by Various
Her hesitation caught him on the raw, tugging on nerves that suddenly felt painfully exposed, desperately vulnerable. A terrible sense of oppression shot through him, a prediction of something that was coming that he wasn’t going to like at all.
‘Because you won’t give me Marco. And that’s what…who I want…nothing else. The only thing in the world that I want is my son.’
If she had spat right in his face he couldn’t have been more appalled. As it was, he felt the sense of dark shock reverberate through him so that he released her at once, almost dropping her to the ground as if she had turned into a poisonous snake in his arms. From wanting to hold her so close, he jumped to the sense that holding her would contaminate him in the space of a single devastated heartbeat.
‘Marco? You came here for Marco? To take him…’
Unable to find the words, Lucy just nodded, then immediately realised that that was just what she should not have done. She hadn’t come to take Marco, not in the way that Ricardo meant. But it was already too late. She had nodded and she watched Ricardo’s face close down, the tightness of his jaw and the darkness in his eyes making her shiver.
‘Never,’ he said and the word was disgust, an ultimatum, a warning and a threat all rolled into one. ‘After what you did? Not in my lifetime.’
‘But—’ Lucy’s voice broke on the word. ‘I can explain…’
‘You can try. But I cannot imagine that anything you say will ever convince me.’
He paused, waited, head slightly tilted to one side, giving her such a pointed look that she practically felt it scrape over her skin like the sharp end of a needle, raising a raw, red weal.
He would listen, that look said, but he would not believe. He was already armoured against her. Even if she mentally beat her fists hard against his unyielding defences until they were raw and bleeding, he would not let her reach him.
‘So…’ he goaded when she still didn’t speak, couldn’t find a way to start ‘…explain.’
She wished she could. But how could she say anything when those cold black eyes seemed to probe her skull as her brain frantically tried different ways of beginning and discarded each one as unusable? At least that was what she thought she was doing but her thoughts seemed so completely unfocused that she found that nothing she tried made sense. And nothing would form clearly so that she could follow it through for herself, let alone explain it to Ricardo so that he would understand and believe her.
Because he had to believe her.
‘You can’t, can you? Because there isn’t an explanation. Not one that would satisfy anyone else. And certainly not someone who loves Marco.’
‘I love him…’
Her voice sounded frail, just a thin thread of sound—what she could hear of it over the buzzing inside her skull. It was as if a swarm of bees had suddenly invaded her head and were swirling round and round inside it.
‘Love him!’ Ricardo scorned ‘How can you say that? How dare you say that? You left him! Abandoned him…’
‘I know and that was wrong—but I was ill. I’m back now. And I want…’
‘You want?’ Ricardo echoed, his voice a vicious snarl. ‘You want—always what you want! Well, let me tell you, cara, that what you want is not going to happen—never. Not while I live. Not while I can stop you. And if “I love him” is the best damn explanation that you can come up with then, to be honest, lady, I don’t want to hear it.’
He was turning away as he spoke, using his body as well as his face, which was set hard and cold against her, to express the way he felt.
‘Ricardo, please…’
She had to stop him; had to make him listen. Lurching forward, she tried to grab at his arm, to hold him back, but missed. Her hand, aiming for the hard strength of his arm, found instead only empty air and waved wildly, frantically. The awkward movement threw her right off balance, jarring her head nastily.
The buzzing in her head grew louder, wilder and a burning haze seemed to rise before her eyes, blinding her completely.
‘Ricardo!’ she cried on a very different note as the world swung round her, lurching violently. Her hand groped for support, found it for a moment in the feel of muscle under warm, hair-hazed skin.
Then she lost it again as her grip loosened completely. A wave of darkness broke over her and she slid to the ground in a total faint.
CHAPTER SIX
‘ARE you awake?’
The voice, huskily male and disturbingly familiar, broke through the clouds of sleep that filled Lucy’s head, making her stir in the bed, frowning slightly as her head moved on the pillows.
Softer pillows than she remembered. She must have got used to the conditions in the boarding house. The first night they had felt so rough and lumpy, but now…
‘Lucy! It is time to wake up.’
The voice came again, rough and impatient now. It broke into the wonderful oblivion of much needed sleep that had hidden everything from her, almost wiping her memory clear of all that had happened.
Until the sound of Ricardo’s voice brought it all back in a way that had her bolting upright in the bed, staring wide-eyed at the figure standing in the middle of the room.
‘What has happened? Where am I?’
‘Buon giorno, bella Lucia,’ Ricardo drawled lazily, strolling across the room to lounge at the end of the bed.
Propping one hip against the ornately carved wooden bed frame, he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the jeans he wore with a deep red polo shirt, open at the throat.
‘You have no need to panic; you are quite safe. You are in the Villa San Felice, just as you were last night. So one might say that in fact you have come home.’
‘Home is not a word I associate with this place!’ Lucy tossed at him as she tried to collect her scrambled thoughts, feeling that panicking was exactly what she should be doing. ‘Nowhere where you are could ever be home to me.’
