Rings of Gold: Gold Ring of Betrayal / The Marriage Surrender / The Unforgettable Husband

An appeal from the heart. It should have cut into him, reminded him of the soft, gentle creature he had originally fallen in love with. The one who had been so timid that she used to cling to him when he’d introduced her to someone he knew, or had reached for his hand if they’d crossed the road, or could be tongue-tied by a painful shyness when teased.

But he was Sicilian. And a Sicilian man was by nature territorial and possessive. And if Sara dismissed Jason Castell from her mind as unimportant Nicolas didn’t. Because she hadn’t voiced all of these complaints before the Englishman’s name had begun cropping up in conversations around the island. She hadn’t dared to argue with him like this before the man had come on the scene.

And she had never turned away from the blatant invitation of his body before the Englishman’s appearance.

‘Get into bed,’ he gritted.

‘No.’ She began to quiver at the expression on his face. ‘I w-want to talk this through …’

He began striding around the bed towards her. She backed away, her hands outstretched to ward him off, long, delicately boned fingers trembling. ‘Please don’t,’ she whispered unsteadily. ‘You’re frightening me. I don’t want to be frightened of you too …’

But he wasn’t listening, or maybe didn’t care at that moment that he was about to murder the one firm bit of faith she had—that he, this hard-headed, ruthless hunter she had married, would not, could not hurt her.

He hurt her. Oh, not in the physical sense, but with a hard, ruthless sensuality that left her feeling ravaged to the point of shock. ‘Go near the Englishman and I shall kill you both,’ he then vowed tautly. ‘What’s mine I keep, and you are most definitely mine!’

‘What’s mine I keep …’

He never retracted that vow. Not throughout the following month when she never saw him, never heard from him, never left the villa. She didn’t even hear Alfredo’s mocking little jibes about her failing marriage and his son’s preference for being anywhere but with his pathetic little wife.

She didn’t so much as suspect the neat little trap that Alfredo was setting for her when he delivered a message from Nicolas one evening telling her to meet him in Catania in a hotel they had sometimes stayed in when attending some function in the city.

She arrived at the appointed suite, nervous, a little frightened, praying that he had asked her to come here because he was at last beginning to accept that she was unhappy and they needed to be alone to talk without fear of interruption. She let herself in with the provided key, took the overnight bag Nicolas had told her to bring with her through to the bedroom, then went back into the sitting room to wait.

He didn’t come. By ten o’clock she was feeling let down and angry. By eleven she’d grimly got ready for bed. By twelve she was trying hard to fall asleep when she heard another key in the door. Elation sent her scrambling in her lovely cream silk nightdress out of the bed and towards the bedroom door just as it opened inwards.

Then came the shock, the horror, the confusion, because it wasn’t Nicolas who came through the door but Jason. Jason, who paused in the open doorway, smiled, and murmured, ‘Sara, darling, you look exquisite—as always.’

Blank incomprehension held her stunned and silent. He stepped closer, pulling her into his arms and she let him do it, utterly incapable of working out how to deal with the situation.

A mistake, she was thinking stupidly. Jason had somehow made a terrible, terrible mistake!

A hand landing hard against its wood sent the door flying open. And then Nicolas stood there. Nicolas, with his face turned to rock. Nicolas, who stared at her with his hunter’s gold eyes turned yellow with shock while she stared helplessly back, the frissons of confusion, alarm, horror and shock wild inside her.

‘So my father was right. You bitch,’ he said. That was all.

Guilty as charged. Her silence damned her. Her blushing cheeks damned her. The way Jason made a lurching dive for the balcony doors and disappeared through them to go she neither knew nor cared where damned her. And the sheer silk nightdress bought especially for this meeting and which showed every contour of her slender body beneath damned her.

He still didn’t move and neither could she. Her mind was rocketing through all the reasons why Jason could have come here believing that she was waiting for him. Then it hit her, and she went white—not with shame but with fury.

Alfredo. Alfredo had set her up—set this up! Alfredo.

‘Nic—please!’ Her blue eyes were slightly wild and begging. ‘This isn’t what you—’

He took a step towards her, his face turning from rock to murderous threat. His hand came up, the back of it aimed to lash out at her.

