Secret Love-Child. Kate Walker

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