She was more aware of her surroundings now. Aware enough to recognise and be thankful for the fact that at least this was just one of the smaller bedrooms in the east wing of the villa. To her intense relief, the heavy wooden furniture and the soft blue curtains and carpet were not the ones she remembered from the room she had shared with Ricardo in her time as his wife. She didn’t feel that she would have been able to hold herself together if she had woken to find herself in their suite.
‘So how did I get here? What happened?’
Ricardo pushed a long hand through the darkness of his hair, disturbing its sleek black strands and his piercing eyes never left her flushed face as he observed every change of expression, every fleeting emotion that crossed it.
‘You were taken ill—you passed out. Do you not recall?’
‘No…I…’
But then she did remember everything in a rush. From the moment she had set out on her attempt to get onto the island, to see Marco…
Marco…
‘I fainted,’ she managed, piecing the events back together in her thoughts. ‘And you…’
The memory of Ricardo’s voice, his cruel words, swirled inside her head, making her feel dizzy just from the thought of it.
You are one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If not my absolute worst.
‘How did I get to be here? Who brought me…’
‘I brought you here,’ Ricardo inserted calmly, the smooth tones of his voice sliding into the rising hysteria of hers. ‘And yes—before you ask, I put you to bed.’
‘You…’
If he had slapped her across the face he couldn’t have brought her up sharp any more forcefully than that. Suddenly she became aware of the fact that she was sitting upright against the pillows with the soft comfort of the downy quilt slipping down to fall around her waist, exposing the top half of her body.
The top half of her body that was now wearing only the thin, plain bra that cupped her breasts.
‘You undressed me!’
Hot blood rushed into her cheeks, then ebbed away again almos
t at once as she snatched at the coverings, yanking them up to her neck to conceal herself, protect her body from those probing eyes. But just too late to erase the sensation of his searching gaze raking over her skin, flaying off a much-needed protective layer. It was impossible not to remember how he had once used to undress her—undress her so softly, so gently, or at other times almost ripping the clothes from her with such a wild urgency that her heart threatened to burst with just the memory of it.
‘I undressed you,’ Ricardo confirmed.
His beautiful mouth twitched, just once, in an expression that could have been anything—amusement, annoyance, contempt or just plain triumph. Lucy had no idea which, and the hot embarrassment that was flooding her thoughts left her incapable of even trying.
‘And why should that disturb you? Surely it was better…’
‘Better!’ Lucy interrupted, still struggling with the uncomfortable feeling of being…violated was the only word that came to mind. She knew that Ricardo would dismiss it as being exaggerated and overblown, and deep down she knew that it was. But it was how she felt all the same at just the thought of those long tanned hands unbuttoning her shirt, sliding it from her, taking her jeans…
‘And tell me just why it’s better to have you manhandle me…’
‘I did not manhandle you!’
She’d caught him on the raw there, sending sparks into the darkness of his eyes and making him bite out the words in a tone of barely controlled fury that had her flinching back against the pillows and pulling the duvet even more tightly around her in spite of the warmth of the sun that was coming in through the narrow arched window. Beyond that window she could hear the calm blue waters of the lake lapping lazily against the stony shore and then ebbing back again with a faint sucking sound as they pulled against the tiny pebbles. It seemed unnaturally loud in the dangerous silence that descended before Ricardo drew in a long harsh breath.
‘I have never ‘manhandled’ a woman in my life and I do not intend to start with my wife. Because surely that is the point here—that I—as your husband—performed this duty for you myself rather than leave it to a stranger.’
‘You are not my husband!’
Lucy wouldn’t have believed that it was possible for Ricardo’s expression to grow any more glacial or for the cold anger in his eyes to burn any more savagely but clearly her words had provoked him into darker fury as he flung a glance of bitter recrimination in her direction.
‘We took the vows,’ he declared icily. ‘We were married.’
‘But only to make sure that our son was born legitimate with two married parents to be named on his birth certificate. Beyond that, the whole thing meant nothing—and the vows less than nothing. I didn’t want to marry you and you…’
‘I wanted you as my wife.’
‘Because I was Marco’s mother. Oh, come on, Ricardo, are you telling me that if I hadn’t got pregnant you would still have asked me to marry you?’
‘No…’
‘No.’ She tried to make it sound as if his answer satisfied her, but the truth was that there was no satisfaction to be found in the single word. ‘I thought not.’
‘I wanted you…’
‘Oh, I know…’ She couldn’t keep the bleakness, the bitterness from her voice. ‘You made that only too plain. But you could have had me in your bed without tying yourself—without tying both of us—down to marriage. But I got pregnant and that trapped us, Ricardo. Trapped us in a marriage that neither of us wanted.’
It was weak, it was foolish—it was downright masochistic—but all the same she couldn’t stop herself from pausing, waiting just a second, just long enough for her stupidly vulnerable heart to give a couple of unsteady, jerky beats just in case Ricardo actually thought about denying that statement.
Well, if she’d hoped it might happen then she was destined for disappointment. He remained stubbornly silent, forcing her to go on.
‘And now I want to get out of it. We both want to get out of it. Which is why it’s not…appropriate…for you to…’
‘For me to do what?’ Ricardo cut in, satire burning in the words. ‘Not appropriate for me to help a woman who is evidently unwell and who has fainted at my feet? Not appropriate to pick her up and carry her inside, put her into a comfortable bed—and perhaps remove her outer clothing so that she may sleep more comfortably? I think that only you would assign some sort of sexual motive to that.’