‘No!’ she cried, instinctively cowering away, long hair flying in a wild arc as her arms came up to protect her face.

It stopped him; seeing her cower like that did manage to stop him. ‘For God’s sake!’ she pleaded, wretchedly from behind her protecting hands. ‘You must listen to me!’

‘Never,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You no longer exist.’

He meant it. She could see in the glacial gold of his eyes that he meant it. It was too much. She fainted at his feet. When she came round she was alone, lying where he had left her.

She hadn’t so much as spoken to him again until today. She had not been allowed back in the villa. And that same hotel suite had become her prison for the next few terrible days until Toni, cold-eyed and uncommunicative, had come to personally escort her off the island and back to London.

Wretched with despair and weak with nervous reaction, she’d done as she was told, come here to this house, sat here in this house for weeks—weeks waiting for him to calm down, see sense, realise that she, of all people, could never do such a wicked thing as to take another lover.

Then she’d discovered she was pregnant, and everything had changed. She’d tried phoning him; he’d refused to take her calls. She’d tried writing to him; he hadn’t acknowledged her letters. In the end she’d turned to Toni for help, called him on the phone and begged him—begged him to persuade Nicolas to see her, listen to what she had to say! ‘I’m going to have his baby, Toni!’ Even now, three years on, she could still hear the anguish in her voice. ‘Surely that must mean something to him!’

It hadn’t. The next day the phone had rung. It was Toni.

‘He says you lie,’ he informed her coldly. ‘The child you carry cannot be his. You may have the use of the house you are in at present.’ He went on in that same icy vein. ‘Everything you and the child may need will be provided so long as you remain there and say nothing of your betrayal.’

‘If he feels like that, then why doesn’t he just throw me out on the street and divorce me?’ she sliced back bitterly, hurt and angered by the injustice of it all.

‘You have humiliated him enough without the added scandal of a divorce,’ he clipped. ‘But hear this,’ he then warned icily. ‘Let another man near you and he will kill you both; make no mistake about that.’

Did that mean Jason already lay dead somewhere in Sicily? she wondered, and found she couldn’t care less. Jason had to have been in cahoots with Alfredo. It had not taken her long to work that one out. And for that he deserved anything Nicolas might have decided to deal out to him. It was only a shame that Alfredo would not be getting his due for his part in it all.

But maybe Alfredo had got what was due to him, she now thought as she slowly returned to the present. Because in his determination to get rid of the woman he saw as an unfit wife for his son he had lost the right to love one of the most wonderful creatures ever placed on this earth: Lia. Was he ever curious? she wondered. Did he ever just sit and wonder about his son’s child who was also his grandchild? Did he ever suffer from pangs of regret?

She hoped he did. She really hoped that, sick man or not now, he suffered daily from bitter, bitter regrets.

And that, she acknowledged grimly, was her own desire for vengeance rearing its ugly head.

A movement just behind her in the doorway made her turn to find herself captured by Toni’s narrowed, watchful eyes. And for a moment—a brief but stinging moment—she had a feeling he knew exactly what she had been thinking.

Then the connection was broken because Nicolas heard them and turned around. But all through dinner she felt Toni’s eyes on her, and stung with the uncomfortable feeling that he had sensed her thirst for revenge.

He was Sicilian. And Sicilians claimed exclusive rights on vendettas. He would not take kindly to the idea of a mere English woman encroaching on those rights. Especially against a fellow Sicilian.

The meal was an ordeal. Sara forced down a couple of small bites of the braised chicken placed in front of her but other than that could swallow nothing. Nicolas and Toni ate with her, their occasional bursts of conversation to do with some business deal they were presently involved in. But these exchanges were brief, and largely they respected her desire to keep silent.

‘Excuse me.’ At last she stood up from the table, bringing both dark heads up sharply. ‘I’ve had enough. I think I’ll go and take a shower …’

‘Try to rest,’ Nicolas quietly advised. ‘I promise I will come and tell you the moment I have any news.’

She nodded, wearied—too weary to want to argue. She wouldn’t rest—she knew she wouldn’t—but it was easier to let him think that she might than to battle.

