’s all right. Mu…’

Her throat closed over the words, choking them off. How could she call herself ‘Mummy’ after all that had happened? Marco would never understand—and would he even let her touch him?

Painfully aware of the way that Ricardo had moved to the doorway, one strong hand resting against the wood of the frame, she could feel the burn of his eyes in her back as she reached in and scooped up the little boy, lifting him gently. He was so much bigger than the last time she had held him that she felt the unexpected weight of him in contrast to then. That dreadful time when she had felt that she had to give him one last hug, in spite of the fears that were whirling in her head, telling her that she wasn’t safe with this precious child. That she had no idea just what she might do.

‘Careful, darling…’

Was it just the unfamiliar voice, or would she be completely fooling herself to think that the baby recognised her somehow? Lucy’s heart clenched sharply as the little boy’s big dark eyes opened wide to stare into her face, his wails and his whole body stilling as she lifted him so carefully.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’

She prayed that he wouldn’t feel the way she was trembling all over. That the twisting of her nerves wouldn’t communicate itself to him and upset him all over again. She also hoped that Ricardo wouldn’t see the fear in her eyes, the determined effort she was making to hide the way she was feeling and misinterpret it as something else.

‘Now, let’s see…’

Adjusting the baby in her arms, she caught a telltale whiff that left her in no doubt of something that needed dealing with. She didn’t have much experience of caring for her child, but this was something practical she’d done for him, even in the short weeks she’d been with him.

‘Oh, so that’s the problem! Let’s see…’

A swift glance around made it clear just where the changing mat and all the things necessary for cleaning and changing a nappy could be found and she moved towards it, taking Marco with her. She was determined not to look in Ricardo’s direction, knowing he was still watching her like a hawk. No doubt just waiting for her to make a mistake, show some hesitation. Something he could criticise. Something he could hold against her.

Well, not this time, Signor Emiliani. She almost laughed as she laid Marco on his back on the brightly coloured changing mat. This was something she knew how to do.

‘Let’s get you cleaned up…’

Unfastening the sleep suit, removing the dirty nappy, cleaning, was the work of moments. And she enjoyed it—doing this simple task for her baby. Even when Marco waved his arms and legs wildly in the air, wriggling so that it was a struggle to get the nappy on and fastened, she couldn’t hold back the soft chuckle of appreciation of his life and energy. Forgetting about the dark, watchful man behind her, she bent her head and blew a loud raspberry on his exposed stomach, revelling in its soft roundness, the uncontrollable giggles that burst from him in response.

Perhaps with Marco at least things could come right. Maybe in time she could make up to him for the way she had left him. If Ricardo gave her that time, she was forced to add as a movement behind her told her that her husband had left his watching position and come closer.

‘That’s you done,’ she said, pretending she hadn’t noticed, determined to ignore him as she fastened the baby’s clothes, lifted him carefully, cradled him against her shoulder. ‘Now, let’s see…’

‘Give him to me.’

She’d been expecting it but still it was like a blow to her heart. She’d known he wouldn’t give her free rein with the baby, that he was just watching and waiting…

Instinctively her arms tightened around the sturdy little body. Every part of her wanted to shout no, to refuse to hand him over. But she knew she had to think of Marco. She must not upset him. And yet she couldn’t just give in to Ricardo’s demand.

‘This isn’t fair,’ she said, keeping her voice as calm and as quiet as she could manage as she swung round on her heel, turning to face the big dark man behind her.

Over Marco’s soft dark head she faced the baby’s father with rejection sparking in her eyes.

‘You let me hold him, come close to him—the next moment you take him from me. It’s cruel and…’

‘I’m not taking him from you,’ Ricardo stunned her by saying. ‘It’s midday. Marco usually has something to eat around now.’

A wave of his hand indicated the padded high chair close at hand.

‘Why don’t you put him in there?’

The slight emphasis on that you brought a stinging reproach that she had to admit to herself she deserved. The sharp reminder of just how little she knew about Marco’s life and routine twisted a cruel knife in her heart.

‘I’m sorry.’

Moving rather clumsily as she adjusted to the unfamiliar weight of her son in her arms, she tried to put Marco into the high chair. Luckily, he seemed prepared to help her and, obviously recognising that this meant food was on its way, began banging on the tray with an enthusiastic hand, slapping his palm on to the surface.

‘Da!’ he said excitedly, waving the other hand wildly in the air. ‘Da!’

He was too young to be talking properly yet, Lucy told herself, fighting with the twist of misery that sound brought her. And, besides, having only ever been spoken to in Italian, Marco was unlikely to be trying to form the word ‘Daddy’. But it was another way of bringing home to her how much she had lost by being away from him at this important stage of his life. The pain that cut at her had her digging her teeth down hard into the softness of her lower lip as she fought with the tears that burned at the back of her eyes.

