Had he been mistaken, or had there been the glisten of tears in those eyes just a moment before?

Ricardo found himself wondering. And did she know what it did to him to see the way that her sharp white teeth had dug into the pink softness of her lower lip as she had looked down at their little boy?

He had lost any ability to read her expression, thrown off balance by what he had just learned. He had trusted her once, and that had had such shocking repercussions that he had vowed never to do so again. But this was very different. Vicious guilt clawed at him at the thought that his already hardened prejudice against her might have blinded him to the truth, driving him to misinterpret her behaviour after Marco’s birth.

He should wait and watch, see what happened, he resolved—in the same moment that another, more primitive response shook his mental balance even harder.

Dio santo, but he had had to fight with himself not to react on the most basic instinctive level. Every male impulse had urged him to reach out for her and pull her to him. To kiss away the imprint of her teeth in her flesh and soothe it with his tongue. He wanted to taste her again, know the soft sweetness of her mouth, explore the moist interior and kiss them both to the verge of oblivion.

Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading. You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com

Recent titles by the same author:

CORDERO’S FORCED BRIDE

BEDDED BY THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE

SPANISH BILLIONAIRE, INNOCENT WIFE

THE GREEK TYCOON’S UNWILLING WIFE

THE SICILIAN’S RED-HOT REVENGE

SICILIAN HUSBAND, BLACKMAILED BRIDE

KEPT FOR HER BABY

BY

KATE WALKER

MILLS & BOON® Pure reading pleasure™

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Anne and Gerry, to celebrate

this very special Caerleon Writers’ Holiday.

CHAPTER ONE

THE heat of the day was fading from the atmosphere and the warm air was slowly beginning to cool. The shadows of evening had started to gather as Lucy carefully brought the small, scruffy rowing boat up to the beach where the edge of the tiny island sloped down to the lake and jumped out.

The cool shallow water swirled around her bare feet, coming up ankle deep, just below the rolled up cuffs of her blue cargo pants, as she tugged the small craft onto the shore, biting her lip as she heard the raw, scraping sound its hull made in the sand.

Would anyone hear that? She couldn’t afford to be caught now, still too far away from the house to achieve her aim. If one of the small army of security guards that Ricardo employed had heard the noise and came to investigate then she was lost before she had even started. She would be escorted off the island, taken back on to the Italian mainland and dumped back into the tiny, shabby boarding house which was the only place she could afford to stay this week.

This vital, desperately important week.

If she managed stay in Italy at all. Once Ricardo knew she was back he was far more likely to decide that he wanted her out of the country as well. Out of Italy and out of his life for good. Just as he had believed that she was already.

‘Oh, help.’

Realising that she was holding her breath, she let it go again on a raw, despondent sigh, pushing a hand through the tumbled blonde hair that had escaped from the band she had fastened it back with as her clouded blue eyes flicked rapidly, urgently from side to side, trying to see if she could spot anyone approaching. If someone had been alerted by the sound of the boat on the sand then surely they should be here by now?

It had to be safe to move. Dipping into the boat, she snatched up her canvas shoes, carrying them to the edge of the beach before she sank down onto the grass to dust off her feet and pull on the footwear.

She wished she could pull the rowing boat up further on the shore. Perhaps even cover it with leaves or branches so that it was more fully concealed from view. But she didn’t have the strength to move it any further and the impatient, nervous thudding of her heart urged her to take other action, move on quickly.

Now that she was here, she really couldn’t delay any more. She’d waited and planned for this so long, making careful preparations, and she couldn’t do so any longer. From the moment that her letter to Ricardo had been returned to her unopened, she had known that this was her only way. She had to take matters into her own hands and do the only thing possible.

She’d tried the polite way, the civilised way and had been firmly rebuffed. She’d tried to appeal to Ricardo’s better nature but it seemed that he didn’t have one—at least not as far as she was concerned.

And so she’d been forced to come here like this, in secret. Like a thief in the night she had come back to the island in the gathering dusk, finding her way to the one spot where she knew that, tight as Ricardo’s security was, it was just possible to sneak up close when hidden behind some bushes that overhung the lake. Paddling rather than rowing so as to be as silent as she could, she’d managed to get onto the shore without being spotted and now she could only hope that her luck would hold as she made her way to the house.

Pausing under the shady protection of a big cypress tree, Lucy found that she was blinking back bitter tears as she stared up at the huge neo-Gothic villa that rose up before her at the top of the lushly green sloping gardens. Carefully shaped terraces with ornate stone balustrades linked by flights of steps led up to the sprawling white-painted building that had once been a monastery and then later a palace.

The glass in the Gothic windows reflected the glow of the setting sun, and in the south western corner a tall tower rose, crowned by battlements sculpted in stone with floral decorations. From those windows in the Villa San Felice she knew you could look out across the calm blue waters of Lake Garda and see the provinces of Verona to the south-east, and Brescia to the west. Directly opposite was San Felice del Benaco, which gave both the island and the villa its name.

This amazing place, this fantastic house had once been her home.

But it was her home no longer. Not for many months now. And it hadn’t ever felt like home in all the time she’d lived there…

Lucy shivered in spite of the mildness of the evening as memories assailed her. Distress made her skin prickle with cold goose bumps and she shuddered at the images that passed through her thoughts, reminding her of how it had once felt to be here. To live here and yet never feel that she belonged.

‘I can’t do this!’ she muttered aloud to herself. ‘I can’t go through with it. Can’t face…’

Abruptly she shook her head, fighting to drive away the unhappy thoughts. She had to face things, had to go through with it. Because inside that villa, as well as the terrible memories of some of the worst months of her life, there was also the one thing that mattered most to her in the world. The one thing that made her life now worth living.

Her feet followed the indistinct path with the ease of instinct built up in her time living on San Felice. She found the small gate into the private gardens in the same way, easing it open carefully and wincing in distress as the weathered wood creaked betrayingly.

‘Please don’t let anyone come,’ she prayed under her breath as she dashed across the soft grass and into the concealment of the lush shrubbery that grew beside the lowest level of the stone paved terraces.

‘Please don’t let anyone see me.’

She had barely hidden herself again when she heard the sound of a door opening above her. The patio doors that led from the big sitting room, she recalled. The same doors through which she had made her escape not quite seven months before when she had fled this house, not daring to look back, terrified of what might happen if someone realised what she was planning and stopped her.

‘Buona sera…’

The voice from inside the house floated down to her, making her heart stop dead in her chest so that she gasped in shock. A moment later it had kick-started into action again, setting her pulse racing.

Ricardo.

She recognised that voice instantly; would know it anywhere. Only one man possessed those dark, sultry tones or had that slightly husky note in every word he spoke.