She didn’t think she would sleep again until she had her baby back in her arms.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS a long night. Sara dozed fitfully and came down to breakfast the next morning hollow-eyed and wan-faced, to find Nicolas sitting alone at the breakfast table, a newspaper spread out in front of him.

He folded it away when he saw her, though, making a narrow-eyed study of the obvious evidence of strain in her face.

She gave an inward grimace, entirely aware of exactly how terrible she looked.

She was wearing no make-up, and the peaches-and-cream bloom that her skin usually wore was missing. She had brushed her hair, but only so she could tie it at the back to keep the long, heavy mass out of the way. And she was wearing a simple, sprigged muslin skirt teamed with a long, loose silk knit jumper in a delicate shade of blue. Under normal circumstances the pastel colour would have suited her, but today it just enhanced the washed-out look—not that she cared. She didn’t care about anything to do with herself right now.

He didn’t look too hot either, she noted. His lean face had a drawn quality about it that suggested he hadn’t slept much himself last night. But at least the slick silk business suit had gone, his casual beige linen trousers and long-sleeved polo shirt in mint-green softening the harder edges of his tycoon persona. And the shirt was big enough not to mold his impressive torso but soft enough to make her aware of the muscled breast flexing beneath it as he moved.

‘What has happened to the nanny?’ she asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I went to see how she was this morning, but she wasn’t there, and her room has been cleared out.’

‘She was taken home to her parents last night,’ he informed her. ‘She was too distressed to be any use here so …’ His concluding shrug said the rest.

No use, so remove her. Sara found a small smile. ‘I never wanted a nanny in the first place,’ she remarked.

‘You were ill,’ he reminded her, getting up to go over to the internal telephone. ‘Tea for my wife,’ he ordered curtly to whoever it was who answered. ‘And whatever she usually eats for breakfast.

‘You needed help with the child,’ he continued as he returned to his seat.

That filled her eyes with a rueful wryness that rid them of a little bit of strain. ‘Have I managed to make a single move during the last three years that you don’t know about?’ she mocked, not expecting an answer—and not getting one.

She knew how Nicolas worked. ‘What’s mine I keep,’ et cetera. And that was exactly what he had done over the last three years—kept his wife and her child in the kind of comfort that would be expected of a man of his stature.

So when Sara had gone down with a severe bout of flu several months ago Julie, the nanny, had appeared to take over caring for Lia. Since then, she’d stayed, not by Sara’s request but probably because this man had ordained it so. Now the nanny had been banished again. For being of no use. For falling into a fit of hysterics in the park instead of responding as she should have responded when her charge was snatched from right beneath her nose and coming straight home to inform Lucas, the chauffeur, who would have then immediately informed Nicolas, his boss—probably before he would have informed Sara. Because Lucas the chauffeur was not just a chauffeur. He was Sara’s guard, and she chose the word selectively. Lucas was paid to guard one of Nicolas Santino’s possessions, namely his wife—not the child, who he did not believe was his child and therefore did not warrant her own guard to watch her every move. Which was why someone had managed to take her.

The breakfast-room door opened and Mrs Hobbit came in carrying a tray loaded with tea things and some lightly toasted wholemeal bread. She smiled nervously at Nicolas and warmly at Sara.

‘Now, you eat this toast,’ she commanded sternly, her busy hands emptying the tray onto the table in front of Sara. ‘Or I shall just follow you around with it until you do.’

‘I will,’ Sara whispered, her eyes filling with a sudden burst of weak tears at the older woman’s rough kind of affection. ‘Thank you.’

‘Oh!’ the housekeeper exclaimed in dismay when she saw the tears. And suddenly Sara was being engulfed by a big, homely bosom. ‘Now, there, there,’ Mrs Hobbit murmured soothingly. ‘You need a good cry, and don’t we all?’ Her soft bosom quivered on a sigh. ‘But the little princess will be back here before you know it, all safe and sound; you wait and see.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ With a mammoth drag on her energy, Sara pulled herself together, straightening out of the older woman’s arms. ‘I’m sorry. It was just …’ Her words trailed off, lost in the helplessness she was feeling inside.

