DarkNightsWithaBillionaireBundle

by Various

  ‘And I don’t want the Emiliani name dragged through the gossip columns, my private life exposed. But Marco is my son. I didn’t go through a marriage I didn’t want just to see you take him from me and turn me into an absentee father.’

  ‘And I don’t want to be an absentee mother either…’

  What had she said to put that sudden gleam of dark satisfaction into those black eyes? It looked almost as if she had done exactly as he had wanted. Lucy had the sudden, deeply uncomfortable feeling that she had been manoeuvred into a corner, checkmated somehow, and she hadn’t even seen it happen.

  ‘Then it seems that there is only one way to handle this.’

  ‘There is? And what’s that?’

  To her astonishment, Ricardo leaned forward and snatched up the cheque from where it still lay on his desk between them.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said and, totally bemused, Lucy let him push the slip of paper into her unresisting hand.

  ‘A small fortune,’ he said, his voice disturbing in its icy intensity. ‘“Enough for any human being”. And it’s yours—if you leave.’

  He saw the way that her head came up, the defiant words forming on her lips to fling his offer back at him and the faintest flicker of something that was almost a smile curled the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Or…’

  If Ricardo’s tone had been glacial, then his eyes seemed to sear right to the core of her soul.

  ‘You can have it the way you want it—if you stay here.’

  Unnerved and mentally armed for a fight as she was, Lucy at first didn’t catch the apparent concession. But when she did it was with a sense of shocked realisation.

  ‘Stay?’ she queried uncertainly. ‘For how long?’

  Ricardo’s stony gaze burned into her, unflinching, unyielding.

  ‘For good.’

  One arrogant wave of his hand towards the window indicated where the boat waited, Enzo standing at the wheel, the subdued pulse of the engine seeming unnaturally loud in the silence. Another took in the room they stood in, the whole of the beautiful villa.

  ‘There is your choice. The boat or the island. If you want to talk about this, then you stay here. If you want to leave, then the subject is closed. For ever.’

  ‘But…’

  Lucy’s thoughts were spinning in a new and different kind of panic. She had the terrible feeling of being trapped. She had been manoeuvred into a very tight corner and it seemed that there was no way out of it.

  ‘You can’t keep me here!’

  ‘No, but Marco can.’

  ‘I…don’t understand.’

  Despairingly, Lucy shook her head, unable to make sense of what he was saying.

  ‘It’s quite simple. If you want the money, then you leave—get on the boat and let Enzo take you wherever you want. But if you want contact with Marco—and I think you do—then you stay here.’

  ‘You’d let…’

  ‘But, in that case, then the money is no longer yours. I’ll stop the cheque…’

  ‘You won’t need to.’

  The rush of delight at the thought that he might let her stay was dizzying in its force. How would this work? Perhaps Ricardo had some idea of letting her replace the nanny, or at the very least act as back-up…She didn’t know and didn’t care. She wanted to stay.

  Without thinking, she took the cheque in a firm grip and ripped it into a thousand tiny pieces, tossing them wildly in the air so that they scattered around their heads, floating down softly to the ground like a fall of confetti. Drifting around Ricardo’s dark head, several tiny white pieces lodged in the silk of his hair, on the broad straight shoulders, settling softly. He barely spared them a glance, his dark-eyed gaze still locked with hers as he watched her response with cool, distant assessment.

  And it was in that moment, as she recalled another day, when the confetti had been real, when the tiny coloured pieces of paper had been thrown around them as they’d emerged from the church after their wedding, that her heart gave a painful lurch of realisation. Then, just as now, the confetti had fluttered around them, landing on Ricardo’s hair and shoulders. She remembered how on that occasion he had shaken his head in impatience, sending the delicate pieces of paper flying once again as he’d rid himself of the tiny symbols of luck and love.

  This time he was still and unmoving, his eyes seeming blank as they looked into her face. And it was that complete lack of expression that made her stomach clench on a cruel twist of apprehension.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his voice as cold as his expression.

  ‘Totally.’ She couldn’t afford to let him see any doubt in her face, hear it in her tone.

  ‘You will stay?’

  ‘I’ll stay.’

  She had no alternative. No other alternative she even wanted to consider.

  She had already run from this house once and she knew that she couldn’t do it again. Then she had known that her heart was being torn in two at the thought of leaving her child behind but she hadn’t been able to feel it. The misery that her life had become had battered her brain so badly that it was numbed by the bruising. Today, with her reunion with Marco so fresh and clear in her mind, the scent of his skin on her clothes, her arms still warm from holding him, she felt every dreadful raw, tearing sensation that threatened to break her heart into pieces, leaving her shattered and destroyed.

  ‘Buono…’

  Once more the phone was in Ricardo’s hand.

  ‘You will not be needed today, after all.’ He spoke to Enzo but his eyes were on Lucy.

  Beyond the window, Enzo leaned forward and turned a key, switching off the boat’s engine. The silence that descended was sudden, still and very, very taut, stretching Lucy’s nerves until she winced in distress. And in the silence she suddenly realised that she had agreed to stay and yet she had no real idea just what she was agreeing to.

