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

Tears bulged in her eyes—tears of love and fear of loss and a heart-clenching tenderness that had her trembling mouth brushing a caress over the baby’s warm cheek.

‘Don’t cry, signora …’ Fabia bent down beside the chair to place a consoling hand on Sara’s arm. ‘She is safe now. Signor Nicolas see to it that she remain safe. You need worry no more.’

Yes, she was safe, Sara silently conceded. But she suspected that, far from being over, her worries were only just about to begin.

Alfredo wanted his grandchild. He did not want her mother. He had been very clever in getting them both here with Nicolas’s blessing. Was his next move to have Sara removed while the child remained?

Sara knew it was Nicolas from the moment he entered the suite. How she knew she wasn’t sure, unless it was a leftover instinct from the last time she had lived here when sheer self-preservation had taught her to pinpoint him wherever he was in this many-levelled villa.

Three years ago he had felt like her only ally in a house of enemies. Even the paid staff had treated her with little respect. And, if she was honest about it, she had not known how to deal with them. They’d intimidated her—as most people had intimidated her then. Now it was a different story. Somewhere along the line she had gained a maturity that stopped her seeing everyone as frightening aliens in an alien world.

Like Fabia, for instance. Whether it was Sara’s own firm, quiet manner or the fact that the servant was a new addition to the Santino staff since Sara had been here last and therefore had no idea how Sara used to be treated she wasn’t sure, but far from being cold and unhelpful Fabia had gone out of her way to make Sara feel more comfortable in a situation she was so obviously not comfortable with. She’d allowed no one entry into the suite, insisting on answering each knock at the door and dealing with the caller herself.

‘The whole house waited anxiously for good news of your baby, Mrs Santino,’ she’d explained. ‘Now they want to come and voice their concerns and their pleasure to you. But they can wait,’ she’d decided firmly. ‘You just be comfortable and enjoy having that warm little body close again. I will deal with the rest.’

And Sara had begun to feel comfortable—to her own surprise.

When Lia had awoken feeling hungry and fractious, it had been Fabia who had helped soothe her with the same quiet manner that Sara had recognised as the one she had used on herself. And when Lia, with the usual resilience that children had by nature, had suddenly become her usual bundle of restless energy Fabia had come with them down to the tiny beach.

The three of them had spent a long, soothing hour down there, taking advantage of the late afternoon sun’s cooler rays to simply play without fear of either mother or child burning. They’d paddled in the silk-warm water that gently lapped the sand-skirted shore, and built a sandcastle together then decorated it with pebbles from farther up the beach, Lia padding to and fro with a happy contentment that twisted her mother’s heart.

She had been so close—so close to never seeing her baby like this again …

They’d come back up the long row of steps as a threesome, at first with the little girl jumping the steps between Sara and Fabia, each small hand tucked into one of theirs, and later, when she’d run out of steam, straddling her mother’s hips, with her tired head on Sara’s shoulder, while Fabia had paced quietly beside them, a kind of soothing quality about her presence.

That had been hours ago, though. Now the sun was setting low in the sky and Lia was fast asleep in the baby’s cot which had been erected by Sara’s bed. And Fabia had seemingly taken root, Sara thought with a small smile, because she was sitting in a chair beside the sleeping child, quietly stitching her delicate embroidery, quite indifferent to Sara’s claims that she did not need to stay any longer.

In the end, Sara had left her to it, coming through here to the sitting room, to flop down on a sofa to watch the sunset, feeling about as drained as an electronic toy without any batteries now that Lia no longer had a claim on her attention.

The last few days, she accepted, were finally catching up with her.

‘You look shocking,’ was Nicolas’s own observation as he arrived at the side of her chair.

‘And it makes me feel so much better to hear you say it.’

He sighed at her sarcasm, stepping past her to go and stare at the sunset. ‘The child is—calmer now?’ he asked after a moment.

‘No thanks to you, yes.’ For a long while after awakening on her mother’s lap, Lia had been frightened, and confused, and—

She sighed, closing her eyes and her mind to all the painful things she could only guess that her poor baby had been feeling over the last few days.

