Secret Love-Child: Kept for Her Baby / The Costanzo Baby Secret / Her Secret, His Love-Child

‘You know, that really doesn’t make any sense,’ she managed.

‘No?’ Ricardo scorned. ‘And why not?’

‘If I’m—’ she had to drag in a gasping breath in order to give herself the strength to speak the hurtful words. ‘—the biggest mistake of your life. One you want out of here for good. Then why—why—are you keeping me a prisoner here?’

‘Hardly a prisoner…’

‘But you’re making sure that I can’t leave! Which amounts to the same thing. And why would you do that if you feel I was such a mistake in your life?’

It was the question he’d been asking himself all day long, Ricardo acknowledged privately. And the fact that she was asking it now too didn’t make it any easier to answer.

He had never seen his relationship with Lucy as going anything beyond the hot, passionate nights they’d shared in his bed. But once he had found out she was pregnant then everything had changed. Their marriage had been for the baby and nothing more.

No, correction, their marriage had been for the baby and the hot blazing sex that had led them to create that baby. The hot, passionate sex that was the glue that had held them together in the place of anything else. And that he had thought would hold them together until they could put something else in its place.

Because, OK, they had rushed into marriage purely for convenience and to ensure that Marco was legitimate. But surely, when the baby was born, they could have taken some time to get to know each other properly. To find out if there was anything more than that blazing passion that had yoked them together from the start.

But Lucy hadn’t stayed around long enough to find out if that was the case. No sooner had Marco been safely delivered than she had launched herself into a lifestyle from which he—and the baby—were totally excluded. She had been out on the town every day, spending money like water, bringing home innumerable carrier bags of clothes, shoes, make-up. Most of which she had never worn or used. She had moved into a separate room, had had to be cajoled into seeing her son, was blatantly reluctant to care for him, leaving him instead to the care of his nanny almost twenty-four hours a day.

Then, within six weeks, she had simply walked out. Leaving a heartless note that made it plain just what she had wanted out of the marriage. It hadn’t been Marco—and it most definitely hadn’t been a life with Ricardo. All she had wanted was the lifestyle, the luxury, that his wealth had brought.

I gave you the son you wanted and almost a year of my life. Think that’s quite long enough. You can have Marco—after all, he’s the only reason we went through this farce of a marriage—and I’ll have my freedom. I’ll be in touch about the divorce.

And now here she was. Just as she had promised. She had come back into his life for the sole purpose of doing just that—talking about the divorce. And, of course, just how much she was going to get in her settlement.

He detested her. He hated who she was, what she’d done. So why in the devil’s name would he try to keep her with him any longer than he had to?

‘We haven’t talked about the divorce. About what you want out of it.’

Had he actually touched a nerve there? Was it possible that she could be affected by what he had said? Certainly it looked as if some sort of a light—the light of challenge and defiance had gone out of her eyes. Or was it merely some trick of the moon that had taken that from her gaze in the same way that it seemed to have drained the colour from her face?

‘When we have an agreement, then you can go. I’ll have Enzo bring the launch around and you can be back on the shore in less than fifteen minutes. I’ll even give you an advance on your settlement so that you can book yourself into a decent hotel—providing you get the first plane from Verona Airport tomorrow morning.’

Once again it seemed that he had caught her on the raw. She actually flinched, wincing away from his words. A frown creased the space between his brows but, just as he was leaning forward in some concern, her head came back up again, blue eyes flashing defiance.

‘No!’

Just for a moment she looked almost as if the force of her refusal had taken her by surprise as much as him. Those clear, bright eyes seemed to go out of focus for a second, then came back to clarity again as she blinked hard. She swayed suddenly as if buffeted by an unexpectedly strong wind that had blown up out of nowhere but then straightened again, fixing her furious gaze on his face once more.

‘That isn’t going to happen! I won’t go!’

‘Won’t?’

Ricardo frowned his deep confusion, trying to read just what sort of mood she was in.

‘Now you’re the one who’s not making sense. A moment ago you couldn’t wait to get away.’

