‘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 pale-faced 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.’
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