‘I apologise if I—frightened the child,’ he murmured stiffly. ‘But you must understand that I find the situation—difficult.’

‘Well, you will no doubt be pleased to know, then, that we will be happy to go back to London just as soon as you give the word.’

‘So eager to leave,’ he mocked.

‘The sooner you transport us back out of here, the sooner the—difficult situation will be over.’

‘I wish it could be that simple.’

‘It is,’ she assured him. ‘Just call for your private limousine and your private jet aeroplane—’ her voice dripped more sarcasm ‘—and we will be gone, I promise you.’

He said nothing to that, his attention seemingly fixed on the breathtaking sight of a vermilion sky touching a blue satin sea.

Then he turned and glanced down at her. ‘Dinner will be ready in about an hour,’ he informed her. ‘Do you think you can make an effort and tidy yourself for it? I can understand why you must look so wrung out,’ he allowed, ‘but do you have to be dressed like a rag doll also?’

The criticism was aimed directly at the way she had her hair scraped untidily back into a pony-tail, and the fact that she was still wearing the same clothes she had travelled in. She looked battle-worn and travel-stained.

He had managed to change his clothes, though, she noted, and was now dressed in a snowy white shirt and black silk trousers. He looked good. Long legs, tight hips, broad shoulders.

‘Blame yourself for the way I look,’ she threw at him, dropping her gaze from the lean, tight attractiveness that had always been his. ‘You may have kindly packed for me this morning, but only the smart couture outfits a man like you would expect a woman to wear. No day clothes,’ she explained at his frown. ‘Nothing to counter the hot climate, or the fact that I would be dealing with a very energetic, very messy child. And to top that,’ she concluded, her voice so dry that you could have scored chalk lines on it, ‘you forgot to pack toiletries, underwear or even a hairbrush.’

‘That bad, huh?’ he grunted. ‘I am not used to packing,’ he then added as an excuse.

‘It showed.’ Despite herself, Sara could not hold back a small smile. ‘You did a little better for Lia,’ she then went on to allow graciously. ‘Simply because you must have just emptied each drawer containing her clothes into the suitcase. And— Oh,’ she added, ‘you remembered Dandy. Now that was really thoughtful. Her whole countenance changed when she saw him again.’

‘And what, I wonder, will change yours?’

She went hot, then cold, then began tingling all over as his softly provoking tone sent disturbing little messages to all her senses.

‘I will eat my dinner here in the suite if you don’t mind,’ she said coolly as a way to counteract the disturbance.

‘You will eat in the dining room as is the custom in this house,’ he ordained. But at least that other, more intimate tone had gone from his voice.

She shook her head. ‘I won’t leave Lia here alone. She may wake up and be frightened.’

‘And Fabia is with her, is she not?’

‘Yes.’ Sara conceded that point. ‘But Fabia is not the child’s mother, is she? She’s had enough upsets in her little life recently without waking to a strange room and a strange woman and no sign of her mother.’

‘The house is equipped with an internal communications system.’ He made dry mockery of all her protests. ‘One call from Fabia and you can be back down here in seconds.’

‘Seconds that can seem like an hour of agony to a child in distress.’

‘This is foolish!’ He sighed. ‘The child is safe! She knows Fabia’s face. She knows her mama accepts Fabia as someone she can trust. You have spent the whole afternoon together building that trust! Now you must trust Fabia to do her job without rancour from you, while you—’

‘Job?’ She picked up on the word with a sharp question.

‘Yes.’ His eyes glinted down at her, cool and unwavering. ‘Fabia has been employed specifically to look after the child.’

She jumped up, a tight band of fear suddenly closing like steel around her chest. ‘As a nanny, you mean?’

‘Yes …’ he confirmed, but in a way which tightened the band further. She was thinking of Alfredo, wondering how much of his influence was at work here. Had Alfredo employed Fabia? Was she here to wean Lia away from her mother so that the wrench when it came would not be too great for the child?

‘I don’t need a nanny to help me with Lia,’ she stated as firmly as her quaking heart would let her. ‘L-look what h-happened the l-last time you employed a nanny! Lia was taken from right beneath her nose!’

‘Why are you stammering?’ He frowned down at her.

