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

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 (#ulink_a90fa9e3-88ea-53f6-a0f3-1035d63d6a68)

‘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…