Secret Love-Child. Kate Walker

better than she could have hoped. From the time that Marco had been born, she and Ricardo had barely spoken to each other. It had been what she wanted but at the same time it had added to the aching inside her, creating a spiral of despair from which she had felt that she would never break free.

      ‘You bought clothes, perfume—clothes you never wore when you were with me.’

      And he had thought that she had bought them to make herself look good for someone else.

      ‘All that spending—it was just an attempt at distraction. I didn’t even want the clothes half the time.’

      And the other half she had wanted them to boost her image, to make Ricardo look at her with the desire he had once shown her. But it had seemed that the women she had overheard had been right. She was not the sort of wife who could hold a man like Ricardo. A man who didn’t do commitment. Who was used to having his pick of the most glamorous, most sophisticated women of the world.

      If only he would speak—say something. Anything, other than subjecting her to the dark, silent stare that seemed to want to probe right into her eyes, burn its way into her head.

      ‘Heaven knows what you must have thought of me!’

      ‘It was only what I expected,’ Ricardo stated flatly. ‘Normal female behaviour. Every woman I’ve known has been out for what I could give her. Why should you be any different?’

      How could she fight such cynicism? She hadn’t been able to do so when they had been together, so why should anything be different now? Besides which the thought that she still hadn’t told him absolutely everything, that there were still things she was holding back, things she could hardly bear to think of herself, sat like a leaden weight in her heart, closing off her throat so that there was no way she could make herself speak.

      ‘And you are well now?’ he asked, an edge to his voice that she couldn’t interpret and she felt too emotionally adrift even to try.

      ‘The doctors say I am,’ she managed stiffly. ‘They think all should be well and that I’m not likely to relapse. I would never have come back here if I’d thought…’

      ‘I believe you,’ Ricardo said when her voice broke too much for her to go on. He was still so very distant, his deep-set eyes hooded and hidden, but his tone gave her a little cause for hope.

      ‘So if you could see your way to letting me spend some time with Marco…’

      And, just at that moment, with amazing timing so that it was almost as if he had heard his name spoken, in the other room the baby stirred and started to whimper faintly, still half asleep.

      ‘Marco…’

      Instinct drove Lucy to her feet but she was only halfway there when realisation struck and she froze, grabbing at the settee arm for support as she looked back at Ricardo, meeting the deliberately blanked out expression in his narrowed gaze.

      ‘I…I’m sorry…’

      She regretted that as soon as she’d said it. She wasn’t sorry at all for reacting automatically to the sound of her child’s cry. She might not have been the best mother in the world—she knew she hadn’t—but that didn’t mean that her maternal instincts had died, swamped by the tidal wave of foul stuff that that rushed over her in the depths of those darkest days. After all, she’d only left because of what she was afraid of. Because of the fear that she might do something dreadful to her little boy. That was those mother’s instincts working overtime, not losing their way. And now she was doing exactly the same—responding to the way that her baby most needed her.

      The memory of that cry had never left her. In her sleep she would hear it and come jerking awake, sitting up in a rush, eyes wide with horror and fear, needing to find Marco…and knowing he wasn’t there. That had been the worst, the most terrible moment of all. The thought that somewhere her baby was crying and she couldn’t go to him.

      Here and now, she could respond to his call. But at the same time she didn’t quite dare to. Not with Ricardo watching and not knowing how he would react if she followed her instincts. He had sworn that she would never take the baby from him, so would he let her comfort the little boy—or would he grab at her arm, to hold her back? Or would he, worst of all, wait until she was at the cot’s side, about to take her son into her arms and then snatch the little boy away from her—so near and yet so desperately far again.

      ‘I doubt that you’ll understand…but…’ Her voice trailed off as she met the burning darkness of his eyes, felt herself flinch under their scorching force.

      From the other room came a second more wakeful cry, louder this time, drawing Lucy’s eyes in a glance of yearning anxiety towards the door.

      ‘I’ll call the nanny,’ Ricardo said and the words brought back such a rush of memory that it pushed her response from her mouth before she had had a moment to consider if it was wise.

      ‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘No nanny! Not now.’

      ‘You were happy enough to leave him in her care before.’

      ‘Did you give me any choice?’ Lucy flung at him. ‘Did you even discuss it with me? No—you made a unilateral declaration that Marco was going to be looked after by a nanny. It may be the way you were brought up—the norm in your wealth driven world to have your children farmed out to the hired help, but it wasn’t what I wanted.’

      ‘I had no intention of having him “farmed out”,’ Ricardo snapped coldly. ‘And it certainly wasn’t the way that I was brought up. My mother barely had enough money to feed and clothe me, never mind hire a nanny.’

      ‘Then why did you hire one for Marco? Did you think I wasn’t good enough to look after your son, the precious Emiliani heir?’

      She didn’t believe that his eyes could close up any more, or become any more opaque, but it was like looking into the immovable face of a statute. One that was carved from cold, hard marble.

      ‘That was never my aim,’ he said at last and if a statue could have spoken then it would have had just that same stiff, icy voice. ‘If you want the truth, I was fool enough to think that you might appreciate some help.’

      That cold comment twisted a knife in Lucy’s already tender conscience. She’d been so caught up in her own misery that she’d never looked at it from this angle. Now she was forced to face the fact that her own lack of self-esteem had turned what had been an attempt to do the right thing into the exact opposite.

      ‘I’m sorry…’ she began but as she spoke Marco whimpered again.

      ‘Your son needs you,’ Ricardo said.

      ‘What?’

      She hadn’t quite caught what he had said. Or, if she had, then she wasn’t at all sure that she could possibly have heard right.

      ‘Your son needs you,’ he repeated, calm, coldly controlled and totally unmistakable this time. ‘You had better go to him.’

      She knew that look, that assessing scrutiny. He was testing her again. But which was the right way to react? How could she prove herself to him? And just what did he want her to prove?

      She could only go with her instincts. There was no way of second-guessing him.

      And, as the whimper turned into a wail and then an outraged cry, she was left with no choice. She no longer gave a damn what Ricardo thought or felt. It was what Marco needed that mattered. She was out of the sitting room in a rush, bending down over the cot before Ricardo could say a word. And she knew that if he had spoken, if he’d tried to stop her, then she would have ignored him completely.

      ‘Hush little one…it’s all right. Mu…’

      Her throat closed over the words, choking them off. How could she call herself ‘Mummy’ after all that had happened? Marco would never understand—and would he even let her touch him?

      Painfully aware of the way that Ricardo had moved