To Wear His Ring Again

by Chantelle Shaw

  Silence quivered between them like an overstretched elastic band. Constantin frowned when she failed to respond to his question, but he glimpsed the unguarded expression in her eyes and his lips curled into a predatory smile.

  ‘Ah, I think I understand, cara. Were you hoping we could get together for old times’ sake, before we make our separation legal?’

  ‘Get together?’ For a moment Isobel didn’t understand. She could not control the heat that surged through her when Constantin’s gaze lingered on her breasts, and to her horror she felt her nipples harden and prayed he could not see their jutting points outlined beneath her clingy tee shirt.

  ‘There were no problems with one aspect of our marriage,’ he murmured. ‘Our sex life was so explosive it was off the Richter scale.’

  He was talking about sex! Her eyes clashed with his glittering gaze and her fingers itched to wipe the mockery from his face. ‘You think I came here to...proposition you? In your dreams,’ she told him furiously.

  Her blood boiled. How dared Constantin suggest that the reason for her visit was because she wanted to sleep with him—for old times’ sake? But her treacherous mind responded to his provocative suggestion and she visualised them naked and writhing on the gym mat, limbs entangled and their skin damp with sweat as he drove his body into hers in a relentless rhythm.

  Heat scalded her cheeks, and she did not trust herself to say anything else to him that wouldn’t result in them having one of the vicious arguments that had been a regular feature of the last months of their marriage. Dignified silence seemed her best strategy, but as she swung away from him his gravelly, accented voice stopped her from marching up the stairs.

  ‘You have often been in my dreams these past two years, Isabella. The nights can be long and lonely...can’t they?’

  Could she possibly have heard regret in his voice? Was there any chance that he had missed her even half as much as she had missed him? Slowly, she turned back to face him, and immediately realised that she had indulged in wishful thinking. He was lounging in the doorway, bare-chested, beautiful and totally aware that he turned her on.

  How could she have thought that Constantin might hide a vulnerable side beneath his arrogance? The idea that she had hurt him when she had left two years ago was laughable, Isobel thought bitterly. If he had a heart, he kept it locked behind a wall of impenetrable steel that nothing and no one could breach.

  ‘I don’t imagine you have spent many nights alone,’ she said tautly, ‘not if the stories in the tabloids linking you with numerous beautiful models and socialites are to be believed.’

  He shrugged. ‘There were occasions when it was necessary for me to invite women to social events—’ he sent her a piercing glance ‘—since my wife wasn’t around to accompany me. Unfortunately the gutter press thrive on scandal and intrigue, and if none exist they fabricate lies.’

  ‘Are you saying that you didn’t have affairs with those women?’

  His mocking expression gave nothing away. ‘If you’re trying to lead me into admitting adultery as a reason for us to divorce—forget it,’ he said coolly. ‘You’re the one who walked out of our marriage.’

  Frustration surged through Isobel and she wanted to demand a straight answer from him. The idea that he had slept with the women he had been photographed with made her feel sick with jealousy. But as Constantin had pointed out, she had been the one to leave, and she had no right to ask him about his personal life. He was a red-blooded male with a high sex drive, and common sense told her that he was unlikely to have remained celibate for the past two years.

  The adrenalin that had pumped through her veins when she had psyched herself up to see Constantin drained away, and she suddenly felt weary and strangely deflated. It had been a stupid idea to come here.

  She looked down at the divorce petition in her hand and calmly ripped it in half.

  ‘I want a divorce as much as you do, but for the reason that we have lived apart for more than two years. If you continue to state my desertion as a reason, I’ll begin divorce proceedings against you, citing your unreasonable behaviour.’

  He jerked his head back as if she had slapped him and his eyes glittered with anger. ‘My behaviour? What about how you behaved? You were hardly a devoted wife, were you, cara?’ He made the endearment sound like an insult. ‘In fact you went out with your friends so often that I almost forgot I had a wife.’

  ‘I saw my friends because, for some reason that I have never understood, you had turned into the ice man. We were two strangers who happened to live in the same house. But I needed more, Constantin. I needed you...’

  Isobel broke off as the hard gleam in Constantin’s eyes told her she was wasting her breath. ‘I refuse to take part in a slanging match,’ she muttered. She gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s a telling indictment of our marriage that we can’t even agree on how we’re going to end it.’

  She swung away from him and marched up the stairs, her back ramrod-straight. Reaching the ground-floor level, she hurried towards the front door but was forced to halt as the butler finished speaking on the house phone and moved to stand in front of her.

  Whittaker held open the door to the sitting room. ‘The Marquis requested that you wait in here while he takes a shower, and he will join you shortly.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m leaving.’

  Whittaker’s polite smile did not falter. ‘Mr De Severino hopes that you will stay and continue the discussion you began a few minutes ago. Shall I bring you some tea, madam?’

  Before she could argue, Isobel found that she had been steered into the sitting room, and there was a faint click as Whittaker departed and shut the door behind him. She didn’t understand what Constantin was playing at. It was clear they had nothing to discuss that could not be dealt with by their respective divorce lawyers. Her immediate thought was that she was not going to be a puppet controlled by the master puppeteer as had so often happened during their marriage.

