To Wear His Ring Again

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘If that’s true, why didn’t the pair of you scotch the rumours of an affair?’

  She shrugged. ‘We told the truth when we said that we are good friends. The press decided that there must be more to our relationship, and we didn’t deny the rumours because, while attention was on us, it allowed Ryan’s girlfriend to escape the media’s interest.’ Isobel hesitated. ‘I guess it is okay to tell you, as Ryan is going to make a public announcement in the next day or so. Emily’s father is a well-known politician and a member of the government. If it had become known that Ryan was dating her, they would have been constantly followed by the paparazzi.’

  ‘So, being a loyal friend, you allowed the speculation about your relationship with Fellows to continue,’ Constantin said grimly. ‘You did not care if I heard the rumours that my wife was involved with another man. Didn’t you think you owed me, your husband, your loyalty?’

  ‘Not when hardly a week went by without a picture of you with a different beautiful woman in the newspapers. How dare you accuse me of disloyalty when you paraded the members of your...your harem in public?’

  Isobel jerked her eyes from him and stared out of the car window, breathing hard. She was not going to admit how hurt she had felt when she’d seen pictures of Constantin with other women. If she was scrupulously honest with herself, she had not denied to the press the rumours of an affair with Ryan because she had hoped that Constantin would realise that she wasn’t pining for him.

  The simmering tension inside the car stretched her nerves to snapping point, and she felt relieved when he parked outside her apartment building.

  ‘Thanks for the lift.’ She glanced at his handsome profile and bit her lip. ‘I don’t understand why you said you’ve changed your mind about the divorce. Separating permanently is the only sensible thing to do. Our marriage is well and truly over. The truth is that it would have been better if we had never met,’ she said in a low tone.

  His head shot round and his blue eyes glittered fiercely. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  If they had never met, she would never have held her tiny baby girl in her arms. Arianna had never lived in the world, but she lived on in Isobel’s heart.

  ‘We were good together.’ Constantin’s husky accent caused her stomach muscles to contract.

  ‘In bed!’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘But marriage has to have more than sex for it to work. Trust, for instance. You resented my friendships with the other members of the band. That’s clear from the way you were so ready to believe I was having an affair with Ryan. Sometimes I had the feeling that you wished you could lock me away in a tower, away from all other human contact.’ Her voice shook. ‘And yet you were so remote and cold towards me that you can hardly blame me for wanting to be with my friends.’

  An image flashed into Constantin’s mind of his father and stepmother, and inside his head he heard Lorena’s impassioned cry.

  I feel smothered, Franco. You’re jealous of my friends, and of any man I happen to glance at. You are even jealous of your own son!

  Dio! Had Isobel felt smothered by him, just as Lorena had by his father? He had tried to fight his possessive feelings and the dark jealousy that he feared he had inherited from his father, but in doing so he had come across as cold and uncaring.

  Isobel got out of the car and Constantin watched her walk towards the front door of the apartment building. She was exquisitely desirable in her gold dress that clung to her slender figure. ‘Our marriage is well and truly over,’ she had insisted. He frowned as he thought of his uncle’s threat to appoint his cousin Maurio as Chairman of DSE.

  Nothing was going to stop him from claiming the position that was rightfully his.

  Growling a curse, he flung open the car door and strode after his wife.

  He caught up with her as she stood on the top step and searched in her bag for her door key. ‘Invite me in, Isabella, so that we can talk.’

  ‘We have nothing to talk about.’ Isobel located her key in the bottom of her bag and gripped it tightly. Her composure was near to breaking point, and she was desperate to reach her flat before she did something stupid like fling her arms around Constantin and beg him to hold her close and never let her go. Her eyes were drawn to his, and the sensual heat in his gaze made her tremble. ‘We’re no good for each other,’ she whispered.

  ‘Not true, tesorino.’

  His use of the affectionate term that he had often spoken to her at the beginning of their marriage undermined her defences, and she was unprepared when he slid his arm around her waist and pulled her towards him.

  His dark head descended and he claimed her lips, kissing her with a fiery passion that lit a flame inside Isobel. This had always been good for both of them, she acknowledged. Sex—white-hot and wickedly erotic! She had been inexperienced when she had met Constantin but he had discovered her secret desires and had used his knowledge mercilessly to take her repeatedly to a sensual nirvana.

  She was melting inside. Heat flooded between her thighs and her body was impatient for more, more of the exquisite pleasure promised by the bold sweep of Constantin’s tongue inside her mouth. She wanted him. She would always want him, she thought despairingly. But he was no good for her.

  He traced his lips over her cheek and the slender arch of her neck. ‘Invite me in,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Let me remind you of how good we are together.’

  ‘No!’ Determination not to take a path that she knew would lead to heartache gave her the strength to push him away. ‘Sex isn’t the solution. In our case, it was the problem,’ she said shakily. ‘We were drawn together by desire, and if we had just had an affair it would probably have burned out as quickly as your affairs with other women. When I fell pregnant you felt obliged to marry me.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I’ll never forget Arianna, but it’s time we both moved on with our lives, Constantin.’

