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

‘Not a prisoner, tesoro…’

Ricardo’s wickedly sensual mouth curled over the word in a way that took it to a point light-years from the term of affection it was supposed to be.

‘You’ll find no locked doors here, no bolts—no chains.’

To Lucy’s amazement he actually stood back, pushing the door wide open and leaving it that way so that she could get past him—and out—if she wanted to.

‘I just think you would find it very difficult to get off the island. But, if you want to try, then be my guest. You were always a strong swimmer, as I recall.’

Coming to an abrupt halt, Lucy had a nasty little fight with herself not to sink back against the wall in admission of defeat. She couldn’t quite believe it herself, but she had genuinely forgotten that the villa was set on its own little island. The distance between here and the shore was far too great for her to want to risk trying to swim it.

‘All right,’ she said, her lips and throat stiff with tension. ‘You’ve made your point. But I still don’t see why you want me here when earlier you were so keen to get rid of me. Oh, of course…’ Realisation dawned as she remembered. ‘You’re waiting for that explanation. No?’ she questioned when Ricardo shook his head.

‘No,’ he confirmed. ‘There is something we have to see first.’

‘Something you’ve decided I must see, you mean,’ Lucy shot back and watched as he sighed his exasperation.

‘Do not look at me like that. I promise you that this is important.’

‘Important in what way?’

‘Lucia!’ Ricardo raked both his hands through the black silk of his hair, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Must you argue with everything? Can you not trust me on this?’

‘Trust you?’ Lucy scorned. ‘So tell me why I should trust you when you have trapped me here, made sure I can’t leave unless I swim for it and…’

Her voice trailed off as she suddenly looked into Ricardo’s deep dark eyes and caught something there. Something that stilled and held her frozen.

‘Trust me,’ he said again and the words tugged on something deep inside, twisting around Lucy’s heart just when she was least expecting it.

It wasn’t rational, it was totally unwise, probably very naïve, but just in that moment she did trust him. So much so that when he took her arm and turned her in the opposite direction, she didn’t pull away from his grasp but allowed herself to be directed down the corridor again, towards the other side of the house.

The part of the villa where their suite had been when they had lived here as man and wife.

That set her nerves tingling in apprehension. Not at the thought of what Ricardo might do but the fear of just how she might react if she was forced to go back to that part of the Villa San Felice where she had lived with him as his wife. The part of the villa where she had been at her happiest, she admitted to herself, fighting against the slash of pain that the memories brought. How would she feel if she had to look into the room where she and Ricardo had spent so many wonderful, blissful nights?

Only physically blissful, stern reality forced her to remind herself. Any emotional contentment she had felt had been based on a lie. A lie she had told herself just to keep from facing up to the truth. She might have fallen head over heels for her husband, but for Ricardo the marriage had just been one of pure convenience. The fact that it had also put a willing and passionate sexual partner into his bed every night had just been a bonus in his eyes.

‘Ricardo…’ she tried but he either didn’t hear her or refused to acknowledge that he had.

But the twisting nerves in her stomach eased as they rounded a corner and Ricardo took the opposite direction to the one she had been anticipating with dread. The next moment he stopped before a closed door, turned the handle and pushed it open.

Immediately Lucy knew what he was doing and, if she had felt fearful before, now a terrible sense of panic rushed at her with the emotional force of a tsunami. She froze in the doorway, unable to move back or forwards, though she knew from the way that Ricardo’s hand gripped her elbow that he was not going to let her escape.

The room was decorated with all the bright pictures, the blue and white carpet and curtains that she had chosen with such joyful anticipation before the birth of her baby. The same huge soft cushions were set on the floor, the same mobile with the cheerful painted animals hung from the ceiling. All this Lucy took in in a single glance. But then her gaze went to the big cot standing against the far wall and every other thought left her head.

‘Marco…’

It was just a whisper, barely a thread of sound, and she was amazed that she could get that out past the knot in her throat. Her heart, which had stopped dead in the moment she had recognised the room as the nursery, was now beating so fast and so wildly that she couldn’t catch her breath. If it got any worse, then she feared that it might actually burst out of her chest in the rush of emotion that made her head swim viciously.

