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

It was miraculous. In those few short seconds he had doubled in strength, in life, in sheer vitality. And the chase was lost to Sara as she took all of this in.

A tingling on the back of her neck—that sixth sense at work again, probably—made her turn and look up—up the white-walled terraces, to see Nicolas standing several levels above them, his dark face carved in a mask of pained observation.

Pain not for the child but for the father. Her heart squeezed in her breast. He too had seen the change in Alfredo—perhaps even heard the exchange which had preceded it.

His eyes flicked to her and turned cold—as cold as yellow ice. Yes, he had heard, she realised with a small shiver. Not all of it, but enough. He had warned her not to upset his father. Now retribution was due because she had.

‘Hah!’ said Alfredo, sitting back in his chair with a triumphant laugh. ‘Did you see that?’ He chuckled delightedly, unaware of the other exchange going on. ‘She escaped by ducking right between Fabia’s legs!’

Dragging her eyes from Nicolas’s, she glanced down at the beach where Fabia was now giving chase in the other direction. When she looked up again, Nicolas was gone.

‘Aye, aye, aye …’ Alfredo sighed envyingly. ‘To be able to go down there and join in the fun …’

‘Alfredo—’ Impulsively, Sara knelt down to his level. ‘Lia is your grandchild—’

‘I know this.’ He turned, eyes so incredibly softened by pride and joy that it caught at her throat.

‘You love her already.’

‘Sì,’ he confirmed. ‘We—how you English say?—bonded!’ he exclaimed. ‘From the moment she saw me, Sara! She came into my arms as if she had known them always! I love her,’ he sighed. ‘She loves me! It is wonderful!’

‘She is part of me too, Alfredo,’ Sara firmly reminded him.

‘It would be difficult to deny this when she is the image of you.’ He grinned.

‘She needs her mother.’

‘Of course!’ He looked almost shocked that she should feel the need to tell him that. ‘All children need their mother …’ he added, his attention drifting back to the beach where the game had now finished and Lia was busy with her bucket and spade while Fabia erected a beach umbrella over her to keep off the sun. ‘Nico was entirely devoted to his mama,’ he went on softly. ‘They would play together—on this same beach—just like that.’

‘Rosalia,’ Sara prompted softly.

‘Sì.’ The gold eyes darkened. ‘You named the child after Nico’s mamma. I thank you.’ He gave a small nod of his head. ‘It was—kind of you under the circumstances.’

‘She was a very special woman, so Nicholas once told me. She—’ Sara eyed him carefully. ‘She was devoted to both her husband and her son.’

‘Sì.’ Again the word held a wealth of tenderness. ‘As we were devoted to her,’ he added. ‘But she took very sick. Then she died. We both grieved for her badly—still do in some quiet moments, though it was a long time ago now.’

‘Would Rosalia be proud of you, Alfredo, for denying her son the right to love his own wife and child as she loved you both?’

There was a sudden stillness about him. Sara held her breath, waiting—waiting to see how he was going to respond to that blatant attempt to reach his conscience.

‘You presume too much,’ he said curtly then.

‘Do I?’ was all she answered, and stood up, deciding she had said enough for now. She had planted the seed; now it was up to him to decide whether to nurture it or just let it die. But if he did let it die then he would be shaming the memory of his beloved wife. Sara had made that point sink indelibly in. ‘Just remember that Lia is my child,’ she concluded. ‘Try any of your rotten tricks to take her from me and I shall fight you to hell and back.’

His golden eyes flicked sharply to her. ‘And how could I possibly do that?’ he asked, back to being the man she used to know—the one who could terrify her with a look like that.

But not any more, she informed herself bracingly. ‘You know exactly how you can do it,’ she countered. ‘I am one step ahead of you, Alfredo,’ she warned. ‘Force me to, and I will use my ace card.’

His eyes were studying her with a gleaming intelligence. ‘And what would that ace card be?’ he asked silkily.

She didn’t have one, but it wouldn’t hurt to let him think that she might have. ‘If you don’t already know then I’m not going to tell you.’

‘My son loves his papà,’ he added slyly.

By that Sara assumed he was wondering if she had some way of proving her innocence and Alfredo’s culpability to Nicolas.