How many times had she heard him speak her name in so many different ways? In amusement, in scorn, in anger. And yet, at other times—times she could no longer bear to remember—she had heard him speak to her in burning ardour, taking the simple ordinariness of her name and turning it into magic as he called her his Lucia, his delight, his passion…

…His wife.

Her heart flinched away from the memory of that word and the way that Ricardo Emiliani had once used it with a note of pride—or so she had thought at the time.

‘My wife,’ he had said as he took her hand to lead her away from the altar where the priest had just declared that they were married. ‘Mia moglie.’

And for a time she had gloried in the title. She had let herself enjoy being called Signora Emiliani. She had buried the doubts that assailed her deep under the cloak of happiness that shielded her from reality. She had smiled until her jaw ached and she had played the role of the happy young bride who had all that she could dream of.

When all the time, deep down inside, she had known the truth—the only reason why Ricardo had married her in the first place.

And love had had nothing to do with it.

‘If you hear anything more, then let me know…’

The once-loved voice came again, startling her because it spoke in English and not his first language of Italian.

So who was he talking to in English? And why?

A nervous shiver ran down Lucy’s spine as the sudden thought struck her that perhaps she might have made a fatal mistake in coming out of hiding and getting back in touch with Ricardo after so long. By writing to him, however desperate her need, she had let him know where she was. And Ricardo, being the hugely wealthy, hugely powerful man that he was, would have no difficulty in using that information to find out more. He had only to click his fingers and he had an army of men at his disposal—private detectives, investigators, ready to do anything needed to find out more, to track her down and…

And what?

What would the man who in one last dreadful row had declared to her face that marrying her had been the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life do once he found out where she was?

‘I want to see this matter sorted out and finished with.’

‘I’ll get on to it right away. The contracts will be ready for you to sign tomorrow.’

Somehow it was the other man’s voice that brought her back to reality with such a bump that she almost laughed out loud, only just catching herself in time before she gave herself away.

Who was she trying to kid? Why would Ricardo want anything to do with her? He had let her go without a second thought, hadn’t he? No one had come after her to try and drag her back to this house and all she had left behind in it. And hadn’t the message of the letter returned to her been loud and clear?

Contracts and signing—of course. What else would be on Ricardo’s mind other than his huge luxury car business?

Ricardo Emiliani wanted nothing to do with her. He would never forgive her for what she had done, so now he was glad that she was out of his life and he wanted it to stay that way. She was a fool if she allowed herself even to dream that it could be anything else.

She shrank back into the shadowed space between the shrubs and the stone wall of the terrace as slow, heavy footsteps brought Ricardo down the last flight of steps and into the garden. Watching him stroll away from her, Lucy felt as if something or someone had suddenly punched her hard in the chest, driving all the breath from her body and making her heart jump painfully in her throat.

Even from behind like this, he still had such a potent physical impact that it made her freeze and just stare, unable to look away.

He had been walking away from her when she had first seen him. So the first impression she had had been of that proud, black-haired head, held so arrogantly high on a strong, deeply tanned neck. Her eyes had been drawn to those broad, straight shoulders, the powerful length of his back sweeping down to narrow hips and long, long legs. Then, as now, he had been wearing denim jeans so worn and tight that they had clung to his powerful thighs like a second skin. But that day on the beach, two years before, he had been wearing no shirt, nothing to conceal the bronzed skin of his torso, stretched tight across honed muscles that flexed and tightened with every movement, making her mouth dry in sensual response as she’d watched. He’d been barefoot too, seeming nothing but the casual holidaymaker she was herself, his appearance giving no sign of the wealthy, powerful man he really was.

She had been halfway in love with him before she had found out the truth.

Today he wore a white polo shirt, untucked at the waist and hanging loose. But she knew what was under that shirt. She had let her hands slide underneath his clothing so many times, stroking hungry fingers over the warm satin of his skin, feeling his shuddering tension as he responded to her provocative caress. She had closed her palms over the tight muscles of his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh in yearning hunger as she had ridden his passion hard and hot until it had taken her right over the edge into ecstasy.

Oh, no, no, no, no! She must not think of that! She must not let herself remember how it had been, how she had once responded to him so fast, so easily. She couldn’t let herself remember that or she would be finished before she started, her plan ruined before it even began.

She had come here for one reason only and that was…

A sudden sound, new and unexpected, broke into her thoughts, stopping them dead. For a moment it was as if it was so much an echo of what was in her thoughts that she almost imagined that she had conjured it up inside her head, wishing—dreaming—that she had heard it, rather than actually catching it in reality.

But then the sound came again, a snuffling, choking sort of wail, not too far away, faintly muffled, as if being held against something soft.

The world jolted beneath her feet, swung round once, and then back again the opposite way, leaving her feeling weak and queasy. One hand went out to grab at a nearby low branch, hanging on for dear life while her thoughts swirled and her head spun sickeningly.

‘No…’

It was a low-voiced moan, one she had no hope at all of holding back. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. She had to have been imagining it, creating it in the hungry depths of her own thoughts.

But, as her clouded eyes cleared, she blinked hard and saw the way that Ricardo’s arms were bent at the elbow, held in front of him as if he was carrying something, cradling it close to his chest. And as she registered the care and concentration he was exerting to hold his small burden, the way his down-bent gaze was directed at it, concentrating only on what he held, her heart clenched once again, skipping several beats in agonizing shock.

‘Hush, caro…’

Once more that painfully familiar voice murmured huskily, the soft note in it tearing at her vulnerable heart. ‘Time to sleep, mio figlio…’

Oh, dear God!

Mio figlio…

Somehow the new angle of Ricardo’s body gave her a better view. Now she could see. And what she saw made her heart twist inside as if some cruel hand had just reached into her chest and wrenched it savagely, threatening to tear it right out of its assigned space.

Now she could see the way that Ricardo’s arms were bent at the elbow, the way they curved around the small body he held. She could see the shock of soft hair—jet-black like that of the man who held him—that was cushioned in the crook of one arm, where the small head rested, relaxed and totally at ease.

And why not? The small boy was safe in his father’s arms.

In a way that she once feared he would never be safe in his mother’s.

‘Oh, Marco…’

Her vision blurred, the harsh, bitter tears welling up at the back of her eyes, pushing against them until they ached and burned. An ache that was echoed deep inside her heart, tearing at her cruelly.

To her shock, she found that she had reached out a hand, stretching her arm towards the man who still stood with his back to her, oblivious to the fact that she was there.

No, not towards the man but towards the child he held. The reason why she was here at all. The one and only person for whom she would have braved Ricardo’s anger, the fury of hatred she knew would be in his eyes when he saw her.