‘I know exactly what it was,’ Mrs Hobbit said grimly. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me, madam. Not a thing …’

With that she patted Sara’s arm and walked out, leaving Sara alone with a very still Nicolas who had observed the whole exchange without uttering a single word.

Sara didn’t look at him—couldn’t. She had an idea that he had been rather shocked by Mrs Hobbit’s affectionate display.

‘They all—care for you a great deal, don’t they?’ he commented at last. ‘I’ve already had Lucas in this morning enquiring about how you are coping. And Mr Hobbit stopped me in the garden earlier to do the same.’

Was he making a comparison with the cold, stiff way his Sicilian servants had treated her? He should do. The difference was palpable. ‘Surprised, are you?’ she countered drily, reaching out with an unsteady hand for the teapot. ‘That anyone could care for the likes of me?’

To her surprise he got up and stepped tensely over to the window. ‘No,’ he replied, the single negative raking over a throat that sounded usually dry for him.

A silence fell, and Sara poured herself a cup of tea then cupped it in her fingers, bringing it to her lips to sip lightly at the steaming hot drink. He didn’t turn back to the table, and they remained like that for long, taut minutes, she sipping at her drink, he lost inside some tense part of himself.

‘Is she?’ he asked suddenly. ‘A little princess?’

Sara stared at his long, straight back and felt the bitter burn of a bloody anger begin to swell inside her. Today he had the damned effrontery to ask a question like that when only last night he had virtually denied her the right to so much as speak of the child! He had even tossed the baby’s picture away from him in open distaste!

She stood up, discarding her cup onto its saucer with the same appearance of distaste. ‘Go to hell, Nicolas,’ she said, and walked out of the room.

The morning stretched out like an interminable wasteland in front of her, growing more difficult to bear the longer it went on without a single telephone ringing in the house. The silence grated. The sense of utter, wretched helplessness grated. The way everyone else seemed to be getting on with their normal business grated. And the burning fact that Nicolas had locked himself away in the study and not come out again grated. Because he should be right here by her side comforting and supporting her! Worrying with her! If he truly believed Lia to be his daughter would he be so calm and collected about it all? Would he be sitting in that damned study getting on with the day’s business while the people who had stolen their baby decided to make them sweat with this long, cruel silence?

In the end, she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand any of it any longer. In an act of desperation she ran upstairs, dragged on an old pair of washed-out and skintight jeans and a T-shirt and ran downstairs again, busily tying a dark green cotton apron about her slender waist while trying to open the front door at the same time.

‘Can I help you, Mrs Santino?’ A big, burly bodyguard stepped out in front of her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ And she went to walk past him.

The big hand closing quite gently around her arm made her freeze. ‘Take your hand off me,’ she instructed him glacially.

A dark flush rushed into his face. But he maintained his grip on her arm. ‘I have instructions that you are not to—’

‘Nicolas!’ she shouted at the top of her voice.

Doors flew open all over the place—including the study door. Nicolas appeared in the hallway, his gaze sharp-eyed and questioning as he took in the little scene being enacted on the steps of the front porch.

‘Tell him,’ Sara breathed, barely enunciating because of the revulsion bubbling inside her, ‘to get his hands off me!’

Instead of obeying, Nicolas frowned. ‘What is this, Sara?’ he asked in genuine puzzlement. ‘You must know that none of my men mean you any harm—’

‘Tell him,’ she repeated, her quivering mouth ringed by a white line of tension. ‘Tell him right now!’

His face darkened, his walk as he came down the hall towards her a statement in itself. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, especially in front of his lackeys. And he did not like it that she was daring to do so now.

He flashed the guard a slicing look that had him abruptly letting go of her arm then melting away like ice on hot coals. ‘Right,’ he said shortly. ‘Would you like to tell me what that was all about?’

‘No,’ she replied, her face still tense with anger and disgust.

He wouldn’t understand if she did try to explain how no man—no man—would ever touch her again without her permission—not without her retaliating accordingly, anyway. She had learned that lesson the hard way, at Jason Castell’s hands. If she had screamed then, if she’d only had the sense to scream and shout and make loud protests, then Nicolas would have known she deserved his help and not his anger. And everything else would have been so different.