‘Your son has a right to love his own daughter too,’ she responded, and turned away, preparing to leave him alone with that.

But his voice when it came to her made her skin crawl with dismay. ‘He has a new woman,’ he said. ‘Her name is Anastasia and she lives in Taormina. He visits her twice a week when he is here.’

Her eyes closed on the words. And she had a flashback to a week ago when she had lain in his arms and heard Nicolas himself confirm that statement. ‘Of course I have tried!’ he had spat at her. ‘Do you think I like feeling this way about you?’

Cancer. Alfredo was a cancer that lived on the weaknesses of others.

She walked away from him, feeling sick and shaken.

When she got back to her suite, Nicolas was there. Her heart sank. He was angry, his lean face stone-like and cold.

Retribution was nigh, she recognised wearily, and with a wry little smile stepped further into the suite. Then stopped dead. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked sharply.

The bedroom door was open, and a couple of maids were busily laying all Sara’s clothes out on the bed.

No! she thought on an upsurge of alarm. Alfredo had not already done it, had he? He hadn’t—?

‘Come with me.’

Catching hold of her hand, Nicolas all but frogmarched her out of that suite and along the hallway to the next, where he threw open the door and propelled her inside. She ended up standing in the middle of a beautiful white and blue sitting room; her eyes drifted dazedly around her surroundings without taking anything in.

The suite door shut with a controlled click. She spun back to face him. ‘What are they doing with my clothes?’ she demanded shakily.

‘Removing them,’ he replied. ‘The suite was not yours to begin with. I was allowing you time to settle before moving you, but, having witnessed the way you could attack a sick old man, I do not see why I should make any concessions to you—on anything!’

‘The suite was not yours … allowing you time to settle …’ Her mind was too busy sorting through what he had said to worry much about the angry way he had said it.

‘You mean,’ she ventured at last, ‘that you’re moving Lia and me up a floor, to the family apartments?’

For some reason her conclusion made him frown in puzzlement. ‘What have you been doing with yourself this last week?’ he demanded. ‘You cannot, surely, still be so ignorant of the changes that have been made here?’

Her answer was a blank look because she hadn’t so much as set foot into the rest of the house since arriving here. She had eaten all her meals in her own room and confined all her recreation to the beach and the pool, which had meant her only having to walk up and down the outer steps. Other than that she had stayed put, with no interest in reacquainting herself with a place where she hadn’t felt welcome the first time and was sure that that welcome would be even smaller this time.

His sigh was impatient. ‘This whole house has been completely redesigned since you were here last—essentially to accommodate my father’s less mobile state!’ he explained. ‘Oh, he gets around quite freely—as you saw just now,’ he added, with a flash of that anger to remind her why she had been dragged in here like a naughty child. ‘With the aid of special chair-lifts we have had fitted alongside the east stairway. But for the sake of comfort other changes were made.’

‘What changes?’ she prompted warily when he went grimly silent. She wasn’t a fool; she knew Nicolas was angry with her. She also knew, therefore, that he was not telling her all of this for her own health!

‘There has been a—reallocation of private facilities. My father now has the full use of what was previously considered the family tier. He needs specialist attention,’ he went on. ‘Twenty-four-hour nursing. Daily physiotherapy and so on. So rooms on that level have been equipped accordingly.’

‘Like a mini-hospital, you mean,’ she suggested.

‘Yes.’

Alfredo must be very ill to warrant such vast and expensive care and attention in his home, she realised, and flicked a look of pained comprehension at Nicolas for what he must be feeling. His father meant the world to him.

He dismissed the look with a cold lifting of his chin. ‘The guest suites, therefore, are now below us, level with the pool, recreation rooms and garden terrace,’ he continued. ‘Because this—’ he made a short, gesturing motion with his hand, which she presumed encompassed this whole tier ‘—is now my own private wing of the house.’

‘Ah, I begin to see,’ she said with a small, bitter, wry smile. ‘You want Lia and me out of your private rooms and down in the guest suites where we belong.’

‘No,’ he said silkily. ‘You do not see at all.’ His eyes narrowed on her face, his next words carefully chosen for maximum impact. ‘Your child remains exactly where she is. It is you who are moving. In here. In this suite—with me.’

