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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No!

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

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

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

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

‘Lucia…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What would I have to be jealous about?’

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

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

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

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

‘Why not?’

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

‘After all, this was my home…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fine.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I wasn’t myself then! I was ill!’

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

‘Of course you were ill.’

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

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

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

‘It wasn’t like that!’

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

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

But still she had to try.

‘I can explain!’

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

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

‘But Rico…’

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

‘Please…’

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY was back.

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

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

‘Dannazione!’

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

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

She had come looking for money, she had claimed.

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

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

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

Marco!

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

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

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

I can explain!

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

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

‘Dannazione, no!’

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

…but at a price.

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

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

Lucy couldn’t sleep.

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

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

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

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

Marco.

Her baby.

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

‘Oh, Marco…’

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

‘So near and yet so far.’

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

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

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

And who could blame him?

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lucia…’

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

‘Lucia!’

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

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

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

‘Lucia!’

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

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

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

‘There might be children asleep!’

‘And you care about that?’

‘Of course I do!’

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

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

‘So are you going to invite me in?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

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

‘This is where you’re staying?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

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

‘Hardly what you’re used to.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You believed me?’

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

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

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

‘Oh, yes.’

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

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

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

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

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

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

‘I didn’t come here for a drink.’

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

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

‘Lucia…’

‘Rico…’

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

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

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

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

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