by Kate Walker
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 insid
e, 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.