  ‘Just one thing,’ she managed, the dryness of her constricted throat making the words come out as a rough-edged croak. ‘There’s something I need to clear up. If I’m staying…how am I staying? On what terms? Will I be a replacement for the nanny or…’

  Silhouetted against the window, Ricardo was just a dark figure against the brightness of the afternoon sun. The sun that was blinding her so that she couldn’t read the look on his face, no matter how much she screwed up her eyes.

  ‘I mean…what…who am I staying as?’

  ‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ Ricardo’s voice was coldly emphatic, totally clear in a way that his expression was not. ‘The only way you’ll stay in this house is as my wife.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE big ornate clock out in the hallway was striking midnight, the deep, ominous tones sounding clearly up the curving staircase to where Lucy was sitting in the darkness of the bedroom. Slowly she counted the strokes—anything to distract her mind and give herself something else to think about, no matter how briefly.

  ‘Six…seven…’

  It was no good, the distraction didn’t work. Her thoughts would keep drifting off to the rest of the day and the time that had passed since Ricardo had decreed that if she stayed at the villa then she did so as his wife.

  In the first moments after he’d flung the declaration at her, pure blinding shock had held her frozen, immobile as if someone had aimed a hard blow at her head and left her reeling.

  The only way you’ll stay in this house is as my wife.

  In the silence of the night, the autocratic words sounded so clear that she almost looked around, expecting to see that Ricardo had come into the room to find her and that he was standing right behind her, between her and the door, so that there was no hope of escape.

  But the room was as dark and silent as before and the only sound was the faint lapping of the waves of the lake against the shore beyond the partly opened window. She had no idea where Ricardo was or what he was doing.

  She hadn’t had a chance to speak to him after that one highhanded statement. By the ti
me she had pulled herself together to respond to him, needing to demand exactly what he meant, the phone had rung and Ricardo had swiftly snatched it up.

  ‘Pronto?’

  Pausing for a moment, he’d spared Lucy a swift flashing glance before saying sharply, ‘I have to take this.’

  In case she hadn’t got the message, he’d moved to the door and held it open, the pointed dismissal only too clear. There’d been no point in arguing either; his attention was totally focused on the call and she had been completely wiped from his thoughts.

  She hadn’t seen him since. He had never come back to any part of the house she had been in, but had sent a message to say that he had been called away on business and wouldn’t be back until very late that evening.

  Well, it was very late now and Ricardo was still not back. She had no idea where he was, or what his plans for her involved.

  The only way you’ll stay in this house is as my wife.

  Why could he possibly want her as his wife, when he had made it plain from the start that he hated her? And…A shiver ran down Lucy’s spine that had nothing at all to do with the coolness of the temperature since the sun had gone down…

  Just how much of a wife did he expect her to be?

  Her whole body felt stiff and cramped and she stretched carefully, easing limbs that had been still for too long. She had fallen fast asleep, lying on the top of the bed as she’d waited for Ricardo’s return, and had woken to find the room in darkness and the house silent.

  She’d filled the hours between Ricardo’s departure and the onset of evening with enjoying more of Marco’s precious company. Upstairs in the nursery flat, still not daring to be on her own with him but, together with the nanny, she had played with him, fed him again. And then, most special of all, she had bathed him and settled him down for sleep in his cosy cot, sitting beside him and singing lullaby after lullaby as she’d watched his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, his breathing slowing until she knew he was deeply asleep.

  Even then she had not been able to drag herself away but had stayed, her arms resting on the cot’s side, her head on her hands, watching him sleeping for as long as she could. It was only when darkness had finally fallen that she had forced herself from the room and had gone looking for her husband.

  Her husband. That, it seemed was what she must now get used to calling him all over again. The man who for his own private reasons wanted her back as his wife—but obviously only on his terms.

  And she had yet to find out exactly what those terms were.

  So she had come here to the room that Marissa, with carefully disguised curiosity and an obvious struggle not to ask the questions that were burning on her lips, had told her was Ricardo’s. Wherever he had been and wherever else he went once he came home, this was where he would have to end up eventually. She had wandered round it, taking in the severe blue and grey, starkly masculine décor that was so unlike the room they had once shared as husband and wife. Here there was little place for comfort, little scope for the softening effects of design or decoration. It was a room that was plain and functional.

  It told her nothing new about her husband, nothing about the sort of life he had lived while she had been apart from him. If he had brought other women back to the huge king-sized bed, then it showed no sign of them. If they had been there, then they had been and gone, leaving no scent, no trace behind. To her relief, there was also no sign of any female clothes, no scented toiletries in the bathroom, no make-up scattered in the dressing room. Lucy didn’t know what she would have done if she had found them there.

  Eventually, the effects of a long stressful day and the buildup of lack of sleep for over a week before that had caught up with her. Telling herself that she would just rest until Ricardo came back, she had lain down on the soft grey and blue covering of the bed, rested her head on the crisp cotton of the pillowcase that still retained some of the most personal scent of Ricardo’s skin and hair, inhaled it deeply and letting a single exhausted tear slide down her cheek, she’d fallen fast asleep.

