Rings of Gold: Gold Ring of Betrayal / The Marriage Surrender / The Unforgettable Husband

‘Job?’ She picked up on the word with a sharp question.

‘Yes.’ His eyes glinted down at her, cool and unwavering. ‘Fabia has been employed specifically to look after the child.’

She jumped up, a tight band of fear suddenly closing like steel around her chest. ‘As a nanny, you mean?’

‘Yes …’ he confirmed, but in a way which tightened the band further. She was thinking of Alfredo, wondering how much of his influence was at work here. Had Alfredo employed Fabia? Was she here to wean Lia away from her mother so that the wrench when it came would not be too great for the child?

‘I don’t need a nanny to help me with Lia,’ she stated as firmly as her quaking heart would let her. ‘L-look what h-happened the l-last time you employed a nanny! Lia was taken from right beneath her nose!’

‘Why are you stammering?’ He frowned down at her.

Because I’m frightened, she thought agitatedly. ‘Nic, please—’ She resorted to begging, her hand going to clutch at his forearm in appeal. ‘Don’t do this to me! Don’t reduce my importance as a mother! I don’t need Fabia! I w-won’t be here long enough to n-need her!’

‘My God,’ he breathed, his eyes suddenly dark with shock. ‘You are terrified, aren’t you?’

So t-terrified that I’m even s-stammering inside my head! she thought wildly. ‘L-let me just stay quietly here in this s-suite until you are ready to send us back to London! Please!’

‘But what are you frightened of?’ He ignored her plea to demand an answer to his question. ‘Do you think because the child’s abductors were Sicilian that I cannot protect you here?’ he suggested when she didn’t answer but just stood there staring at him with those huge, frightened eyes and trembling so badly that he felt compelled to lift his hands to her arms to steady her. ‘You are wrong, you know,’ he murmured reassuringly. ‘This place is built like a fortress. Nothing moves outside it without an electronic camera picking it up.’

But it wasn’t the outside Sara was worried about. It was the inside. And the people within it.

She took in a deep breath, and tried very hard to grab back some self-control. ‘Nic …’

She stepped closer, her fingers settling tremulously on the centre of his wide chest. It was not a come-on; she was not trying to use female wiles on him here to get him to do what she wanted. She was simply too anxious to know what she was doing or how she was doing it.

‘Listen to me …’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t want to be here and you don’t want us here! If you believe it impossible to protect us in London, then I will change my name—my identity if I have to! Just send us back to England and I shall get right out of your life. I promise you. You won’t have to be inconvenienced like this again on our account!’

He stiffened, the big chest expanding on a tense clenching of its muscular flesh. ‘You—love this child very much, don’t you?’

Why did he keep on asking her that question? ‘She is my life!’ she choked.

‘And the father? Did you love him with the same strength?’

Oh, God. Sara closed her eyes on a shaft of tight pain and wanted to drop her head onto that big chest and weep. Weep. ‘Yes,’ she breathed.

He stepped away from her, turning back to the window and leaving her standing there trembling with her hands still lifted in front of her where his chest had just been.

‘Did he love you?’ he enquired after a moment.

She had to swallow to remove the aching lump from her throat. ‘I think so, once,’ she replied, letting her hands drop empty to her sides.

‘Then why did he never claim you both?’

Her sigh held an irony only she would ever understand. ‘Because he could never be sure that my baby was his and his pride could not let him accept another man’s child.’

‘Could she be mine, then?’

Oh, no, she thought wretchedly. Don’t ask me that question now. Not when I daren’t give you an honest answer!

So instead she avoided it. ‘Nic, I need to get away from here. I can’t bear this place,’ she murmured thickly. ‘I never could.’

‘Were you so unhappy here?’

Without you here with me? she thought painfully. ‘Yes,’ she said, and sank down onto the sofa and wished to God that they’d never begun this whole wretched scene.

He didn’t say anything to that, and the silence between them throbbed with the heavy pull of her own heartbeat.

Then, quietly, he said, ‘You cannot leave.’

Her stomach gave a funny lurch. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked warily.

He turned. ‘Just what it said. You cannot leave here. The risk is too great. I can guarantee your safety here; I cannot in London.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘So here is where you and the child must stay.’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I am not giving you a choice,’ he grimly informed her.

It brought her back to her feet. ‘Just because you refuse to divorce me does not mean you own me, Nicolas!’ she cried. ‘I can make my own choices. And I prefer to take my chance in London rather than live under this roof again!’

‘You speak as if it were you who was betrayed!’ he said derisively in response to that little speech.

‘I will not be put through the kind of misery I endured here a second time.’

‘Maybe you deserve to be miserable.’

That came straight from the gut, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut while she handled the blow it dealt her.

‘But my baby does not,’ she managed to parry. ‘She is the innocent one in all of this. Punish the mother and you will punish the child. Can you be that callous? That thirsty for revenge?’

‘I am not after revenge,’ he denied. ‘It is a simple case of logistics which decides it for us. This house is easier to guard against a repeat of what you have just been through. Therefore this is where you will live from now on. Comprende?’

Oh, she ‘comprended’ all right. The lord and master had spoken. End of discussion.

‘But I don’t have to eat with you,’ she countered, throwing herself back onto the sofa with a defiance about her that warned him she was not going to surrender this point to him as well! ‘I would rather starve first.’

‘And that is being childish,’ he derided.

Too true, she agreed. But there was no way she was going to sit at the same table as Alfredo Santino! No way.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to dress up and play happy dinner hour with you and your father—can’t you even allow me that one concession?’

He sighed, allowing some of his anger to escape with the sound. Then surprisingly he gave in. ‘I need to speak to Fabia before I leave you,’ he said. ‘Then I will have something sent down to you.’

With that, he walked off towards the bedroom, leaving Sara feeling annoyingly, frustratingly let down.

Though she didn’t know why.

Or refused to look at why.