Silence. She met that with total, woolly-minded silence. He watched and waited, his hooded gaze glinting over her long, bare legs, which had been faintly tinted gold in the days she had spent here already. Her plain pink shorts with their loose pleated style did nothing to camouflage the slender hips beneath them. Nor did the simple crop-waisted vest-top, which gave glimpses of her flat stomach when she moved, hide the fact that she was wearing no bra beneath it. Two firm crests were thrusting gently against the thin cloth in a dusky invitation that he would have had to be totally indifferent to not to feel the hot sting of temptation that hit his loins. He remembered too well how they tasted, how they would respond to the lightest touch from him.

Provocative. That was how she looked. A fine, sleek golden creature of sensual provocation. A woman he would be happy to die inside, so long as those breasts were there for him to suckle while he did so. So long as those long golden legs were wrapped around him. So long as that pink heart-shaped mouth was fastened somewhere on his skin, warm and moistly tasting him as he knew it loved to do.

Not that she was aware of any of this, he acknowledged grimly—not of her own sexual attractiveness or what it did to him.

Unaware. Just as her hands were unaware, he was sure, of the coil of garden wire she was twisting between them, and the secateurs and the fact that her wedding ring gleamed gold on her finger.

His wedding ring. The ring he had placed there. Once a gold ring of love, now a gold ring of betrayal.

Stiffly he turned away from both the temptation and the ring, despising himself—despising her.

His movement set her long golden lashes flickering, blue eyes zooming into focus on his long, tense back.

Then, ‘No,’ she said in flat-voiced refusal. ‘I will stay with Lia.’

He spun back, face fierce, the earlier coldness replaced by something else, something faintly disturbing. ‘Are we back to arguing about choices?’ he clipped. ‘Because you have none,’ he informed her brutally. ‘You will do exactly as you are told while you are under this roof.’

‘Except sleep with you,’ she objected.

‘You will,’ he insisted. ‘And you will do it without protest! You owe me that!’ he rasped in a bitter rejoinder.

Did he mean by that, that she owed him the use of her body in return for his retrieving her stolen child? she wondered in horror. ‘But you hate and despise me! You even hated yourself for what happened the last time we shared a bed!’

‘True.’ His hard face tightened. ‘But if I had wanted the whole world to know that Nicolas Santino was foolish enough to marry a faithless woman,’ he threw at her, ‘I would have denounced both her and her child three years ago!’

She blanched at the intended insult. He took the reaction as his due.

‘As it is,’ he continued, ‘to the world and this household, we are still very much man and wife. And man and wife share a bed and have a certain amount of marital privacy which does not include a child sleeping in the same room.’

‘But you haven’t been near me for three years,’ she cried. ‘How are we supposed to have a proper marriage with three years’ separation in the middle?’

Her scornful tone made his golden eyes glint. ‘You mean because until now you have preferred to spend your time at our London home where I have visited you on a regular basis?’

‘My God,’ she gasped as clear understanding of his meaning hit her full in the face. ‘You can be as two-faced as your father when it really comes down to it, can’t you?’

‘We will leave my father out of this, if you please,’ he said tersely.

‘I wish we could!’ she flared. ‘But since he lives here too and he knows exactly what state our so-called marriage is in isn’t he going to find it rather odd—’ if not damned frustrating, if her suspicions about him were correct, she added silently to herself ‘—that you and I are cohabiting again?’

‘He will keep his own counsel,’ Nicolas coldly stated. ‘For neither does he wish to see his son’s pride dragged in the dirt because of this—situation we all find ourselves thrust into.’

‘He said that, did he?’ she challenged. ‘Condoned this frankly—obscene suggestion you are putting to me?’

‘It is not a suggestion,’ he denied, ‘and nor is it obscene. You are still my wife in the eyes of the world, and you will maintain good appearances at all costs, Sara,’ he warned. ‘Or so help me I will let you go, and keep the child!’

Thereby threatening to walk her right into Alfredo’s neatly baited trap! she realised, and didn’t know whether to scream in frustration or weep in defeat. ‘I won’t sleep with you, Nicolas,’ was what she eventually said, and spun abruptly on her heel.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ he demanded.