Because I’m frightened, she thought agitatedly. ‘Nic, please—’ She resorted to begging, her hand going to clutch at his forearm in appeal. ‘Don’t do this to me! Don’t reduce my importance as a mother! I don’t need Fabia! I w-won’t be here long enough to n-need her!’

‘My God,’ he breathed, his eyes suddenly dark with shock. ‘You are terrified, aren’t you?’

So t-terrified that I’m even s-stammering inside my head! she thought wildly. ‘L-let me just stay quietly here in this s-suite until you are ready to send us back to London! Please!’

‘But what are you frightened of?’ He ignored her plea to demand an answer to his question. ‘Do you think because the child’s abductors were Sicilian that I cannot protect you here?’ he suggested when she didn’t answer but just stood there staring at him with those huge, frightened eyes and trembling so badly that he felt compelled to lift his hands to her arms to steady her. ‘You are wrong, you know,’ he murmured reassuringly. ‘This place is built like a fortress. Nothing moves outside it without an electronic camera picking it up.’

But it wasn’t the outside Sara was worried about. It was the inside. And the people within it.

She took in a deep breath, and tried very hard to grab back some self-control. ‘Nic …’

She stepped closer, her fingers settling tremulously on the centre of his wide chest. It was not a come-on; she was not trying to use female wiles on him here to get him to do what she wanted. She was simply too anxious to know what she was doing or how she was doing it.

‘Listen to me …’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t want to be here and you don’t want us here! If you believe it impossible to protect us in London, then I will change my name—my identity if I have to! Just send us back to England and I shall get right out of your life. I promise you. You won’t have to be inconvenienced like this again on our account!’

He stiffened, the big chest expanding on a tense clenching of its muscular flesh. ‘You—love this child very much, don’t you?’

Why did he keep on asking her that question? ‘She is my life!’ she choked.

‘And the father? Did you love him with the same strength?’

Oh, God. Sara closed her eyes on a shaft of tight pain and wanted to drop her head onto that big chest and weep. Weep. ‘Yes,’ she breathed.

He stepped away from her, turning back to the window and leaving her standing there trembling with her hands still lifted in front of her where his chest had just been.

‘Did he love you?’ he enquired after a moment.

She had to swallow to remove the aching lump from her throat. ‘I think so, once,’ she replied, letting her hands drop empty to her sides.

‘Then why did he never claim you both?’

Her sigh held an irony only she would ever understand. ‘Because he could never be sure that my baby was his and his pride could not let him accept another man’s child.’

‘Could she be mine, then?’

Oh, no, she thought wretchedly. Don’t ask me that question now. Not when I daren’t give you an honest answer!

So instead she avoided it. ‘Nic, I need to get away from here. I can’t bear this place,’ she murmured thickly. ‘I never could.’

‘Were you so unhappy here?’

Without you here with me? she thought painfully. ‘Yes,’ she said, and sank down onto the sofa and wished to God that they’d never begun this whole wretched scene.

He didn’t say anything to that, and the silence between them throbbed with the heavy pull of her own heartbeat.

Then, quietly, he said, ‘You cannot leave.’

Her stomach gave a funny lurch. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked warily.

He turned. ‘Just what it said. You cannot leave here. The risk is too great. I can guarantee your safety here; I cannot in London.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘So here is where you and the child must stay.’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I am not giving you a choice,’ he grimly informed her.

It brought her back to her feet. ‘Just because you refuse to divorce me does not mean you own me, Nicolas!’ she cried. ‘I can make my own choices. And I prefer to take my chance in London rather than live under this roof again!’

‘You speak as if it were you who was betrayed!’ he said derisively in response to that little speech.

‘I will not be put through the kind of misery I endured here a second time.’

‘Maybe you deserve to be miserable.’

That came straight from the gut, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut while she handled the blow it dealt her.

‘But my baby does not,’ she managed to parry. ‘She is the innocent one in all of this. Punish the mother and you will punish the child. Can you be that callous? That thirsty for revenge?’

‘I am not after revenge,’ he denied. ‘It is a simple case of logistics which decides it for us. This house is easier to guard against a repeat of what you have just been through. Therefore this is where you will live from now on. Comprende?’