‘Yes…but…I can’t go like this.’

‘Yes. you can. It’s quite simple—all you have to do is to tell me what you want and I’ll give…’

‘But you won’t!’ Lucy cut in, her voice sharp and shaking, her hands coming up in a wild gesture to emphasise her words. ‘You won’t give it to me.’

‘I gave my word.’

She was shaking her head violently, sending her hair flying out around her in a crazily flurried halo.

‘But you won’t keep it!’

‘I will—damn it, Lucia—I promise…’

‘Don’t promise what you can’t…won’t…’

It was as she shook her head again, clearly on the edge of losing things completely, that Ricardo felt his own control crack. That swirling hair had brushed against his face, the feel, the scent of it bringing so many memories rushing to the surface of his mind.

How could he ever forget the fresh, clean scent of it, perfumed by some herbal shampoo that tantalised his senses? Or how it had felt to know the silken slither of that long blonde hair over his skin as she knelt above him, his body sheathed in hers? As his groin tightened in instant response he almost felt again the slow, sensual movements that had driven him to the edge of his control, keeping him there in subtle torture until he could take no more.

‘Lucia—stop…’ he growled, reaching for her flailing hands. ‘Stop it, now! This isn’t doing you any good.’

The rough little shake was just meant to force her to rethink, to come back to herself. But when she threw back her head, drawing in a ragged breath, ready to speak again, he knew that touching her had been a mistake. A big mistake.

A mistake he had been heading towards all evening. Ever since that moment when she had touched his arm earlier in the shabby little room in the boarding house. No—earlier than that, when she had been about to fall and he had caught her, yanking her upright so that she had slammed hard against him. Her body pulled into close and intimate contact with his.

Just recalling that made his heart kick up a pace, his breath coming raw and uneven into his lungs. His hands tightened even more about her arms, moving upwards, towards her shoulder, stilling her, holding her…

And, in that moment, she looked up into his face, her soft pink mouth half open, her breath coming as unevenly as his. Their eyes caught and clashed, held and…

And all control left him as he saw her eyes widen, saw the shocked response and then the sensual awareness that clouded them. It clouded his mind too, leaving him no ability to think. He could only feel.

And hunger.

And that hunger drove him into mindless action, pushing him into hauling her hard up against him, wrenching her chin up towards him and clamping his mouth down hard on hers. Letting loose a rough grunt of satisfaction as he felt her lips give, opening instinctively under the hard, fierce pressure of his kiss.

A small murmur of distress got through to him, ripping apart the clouds of burning sensuality that clouded his mind, bringing a flash of rational clarity to his heated brain. Immediately he gentled his kiss, easing the pressure on her mouth, using softness, enticement, seduction to counter the brute force he had subjected her to just moments before.

It started out hard to silence her, control her. He had snatched at her lips, trying to crush back the cries of distress, stop them from pouring from her mouth. He didn’t understand why she should be so upset, why she was in such a state, but there would be no talking to her until she had calmed down.

‘Hush, Lucia, hush…There’s no need for this. Whatever you need—whatever you want—whatever trouble you’ve got yourself into—I’ll deal with it.’

That stopped her, froze her. She could only stare mutely into his face, her expression white and strained, huge eyes colourless in the moonlight. With a devastating sense of shock, Ricardo realised that the strange glitter on their surface was not the effect of the pale, cold moonlight but the glisten of unshed tears.

‘Lucia?’ It was a shocked whisper. And his next kiss was soft, gentle, wanting to wipe the upset from her lips. He took her mouth slowly, carefully, and his heart seemed to stop dead, then start up again in double-quick time, ragged and uneven as he felt the tiny, involuntary, almost automatic softening of her lips in response, the gentle pressure of her mouth against his.

The scent of her skin was all around him. The slide of her hair was against his hands. The softness of her body was in his arms, tight against him. And deep inside the hunger was waking, starting to grow.

But, even as he slid his hands down her back, he knew that something had changed. Lucy had hesitated, drawn back faintly, then a little more strongly, putting her hands on his chest to push him away from her.

