Secret Love-Child. Kate Walker

watchful face, seeing herself reflected, tiny and palefaced in the polished blackness of his eyes. Blank, unreadable eyes. Eyes that gave nothing away.

      And suddenly it was as if she had slipped back through time, back to the moment when she had first arrived at this villa after their wedding. The speedboat had ferried them from the shore across to the island and as they’d stepped ashore she had slipped and almost lost her footing. Immediately Ricardo had moved forward and caught her before she could fall, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her along the wooden jetty that led to the wide stone steps up to the house. As he’d lifted her over the threshold into the villa itself he had suddenly looked down into her eyes, his own deep and dark and totally inscrutable, revealing nothing at all about his thoughts or his feelings.

      ‘Welcome home, wife,’ he had said.

      Then, as he had let her slip to the floor, he had pressed the palms of his hands, big and warm and strong, to the front of her dress, below which the baby she was carrying—the baby that would eventually become Marco—was as yet just a tiny curve to her belly.

      ‘Welcome, mother of my child.’

      It had been in that moment that she had realised that she had fallen desperately, irrevocably in love with this man who was now her husband. But only her husband of convenience, married purely for the sake of that baby.

      As the mother of his child, she was welcome in his home. As the mother of his child, his home became her home. But only as the mother of his child. For herself, and in herself she had no place here at all.

      ‘Lucia—your water.’

      Cold moisture beaded the sides of the glass Ricardo held out to her and as she took hold her fingers slipped, sliding up against his hand where he held it. The contrast between the coldness of the glass and the warmth of his skin was a shock, startling her and making her nerves fizz as if a bolt of electricity had shot up her arm.

      And from the way that those dark eyes burned into hers it was obvious that Ricardo had felt it too. Just for a moment as their gazes locked she felt that he was about to say something—she could almost feel the words in the air. But then he apparently had second thoughts and stepped away again to move to the door and check on Marco. The baby was still sleeping soundly so Ricardo turned back, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers as he leaned against the wall.

      ‘So,’ he said flatly. ‘The truth…’

      Which was guaranteed to tighten Lucy’s throat even more.

      Lifting the glass to her mouth, she took a swift, deep gulp of the cooling water as she tried to collect her thoughts. She wished that Ricardo would move somewhere else or that he would come and sit down. Standing there, so tall and lean and dark, he seemed to tower over her oppressively, dominating the room and tightening every one of her muscles just to look at him.

      ‘Why…’ Her throat clenched and she had to take another gulp of water. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

      The look he gave her said that that was a question that didn’t need answering but all the same he drew in a long, deep breath and then looked her straight in the eyes.

      ‘I wanted to see you with Marco—how you would react. How you would be when you met him for real.’

      So she had been right. He had been testing her. The atmosphere she had sensed in the room earlier had been real and not the product of her overheated imagination.

      ‘And what did you find out?’

      ‘That you lied.’

      It was the last thing she had expected but as she opened her mouth to refute the accusation he ignored her attempt at protest.

      ‘You lied in that note you left when you said you wanted your freedom—at least when you said you wanted your freedom from Marco. So something else took you away. You said you were sick—what was wrong?’

      ‘I wasn’t exactly sick…’ Lucy hedged. ‘It was more like a…a breakdown.’

      She had his attention now. Those dark eyes couldn’t have burned any stronger, or been more fixed on her face.

      ‘A mental breakdown?’

      If there had been any hint of shock or horror in his voice then she might not have been able to answer him but the truth was that his tone was completely controlled, totally matter-of-fact. So much so that it was only just a reaction.

      ‘Yes…’

      She nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his. That steady black gaze never wavered, never moved. Instead, it stayed fixed on her, probing deeper and further with every breath that she took.

      ‘You were depressed.’

      ‘You could say that.’ Lucy’s voice was shaky, her weak attempt at laughter even more so. She knew from his quick frown that her laughter seemed out of place but she just couldn’t hold it back. Depressed seemed such an inadequate word for what she had been through. She had barely known who she was or what she was doing. And the world had seemed like a dark, empty cavern, one that she couldn’t find her way out of, no matter how she’d tried. ‘Though depressed sounds like the way you’d describe it if you lost a job or your dog died.’

      ‘Not true depression. And if you had a breakdown, then that’s what you must have suffered.’

      Looking up into Ricardo’s face, Lucy blinked hard at the unexpected note in his voice. She hadn’t anticipated such sympathy. Was it possible that he might understand after all?

      ‘It was horrible.’ She shivered at the memory. ‘The whole world seemed black and I didn’t know how to make myself get out of bed every day.’

      And knowing what she had done to Marco, that by running away she had probably lost him, and the man she’d loved, for ever, had made things so, so much worse. The future had stretched ahead of her, bleak and cold and empty, and she hadn’t known how she was going to cope. If it hadn’t been for the care of a kind and understanding doctor, the support of therapists, she didn’t know how she would have survived.

      ‘There didn’t seem to be any point in going on. Any reason to—’

      She broke off sharply, startled into awareness of the way that Ricardo had suddenly abandoned his position against the wall and had come close, his fingertips resting lightly on her arm.

      ‘Don’t…’ he said quietly, pulling her out of the dark fog of her memories.

      ‘Ricardo…’ Her voice was all over the place, shaking and quavering in a way that she just couldn’t control. And she felt so cold…so horribly cold. She was shivering as if she were in the grip of some horrible fever.

      ‘Give that to me.’

      It was only when Ricardo’s hand came out and eased the glass from her clenched fingers that she realised how tightly she had been gripping it. She had been holding it so firmly that when her hand had started to shake the water inside the glass had swirled around, slopping over the side and splashing onto the pink linen of her skirt, marring the fine material with ugly dark patches.

      She remembered buying this skirt—at least, she thought she did. It had been one of the things she had found on one of the first trips she had made away from the villa a couple of weeks after Marco had been born. She had left him with his nanny and had called Enzo, who took care of and piloted the motorboat, to take her across the lake to the shore. And there she had taken the car into Verona, where she had shopped, hunting for something—anything—that would make her feel more human. Something that would make her feel more alive, more in control of herself and her life.

      And something that would make Ricardo look at her like a woman he desired once again.

      Without the glass to hold, her hands were shaking even more and when she clasped both of them together on her lap they still kept shaking, shuddering where they lay on the pink skirt. With a terrible effort she twisted them together even more tightly, whimpering faintly when