The Riccioni Pregnancy. Daphne Clair

as she’d have liked to, but clearly enough, even if her voice was low in her throat.

      Seconds ticked by. Then he lifted the glass and swallowed, lowered it again, holding it in both hands. He turned his head and she received the full force of the ferocious blaze in his eyes, so that she recoiled, her lower lip briefly caught in her teeth.

      ‘No,’ he said.

      She shot to her feet, then halted because the sudden movement had made her a little dizzy—the damned brandy again—and besides, where was there to run to? He could corner her easily before she’d taken half a dozen steps.

      As if to confirm it, he downed the remainder of his drink and stood up too, leaving the glass on the carpet by the couch. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t run from me any more, Roxane.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘I’M NOT running.’ It made her sound as if she’d fled without thought, in blind fear. The room tilted, and she hastily sat down again. ‘I’ve never run from you.’

      ‘What would you call it, then?’ he demanded.

      ‘It was a decision. A rational, sensible decision.’

      His lip curled. ‘Rational? Sensible?’

      A sensation sickening in its familiarity washed over Roxane. Helplessness, despair, and mingled with it a deep, inexpressible longing. ‘You don’t think I’m capable of that. But it was the best decision of my life.’

      His jaw tightened and a small muscle in his cheek kicked almost invisibly. The anger that still smouldered in his eyes turned bleak before thick black lashes hid them. ‘Was it necessary,’ he asked bitingly, ‘to be so dramatic—cutting off all contact, swearing your parents to secrecy, making me communicate through your lawyer as if I were some brute who had beaten you?’

      ‘I told him you hadn’t,’ she said swiftly, looking down at her hands, wound tightly into each other. The solicitor had jumped to obvious conclusions, and she’d made sure he didn’t retain them. ‘You’re not a brute, Zito.’

      ‘God—’ he breathed the word as if it rasped his throat ‘—I thought I’d never hear you say my name again.’

      Roxane winced, thankful that her head was still bent and he couldn’t see her face, shadowed by the shoulder-length sable fall of her hair. But the change in his voice forced her to look up, her clear green eyes wondering.

      To find his expression rigid and unreadable, his gaze cool, almost indifferent. ‘Did it occur to you that if I wanted you back I could have found you?’

      ‘I know you could have.’ She tried to ignore the gibe in his caveat, if I wanted you… Zito could afford to pay any number of private detectives, for as long as it took.

      ‘You’d made it clear you didn’t want to be found.’ He paused, a corner of his mouth curving satirically. ‘Or were you hoping that I’d somehow do it anyway and come running after you, begging you to return to me?’

      Sometimes, weakly, she had fantasised that he would track her down regardless of her efforts, that he’d come to her with apologies and promises and a new understanding—a changed and humbled man, and everything would miraculously be all right. There had been long cold nights when the fantasy had helped her through to another dawn.

      But it would be fatal to admit it. ‘No!’

      She thought she saw a brief flare of some emotion—frustration? disappointment?—before he resumed the guarded watchfulness he’d shown earlier. She must have been mistaken, falling prey to all-too-familiar wishful thinking. ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ she said.

      He swung away from her, pushing back the jacket of the perfectly tailored suit by shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

      Zito’s clothes had always been impeccable, discreetly expensive but worn with an insouciance that made them part of the man, not any kind of status symbol to impress others.

      Now he was inspecting the walls that she’d painted palest jade green and hung with cheap reproduced art, along with a couple of originals by local unknowns.

      His gaze next disdained the calico covers hiding the shabbiness of her comfortable secondhand couch and the mismatched armchairs facing it across the low table that bore the honourable scars of a chequered life. For a few seconds his attention was caught by the worn, silky antique rug that Roxane had spent too much on but loved all the more for it.

      He swept another sharp-eyed glance about the room, before he turned to her.

      Roxane asked defiantly, ‘Don’t you like it?’

      He didn’t answer immediately, and when he did his voice was expressionless. ‘It’s very attractive. Small but…cosy.’

      ‘I like small.’

      For a moment the wicked, teasing sexual humour that had attracted and excited and confounded her when they first met gleamed in his eyes, lifting one eyebrow and a corner of his mouth in subtle disbelief. And damn, she responded to it as always, with a frightening mix of inward laughter and sheer wanton, bone-melting desire.

      Keeping her expression blank, she hoped her eyes wouldn’t betray her.

      The laughter died and his mouth went hard. To her considerable surprise, he looked away first. ‘Is the house yours?’ he asked, almost as if it were a random question plucked from the air.

      ‘Mine and the bank’s.’

      Her stock answer, but she should have expected the sudden stabbing quality of his stare. ‘If you needed money you could have asked me. Through your lawyer if necessary. I told him—’

      ‘I don’t want your money. I have a good job and I can afford the mortgage.’

      ‘Mortgage!’

      He made it sound like a dirty word. Roxane smiled thinly. ‘It’s what we little people have when we need to buy a house.’

      ‘You have no need to buy a house. I can give you anything you need—hell, I did give you everything!’

      ‘Not everything,’ she said softly, sadly. Not the one thing she needed above all.

      Furious, he said, ‘I loved you!’

      She wouldn’t even think about what that past tense meant. ‘I know. I know you did. In your own way.’

      He thrust a hand savagely over his hair, the frown turning to a scowl. ‘I gave you my heart and my soul, everything that was in me. I don’t know any other way.’

      Of course he didn’t. Maurizio Riccioni never had done a thing in his life except in his own inimitable, confident, and usually hugely successful way. Why should he have ever imagined that his marriage, his wife, might not succumb to that combination of self-assured charm and incisive decision-making?

      Almost compassionately she said, ‘It wasn’t all your fault. I was too young, and I should have said no when you asked me to marry you.’

      ‘You did,’ he reminded her.

      Yes, she had, the first time he asked her, showing a shred of common sense. But her opposition hadn’t lasted long. She’d soon had her fears and scruples overturned one by one under the onslaught of Zito’s clever brain, unswerving will, and devastating kisses. He had even talked her parents round, despite their misgivings about their only daughter marrying at nineteen.

      He’d reluctantly waited until she turned twenty, and on her birthday she’d stood beside him while they exchanged their solemn vows in the cathedral in Melbourne, with all the trimmings and before several hundred guests.

      But marriage was more than a frothy white dress and a champagne reception. And theirs hadn’t stood the test.

      ‘I should have stuck to my refusal,’ she admitted.

      ‘Thank