‘You mustn’t do this. You shouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Trying to make light of it, he even tried a rough laugh deep down in his throat. ‘You were becoming hysterical. Something had to be done—and there are only two traditional ways to calm a hysterical woman. You surely wouldn’t have wanted me to slap you.’

Numbly she shook her head, her eyes glazed with something that looked close to despair. ‘You might wish you’d done that when I tell you.’

‘When you tell me what? Damnation, Lucia, what the hell are you talking about? What is it that you want? And why are you so sure that I won’t give it to you?’

Her hesitation caught him on the raw, tugging on nerves that suddenly felt painfully exposed, desperately vulnerable. A terrible sense of oppression shot through him, a prediction of something that was coming that he wasn’t going to like at all.

‘Because you won’t give me Marco. And that’s what…who I want…nothing else. The only thing in the world that I want is my son.’

If she had spat right in his face he couldn’t have been more appalled. As it was, he felt the sense of dark shock reverberate through him so that he released her at once, almost dropping her to the ground as if she had turned into a poisonous snake in his arms. From wanting to hold her so close, he jumped to the sense that holding her would contaminate him in the space of a single devastated heartbeat.

‘Marco? You came here for Marco? To take him…’

Unable to find the words, Lucy just nodded, then immediately realised that that was just what she should not have done. She hadn’t come to take Marco, not in the way that Ricardo meant. But it was already too late. She had nodded and she watched Ricardo’s face close down, the tightness of his jaw and the darkness in his eyes making her shiver.

‘Never,’ he said and the word was disgust, an ultimatum, a warning and a threat all rolled into one. ‘After what you did? Not in my lifetime.’

‘But—’ Lucy’s voice broke on the word. ‘I can explain…’

‘You can try. But I cannot imagine that anything you say will ever convince me.’

He paused, waited, head slightly tilted to one side, giving her such a pointed look that she practically felt it scrape over her skin like the sharp end of a needle, raising a raw, red weal.

He would listen, that look said, but he would not believe. He was already armoured against her. Even if she mentally beat her fists hard against his unyielding defences until they were raw and bleeding, he would not let her reach him.

‘So…’ he goaded when she still didn’t speak, couldn’t find a way to start ‘…explain.’

She wished she could. But how could she say anything when those cold black eyes seemed to probe her skull as her brain frantically tried different ways of beginning and discarded each one as unusable? At least that was what she thought she was doing but her thoughts seemed so completely unfocused that she found that nothing she tried made sense. And nothing would form clearly so that she could follow it through for herself, let alone explain it to Ricardo so that he would understand and believe her.

Because he had to believe her.

‘You can’t, can you? Because there isn’t an explanation. Not one that would satisfy anyone else. And certainly not someone who loves Marco.’

‘I love him…’

Her voice sounded frail, just a thin thread of sound—what she could hear of it over the buzzing inside her skull. It was as if a swarm of bees had suddenly invaded her head and were swirling round and round inside it.

‘Love him!’ Ricardo scorned ‘How can you say that? How dare you say that? You left him! Abandoned him…’

‘I know and that was wrong—but I was ill. I’m back now. And I want…’

‘You want?’ Ricardo echoed, his voice a vicious snarl. ‘You want—always what you want! Well, let me tell you, cara, that what you want is not going to happen—never. Not while I live. Not while I can stop you. And if “I love him” is the best damn explanation that you can come up with then, to be honest, lady, I don’t want to hear it.’

He was turning away as he spoke, using his body as well as his face, which was set hard and cold against her, to express the way he felt.

‘Ricardo, please…’

She had to stop him; had to make him listen. Lurching forward, she tried to grab at his arm, to hold him back, but missed. Her hand, aiming for the hard strength of his arm, found instead only empty air and waved wildly, frantically. The awkward movement threw her right off balance, jarring her head nastily.

The buzzing in her head grew louder, wilder and a burning haze seemed to rise before her eyes, blinding her completely.

‘Ricardo!’ she cried on a very different note as the world swung round her, lurching violently. Her hand groped for support, found it for a moment in the feel of muscle under warm, hair-hazed skin.