  But now she was wide awake again—and Ricardo had not come back. Swinging her legs off the bed, Lucy padded across the thick carpet to the uncurtained window and stared out at the silent, still lake that glistened in the moonlight. From this side of the house she couldn’t see the mooring point so she had no idea if Enzo had brought the launch back and Ricardo with him. All the other staff must surely be asleep by now and so…

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  The voice came so suddenly and harshly from behind her that she started violently, caught off balance as she spun round in an ungainly movement, gaping at the tall dark figure of the man who stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  Her mind had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t heard the footsteps on the stairs, or coming rapidly down the corridor. She hadn’t known that Ricardo was even in the house until he had appeared without warning and tossed the rough-voiced demand at her, obviously none too pleased to find her there.

  ‘I’m waiting for you,’ she managed at last, awkward and uncomfortable. And her unease was aggravated by the way that his dark head went back, his shadowed face tensing suddenly.

  ‘And what the devil gave you the idea that I would want that? This is my room, and what you’re doing here at this time of night…’

  ‘But you said that the only way I would stay here would be as your wife. Where else should a wife be…but in her husband’s room? Isn’t that what anyone would expect…would understand from the simple fact that we are married?’

  ‘Anyone would be a fool if they did,’ Ricardo growled back. ‘This is the last place I expected to see you—the last place I want you to be.’

  The effect of the rejection was so powerful that Lucy actually staggered as she stood, reaching out an uncertain hand to grab at the curtains for support. It was only now that she realised how her own feelings had misled her into this situation.

  Could see that the hot, hungry need she felt for Ricardo whenever he was near had meant she had put two and two together and come up with an awkward and inaccurate five. She had assumed that he still felt the same about her physically. That at least the burning passion that had brought them together in the first place, rushing them into bed before they had ever had a chance to get to know each other, still blazed unappeased. And it had done—hadn’t it? Last night, in her room in the boarding house—and again out on the balcony…

  So when Ricardo had declared that he wanted her as his wife then, naturally, she had believed that it was this part of their married relationship that he had wanted to revive.

  An assumption that perhaps was not as natural as she had believed.

  ‘But Marissa showed me the way…’

  ‘If Marissa assumed that I wanted you in my bedroom then she overstepped the mark. She…’

  ‘Oh, but that was my fault,’ Lucy broke in urgently, terrified that she might get the young nanny into trouble. ‘I asked…I thought…’

  The words shrivelled on her tongue as Ricardo stepped forward into the room. The light of the moon falling on his handsome face made it look as if it had been carved from marble, tight and cold, his eyes opaque and unreadable.

  ‘You thought that I would want you in my bed?’

  His tone made it plain that that had been the furthest thing from his thoughts. Lucy was so grateful for the lack of clear light in the room and the way that it hid the flood of hot colour she could feel rushing up her neck and into her face. Had she got it so terribly wrong?

  ‘You said that if I stayed here then it had to be as your wife.’

  ‘My wife, and Marco’s mother.’

  Ricardo moved further into the room and flung himself down into a chair at the end of the bed. The change in his position should have made him seem less imposing, less overwhelming in the way that he now no longer towered over her but instead it had the opposite effect. Looking at him as he was now, with his jet-dark eyes gleaming coldly in the wash of moonlight, he
seemed even more dangerously distant. If she had ever let herself believe that his decision to allow her to stay had been based on hot-blooded passion then she could no longer think of any such thing.

  The man who faced her in this moment looked as if he didn’t have a hot-blooded cell in his body. He was all steel and ice, brutal control imposed over any trace of humanity he might have been tempted to show.

  ‘You only want me as Marco’s mother?’

  What else could there possibly be? the cold burn of his eyes demanded. What else could I want from you?

  ‘A child needs two parents—both his mother and his father. That is what I want for Marco. And from the way that I’ve seen you with him, I can tell that whatever problems you have with our marriage, you don’t feel them with him.’

  ‘Yes, you told me about that.’

  He’d explained to her in detail, in one of the rare moments of opening up to her about his past. He’d told her then how first his mother, and then Ricardo himself had been turned away from their family’s homes because they had been born to the unmarried daughters. The memory of standing on the doorstep as a boy of five with his mother, who had been looking for help, only to have the door slammed in their faces, had burned deep into his soul and made him resolve from then onwards that no one would ever shut him out in that way again. And they would certainly never do it to his child. It was part of what had made him the man he was—ruthless, determined, never taking any help from anyone.

  ‘I understood. It was why I married you.’

  ‘That and the moment that you set eyes on the island, and the villa,’ Ricardo returned cynically, lifting one hand in an arrogant flicking gesture that took in their luxurious surroundings, referring to the rest of the beautiful house, the stunning private island.

  ‘Well, yes…’ Lucy admitted. ‘I saw that this was where your child belonged. That it was our baby’s—Marco’s inheritance. I didn’t want to risk depriving him of this any more than you did.’

  What had she said to make him look at her in that way? Why had he suddenly become so still, so focused, with those dark burning eyes fixed on her face as if they wanted to bore right through her skull and into her mind, read her thoughts—dig right into the depths of her soul?