Ricardo bent to wipe the high chair’s tray, receiving enthusiastic pats on his face from his son as he did so. Careful cleaning of those grasping fingers followed.

‘Here—give him this…’

Ricardo passed her a sliced banana on a plate.

‘Just put it onto the tray and let him help himself.’

The small domesticated tasks, the time taken to feed the baby, brought a new and unexpected peace between them. Ricardo passed her the food that the nanny had left prepared and Lucy put it before the little boy, some of the tension seeping from her face, a light switching on in her eyes.

Had he been mistaken or had there been the glisten of tears in those eyes just a moment before? Ricardo found himself wondering. And did she know what it did to him to see the way that her sharp white teeth had dug into the pink softness of her lower lip as she had looked down at their little boy?

He had lost any ability to read her expression, thrown off balance by what he had just learned. He had trusted her once and that had had such shocking repercussions that he had vowed never to do so again. But this was very different. Vicious guilt clawed at him at the thought that his already hardened prejudice against her might have blinded him to the truth, driving him to misinterpret her behaviour after Marco’s birth.

He should wait and watch, see what happened, he resolved in the same moment that another more primitive response shook his mental balance even harder.

Dio santo, but he had had to fight with himself not to react on the most basic instinctive level. Every male impulse had urged him to reach out for her and pull her to him. To kiss away the imprint of her teeth in her flesh and soothe it with his tongue. He wanted to taste her again, know the soft sweetness of her mouth, explore the moist interior and kiss them both to the verge of oblivion.

He wanted to tangle his hands in the golden fall of her hair and hold her just so—exactly where he could kiss her hardest, strongest, with the deepest passion.

But there was something else he wanted too. Something that combined with the sensual hunger, taking it and twisting it brutally inside him until, looking across at her, he had to push his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans against the temptation to use them in another, very different way.

She was looking down at Marco, laughing softly as the little boy squished his banana in his hand, obviously revelling in the mess he was making and the feel of it between his fingers. And Marco was watching her, his wide smile a beam of delight as he held up the sticky mess for her to see.

A child and his mother. That was what a stranger looking in through the wide open French windows would see in the scene before them. A child and his mother enjoying the moment, sharing the experience of food and fun, while the father, the husband, looked on and laughed with them.

A family.

That was how it should be. It was why he had married her, after all. Because his child, unlike Ricardo himself, his mother before that, should have two caring parents. And, having seen Lucy with Marco, having heard her story, how could he refuse her—and Marco—that in the future? He had to let her back into their son’s life.

And back into his?

The cold stab of anger at the thought was like a blade of ice between his ribs, making him clench his teeth tight against it.

He couldn’t blame her for the way she had run out on her marriage if she had been as ill as she had described. The evidence of her feelings for Marco were there before him in a natural warmth that no one could mistake. But where did that leave their marriage?

Was Marco truly all she had come back for or was there more to it than that? She needed money, obviously, because she had admitted that she had none now. So was she back, looking for the means of support that he as her wealthy husband was obliged to provide? Did she really just want to be with her son or was the fact that she was Marco’s mother still her key to the luxurious lifestyle for which she had married him?

‘Oh, Marco! What a mess!’

Lucy’s voice, soft and warm with amusement, broke into his thoughts, shattering them and sending them spinning off onto another tangent entirely. As she bent her head, leaning down towards the little boy, laughing again as he reached up and smeared the fall of her hair with banana, he found that he was once more seeing the scene as someone else might see it.

That person would see a happy family. Not knowing the events that had torn the little group apart, they would assume it was still the perfect setting in which to bring up the little boy.

Which it was. Or once had been.

He had wanted a family for his child. Still wanted it more than he could say. And if he played his cards right then there was a way that he could still make it come true for the future. For Marco.

And if there were other reasons—private reasons—for him wanting to keep things the way they had been, could he admit them, even to himself? He had no wish to let anyone know the way that, after just twenty-four hours, he was once more fighting the irresistible, burningly sensual passion that Lucy’s slender beauty had always been able to arouse in him. And certainly he was damned if he was ever going to let Lucy begin to suspect that those feelings were there. Sex and money had been the reasons why they had gone into this marriage that was not a marriage in the first place. And sex and money had been the things that had torn it apart too. Those two dangerous elements had ruined his past. He was not going to let them ruin his future too.

She seemed to have been honest with him. And she truly seemed to want to be back with Marco, for the baby’s sake, not for anything she could get out of this, but her concern could easily be faked. Could he really trust her with his beloved son’s future? Why should she be so very different from the other women in his past?

The only way to be sure was to test her sincerity one more time. To make absolutely sure that her reasons for being here were as she claimed. He would offer her the sort of deal that, if she was lying, would surely tempt her into showing her true colours. And the way she responded would tell him all he needed to know.

But if he could get what he wanted out of this situation—if he could keep her here, for Marco’s sake, on the terms that suited him—then he would do just that.

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