She had thought that she would never see her husband again, and she had resigned herself to that. But what she had never managed to resign herself to was the fact that she would never again see the baby boy she adored with all her heart but hadn’t been strong enough to love properly.

His baby boy—and hers.

Her son.

CHAPTER TWO

HER son was no more than a few metres away from her.

And never before had the phrase ‘so near and yet so far’ meant so much to her. Never before had it slashed at her with the cruel truth that she was so near to Marco that all she had to do was to take a couple of steps forward and she could be close to him. She could look down at him and see how much he had grown, how he had changed—because he had to have changed, surely, in the time she had been away.

Perhaps she could even reach out and take him in her own arms…

No!

Even in her dreams that was just a step too far.

She knew that Ricardo would never let her touch their son. And deep inside she really knew that it would be just too much to bear if she did. How could she reconnect with her little boy after all this time? She knew how the world would look at her—how Ricardo would see her. What loving mother, what good mother, would abandon her baby, walk out on him, leaving him alone with his father?

It had taken her long enough to accept that she had been ill. To acknowledge that she hadn’t been able to find any alternative. The doctors said that she was well again now—but she didn’t know it, deep in her heart.

Cruel, bitter tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. All she knew was that she couldn’t stay in this hateful, appalling, ‘so near and yet so far’ situation and not give herself away.

She felt as if her already wounded heart would break, splintering into tiny pieces that scattered all over the paving stones at her feet. And yet this was what she had come this far for, after all. She had crept onto this island, sneaking past the security, just for this. The chance to see her little son.

But not like this. Not when she was not ready, not prepared.

And not with Ricardo Emiliani’s cold, dark eyes watching her, cruelly assessing everything she did.

Stumbling slightly, she turned away. Not looking where she was going, not caring, she headed in the vague direction of the way she had come, hoping that she would reach the shore, and the boat, before the pain got too much and she sank to the ground and howled like an animal.

The crack that came when her foot landed on a fallen branch sounded appallingly loud in the stillness of the evening. There was no way that Ricardo could not have heard it. Freezing, Lucy tensed, waiting for the inevitable.

‘Who’s there?’ Ricardo’s voice was sharp, harsh in contrast to the soft tones of just moments before.

Not daring to look back to see if he had actually spotted her, Lucy plunged on, dashing into the bushes in the hope of hiding from his sharp-eyed gaze.

‘Stop!’

There was no way she was going to respond to that…

‘Marissa! Here—now…’

Behind her, Lucy vaguely heard the sound of swift footsteps—female footsteps—hurrying down the stone steps to where he was in the garden.

‘Take Marco…’

That was the last thing she heard as she fled headlong, pushing aside branches that got in her way as she ran. Twigs snapped back, slapped her in the face, but she didn’t care. All she could think of was getting away, reaching the boat and heading back across the lake. Anything other than facing an angry and aggressive Ricardo.

‘Stop!’

How had he got to be so close behind her already? He had had to hand the baby over to Marissa—the nanny?—and then come after her but still it sounded as if he had made up so much ground that she could almost imagine that he would catch up with her at any moment. Heavy footsteps pounded behind her, making her heart race even faster in fear and apprehension.

‘Giuseppe…Frederico…’

Ricardo was speaking to someone else. A swift, desperate glance over her shoulder revealed that he had taken out his mobile phone and had flipped it open, speaking into it as he ran, not breaking stride or even adjusting his breathing. A string of curt, sharp commands in Italian were flung into the receiver and Lucy’s thudding heart lurched in even greater fear.

He was calling security. Summoning the trained bodyguards who watched the island boundaries for him, protecting his privacy—and making sure that his baby son was safe. And now he was setting his bloodhounds on to her.

And he was not pleased. There was no mistaking that tone of voice. She’d heard it often enough when she and Ricardo had been together. That tone meant that security had failed him and he was furious. Ricardo Emiliani didn’t countenance failure and heads would roll as a result of this.

A furious Ricardo was not someone she wanted to face. She had come here to try and talk to her husband, it was true, but she had planned to tackle him with the advantage of surprise on her side. Facing him now was quite a different matter. Seeing little Marco so unexpectedly had ripped away the flimsy protective shield she had built up around herself, taking with it several much needed layers of skin and leaving her raw and bleeding deep inside. She needed to get away, regroup and gather her strength again before she dared risk taking things any further.

The shore where she had left the boat was just around the corner. If she could just put on one last spurt, force her tiring and shaking legs into action, she might just do it. But whether she could get the boat onto the lake and actually get away was a very different matter.

Making a last effort, she pushed herself to breaking point, her breath coming in laboured gasps as a lack of fitness resulting from the past few months started to tell on her. She couldn’t look where she was going, caught her toe on a clump of grass, missed her footing and fell headlong.

Or, rather, started to fall.

Just as she felt herself totally lose her balance, convinced that the ground was coming up to meet her, she felt a hand grab her flailing arm, clamping tight around her wrist and holding firm.

‘Got you!’

With a jarring jolt she was jerked back from the fall, hauled upwards so that she balanced upright for just a moment, swaying precariously, before tumbling the other way. Straight into the arms of the man behind her.

‘Oh, no!’

She hit him like a ton of bricks but, although he staggered back, he didn’t fall and the punishing grip around her arm didn’t loosen for a moment. If anything, it tightened bruisingly so that she had no hope of pulling away.

‘So who the devil are you?’

There was no way that Lucy could answer him. Her mouth seemed to have dried so much that her tongue couldn’t form a word and her throat felt as if it had tied itself into knots.

But Ricardo didn’t seem to need an answer. Instead, he adjusted his hold so that he could spin her round, bringing her to a position facing him where he could see her for himself.

‘I said…you!’

It took every nerve in Lucy’s body to force herself to look him in the face, though she flinched away from meeting his eyes, terrified of the darkness she would see there. She could almost feel the cold burn of his glare on her skin, flaying it from her bones.

‘Me,’ she managed and the uncomfortably jagged beat of her heart made her voice sound brittle and defiant.

The stunned silence that greeted her response stretched her nerves to near breaking point. In desperation, knowing he wasn’t going to be the one to break it, she pushed herself to say something—anything—to try to show that he didn’t totally have control of this situation.

‘Buona sera, Ricardo.’

The sound of Ricardo’s breath hissing in between his teeth told her that she’d caught him on the raw and the way his hand tightened about her arm betrayed the struggle he was having with himself to control the burning temper that she knew was flaring inside him.

But all he said was one word—

‘Lucia…’

Her name. Or rather the Italianised form of it that only he had ever used. The low, almost whispered syllables slid off his tongue in a way that could have been a verbal caress or then again might have been the hiss of an angry snake, preparing to strike. And not knowing which brought her eyes up in a rush to clash with his glittering black gaze, the ice in their burning depths making her shiver in uncontrolled response.