  She reached for the door handle just as the door opened and the butler entered carrying a tray with a silver teapot and a cafetière.

  ‘I remembered that you prefer Earl Grey tea, madam,’ he said, smiling as he held out a cup and saucer.

  Good manners prevented Isobel from storming out of the house. She had always got on well with Whittaker, and her problems with her marriage were not the elderly butler’s fault. Suppressing her irritation that Constantin had got his own way as he had so often done in the past, she wandered over to the window. The view of the park was familiar and evoked painful memories.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to my lawyer and instructed him to send a new divorce petition for you to sign. You’ll also have to give a written statement saying that we have lived apart for two years.’

  At the sound of Constantin’s clipped voice Isobel jolted and slopped tea into her saucer. She spun round, disconcerted to find him standing close to her. For such a big man he moved with the silent menace of a panther stalking its prey, she thought ruefully. The black jeans and polo shirt he had changed into emphasised his lethal good looks. His hair was still damp from his recent shower and the citrusy fragrance of soap mixed with his spicy cologne teased her senses.

  ‘Giles still thinks I have good grounds to divorce you for desertion.’ Constantin’s anger that she had thwarted him was evident in his harsh tone. ‘But the legal advice is that it will be quicker to go with the fact that we have been separated for two years. The one thing we can both agree on is that we want a swift end to our marriage,’ he drawled sardonically.

  Determined to hide the pang of hurt that his words evoked, Isobel turned her gaze back to the window and stared once more at the pretty park at the centre of Grosvenor Square.

  ‘When I was pregnant, I often used to stand here and imagine pushing our baby in a pram around the gardens,’ she said softly. ‘Our little girl wo
uld have been almost two and a half now.’

  The shaft of pain in her chest was not as sharp as it had once been, but it was enough to make her catch her breath. Coming back to the house where she had lived when she had been pregnant had opened up the wound in her heart that would never completely heal. She had chosen one of the bedrooms at the back of the house for a nursery, and had been busy planning the colour scheme before she and Constantin had made that fateful trip to Italy.

  She watched him pour himself a cup of coffee and felt a surge of anger that he had not reacted to the mention of their daughter. Nothing had changed, Isobel thought grimly. When she had lost their baby, twenty weeks into her pregnancy, she had been numb with grief. A few times she had tried to talk about the miscarriage with Constantin, but he had rebuffed her and become even more distant, and eventually she had stopped trying to reach him.

  ‘Do you ever think about Arianna?’ The nurse at the hospital had advised them to choose a name for their baby, even though she had been born too early to survive.

  He sipped his coffee, and Isobel noted that he did not meet her gaze. ‘There’s no point dwelling on the past,’ he said shortly. ‘Nothing can change what happened. All we can do is move forwards.’

  Two years ago, she had been chilled by his lack of emotion, but as she looked closely at him and saw a nerve flicker in his cheek she realised that he was tenser than he appeared.

  ‘Is that why you’ve begun divorce proceedings? You want to bury the past?’

  He winced at her deliberate use of the word bury, and Isobel wondered if his mind pictured, as hers did, the small white marble tombstone in the grounds of the chapel at Casa Celeste—the De Severino family’s historic home on the shores of Lake Albano—where they had laid Arianna to rest.

  Constantin’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is there a point to this conversation? I haven’t heard a word from you in two years. Why have you turned up out of the blue?’

  He did not try to disguise his frustration. He had not anticipated this meeting with his soon-to-be ex-wife, and Constantin hated surprises. His shock when he had caught sight of Isobel standing in the doorway of the gym had sparked his anger that she had left him—even though he acknowledged that he had driven her away. She had a hell of a nerve to stroll back into the house, looking so beautiful that he’d been instantly and embarrassingly aroused.

  His temper was not improved when he felt his hand shake as he lifted his cup to his lips and gulped down his coffee, scalding the back of his throat in the process. He did not want her here, stirring up memories of the past that he had successfully kept locked away. An image flashed into his mind of their tiny, perfectly formed baby girl who had never lived. Pain flared inside him, but he controlled it as he always did, by force of will, and blocked out the memories.

  Harder to control was his body’s reaction to Isobel. Unwanted memories were not the only thing she was stirring, Constantin acknowledged self-derisively as he shifted position in an effort to hide the bulge of his arousal. No other woman had ever turned him on as hard and fast as Isobel.

  He remembered the first time he had met her. She had hurtled into his office half an hour late for work, a flurry of honey-blonde hair framing a strikingly beautiful face, and announced that she had been sent by the temp agency to cover for his office assistant who was on maternity leave. He’d cut short her explanation of why she was late, but his impatience had died when he had looked into her wide hazel eyes and felt a shaft of desire so strong that it had literally taken his breath away.

  From that moment his sole aim had been to take her to bed, a feat he’d achieved within the month. Discovering that he was her first lover had elicited emotions he had not believed himself capable of. The weekend they had spent together in Rome had been the best—and worst—of his life.