‘It’s time for Lia’s afternoon nap,’ she informed him stiffly.

‘Fabia will see to the child,’ he ordained. ‘We have unfinished business to discuss here.’

‘Except I prefer to see to Lia myself.’

‘And I am telling you you cannot!’ he snapped, then made an effort to get a hold of himself. ‘This is more important. So leave it,’ he clipped. ‘The child is as safe with Fabia as she could be with anyone.’

She spun back to stare at him. ‘Even her own mother?’ she challenged. Then, as a sudden thought struck her, she felt tears of hurt spring into her eyes. ‘This is another punishment, isn’t it?’ she accused him bitterly. ‘It’s just one more Sicilian vendetta whereby you cruelly separate me from my baby for some nasty reason of your own!’

She had to be crazy speaking to him like that, she realised hectically as he took an angry step towards her. But she held her ground, eyes ablaze, her fingers tightening on the coil of wire and secateurs in a way that made his eyes widen in real surprise because it was so obvious that she was ready to use them on him if he gave her reason.

‘Put those down,’ he instructed.

She shook her head, mouth drawn in at the corners and defiant, like her blue eyes, her whole stance!

‘You will not like it if I am forced to take them from you,’ he warned darkly.

I know I won’t, she acknowledged to herself. But for some reason I can’t allow myself to cower away from you! Not any more—perhaps never again! she realised with a start, and knew the words would have surprised him if she’d said them out loud.

But maybe she didn’t need to say them out loud, she noted breathlessly. Because something altered in his eyes, the anger darkening into something much more dangerous: a taste for the battle—not this mental battle whereby she was daring to defy him, or even the one involving a silly pair of secateurs that he could take from her with ease if he so wanted to, but a far more complicated one which set the tiny muscles deep down in her stomach pulsing, set her heart racing.

‘Taking me on, cara?’ he drawled.

Her fingers twitched. ‘I’m not going to let you walk all over me, Nicolas,’ she returned. ‘Not again. Last time you broke my spirit—’

‘You never had a spirit,’ he countered deridingly, taking a deliberate step towards her. ‘You used to jump ten miles high if anyone so much as frowned at you.’

She had to steal herself not to take a defensive step back. ‘Well, not any more,’ she said determinedly. ‘I am a mother now. And I shall fight you to the end of the earth if I have to but you will not separate me from my baby.’

‘This has nothing to do with the baby.’ He dismissed that angle, taking yet another carefully gauged step.

Her breasts heaved on a short, tense pull of air, but she held her ground.

‘This is about you standing there—’ he used his darkened eyes to indicate the defiant pose she had adopted ‘—daring to take me on …’

Another step. She quivered. He saw it and sent her a taunting smile. ‘The coil of wire,’ he suggested, ‘would make an adequate garotte but would require a lot of physical strength for you to succeed with it. I would throw it to one side if I were you, amore,’ he advised, ‘and concentrate on the scissors instead.’

‘Secateurs,’ she corrected him tensely.

His mocking half-nod acknowledged the correction. ‘Now with those you could do me some damage,’ he observed. ‘Not much,’ he added. ‘But some—enough maybe to make this new spirit you talk about feel better.’

‘I have no wish to damage you at all!’ she shakily denied. ‘I just want you to stop trying to bully me all the time!’

‘Then put down the weapons,’ he urged, ‘and we will talk about my—bullying.’

She shook her head in refusal, and the odd thing about it was that she had a feeling he would have been disappointed if she had given in to him. He was enjoying this; she could see the beginnings of amusement gleaming behind the taunt in his eyes.

‘Then make your move, cara,’ he softly advised. ‘Or I will undoubtedly make mine …’

Then he did—without any more warning, her half-second hesitation all he allowed her before his hands were suddenly snaking out to capture her two wrists, fingers closing tightly around them then forcing them up and apart until he had her standing there in front of him with her hands made useless; then his body was taking up the last bit of space separating them, chest against wildly palpitating chest, hips against hips, thighs against thighs.

‘I like it—the spirit,’ he murmured. ‘I used to like the soft clinging vine you used to be but I think I may like this more spirited creature a whole lot more.’

‘I don’t want you to like me,’ she mumbled in protest.