Then she lost it again as her grip loosened completely. A wave of darkness broke over her and she slid to the ground in a total faint.

CHAPTER SIX

‘ARE you awake?’

The voice, huskily male and disturbingly familiar, broke through the clouds of sleep that filled Lucy’s head, making her stir in the bed, frowning slightly as her head moved on the pillows.

Softer pillows than she remembered. She must have got used to the conditions in the boarding house. The first night they had felt so rough and lumpy, but now…

‘Lucy! It is time to wake up.’

The voice came again, rough and impatient now. It broke into the wonderful oblivion of much needed sleep that had hidden everything from her, almost wiping her memory clear of all that had happened.

Until the sound of Ricardo’s voice brought it all back in a way that had her bolting upright in the bed, staring wide-eyed at the figure standing in the middle of the room.

‘What has happened? Where am I?’

‘Buon giorno, bella Lucia,’ Ricardo drawled lazily, strolling across the room to lounge at the end of the bed.

Propping one hip against the ornately carved wooden bed frame, he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the jeans he wore with a deep red polo shirt, open at the throat.

‘You have no need to panic; you are quite safe. You are in the Villa San Felice, just as you were last night. So one might say that in fact you have come home.’

‘Home is not a word I associate with this place!’ Lucy tossed at him as she tried to collect her scrambled thoughts, feeling that panicking was exactly what she should be doing. ‘Nowhere where you are could ever be home to me.’

She was more aware of her surroundings now. Aware enough to recognise and be thankful for the fact that at least this was just one of the smaller bedrooms in the east wing of the villa. To her intense relief, the heavy wooden furniture and the soft blue curtains and carpet were not the ones she remembered from the room she had shared with Ricardo in her time as his wife. She didn’t feel that she would have been able to hold herself together if she had woken to find herself in their suite.

‘So how did I get here? What happened?’

Ricardo pushed a long hand through the darkness of his hair, disturbing its sleek black strands and his piercing eyes never left her flushed face as he observed every change of expression, every fleeting emotion that crossed it.

‘You were taken ill—you passed out. Do you not recall?’

‘No…I…’

But then she did remember everything in a rush. From the moment she had set out on her attempt to get onto the island, to see Marco…

Marco…

‘I fainted,’ she managed, piecing the events back together in her thoughts. ‘And you…’

The memory of Ricardo’s voice, his cruel words, swirled inside her head, making her feel dizzy just from the thought of it.

You are one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If not my absolute worst.

‘How did I get to be here? Who brought me…’

‘I brought you here,’ Ricardo inserted calmly, the smooth tones of his voice sliding into the rising hysteria of hers. ‘And yes—before you ask, I put you to bed.’

‘You…’

If he had slapped her across the face he couldn’t have brought her up sharp any more forcefully than that. Suddenly she became aware of the fact that she was sitting upright against the pillows with the soft comfort of the downy quilt slipping down to fall around her waist, exposing the top half of her body.

The top half of her body that was now wearing only the thin, plain bra that cupped her breasts.

‘You undressed me!’

Hot blood rushed into her cheeks, then ebbed away again almost at once as she snatched at the coverings, yanking them up to her neck to conceal herself, protect her body from those probing eyes. But just too late to erase the sensation of his searching gaze raking over her skin, flaying off a much-needed protective layer. It was impossible not to remember how he had once used to undress her—undress her so softly, so gently, or at other times almost ripping the clothes from her with such a wild urgency that her heart threatened to burst with just the memory of it.

‘I undressed you,’ Ricardo confirmed.

His beautiful mouth twitched, just once, in an expression that could have been anything—amusement, annoyance, contempt or just plain triumph. Lucy had no idea which, and the hot embarrassment that was flooding her thoughts left her incapable of even trying.

