by Various
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 n
anny 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.’