‘Lucia.’

He said it again and this time there was no doubting the way that he meant it. The venom injected into the syllables of her name made her quail inside, shrinking away from him as far as his cruel grip on her arm would let her.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Don’t tell him the truth.

The warning words slid into her thoughts as if spoken aloud.

Don’t say a word about Marco. If you put that weapon into his hands, then he will use it against you.

‘I said…’

‘What do you think I’m doing?’

Somehow she found the strength to answer him, to put a note of defiance into her tone. She even managed to lift her chin in an expression of rebellion that was a million miles from what she was actually feeling. And although she actually made a pretence of looking into his eyes, of meeting their savage glare head on, the truth was something so very different. Deliberately she let her gaze slip out of focus so that all she could see was the dark blur of his face up above her. The jet-black pools of his eyes were bleak hollows where no light, no hint of feeling showed in their depths.

‘I certainly haven’t come to try to renew our marriage.’

‘As if I’d think that was why you were here.’

Ricardo’s tone was rough but laced with a deadly control that refused to allow any real emotion into the words. And although he still held her, she felt that his attention was not on what he was doing but on the thoughts that were inside his head. The thoughts that his icy command refused to let show in his face.

‘Our marriage is over. It was over before it really started.’

From the moment he had accused her of trapping him into marriage. Of letting herself get pregnant purely to get her hands on some of the vast wealth he possessed.

‘Well, that’s something we both agree on, at least.’

Lucy tried an experimental tug to try to free her arm, recognising how much of a mistake the action was when Ricardo’s grip tightened, restraining her without any real effort.

‘If it’s not that—grazie a Dio—then what is it?’

He was finally starting to recover from the shock of seeing her, Ricardo admitted privately to himself. Finally coming to terms with the fact that she was here, in front of him—the woman he had never wanted to see again for the rest of his life. The woman who had deceived him, played him like a fool. The woman he had thought was gone for good, out of his life for ever, and that had suited him to perfection.

And yet here she was, standing before him, her arm tensed against the pressure of his, her head flung back, her small chin raised, and those blue, blue eyes glaring into his in wide, determined defiance.

She hadn’t changed much, he acknowledged unwillingly because he didn’t want to notice anything about her. He didn’t even want to look into her face, into that lying, devious face, and see the beauty that had once caught him, entrapped him—deceived him. A beauty that had once knocked him so off balance that he had forgotten all the careful rules by which he lived his life.

More than forgotten. He had ended up breaking every single one of them and had turned his life into a form of hell from which he had been only too glad to escape. The one and only time he’d broken his self-imposed rule, he’d been caught by a scheming gold-digger in the guise of an innocent lamb. And he was not about to let that happen again.

She had lost weight, it seemed, losing some of the softness of her face and her body. He wouldn’t be human—or male—if he didn’t feel a pang of regret at the loss of the soft swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips. But then she had been pregnant for so much of the time they had been together that naturally her figure had been more lush, the feminine parts of her body more emphasised. If she hadn’t been pregnant then he would never have married her, would never have rushed into the union that he had come to regret so badly. Would never have tied himself to a woman he had come to detest so savagely and so soon.

‘If you’ll let go of my arm, then maybe we can discuss this like civilised human beings!’

‘Civilised!’ Ricardo scorned. ‘That’s not the word that comes to mind when I think of how I’d like to be where you are concerned.’

Now there was a word he would never use to describe Lucy Mottram—Lucy Emiliani as she was now, though the thought of his family name being attached to someone like her brought a sour taste into his mouth. Civilised didn’t describe a woman who had deliberately let herself become pregnant just to trap herself a rich husband, and then walked out on her marriage when that baby had not even been two months old.

‘And it’s not the way I’d want to describe your behaviour in the past.’

Had she actually winced, flinching away in response to the taunt? If she had then she had recovered almost instantly, tossing her hair back and glaring defiance up into his face.

‘Equally, it’s hardly civilised to hold me prisoner like this—just because you’re stronger than me.’

‘Oh, si—and if I let go then you will run off again and I’ll never find out just what you’re up to.’

‘I’m not up to anything! And I promise I’ll stay still.’

He’d be a fool to believe that. But, all the same, he eased his grip on her arm just a little. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Giuseppe and Frederico, his damned inefficient security guards, had finally come up behind them, each one taking an approach from a different side, and he realised that he could at least afford to relax a little.

‘I’d be a fool to trust you,’ he declared, letting her hand drop in a gesture of deliberate distaste. ‘But there’s no way you can escape three of us.’

‘Three bully boys onto one little woman!’ Lucy flashed at him, her eyes sparking rebelliously. ‘That’s really balancing the odds.’

‘There will be no bullying,’ Ricardo tossed back. ‘And you’re hardly such a little woman!’

Deliberately he let his gaze slide over her tousled blonde head, her flushed face, and down the length of her body to where her narrow feet in the battered canvas shoes betrayed her mood in the way that they moved restlessly on the dusty path.

Her height had always been one of the things that he had liked most about being with her. The fact that he only had to bend his head just a little to meet her eye to eye had been a delight. The way that her mouth was just inches away from his when he did so had been a new and enjoyable experience after having to almost stoop in order to kiss the other women he had had relationships with.

Those eyes were what he remembered most about her in the past. The clear, bright blue that had seemed to reflect the colour of the sky on a summer’s day when she smiled, or sparkled in amusement like the warm waters of the lake that surrounded this private island. At other times they had flashed in deliberate provocation when she had thrown a challenge at him. And then at other, very different times darkened into cloudy sensuality, heavy lids drooping into an almost sleepy look when all the time he knew that she had never been further from sleep. That her senses were on high alert, her body warming with awakening desire, her…

No!

With a brutal mental effort he caught his thoughts back from the dangerous path they were on. They threatened to scramble his ability to think, heating his blood and sending his brain into meltdown at just the memories.

That was the way she had caught him the first time around. That was never ever going to happen again. Never, damn it.

‘So now…’ his voice was rough with the effort of control ‘…I’ve waited long enough. I want an explanation and I want it fast.’

For a couple of seconds Lucy’s mind hazed over as she struggled to find the words with which to answer him. Once again that warning voice sounded in her head and she acknowledged the fact that she couldn’t let Ricardo see into the real depths of her heart. To do so would be to make herself too vulnerable, too exposed and defenceless. And she knew that, hating her as he did, Ricardo would take great delight in using her deepest need against her. He would exploit the overwhelming longing to see her baby again like a weapon and he could hurt her terribly that way, wrenching her heart into so many little pieces that it would be impossible to put it back together again.