  It had been the beginning of the nightmares that had haunted him ever since he’d woken in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking, and utterly appalled by the truth that his dream had revealed. He had looked at Isobel sleeping innocently beside him, and realised that for her safety he could not allow their relationship to continue.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SUN GLINTING through the windows turned Isobel’s hair to spun gold. A sensation he could not define tugged in Constantin’s chest, but he ignored it and forced himself to study her objectively.

  Her clothes bore the hallmarks of superb design; the close-fitting jeans drew his attention to her endlessly long legs and her tee shirt snugly moulded her firm breasts. A gold chain around her neck was her only item of jewellery. His mouth thinned as he glanced at her bare left hand and pictured her wedding ring and diamond engagement ring that she had left behind when she had abandoned their marriage to pursue her career.

  Her physical appearance had changed little in two years. Her face, with its high cheekbones and firm jaw that gave a clue to her determined character, was as beautiful as he remembered, and her hazel eyes fringed with long lashes were clear and intelligent. Her natural blonde hair was sexily tousled, and the just-got-out-of-bed style made him want to run his fingers through the silky layers.

  His eyes sought hers, and he was intrigued when she met his gaze with calm self-assurance where once she would have blushed and looked away. There was something very alluring about a woman who was comfortable in her own skin and Constantin felt an ache of desire in his groin, but, perversely he was irritated by the self-confidence that she had developed after she had left him.

  ‘I’m not the only one of us to have featured in the press,’ he said abruptly. ‘The Stone Ladies’ success has been meteoric and the band has won a raft of music awards. How does it feel to be a famous star?’

  Isobel shrugged. ‘Frankly, it seems unreal. In two years the band has gone from playing small gigs in pubs to performing in huge arenas in front of thousands of people. Success is amazing, of course, but if I’m honest I find the media interest in my private life hard to deal with.’

  ‘Particularly as the paparazzi are fascinated by your relationship with one of the male band members,’ Constantin said sardonically. ‘I’m guessing the record company want the band’s image to be squeaky clean for your teenage fans, which is why your profile on social media sites makes no mention of the fact that you are married.’

  Isobel sighed, sensing that they were heading towards an old argument. ‘I’ve explained that Ryan is just a friend. I’m close to everyone in the band. We grew up together and Ben, Carly and Ryan are like my family. You never understood how important they are to me and I know you resented my friendships, but the truth was that the more you pushed me away, the more I needed to be with people who cared about me, people I could trust.’

  Constantin frowned. ‘I never gave you any reason not to trust me.’

  ‘I don’t mean I suspected you of seeing other women behind my back.’ In a way, if he had been unfaithful it would have been easier to understand, Isobel thought painfully. She would have been hurt, but she would have accepted that she’d made a mistake by marrying a notorious playboy, and eventually she would have got over him.

  She stared at his handsome face and her heart clenched. She had written songs about falling in love at first sight but she’d never really believed it could happen—until she’d met Constantin.

  When she had hurried into his office on her first day at her new job, her eyes had crashed with his cobalt-blue gaze, and the world had tilted on its axis. She had expected the CEO of a world-famous company to be older, possibly with thinning hair and a thickening waistline, but Constantin was a superb example of masculine perfection, with exotic film-star looks and the commanding presence of a world leader. She had felt intimidated by his height and powerful build, by his smouldering sensuality that made her acutely aware of her femininity. But then he had smiled and she had felt a yearning ache in the pit of her stomach that she had instinctively known only he could assuag
e.

  Constantin put his coffee cup on the tray, and his eyes narrowed on Isobel’s flushed face as he wondered what thoughts she was trying to hide behind the sweep of her long eyelashes. She looked amazing, he acknowledged. Following the miscarriage she had barely eaten and had lost weight dramatically, but now her slim figure was firm and toned. Did she have a lover? The thought oozed its poison into his head. She was a beautiful, sensual woman, and it was difficult to believe she had lived like a nun for the past two years.

  He had seen her photograph on posters advertising the Stone Ladies’ new album. There were pictures of her on giant billboards around London wearing a skirt that was barely more than a wide belt, which showed off her lissom thighs. She was a pin-up girl, a male fantasy, but he had no need of fantasies when he had X-rated memories of making love to her.

  Those memories crowded his mind and his arousal became a potent, throbbing force. The atmosphere in the sitting room altered subtly. He heard the quickening sound of his breathing, or was it Isobel’s? He looked into her eyes and watched them darken as her pupils dilated, and he knew she was remembering the white-hot hunger that had consumed them in the past and was simmering between them now.

  Goosebumps prickled on the back of Isobel’s neck when she saw the hard glitter in Constantin’s eyes. The realisation that he still desired her filled her with panic and undeniable excitement. She tore her gaze from him and stared desperately at the empty teacup and saucer in her hand, suddenly realising that she was gripping the delicate bone china so tightly it was in danger of breaking. She took a step towards the coffee table, intending to put the cup and saucer on the tray, but her heel caught on the edge of the rug and she stumbled. Immediately two strong arms caught her, and when she regained her balance she found herself standing so close to Constantin that the tips of her breasts grazed his chest.