Oh, she ‘comprended’ all right. The lord and master had spoken. End of discussion.

‘But I don’t have to eat with you,’ she countered, throwing herself back onto the sofa with a defiance about her that warned him she was not going to surrender this point to him as well! ‘I would rather starve first.’

‘And that is being childish,’ he derided.

Too true, she agreed. But there was no way she was going to sit at the same table as Alfredo Santino! No way.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to dress up and play happy dinner hour with you and your father—can’t you even allow me that one concession?’

He sighed, allowing some of his anger to escape with the sound. Then surprisingly he gave in. ‘I need to speak to Fabia before I leave you,’ he said. ‘Then I will have something sent down to you.’

With that, he walked off towards the bedroom, leaving Sara feeling annoyingly, frustratingly let down.

Though she didn’t know why.

Or refused to look at why.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SARA was squatting by the cultivated border of one of the many white-painted terrace walls, carefully coaxing bougainvillea strands around a wire support that she had just constructed, secure in the knowledge that she could hear Lia’s happy voice drifting up to her from where she played on the beach with Fabia, when an electric whirring sound behind her warned her of Alfredo’s approach.

She didn’t turn, did not so much as reveal she was aware of his presence. But her inner sigh was heavy. In the six days since she had arrived here, she had carefully avoided any contact at all with Alfredo. He came to see Lia each lunchtime, guiding his chair into the suite and staying long enough to share lunch with the baby, and Sara made herself distinctly scarce before he was due to arrive.

It was necessary for them to stay here, Nicolas had said. But necessary to whom? To this man in the wheelchair coming steadily towards her along the terrace? Of course it was.

It certainly wasn’t what Nicolas wanted, she thought bleakly, because she hadn’t even seen him since the first night she’d arrived here.

He had had his talk with Fabia, their two voices conversing in the quick Sicilian dialect Sara had never quite been able to keep up with even before her Italian had become rusty through lack of use.

When he’d come out of the bedroom again, he hadn’t even bothered to wish her goodnight, but had just left.

She hadn’t seen him since. The next morning she’d awoken to Fabia arriving with a manservant in tow carrying some heavy suitcases. They’d contained all her personal belongings. Nicolas must have had them flown in overnight from London. A further statement that this was to be a permanent situation. Fabia had also brought a message from Nicholas informing her that he’d had to fly back to New York.

He had been gone for almost a week now, and she refused point-blank to admit—even to herself—that she missed him.

The wheelchair stopped a couple of feet away. Sara felt his eyes on her, sensed him urging her to turn and acknowledge him. When she did not, it was he who broke the tense silence between them.

‘The garden has missed your special touch,’ he said.

‘I have nothing to say to you, Alfredo,’ she told him without pausing in what she was doing. ‘You are a mean, nasty, selfish old man who doesn’t deserve my attention. Or the attention of my daughter, come to that.’

Instead of taking exception to her outright attack on him, she was surprised to hear him give a soft chuckle. ‘I would say that constituted saying a lot,’ he remarked ruefully.

It made her turn, more out of suspicion than because she had been taken by surprise by his amiable tone. She was quite sure Alfredo could chuckle as pleasantly as that while thrusting a knife between her shoulderblades!

Still, this first real look at him without her being blinded by the horror of seeing her daughter clasped to his chest was a shock.

Dressed in a cream short-sleeved shirt open at the throat and a pair of brown trousers, he was still a remarkably daunting person—remarkable because he had been so drastically diminished in the purely physical sense.

Never anywhere near as tall as his son, he had once made up for his lack of inches with width. Wide shoulders, wide chest, wide hips, short, immovable trunks for legs—all of it solid-packed and tough. But now the width had gone, the muscle waste so dramatic that it had left behind it a mere shadow of what once had been, replacing it with a frailty so obvious that Sara began to understand why Nicolas was so angrily protective of what pathetic amount was left.

The sun was shining down on his silvered head—the hair was not thinning, she noted. At least he had been saved that emasculation. But his skin, though tanned, was sallow and loose, wrinkling his arms and his throat. And there was a lack of strength in the way he sat hunched in his wheelchair, as if the mere act of sitting in it was an effort in itself.