‘No?’ He challenged that. The word challenged it, his eyes challenged it, and the sensual curve of his mouth challenged it. ‘I think,’ he said very softly, ‘you want to be kissed into submission.’

‘I do not!’ she denied.

But it was too late; his mouth covered hers, covered it and moulded it, moulded it and parted it, and, on parting it, brought every sense that she’d been severely containing bursting into quick, clamouring life.

Her wrists he kept up and level with her head; her fingers were still clenched tightly around her ‘weapons’, as he’d called them. His big chest moved against her chest, making her breasts swell and tighten. His tight hips pushed knowingly against her hips, and the terrible, wonderful sinking feeling she experienced inside made her groan in denial. A denial he scorned by doing the same thing again. And again. And again—until the groan changed in timbre, gave her away, just as her breasts gave her away, her breathing, the way she sank powerlessly into the kiss.

Then her fingers slowly opened, the two clattered thuds which echoed on the tiles at either side of them announcing the final surrender, and she was tugging her wrists, urgent to free her fingers so that she could slide them into his hair, hold his mouth down on hers, move closer—even closer because her legs had turned to liquid and she needed his support to remain upright.

He let her have her way, set her wrists free so that her hands could find his head while his own hands lowered to clasp her lightly around her slender ribcage just below the trembling swell of her breasts. She gave a sensually unsteady sigh and wound her arms around his neck, moving her body closer to the source of its pleasure, sighed again as his hands began stroking her body, moving downwards until they found her hips where they closed and lifted her against the steadily growing evidence of his own passion.

It went on and on, and the one word which kept repeating itself over and over in her head was beautiful. This was so beautiful. The man, his touch, his kiss. Beautiful.

When he lifted her into his arms she did not protest. When he carried her through to the bedroom she only groaned in protest when his mouth left hers for the moment it took him to settle them both on the bed.

Then his mouth was back on hers and she was lost—lost in the beauty of deep, drugging kisses, of his hands caressing her body as they slowly stripped her of her clothes. She lost herself in the acute pleasure of helping him to remove his own, lost herself in the burning blackness of his eyes as he came over her and into her, slowly this time and deeply; mouth tense, cheeks taut with desire, he made the connection with a sombre need that brought tears to her eyes.

‘Don’t hate me, Nic,’ she whispered.

He didn’t answer, his long lashes lowering to cover his eyes, and his mouth came down to cover hers, and there in the full brightness of an afternoon sun he lost them both, lost them in the sheer beauty of a slow, slow climb to fulfilment.

When she awoke what seemed like hours later, but was probably only a few blissfully forgetful minutes, he was gone.

Gone hating her? she wondered. Hating himself?

CHAPTER NINE

AND that was it. Sara was trapped. Trapped by necessity. Trapped by her own body, which would respond to the slightest touch from the man who had reawoken it to its pleasures. And did he pleasure her! Night after night, hungrily, devouringly. But she never woke up to him still there beside her, and that trapped her too—trapped her in a tight little world of self-disgust and helplessness because she could not do a single thing to change the status quo, his status quo, where she played the loving wife and he played the ravaging conqueror.

She was trapped by his ruthless determination to appear the master of his own household by making her sleep with him, eat in the dining room with him and his father, where she was polite to Alfredo but that was about all and Alfredo teased her with cleverly chosen words with double meanings that she did not dare react to for fear of bringing Nicolas’s wrath down on her head.

And she was trapped by her daughter, who loved it here and, worse than that, adored Alfredo. A daughter whom Nicolas had managed to avoid at every possible opportunity, so they only came together on very rare occasions, when he would be coolly polite and the little girl would be warily cautious. And Sara would feel her heart break a little more each time she witnessed the guarded manner of both.

Then there was that terrible trapped feeling she experienced when twice a week Nicolas would take himself off to Taormina and not come back until late in the night. Those were the only nights he didn’t touch her. And that trapped her too, because she wanted him to touch her, she wanted him to come from his mistress and still need her, still need to drown himself in her kisses, her body, her arms, her—

Love.

And, God, but she didn’t know how long she could go on bearing all of this—bearing the fact that she did not dare say anything about his precious Anastasia because Alfredo’s lies about herself had robbed her of the right!