‘Lucia…’

Her name was a warning, a command and a threat all rolled into one and simply hearing it made her mouth dry in panic so that she had to swallow long and hard in order to find the strength to answer him.

‘I…’ she began, but he had already started to speak again, too impatient, too angry to wait for her to find the words.

‘Just tell me why you are here and what you want!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve wasted too long on you when I have better things to do.’

‘Better things like what?’ Lucy challenged, stung by his dismissive tone. ‘Signing more contracts? Making more millions? Or perhaps you have some hot babe waiting for you…’

The words shrivelled on her tongue as the image that they conjured up scorched her brain. She struggled to try to force away the memory of Ricardo in bed, as she had seen him so many times during their brief marriage, his jet-black hair ruffled and his bronzed skin dark against the whiteness of the sheets. She couldn’t allow herself to remember how it had been. To do so would destroy what little was left of her self control and she knew that if Ricardo spotted just the slightest chink in her carefully protective armour then he would pounce.

But she had reacted too slowly. He’d already seen it and he had no hesitation in taking advantage of it.

‘What’s the matter, cara?’ he drawled cynically. ‘You’re not jealous, surely?’

‘What would I have to be jealous about?’

‘What, indeed? After all, you were the one who declared that our marriage was over, and then walked out.’

Leaving your baby behind. He didn’t actually say the words but he didn’t have to. It was as if they hung there between them, big and dark and carved from ice.

And she knew that she was being a coward by avoiding them but she didn’t dare bring the subject out into the open. Certainly not in front of the two muscular security men who were hovering just within hearing distance, obviously waiting for Ricardo to give a command so that they could take whatever action he demanded.

‘And now you’re back. And I’m wondering why.’

‘Why not?’

Lucy aimed for bravado and missed it by a mile. She could only wince inside as she heard how sharp and brittle her voice sounded in the stillness of the evening, with just the faint lap of the lake water against the shore to break the almost total silence.

‘After all, this was my home…’

No, blustering had been a mistake. She knew it immediately from the way that those brilliant black eyes narrowed sharply, always a danger sign in this man who had once been her husband. When his face changed like that, sensual mouth clamping tight shut, eyes seeming like gleaming slits above his carved cheekbones, then she knew he was at his most ruthless, his most coldly furious.

‘My home,’ Ricardo corrected coldly. ‘A home that you only had a place in as my wife. A home you said you hated—a home you couldn’t wait to turn your back on.’

The coldly obdurate way that he had said my home seemed to sear across her skin, burning away all trace of caution and pushing her into a total change of mood. He couldn’t have made it plainer that she no longer had a place in his life, that he didn’t want her here. She had only been tolerated because she’d been pregnant with his child, the heir to his fortune. Once she had given birth to Marco, all the tenuous value she had possessed had vanished. After that Marco had become an Emiliani and she…she had become nobody—not needed, not wanted.

Her fingers itched to slap that coldly ruthless look from his face but she knew that any such action would be a mistake—if only because of the still watchful, wary presence of the two security guards.

But there was more than one way to skin this particular cat and a wicked imp of inspiration told her exactly what to say to have the same effect verbally if not physically.

‘Ah, but I’ve had a rethink since then and changed my mind. After all, I am still your wife, if only in name.’

‘And only in name is all you’ll ever be.’

‘Fine.’

Lucy forced herself to give sort of a smile, knowing very well that it brought no light to her eyes and so made her look distant and disdainful.

‘And as soon as I can arrange a divorce then I’ll get rid of your name with relief. But there’s one thing that came out of our marriage that I do want.’

‘Of course…’ Ricardo’s arrogant gesture seemed to throw her words back at her in savage dismissal. ‘I should have known that you’d come looking for the money you think you’re entitled to.’

The fact that he thought she had come for money—and only for money—incensed Lucy, making her want to lash out, hurt as she was hurting. She was glad that she hadn’t even mentioned Marco. Being the cold hearted man that he was, Ricardo was capable of flinging any request to see her son back in her face and walking away. But at least he had given her the opportunity to get in a few hits of her own before she revealed the truth.

‘Not think, Ricardo—know. As your wife, then legally I’m entitled to a decent settlement.’

Could those dark eyes narrow any more? Half-closed though the lids might be, they still seemed to have the burn and force of a laser as they were directed at her face.

‘Didn’t you spend enough when you were here? As I recall, you damaged my bank balance pretty badly just before you left.’

The cruel words slashed like a blade, slicing into her heart, into her control and destroying every bit of command she had over it.

‘I wasn’t myself then! I was ill!’

To her shock and horror, Ricardo’s reaction to her desperate admission was to throw his proud head back and laugh out loud. The sound echoed across the open space, seeming to swirl around the small bay and come back at them, dark, eerie and frighteningly cold.

‘Of course you were ill.’

Hearing the sudden quietness of his voice, the complete ebbing away of even the dark humour, Lucy felt her head spin as if someone had just slapped her hard in the face, knocking her for six.

Was it possible that he believed her? That he actually understood?

‘Oh, yes, you were ill, all right—you’d have to be sick to behave as you did. Sick to walk out and leave your baby behind.’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

She had to try to protest, even if she knew that he wasn’t listening. The deliberate way that he had changed the words around so that he had exchanged the word ‘sick’ for ‘ill’, with its very different emphasis and meaning, told her all that she needed to know.

Ricardo’s mind was totally closed against her. She could try to explain all she liked. She could offer any possible explanation to exonerate herself and he wasn’t going to believe her. He wasn’t going to listen and that was that.

But still she had to try.

‘I can explain!’

But Ricardo shook his head in total rejection of the appeal in her voice, in her eyes.

‘I don’t want to hear it. There is no explanation that would justify such behaviour—none at all.’

‘But Rico…’

Too late she realised the mistake she had made. In her fear and panic she had slipped into the shortened, softened form of his name that she had once been able to use. And the way that his face closed up told her that, if it was possible, he hated her for it even more than before.

‘Please…’

But he was already turning away. She was dismissed from his thoughts, and his mind was already on something else as he turned to head back to where the lights inside the house gleamed out through the Gothic windows, emphasising the way that dusk had fallen as they had talked.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ was his callous declaration, followed by an imperious flick of his hand towards the two security guards, still standing as silent, stolid observers of the scene before them.

‘Giuseppe…Frederico…escort Signora Emiliani off the island. Take her to wherever she is staying—and make sure she doesn’t come back.’

He paused just long enough to let the words sink in before adding with extra emphasis, ‘And this time make sure that you do the job properly. If she sets foot on this island ever again then you will both lose your jobs.’

Then he strode away, climbing up the slope towards the lights of the house without so much as a single glance back to make sure that his orders were carried out. He obviously had no doubt that they would be and that he could dismiss his soon-to-be ex-wife from his mind without a second thought.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY was back.