  That was easy for Isobel to say, he thought grimly. The Stone Ladies were hugely successful, but his career at DSE, his life for heaven’s sake, was about to go into freefall unless he could persuade her to come back to him. He didn’t doubt that he could persuade her back into his bed. He had felt her tremble when he’d kissed her and knew she shared his hunger. If he drew her back into his arms, he was confident that she would offer little resistance. But his conscience stayed him. Her clear hazel eyes reflected her confusion. Undoubtedly she desired him. But for her, it wasn’t enough, and Constantin knew he was no more capable of satisfying her emotional needs now than he had been two years ago.

  As Isobel shut the front door on Constantin and walked across the lobby to the lift, she assured herself that she was relieved he had not tried to detain her. She knew she had been right to turn down having sex with him, but her body did not agree and the dragging ache in the pit of her stomach was almost as bad as the ache in her heart.

  ‘Evening, Miss Blake,’ the concierge greeted her. ‘The parcel that you said you were expecting to be delivered didn’t arrive today.’

  ‘I’ll have to phone the courier tomorrow. Goodnight, Albert.’

  As the lift carried her to the fourth floor she focused her thoughts on the missing parcel, the friend she’d arranged to meet for lunch the following day, anything but Constantin. Her life was good the way it was. Why alter the status quo and allow him to turn her world upside down again?

  She had no idea why he had suddenly decided that he didn’t want a divorce. There was a time when she would have immediately given in to him, in the desperate hope that perhaps he did have feelings for her. She had been pathetic, Isobel thought grimly. But after she’d had the miscarriage Constantin had let her down badly by failing to support her. She was no longer in awe of him, and, although she had a sneaking suspicion that she would always be in love with him, she understood that he was an ordinary mortal—a complex man, certainly, but he had his faults just as she did. Unfortunately she s
imply could not believe that they would be able to resolve the differences that had driven them apart.

  The lift stopped and the doors opened. The front door of her flat was a couple of hundred yards along the corridor. Isobel glanced down to select the appropriate key on the key ring she was holding, when something, a sixth sense, warned her that she wasn’t alone.

  ‘Who’s there...?’ She looked over her shoulder down the brightly lit, empty corridor, and cursed her overactive imagination.

  ‘Hello, Izzy.’

  She spun round, and her heart cannoned into her ribs as a man stepped out from a shadowed recess and walked towards her. She did not know him, but she had recognised his voice. ‘David?’

  He was shortish, thinnish—nondescript. For a moment Isobel wondered why she had been so worried about this very ordinary-looking, middle-aged man.

  ‘I knew you must remember me.’ He smiled pleasantly. ‘You felt the connection between us when we met at a Stone Ladies concert. We were together in a previous world and we will be together again in the next one, my darling.’

  The strange expression in his eyes sent a frisson of fear through Isobel, and she sensed that beneath his outwardly benign manner he was a mass of nervous energy and excitement that she found unnerving.

  ‘I bought these for you.’ It was only then that she registered he was holding a cardboard box. Something in the man’s demeanour told Isobel to remain calm and play along with him. Hoping he did not notice that her hands were shaking, she took the box from him and opened the lid. The sickly-sweet scent of oriental lilies that pervaded the air was so strong she almost gagged.

  Feeling that he expected a response from her, she murmured, ‘They’re lovely.’ She stared at the white flowers and repressed a shudder.

  ‘You remind me of a lily, beautiful and pure.’ David’s voice suddenly changed. ‘I thought you were pure, until I watched you kissing another man tonight.’

  Isobel swallowed. ‘You were there...at the party?’

  ‘Where else would I be but with you, my angel? You belong to me, Izzy, and no other man shall try to steal you from me.’

  Isobel tensed as the stalker took a step closer. Her key was digging into the palm of her hand and she glanced along the corridor, trying to estimate the distance to her front door, wondering what her chances were of getting past David and making it to the safety of her flat. She did not dare risk it. Although he was not physically imposing, she sensed that he was stronger than he looked. His pale eyes were watching her intently and the manic gleam in his gaze chilled her blood.

  ‘Come away with me.’ His voice hardened when she shook her head. ‘It is time that you and I left this earthly world.’

  The hell it was! Isobel’s survival instinct kicked in. She threw the box of lilies at the stalker’s face before she spun round and raced down the corridor. Of course the flowers were not a substantial weapon, but her actions had surprised him and given her a vital few seconds’ head start. She heard his angry shout, heard his footsteps as he chased after her, but she resisted the temptation to look behind her as she reached the lift, which was thankfully still waiting at the fourth floor. She hit the button to open the doors. Come on, come on! she pleaded as they slid apart agonisingly slowly. She heard heavy breathing close to her, and she screamed as a hand grabbed her bare shoulder.

  In desperation she rammed her elbow hard into the stalker’s stomach. He groaned and released his grip. She fell into the lift and held down the button to close the doors. Only then did she look round and glimpse his crazed expression before the metal doors obliterated him from view.