He sighed, his whole manner impatient. ‘Then would you like to tell me where you think you are going?’

‘Out,’ she said. ‘Or am I under some kind of house arrest?’ she then asked bitterly.

‘No.’ He denied that, but in a way that only helped to irk her further. ‘But I would have thought your daughter’s plight was more important to you than any appointment you may desire to keep.’

Sarcasm, dry and deriding. She responded to it like a match to dry wood. ‘Don’t you dare try telling me what should be important to me,’ she flashed, ‘when you have no understanding of the concept yourself!’

An eyebrow arched, black, sleek and threatening, golden eyes warning her to watch her step. ‘Where do you think you are going, Sara?’ he repeated smoothly.

‘I don’t think it, I know it!’ she asserted. ‘We still have the right of free will in this country in case you didn’t know it. I can go where I please without answering to anyone and that includes you and your damned henchmen!’

With that she turned, hair flying out in a silken fan of sun-kissed gold, the frustration that had been building up all morning culminating in that one furious movement.

His hand circling her wrist halted her mid-step, pulling her back round to face him. ‘Stop it,’ he commanded when she tried to tug free. His face was dark, its angles sharpened with anger. ‘Now try again,’ he suggested. ‘And this time come up with a suitable reply. Where do you think you are going?’ He enunciated it warningly.

She glared into his predator’s eyes, glared down at the place where his long fingers were crushing the bones in her slender wrist, felt the ready tears burst into her eyes and the frustration alter to despair. Felt horrid and frightened and useless and fed up and lonely and—

‘To help Mr Hobbit in the garden,’ she whispered thickly, and wilted like a rag doll. ‘Where else would I be going dressed like this?’

He should have recognised what she was wearing! He might hate the very sight of her, and he might have come to despise her lack of sophistication and good dress sense. But did he really think she would go out into the street dressed like this?

And he really should have recognised the apron as the same kind she always wore to work in the garden!

And it hurt—hurt like hell that he hadn’t.

He muttered something. What, she didn’t catch, because she was too busy fighting the onset of tears. Then the grip on her wrist slackened and she slid it free to lift it into her other hand where she rubbed at it pitiably.

‘Where are your gloves?’ he enquired gruffly.

So, he remembered that she usually wore gloves to protect her hands! One small tick in his favour, she thought sarcastically, and indicated with a half-nod of her bowed head towards the side of the house. ‘In the garden shed,’ she mumbled.

‘Come on, then.’ His arm coming to rest across her shoulders made her stiffen in rejection, but he ignored it. ‘Let’s go and find your gloves.’

She went with him simply because he gave her no choice, the arm remaining where it was as they walked together around the front of the house to the side where, cleverly concealed behind a high box hedge, the big garden shed stood with its door open to reveal the multitude of gardening implements held inside.

The moment they reached it, she went to move away from him, but he stopped her, the arm remaining firm as he twisted his body until he was standing in front of her. Then he reached out to pick up her wrist—the wrist he had used to pull her back towards him. His fingers were gentle as they ran over the tiny marks already promising to become bruises in the near future.

Sara kept her face lowered and didn’t even breathe. If she did breathe she would weep; she knew she would. She was feeling so raw at the moment that anything—anything—was likely to set her off.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sorry if I overreacted. But you must understand that it is not safe for you to come outside without someone with you. And I am sorry for this.’ His thumb brushed a gentle caress over the fine veins in her wrist. ‘I forgot my own strength, and the delicacy of yours.’

‘Why isn’t it safe?’ she asked huskily.

He didn’t answer for a moment, then gave a small sigh. ‘We’re dealing with ruthless people here, Sara,’ he said grimly. ‘They will stop at nothing to get what they want. Which means they would very much like to snatch you too if they thought they could get you.’

‘Why?’ She lifted tear-filled eyes to him in wretched bewilderment. ‘Isn’t it enough that they have my baby? What more do they think another life is worth on top of hers?’

For the first time since he had walked back into her life yesterday, she saw the Nicolas she used to know. The one who didn’t slice her in two with his eyes. The one who looked almost—tender.