‘Goodness me.’ She sat back on her heels, too stunned to hold back the next comment. ‘You look terrible.’

His answering wry smile was more a fatalistic rueful grimace. ‘I hate it,’ he admitted, and slapped a thin hand on the wheelchair arm. ‘Hate this too.’

I just bet you do, she thought with a moment’s soft pity for this man who used to be a giant despite his lack of inches.

Then he was sending her a look that had all hint of compassion draining right out of her. For this man was still dangerous, physically incapacitated or not. Those two bright hunter’s gold eyes were burning pinpoints of astuteness and guile, warning her that the sharp brain behind them still functioned at its old breakneck pace.

‘You, I see, are more beautiful than ever,’ he remarked. ‘The child is hewn in your image. Your hair, your face, your inherently sweet and gentle nature.’

‘I was a coward, Alfredo,’ Sara countered, ignoring the attempted compliment. ‘My daughter is not.’

Something she had discovered via listening painfully as Lia had over the last few days let little things slip which suggested that the child had not made it easy for her kidnappers.

‘It will be my son’s genes which give her courage.’ He nodded proudly. ‘Or maybe even my own.’

‘God help her,’ Sara responded, amazed that he wasn’t even going to pretend he did not know exactly who Lia’s father was. ‘If she has much of you in her, Alfredo, then she will need God’s help.’ She fixed him with a hard and cold look. ‘Have you any idea how much you frightened her having her snatched like that?’

‘Me?’ At last he decided to use his striking ability to fake innocence, actually managing to look shocked by the accusation. ‘I did not snatch the bambina!’ he denied. ‘I would not wish to frighten a hair on her beautiful head!’

‘Liar.’ Blue eyes suddenly hot with anger, she stood up and went to lean over him. ‘I saw your expression when you held my baby in your arms! You were glowing with triumph! With everything alive in you, you were staking ownership! Possessive and territorial! I saw it, Alfredo. I saw it!’

It made him gasp, the very fact that she could spit at him like that utterly astounding him. ‘You grow brave in the face of a shrivelled old man in a wheelchair,’ he murmured feebly.

‘Don’t try the poor sick old man routine on me,’ she said scathingly as she straightened away. ‘It just won’t work.’

With that, she bent to pick up her coil of garden wire and secateurs and made to leave.

‘Don’t walk away from me, woman!’ he growled.

Oddly, it stopped her. Not the words themselves but the way he had said them. There was a bitter, biting frustration there—frustration with his physical disadvantage.

She turned back to glance at him just as his fist made furious contact with the wheelchair arm, his face a twisted map of angry helplessness.

‘I did not take the child!’ He scowled mutinously up at her. ‘If I had thought of it, I would have!’ he added bluntly. ‘But I did not!’ Then he sighed heavily because the burst of passionate anger had obviously drained his energy.

Sara saw him go a paler shade of sallow, his eyes lose the vibrant spark of life, and her bottom lip twitched in a spasm of unwanted feeling for this man who was her enemy. She didn’t know whether to believe him, or even if it really mattered that much now that the deed was done. But she could not afford to relax her guard around Alfredo, she reminded herself grimly. Past experience had taught her that lesson the hardest way anyone could learn a lesson in life.

But nor was it in her nature to be cruel to the afflicted, and Alfredo was certainly afflicted at the moment.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked stiffly.

‘Sì,’ he clipped back, but he was leaning heavily on his forearms, his silvered head lowered while he seemed to be concentrating on pacing his breathing.

A child’s laughter drifted up from the small beach below, tinkling around both of them and diverting their attention to the sight of Lia dressed in white cotton dungarees and a white cotton mob-cap pulled on over her hair, running as fast as her little legs could take her, away from Fabia who was chasing with a string of wet seaweed dangling from one hand.

Sara laughed too; she couldn’t help it. Leaning her thighs against the terrace wall, she folded her arms and watched the chase.

Suddenly the wheelchair was right beside her, Alfredo leaning forward as much as he could to follow what was going on.

‘Run, little one. Run!’ he encouraged gruffly, a thin hand making a fist which he used to urge the child further.