  As the lift descended she tried to marshal her thoughts. How had David gained entry to the apartment building? The concierge always vetted visitors, and some of her friends had joked that it would be easier to break into the Bank of England than slip past Albert. Reaction was setting in, and she felt sick as the lift arrived at ground level.

  ‘Miss Blake?’ The concierge looked up from his desk. ‘Is something the matter?’

  Isobel did not reply. Through the glass doors of the building she saw Constantin’s tall figure illuminated by the street lamp. He was not looking in her direction as he lowered his mobile phone from his ear and walked towards his car. Impelled by an instinct she did not even try to question, she flew across the lobby.

  ‘Constantin—wait!’

  The sound of Isobel’s voice drew Constantin’s thoughts from the phone conversation he’d just had with the finance director at the New York office. The East Coast of the USA was five hours behind England, and Jeff Zuckerman had seemed blithely unconcerned that it was midnight in London.

  Constantin glanced round and dismissed work issues from his mind when he saw Isobel running towards him. Her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders and he felt a tightening in his groin as he watched the bounce of her firm breasts as she ran.

  ‘Have you changed your mind about inviting me up to your flat, Isabella?’ His smile disappeared along with his sense of pleasurable anticipation when he saw the look of terror on her face. ‘Santa Madre!’ He caught her as she literally threw herself into his arms and held her tightly as tremors shook her body. ‘What the hell...?’

  ‘He was waiting for me outside my flat. He’s so weird.’ Her words were jumbled and incoherent. ‘He wanted me to go with him, and he gave me funeral flowers.’

  Constantin cupped her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘Who was waiting for you, cara?’

  ‘David...the man who has been stalking me.’ Isobel released her breath on a ragged sigh as the fear drained out of her. She felt safe with Constantin. It did not even occur to her that her blind trust in him revealed perhaps too much of her deepest feelings.

  ‘Stalking you?’ Constantin’s eyes glittered fiercely. ‘Do you mean to say that your safety has been threatened by this man? For how long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have arranged security measures, hired a bodyguard to protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need a bodyguard.’ The stark terror that had gripped Isobel when David had confronted her outside her flat seemed like an overreaction now, and she felt embarrassed that she had involved Constantin. The determined set of his jaw warned her that he would not let up until she had told him everything.

  ‘I’ve been getting nuisance calls from a man called David for a few months. I’ve changed my landline number and mobile-phone number, but somehow he managed to get hold of my new numbers.

  ‘He said we had met at a Stone Ladies concert...but I don’t remember meeting him. He phoned me just before I went on stage tonight and said that he would be watching me tonight.’ She bit her lip. ‘I spent all evening wondering if one of the guests was the stalker. When I stepped out of the lift after you’d brought me home he appeared in the corridor.’

  The memory of David’s wild-eyed expression sent a shiver through Isobel. ‘He said it was time that he and I left this earthly world. I’m not sure what he meant.’ She hadn’t waited around to find out, she thought, and shivered again.

  A nerve flickering in Constantin’s jaw was the only indication of his barely restrained fury. Give him two minutes alone with the guy who got his kicks out of frightening Isobel, and the stalker wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone stalk a defenceless woman, he thought grimly. The glimmer of tears in Isobel’s eyes and the realisation that she was not nearly as calm as she was pretending to be stopped him from rushing up to the fourth floor to look for the intruder.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Isobel said shakily. ‘I have a direct number to report any incidents with the stalker.’

  The terror she had felt when David had accosted her was fading, and she felt angry with herself for not telling the man to get lost. He was probably a harmless overenthusiastic fan, she told herself, although th
e wild expression in his eyes suggested the possibility that he had mental-health issues.

  She remained in the lobby with Albert while Constantin went up to the fourth floor. The concierge was adamant that no one fitting the stalker’s description had entered the apartment building, and he was deeply upset when he explained that the CCTV system had developed a fault and was due to be repaired the next day.

  The police arrived to take a statement. An officer joined Constantin in searching every floor of the apartment block, but all they found were a few white lily petals. ‘The intruder must have somehow accessed the building by the fire escape,’ the police officer in charge told Isobel. ‘It’s a pity for us and lucky for him that the CCTV is down or we would have his face on film.’

  Because the stalker had not assaulted her, or made a specific threat to harm her, there was little more that the police could do except to advise Isobel on measures she should take to ensure her personal safety. While she was giving her statement she saw Constantin walk out of the flat. She assumed he felt he had done all that he could to help her, but she wished he had stayed a few minutes longer so that she could have thanked him.

  After the police had gone, she purposefully concentrated on the mundane tasks of removing her make-up and washing her face, before exchanging the gold evening gown for her favourite item of nightwear—namely one of Constantin’s tee shirts that she had taken with her when she had called time on their marriage. Despite her best efforts not to think about the stalker, the memory of his strangeness lingered in her mind, and although she knew she was being ridiculous she checked inside the wardrobe and the hall cupboard to make sure he had not somehow gained entry to her flat.

  There was no question of trying to sleep. She would make a milky drink and watch TV for a while. Walking into the sitting room, she stopped dead and drew a sharp breath.

  ‘How did you get in here?’