At her side she was barely aware of Ricardo making a silent gesture with one hand. In response a young woman in a neat uniform, clearly the nanny hired to look after the baby, slipped silently from the room, leaving them alone. And all the time Lucy couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. She could only stare wide-eyed at the small person lying under the quilt in the cot, his black hair startling against the white sheet.

Marco’s eyes were closed and he was fast asleep. One small hand was flung up outside the coverings and his deep breathing made soft snuffling noises as he exhaled.

‘Marco…’

It was all that she could manage and she swayed towards him where she stood but didn’t dare to try to make a move towards the cot. It was what she wanted most in all the world and yet what she feared in the same moment as she longed for it. Tears blurred her eyes but they were too hot and too bitter to give release to them. She almost felt as if they would burn down her cheeks like acid if she actually let them fall and flow.

And all the time she was so desperately aware of Ricardo standing next to her, still and silent, just watching her, his dark eyes observing and noting everything.

She didn’t know what he was thinking and, quite frankly, she didn’t care. All she knew was that her son—her baby—was just across the room from her and she didn’t know how she could get to him, or even if she dared to try.

‘Marco…’ she said yet again. Then, as Ricardo’s stillness and silence got through to her once more, she cleared her throat and forced the words out.

‘“Something we have to see”, you said,’ she croaked in reproach.

‘This is what you came for, isn’t it? You wanted to see Marco.’

Lucy could only nod silently, the one accusing outburst she’d managed seemed to have drained all her strength so that she couldn’t find any words to answer him.

What was happening here? What was in Ricardo’s mind? Why had he brought her here like this—to see her baby—and yet once again be so near and yet so far? How had he come from Not while I live to actually leading her to the nursery, dismissing the nanny?

He couldn’t be so cruel as to let her see Marco, come within touching distance of the baby and…

‘Then go and see him,’ Ricardo said, stunning her.

He wasn’t touching her, wasn’t doing anything to push her forward or to hold her back either. The hand that had been on her arm had dropped to his side and he was standing back, waiting—and watching. She could feel the burn of his gaze on her face so fiercely that she didn’t dare to turn to meet the darkness of his eyes.

‘I can’t…’

This couldn’t be happening. Not after she had dreamed of it for so many weeks, ever since the doctors had told her that she was fine now. That they were sure she could handle things, and that she was no longer a danger to her baby or to herself. Without that assurance she would never have dared even to try to make contact. But she had wanted this moment so much that now she could not believe it was actually real.

‘Yes, you can.’ Ricardo’s voice was surprisingly soft, though still without any trace of emotion in it. ‘He’s real, Lucia. Our baby—our son. You can…’

‘No, I can’t!’ It was a cry of raw pain, dragged from her as if it was tearing her soul out by the roots, leaving her bruised and bleeding deep inside. ‘I can’t—’

‘Have you come all this way to give up now? Whatever else I thought of you, Lucia, I never considered you a coward.’

Coward! If he had meant to sting her into action—and Lucy strongly suspected that he had—then it worked. Before she had time to think, rejection of that accusation had pushed her forward, the impetus driving her to the side of the cot before she had time to think.

And from the moment that she looked into her baby’s face there was nowhere else she could look at all. Nothing else that mattered.

‘Oh, Marco…’

Sinking down onto the floor beside the cot, she curled her fingers around the white-painted bars and just stared, seeing the way that the baby’s chest rose and fell, the curl of his lashes onto the soft cheeks, the faint bubble that formed at his lips as he breathed.

‘Darling…sweetheart…’

And looking was just not enough. Slowly one hand uncurled itself from the bars, then slid between them, reaching out towards where Marco lay. With soft fingers she touched his cheek, then curved her palm around the top of his small head, resting gently on the fuzz of jet-black hair. It seemed to fit so perfectly, and yet it was so different from the times that she had held him before that it made a terrible sorrow at all that she had missed clog up her throat.