Ricardo paced restlessly around the elegant white and gold sitting room, the glass of wine he had poured and then forgotten about still untouched in his hand. His thoughts were too preoccupied to allow him to drink, or even to let go of the glass his hand was clenched around, almost as if it was the arm of his errant wife, which he had held so tightly a short time before.

Lucy was back and in just a short space of time she had managed to throw his life into chaos just by reappearing in it.

‘Dannazione!’

He slammed the glass down ferociously onto the nearby table, watching without a flicker of reaction as some of the ruby-coloured liquid slopped over the side and landed on the polished wood.

Lucy was back and he was damned if he knew what she wanted.

She had come looking for money, she had claimed.

Well, yes, of course she wanted money. What the hell else would bring her crawling back into his life when she had flounced out of it so carelessly and selfishly just over six months before?

She had to need money because she would be missing the more than generous allowance he had given her from the moment she had agreed to become his wife. The allowance that she had gone through with such speed and almost a compulsion in the weeks after Marco had been born. Then she had thrown money away on anything and everything that took her fancy, often buying half a dozen or more of the same item, in as many different colours as were available.

And then, more often than not, she’d discarded them when she’d grown tired of them, often without even wearing them, he recalled.

She must miss that allowance now that it was no longer hers. He’d cut off the supply of money as soon as he’d known that she’d left him—and the baby. At the time he’d foolishly thought that by cutting off her income he would bring her out of hiding more quickly, force her to come back to ask for more so that he could at least try to persuade her that her child needed her. But she had disappeared completely, vanished off the face of the earth, and even the extensive enquiries he had set in motion had been unable to track her down.

But she had to have lived somewhere and, with her bank account frozen, everything she had managed to stash away would soon have been used up so that she would have to come looking for more.

‘No.’

Speaking the word out loud in the silence of the empty room, Ricardo shook his head as he moved over to the huge, high window that looked out across the lake and over towards San Felice del Benaco.

No, she wanted more than money. She had declared that she wanted a divorce, that she was putting in a claim for a ‘decent settlement’. But, if that was what she wanted, why had she come creeping onto the island in secret, sneaking round to where he had been in the garden, watching him walking with Marco…

Marco!

Ricardo’s hands clenched into such tight fists that if he had still held the wineglass it would have shattered in his grip.

Was Marco the real reason that Lucy had come back? Was she in fact here to try to get her hands on the baby son she had abandoned so heartlessly?

He’d die rather than let her! And no court in the country would give her custody after the way she had walked out on her child before he was even old enough to know her.

I can explain!

Lucy’s voice sounded inside his head and in his thoughts he could see her face, pale in the gathering dusk, as she had turned to him. What explanation could justify her behaviour?

But what if there was some explanation—some justification that she could use against him? What if she had some story that she could take to court and try to claim custody of the baby—his son?

‘Dannazione, no!’

That was never going to happen. He’d make sure of that. There was one way he could ensure that his troublesome wife never got her hands on the baby she had abandoned so heartlessly. Lucy needed money and she would have as much as she wanted—more money than she could ever have imagined in her dreams…

…but at a price.

Snatching up the phone, Ricardo pressed a speed dial number and waited impatiently, long fingers tapping restlessly on the table top until someone answered.

‘Giuseppe…’ he snapped as soon as he heard the other man’s voice at the end of the line. ‘My wife—Signora Emiliani…’ His tongue curled in distaste as he made himself say the name. ‘When you escorted her home, where exactly did you take her?’

Lucy couldn’t sleep.

No, the truth was that she didn’t want to sleep or even try to. If she so much as lay down on the bed and closed her eyes then images of the evening floated in her mind.

Images of Ricardo, tall and dark and devastating as ever.

Ricardo walking down the stone steps, along the grass. His long lean body silhouetted against the distant lake, his voice carrying to her on the still air of the evening.

And then that other sound, the faint, whimpering cry…

Marco.

Her baby.

Pain lanced through her, cold and cruel. A choking sob escaped her as she wrapped her arms around her body, feeling that she had to hold herself together or she would fall apart completely.

‘Oh, Marco…’

The little boy’s name was a moan of despair. Lucy moved to the small, high window and leaned against the wall, staring out across the darkened lake.

‘So near and yet so far.’

Out there was her baby—her little son. Her arms felt empty and her heart ached with the longing to hold him. But if her visit to the island this evening had told her one thing it was that Ricardo was going to fight her every inch of the way.

You’d have to be sick to behave as you did. Sick to walk out and leave your baby behind.

Her husband’s voice echoed in the bleakness of her thoughts, black with cruel contempt. She would never get to see her baby again, not if he could help it. He clearly had no intention of ever forgiving her for what she had done.

And who could blame him?

Lucy swiped the back of her hand against her eye to wipe away the single tear that had welled up there, threatening to fall.

Why should Ricardo be able to forgive her when she couldn’t forgive herself? She had walked out on her baby. But she hadn’t known what she was doing. And she hadn’t left him alone. He had had his father and the trained nanny to care for him. The nanny that Ricardo had insisted on from the moment she had given birth, making her feel useless and inadequate in a way that must have contributed to her breakdown. In her thoughts, they had been so much better for her darling son than a mother who didn’t know her own mind well enough to know if she might be able to look after him—or if she would actually harm him.

She had hoped for a chance to tell Ricardo that. But he clearly wasn’t prepared to listen. He had sent her letter back to her and now he had had her escorted from the island without a chance to explain. He would never give her another opportunity. She had known that he must hate her, but until today she had never truly realised just how much.

A sudden sharp rap at the door broke into her thoughts, making her start, her head coming up and her eyes widening in surprise. No one knew she was here.

‘Who…?’ Her voice croaked, broke on the word. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Lucia…’

The husky male voice with its distinctive use of her name was too familiar, too disturbing. It was as if by thinking of Ricardo and their meeting earlier this evening she had conjured him up out of the air and brought him to her door. And that thought froze her in the middle of the room, unable to move forward, unable to think.

‘Lucia!’

It was louder now, more impatient, definitely Ricardo. So definitely Ricardo that, in spite of herself, it brought a wry, remembering smile to Lucy’s face as she recalled the times—the many times—that she had heard just that note in his voice.

‘We can’t have a conversation through the door. Everyone will hear us.’

Ricardo paused, obviously waiting, and in spite of the thickness of the wood between them Lucy felt that she could almost hear the irritated hiss of his breath in between clenched teeth as he waited for her answer.

‘Lucia!’

Once again his knuckles rapped hard on the door. Clearly he had no intention of leaving. Suddenly afraid that he would take his annoyance out on the door even further, or that he would disturb other guests in the boarding house, Lucy was pushed into action, hurrying to the door and unlocking it. Yanking it open, she glared at Ricardo as he stood in the corridor.