His cynicism lashed at her, making her flinch inwardly. Her face was burning once more but this time with a very different sort of embarrassment. Hearing it like that, it did sound so perfectly innocent. Did she really think that she was so sexually irresistible that he was unable to keep his hands off her?
If she had been foolish enough to even consider any such thought then his tone and the blazing fury in his eyes would have very soon disillusioned her. Ricardo might have once been so determined and so hungry to get her into his bed that he had broken what he had told her was normally an indestructible rule and made love to her without using a condom, but it clearly was not the case any more. He had seen her as nothing more than some woman who needed help and he had acted accordingly.
‘You did that?’ Her whole body was burning with embarrassment so that the words quavered on her tongue. ‘Thank you—and I’m sorry.’
A swift, curt nod was Ricardo’s only acknowledgement of her response and almost immediately it seemed that his mind had moved on to something else.
‘Someone had to take care of you. You obviously weren’t taking care of yourself. Tell me, Lucia—when did you last eat?’
The question was unexpected, catching her off guard and forcing her to consider.
‘Yesterday…’ she said slowly, still thinking about it.
‘Are you sure?’
No, she wasn’t sure. Yesterday morning she had known that she was going to try to get onto the island. That she was going to try to see Marco. And that had left her nerves so tightly strung that her stomach had clenched painfully from the moment that she had woken up, and it had stayed like that all day. And the day before…
‘You told me that you had been ill.’
She’d told him but, if he was honest, he hadn’t considered that it was serious, Ricardo admitted to himself. But when she had collapsed at his feet then he had had to take notice. And picking her up to carry her indoors had sent a sensation like a brutal kick straight to his guts.
She had lost so much more weight than he had realised. In his arms she had felt as fragile and vulnerable as a lost bird, one that had fallen from the nest before it had quite learned how to fly. Beneath the protection of her clothing, she was skin and bone, and the way that stabbed at his conscience was uncomfortable and disturbing.
‘But you didn’t say what was wrong with you.’
He’d touched on a raw nerve there. Those concealing eyelids flickered up, fast but hesitant, and the blue eyes flashed one swift, wary and defensive look in his direction before she stared down again, focusing on where her hands were twisting in the protection of the quilt, revealing an uncertainty she didn’t want him to know about.
Yesterday he had wanted to hate her. It had been easy to hate her when she had come sneaking onto the island like a thief in the night, invading the world he had built around Marco since she had walked out on them. He hadn’t wanted to listen then.
And hatred—hatred and rejection—had been uppermost in his mind when she had declared to his face the truth of why she was here. That she had come to try to claim Marco. Then his rage had been like a red mist in front of his eyes and he had had to turn away from her rather than give in to the murderous fury that boiled inside him.
He wished he still felt like that. To stay feeling that way would have been so much simpler. It would have made things so much more easy and straightforward. This woman had walked out on their marriage, their child so carelessly and selfishly, without even a backward look. Now she was back, walking into the life he had made without her.
And demanding her son.
No!
Even now the roar of rejection was wild and savage inside his head. It obliterated every other consideration in a storm of savage feeling. It felt wonderful, simple, strong—and right.
But then she had fainted. She had turned white, all the blood draining from her face, had just seemed to shrivel up at his feet. She had lain there unconscious and he had had to kneel beside her, checking her pulse, her breathing, her temperature. Knowing that he had to take her somewhere more comfortable, he had had to bend to lift her up…
And that was when everything had changed.
‘No, I didn’t say,’ Lucy flung at him now. ‘Are you saying you want to know what happened? Do you really…’
She had to break off the question as a knock came at the door. Of course—Tonia with the food he had told her to prepare for Lucy. Food it was obvious she needed.
‘Eat your breakfast,’ he commanded gruffly. ‘Then we’ll talk.’
‘I want to talk now…’ Lucy protested, struggling to sit up enough to take the tray on her knees without letting the covers fall down at the same time.
The sudden pretence of modesty set his teeth on edge so that with a muttered imprecation under his breath, he strode to the wardrobe and wrenched open the door. Snatching a white robe from a hanger inside, he tossed it in Lucy’s direction, gesturing to the maid to leave at the same time.
‘You need to eat.’
Now she was trying to pull on the robe while still balancing the tray.
‘Dio santo!’
Clamping his jaw tight shut against the irritation that almost escaped him, he lifted the tray again, carrying it to the small table set in the bay window and dumping it down. Then he moved back to the bed, taking the robe from her while she still struggled with it and holding it open for her to get into it.
‘If it will speed up the process, I assure you I am not looking,’ he told her satirically when she still hesitated.
He didn’t have to look—the memory of every inch of her body was etched onto his brain. And not just from last night, when he had taken the shirt and jeans from her unconscious body. No, the memories he had were from the time when they had been together. When her warm, smooth skin and long slender limbs had been a source of endless delight. When he had known the scent of her, the taste of her, every intimate inch of her.