‘And why should that disturb you? Surely it was better…’

‘Better!’ Lucy interrupted, still struggling with the uncomfortable feeling of being…violated was the only word that came to mind. She knew that Ricardo would dismiss it as being exaggerated and overblown, and deep down she knew that it was. But it was how she felt all the same at just the thought of those long tanned hands unbuttoning her shirt, sliding it from her, taking her jeans…

‘And tell me just why it’s better to have you manhandle me…’

‘I did not manhandle you!’

She’d caught him on the raw there, sending sparks into the darkness of his eyes and making him bite out the words in a tone of barely controlled fury that had her flinching back against the pillows and pulling the duvet even more tightly around her in spite of the warmth of the sun that was coming in through the narrow arched window. Beyond that window she could hear the calm blue waters of the lake lapping lazily against the stony shore and then ebbing back again with a faint sucking sound as they pulled against the tiny pebbles. It seemed unnaturally loud in the dangerous silence that descended before Ricardo drew in a long harsh breath.

‘I have never ‘manhandled’ a woman in my life and I do not intend to start with my wife. Because surely that is the point here—that I—as your husband—performed this duty for you myself rather than leave it to a stranger.’

‘You are not my husband!’

Lucy wouldn’t have believed that it was possible for Ricardo’s expression to grow any more glacial or for the cold anger in his eyes to burn any more savagely but clearly her words had provoked him into darker fury as he flung a glance of bitter recrimination in her direction.

‘We took the vows,’ he declared icily. ‘We were married.’

‘But only to make sure that our son was born legitimate with two married parents to be named on his birth certificate. Beyond that, the whole thing meant nothing—and the vows less than nothing. I didn’t want to marry you and you…’

‘I wanted you as my wife.’

‘Because I was Marco’s mother. Oh, come on, Ricardo, are you telling me that if I hadn’t got pregnant you would still have asked me to marry you?’

‘No…’

‘No.’ She tried to make it sound as if his answer satisfied her, but the truth was that there was no satisfaction to be found in the single word. ‘I thought not.’

‘I wanted you…’

‘Oh, I know…’ She couldn’t keep the bleakness, the bitterness from her voice. ‘You made that only too plain. But you could have had me in your bed without tying yourself—without tying both of us—down to marriage. But I got pregnant and that trapped us, Ricardo. Trapped us in a marriage that neither of us wanted.’

It was weak, it was foolish—it was downright masochistic—but all the same she couldn’t stop herself from pausing, waiting just a second, just long enough for her stupidly vulnerable heart to give a couple of unsteady, jerky beats just in case Ricardo actually thought about denying that statement.

Well, if she’d hoped it might happen then she was destined for disappointment. He remained stubbornly silent, forcing her to go on.

‘And now I want to get out of it. We both want to get out of it. Which is why it’s not…appropriate…for you to…’

‘For me to do what?’ Ricardo cut in, satire burning in the words. ‘Not appropriate for me to help a woman who is evidently unwell and who has fainted at my feet? Not appropriate to pick her up and carry her inside, put her into a comfortable bed—and perhaps remove her outer clothing so that she may sleep more comfortably? I think that only you would assign some sort of sexual motive to that.’

His cynicism lashed at her, making her flinch inwardly. Her face was burning once more but this time with a very different sort of embarrassment. Hearing it like that, it did sound so perfectly innocent. Did she really think that she was so sexually irresistible that he was unable to keep his hands off her?

If she had been foolish enough to even consider any such thought then his tone and the blazing fury in his eyes would have very soon disillusioned her. Ricardo might have once been so determined and so hungry to get her into his bed that he had broken what he had told her was normally an indestructible rule and made love to her without using a condom, but it clearly was not the case any more. He had seen her as nothing more than some woman who needed help and he had acted accordingly.

‘You did that?’ Her whole body was burning with embarrassment so that the words quavered on her tongue. ‘Thank you—and I’m sorry.’

A swift, curt nod was Ricardo’s only acknowledgement of her response and almost immediately it seemed that his mind had moved on to something else.

‘Someone had to take care of you. You obviously weren’t taking care of yourself. Tell me, Lucia—when did you last eat?’

The question was unexpected, catching her off guard and forcing her to consider.

‘Yesterday…’ she said slowly, still thinking about it.