‘Are you determined to disturb everyone in the house?’ she flung at him. ‘Some of them may be sleeping.’

‘Not at this time,’ Ricardo dismissed with a swift glance at his watch.

‘There might be children asleep!’

‘And you care about that?’

‘Of course I do!’

Too late she saw his face change and knew the direction of his thoughts. How could she care about other people’s children, he was obviously implying, when she had walked out on her own son when he was barely a month and a half old? Didn’t he know that nothing he did or said could make her feel any worse than she already did?

‘I can’t afford to cause any trouble that might get me thrown out of here. I have nowhere else to go.’

‘So are you going to invite me in?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

Not if she wanted to keep this private and quiet, Ricardo’s burning glance said. And, knowing she had no other option, Lucy unwillingly stepped back, allowing Ricardo to stroll into her room. Those deep-set dark eyes subjected their surroundings to a swift, assessing scrutiny and his black brows drew together in a quick frown.

‘This is where you’re staying?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

It was pretty bad really, Lucy had to admit, suddenly seeing the room from his point of view. It was at least clean but it was definitely shabby, the flooring worn and the white covers dulled and thin from repeated washing.

‘Hardly what you’re used to.’

‘Not what you’re used to—or what you used to provide for me, you mean!’ Lucy snapped back. ‘I managed with worse before we met—how do you know what I’ve been used to while we’ve been apart? You stopped all my allowance, remember.’

Seeing the expression of dark satisfaction that crossed his face, she knew that she’d played right into his hands. He was thinking that the only reason she was here was because she was after his money. But then who could blame him? It was the impression she had set out to give in those few desperate moments on the island when she had been afraid to let him know her real reason for being there.

‘There is such a thing as work—paid employment.’

Ricardo’s scorn lashed at her like a cruel whip, the black contempt in his eyes seeming to flay her savagely.

‘Or have you decided that that’s beneath you?’

‘Why would I want to work when I have a filthy rich husband?’

Determined to give as good as she got, she laid a bitter emphasis on the word filthy, knowing that she’d stung him when she saw his mouth tighten into a thin hard line as if clamping down on some more violent expression that he didn’t want to let loose.

Just for a moment she feared—or was it hoped?—that he would actually turn on his heel and march away, walk out without another word. Instead, he pushed the door to with a bang, shutting them in the small room together.

A room that suddenly seemed so much smaller than ever before. Ricardo’s tall, strong form seemed to fill the confined space, his dark colouring in stark contrast to the white-painted walls. She had not been alone with him for over six months—and being here, like this, in the intimate surroundings of a bedroom made Lucy’s heart kick sharply, her pulse rate beating twice as fast.

In all her time apart from him she had never forgotten the sheer physical impact that Ricardo had on her. It was, after all, what had brought them together in the first place. That intense rush of burning awareness, the deep, hungry sexual attraction that had had her in Ricardo’s arms within an hour of meeting him, in his bed just a few short days later. Just being with him had seemed to lift her life on to another plane entirely. One in which every sense was heightened, every experience felt new and wonderful. And the months they had been apart had done nothing at all to diminish the way he made her feel.

Every nerve seemed to prickle with excitement. She was so sharply, stingingly aware of the height and strength of him, the burn of those deep, dark eyes, the golden tone of his skin and the gleam of his jet-black hair. In the confines of the room she could even catch the clean, totally personal scent of his skin that coiled around her like the most seductive of perfumes.

Feeling overwhelmed and unsettled, she wanted to move somewhere—anywhere—to put a bit of space between them but the size of the room made that impossible. The only place to sit was on the edge of the narrow, uncomfortable bed, and just the thought of that made her stomach twist and knot so painfully that she pushed the idea aside in a second.

‘I haven’t been able to work,’ she managed, keeping to the far side of the room while Ricardo paced restlessly around, making her think unnervingly of some big, sleek feline predator caged in a space that was too small for its size. ‘Even if I’d wanted to.’

‘No,’ Ricardo conceded unexpectedly. ‘You said you’d been ill.’

‘You believed me?’

After his response earlier, on the island, she’d assumed that he would think the story of her illness was just that—a story—with no truth behind it at all.

The look Ricardo slanted at her from those dark eyes said that he wished he didn’t have to believe her but he had no alternative.

‘You’ve changed since I saw you—lost weight. But you’re well now?’

‘Oh, yes.’

That, at least, she could say without fear of how he would judge her. She wouldn’t be here now, like this, if that wasn’t true. Having forced herself away from Marco once in her life, there was no way she was going to risk having to make that terrible decision ever again by coming back too early.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Fine didn’t really describe it, would never describe it. Not until she had her beloved baby boy back in her arms and could make reality of the assurances that the hospital had given her. But, before that could ever happen, she had to deal with his father. And, because she didn’t know why he was here, she didn’t know how to handle Ricardo.

But he was here—and he had accepted that she had been ill. So would she be a gullible fool to allow herself to hope for something from that?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, slipping into careful politeness in the hope of steering the situation into calmer waters so that they could at least talk civilly. ‘I should offer you a drink…or something. But, as you can see, I’m afraid this room doesn’t even boast a kettle.’

Her hand gesture, used to indicate the lack of facilities in the room, was a little too wild, a little too expansive. It gave away too much of the uncomfortable way she was feeling inside, the struggle she was having against the need to demand to know just what he wanted from her.

‘I didn’t come here for a drink.’

‘No? So what did you…’ Abruptly the courage to ask the most important question deserted her and she rushed on instead to a different distracting topic. ‘I think I could do with one…’

There was a bottle of water and a glass on her bedside table across the other side of the room, just near to where Ricardo was standing. Without thinking, she moved to reach for it, stretching out her hand in the same moment that he did just the same. Their fingers clashed at the top of the bottle, tangling, pausing, snatched back, only to pause again, just touching, as they froze, barely inches apart, staring deep into each other’s faces.

‘Lucia…’

‘Rico…’

Their voices clashed too, just for a second, then died away into stillness as silence reached out to enclose them, hold them.

It was as if they had both been struck by lightning. An electrical response had sizzled up her arm, fizzing along every nerve at just the feel of the heat of his body, the burn of his skin against hers.

Now she really did need that drink of water. Her throat was drying out completely in the wave of heat that seared her body, shrivelling her thoughts in its fire and setting alight the senses that she had barely kept under control from the moment that Ricardo had walked through the door.

‘Rico…’ she croaked again, unable to drag her eyes away from the burn of his glittering gaze, unable to move, unable to think, only able to feel.

And what she felt was the rush of awareness, of need that she had known from the first moment this man had touched her. A need and a hunger that had grown with each kiss, each caress. A hunger that she had convinced herself she could learn to live without as long as she was far away from him, never seeing him, never speaking to him, never touching him…

And she had managed it until now.

But she had only to touch him, have him touch her, and it had all sparked off again in the space of a single heartbeat. Nothing had vanished; it was all still there.

He felt it too. She could read it in his eyes, sense it in the change in his breathing, the way that a muscle jerked at his jaw line. It was still there, as strong, as sharp and as primitively intense as ever. Body speaking to body, sense to sense. Whatever had burned between them in the eleven months of their marriage, it was all still smouldering just below the surface, needing only a touch to make it flare into life all over again.

‘Oh, Ricardo…’

Acting purely at the demand of her instincts, Lucy finally moved. Twisting her hand around, she let her fingers brush his palm, watching fascinated as his own fingers jerked just once, convulsively, as if about to close around her teasing touch, but then were abruptly forced still again. Those gleaming black eyes were suddenly hooded, hidden from her, concealing any trace of his thoughts. But Ricardo couldn’t hide the way that his breath caught sharply in his throat, the deep swallow that struggled to ease the dry discomfort that matched her own.

Lucy let a small smile curl the corners of her mouth, grow until her lips curved upwards, wide and soft at the thought that at least in this one way she could still affect this hard, distant man as she had once been able to.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this. It really doesn’t.’

‘No?’ Ricardo’s voice was thick and rough, seeming to come from a throat that was so clogged with something raw that he could barely speak.

‘No.’

Softly she let her fingertips drift over the palm of his hand, watching the strong hand quiver in uncontrolled response. Circling his thumb, she caressed her way over the powerful bones in his wrist, watching as the sinews tightened, the muscles clenched. It was impossible to control the need to touch him, impossible to fight back the urge to provoke him to react in a way that revealed that he was no more immune to her than she was to him.

To feel him close like this, scent his skin, feel the heat of him, made her mind respond as if she had slipped back to the days when she had been free to touch him, to caress him whenever she had wanted. She had loved those days, adored that freedom—adored him. And she wanted to go back there—wanted it, needed it so much…

‘It never used to be this way.’

She didn’t deliberately pitch her voice to sound so breathy, so husky. It just came out that way naturally. And right now she couldn’t regret the way it revealed how the tiny physical contact had shaken her. How aware, how aroused it had made her. With her eyes fixed on Ricardo’s taut face, she could see how, just for a moment, his tongue slid out to moisten suddenly dry lips.

Perhaps he too recalled the softer times in their relationship. The times before suspicion had changed him, darkening his opinion of her.

‘It could still be…’

Moving her hand again, this time she curled it around Ricardo’s, fingers lacing with his, palm pressing to palm, deepening the contact, making it more intimate.

And she knew her mistake as soon as she’d done it.

‘Inferno—no!’

The harsh mutter was harder, more biting than if he had shouted. And the way that he froze, before deliberately, coldly uncoiling his hand from her gentle grip, pulling away almost in slow motion, was so obviously a deliberate insult that it stung like a slap in the face. With a flick of his wrist, he seemed to shake off even the last traces of her touch as he swung away from her, putting as much distance between them as it was possible to do in the small bedroom.

‘It could not “still be” anything,’ he declared, every word pure ice. ‘There is nothing left between us, nothing I want to revive. Certainly not how it used to be. That is not what I came here for.’

‘So what did you come here for?’

Determined not to show how his rejection of her had hurt, Lucy brought her head up defiantly, turning what she hoped were cold eyes on him as she injected every ounce of control possible into her voice.

‘I take it it wasn’t just to pass the time of day—renew an old…’ she hesitated deliberately over the word ‘…friendship?’

‘Hardly. We were never friends.’

‘Husband and wife.’

‘Legally, perhaps.’ Ricardo dismissed her pointed comment with an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘But I doubt if we were ever married in the true sense of the word.’

‘And just what, in your opinion, is the true sense of the word?’

‘For better, for worse, to love and to cherish,’ Ricardo quoted cynically, making her wince inside as the words stabbed at her.

‘For richer for poorer…’ she flung back, refusing to let herself think of the other words—the ones that said in sickness and in health.

If only she had been able to turn to Ricardo at a time when those words had meant so much, then how different things might have been. But she had known from the start that their marriage was never meant to be as long as we both shall live. If she had never become pregnant then he would never have married her at all. It was only because of his determination that his son would be legitimate that he had ever put a ring on her finger.

‘For richer, certainly, in your case. You played your virginity like a trump card, withholding it from the poor Italian fisherman you first thought I was but only too keen to lose it to the rich man you then discovered me to be.’

‘If that’s the way you want to read it.’

It was the only way he’d ever read what had happened. He had never understood the very real fear that had held her back at their first meeting, forcing her away from him even though she’d feared she would never see him again. He would understand even less the bitter regret that had eaten at her for days afterwards, so that when she had met him again, in the very different circumstances of an elegant society party, she had been unable to hold back and, buoyed up on an unwise glass of champagne, had practically thrown herself into his arms.

‘And I did not play…’

‘You sure as hell did,’ Ricardo tossed back at her. ‘You played with both our lives—and the life of the baby we unwisely created between us. You told me…’

The temptation to put her hands over her face and hide from his anger—his justifiable anger—was almost overwhelming but Lucy forced herself to brave it out. She knew what she’d said. That she’d given him the idea that she was protected. But the truth was that she had been so wildly, blindly lost in sensation, in the heat and hunger that his kisses, his touch had aroused, that when he had muttered, ‘Is this OK? Are you all right?’ in a voice so thick and rough it betrayed only too clearly how close to losing control he was, she had only thought that he was considering her inexperience. She couldn’t have said no if she’d tried. The only word in her head had been yes, the only need in her body, in her heart, had been to know the full reality of this man’s sensual possession. And so, ‘Yes, oh, yes!’ had been her only possible response.

She had thought she was safe. The time of her cycle should have made her safe. But in that she had been stupid and naïve too.

‘And richer is what you really want me to discuss. So OK, let’s get to the real point. You wanted to know why I came here. I came to ask you just one question.’

‘And that is?’

‘How much will it cost me to get rid of you?’

‘Get…’

In the scrambled muddle of her thoughts, Lucy couldn’t decide if it was shock, fury or just plain horror that kept her tongue from being able to form an answer to his question. She could only stare at him in disbelief, her eyes wide.

‘It’s a simple question, Lucia.’ Ricardo’s voice was tight with impatience and exasperation. ‘Surely you can have no problem in understanding it. What I want to know is how much will you take to leave now, get out of here—and stay out of my life for good?’

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