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

Provocative. That was how she looked. A fine, sleek golden creature of sensual provocation. A woman he would be happy to die inside, so long as those breasts were there for him to suckle while he did so. So long as those long golden legs were wrapped around him. So long as that pink heart-shaped mouth was fastened somewhere on his skin, warm and moistly tasting him as he knew it loved to do.

Not that she was aware of any of this, he acknowledged grimly—not of her own sexual attractiveness or what it did to him.

Unaware. Just as her hands were unaware, he was sure, of the coil of garden wire she was twisting between them, and the secateurs and the fact that her wedding ring gleamed gold on her finger.

His wedding ring. The ring he had placed there. Once a gold ring of love, now a gold ring of betrayal.

Stiffly he turned away from both the temptation and the ring, despising himself—despising her.

His movement set her long golden lashes flickering, blue eyes zooming into focus on his long, tense back.

Then, ‘No,’ she said in flat-voiced refusal. ‘I will stay with Lia.’

He spun back, face fierce, the earlier coldness replaced by something else, something faintly disturbing. ‘Are we back to arguing about choices?’ he clipped. ‘Because you have none,’ he informed her brutally. ‘You will do exactly as you are told while you are under this roof.’

‘Except sleep with you,’ she objected.

‘You will,’ he insisted. ‘And you will do it without protest! You owe me that!’ he rasped in a bitter rejoinder.

Did he mean by that, that she owed him the use of her body in return for his retrieving her stolen child? she wondered in horror. ‘But you hate and despise me! You even hated yourself for what happened the last time we shared a bed!’

‘True.’ His hard face tightened. ‘But if I had wanted the whole world to know that Nicolas Santino was foolish enough to marry a faithless woman,’ he threw at her, ‘I would have denounced both her and her child three years ago!’

She blanched at the intended insult. He took the reaction as his due.

‘As it is,’ he continued, ‘to the world and this household, we are still very much man and wife. And man and wife share a bed and have a certain amount of marital privacy which does not include a child sleeping in the same room.’

‘But you haven’t been near me for three years,’ she cried. ‘How are we supposed to have a proper marriage with three years’ separation in the middle?’

Her scornful tone made his golden eyes glint. ‘You mean because until now you have preferred to spend your time at our London home where I have visited you on a regular basis?’

‘My God,’ she gasped as clear understanding of his meaning hit her full in the face. ‘You can be as two-faced as your father when it really comes down to it, can’t you?’

‘We will leave my father out of this, if you please,’ he said tersely.

‘I wish we could!’ she flared. ‘But since he lives here too and he knows exactly what state our so-called marriage is in isn’t he going to find it rather odd—’ if not damned frustrating, if her suspicions about him were correct, she added silently to herself ‘—that you and I are cohabiting again?’

‘He will keep his own counsel,’ Nicolas coldly stated. ‘For neither does he wish to see his son’s pride dragged in the dirt because of this—situation we all find ourselves thrust into.’

‘He said that, did he?’ she challenged. ‘Condoned this frankly—obscene suggestion you are putting to me?’

‘It is not a suggestion,’ he denied, ‘and nor is it obscene. You are still my wife in the eyes of the world, and you will maintain good appearances at all costs, Sara,’ he warned. ‘Or so help me I will let you go, and keep the child!’

Thereby threatening to walk her right into Alfredo’s neatly baited trap! she realised, and didn’t know whether to scream in frustration or weep in defeat. ‘I won’t sleep with you, Nicolas,’ was what she eventually said, and spun abruptly on her heel.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ he demanded.

‘It’s time for Lia’s afternoon nap,’ she informed him stiffly.

‘Fabia will see to the child,’ he ordained. ‘We have unfinished business to discuss here.’

‘Except I prefer to see to Lia myself.’

‘And I am telling you you cannot!’ he snapped, then made an effort to get a hold of himself. ‘This is more important. So leave it,’ he clipped. ‘The child is as safe with Fabia as she could be with anyone.’

She spun back to stare at him. ‘Even her own mother?’ she challenged. Then, as a sudden thought struck her, she felt tears of hurt spring into her eyes. ‘This is another punishment, isn’t it?’ she accused him bitterly. ‘It’s just one more Sicilian vendetta whereby you cruelly separate me from my baby for some nasty reason of your own!’

She had to be crazy speaking to him like that, she realised hectically as he took an angry step towards her. But she held her ground, eyes ablaze, her fingers tightening on the coil of wire and secateurs in a way that made his eyes widen in real surprise because it was so obvious that she was ready to use them on him if he gave her reason.

‘Put those down,’ he instructed.

She shook her head, mouth drawn in at the corners and defiant, like her blue eyes, her whole stance!

‘You will not like it if I am forced to take them from you,’ he warned darkly.

I know I won’t, she acknowledged to herself. But for some reason I can’t allow myself to cower away from you! Not any more—perhaps never again! she realised with a start, and knew the words would have surprised him if she’d said them out loud.

But maybe she didn’t need to say them out loud, she noted breathlessly. Because something altered in his eyes, the anger darkening into something much more dangerous: a taste for the battle—not this mental battle whereby she was daring to defy him, or even the one involving a silly pair of secateurs that he could take from her with ease if he so wanted to, but a far more complicated one which set the tiny muscles deep down in her stomach pulsing, set her heart racing.

‘Taking me on, cara?’ he drawled.

Her fingers twitched. ‘I’m not going to let you walk all over me, Nicolas,’ she returned. ‘Not again. Last time you broke my spirit—’

‘You never had a spirit,’ he countered deridingly, taking a deliberate step towards her. ‘You used to jump ten miles high if anyone so much as frowned at you.’

She had to steal herself not to take a defensive step back. ‘Well, not any more,’ she said determinedly. ‘I am a mother now. And I shall fight you to the end of the earth if I have to but you will not separate me from my baby.’

‘This has nothing to do with the baby.’ He dismissed that angle, taking yet another carefully gauged step.

Her breasts heaved on a short, tense pull of air, but she held her ground.

‘This is about you standing there—’ he used his darkened eyes to indicate the defiant pose she had adopted ‘—daring to take me on …’

Another step. She quivered. He saw it and sent her a taunting smile. ‘The coil of wire,’ he suggested, ‘would make an adequate garotte but would require a lot of physical strength for you to succeed with it. I would throw it to one side if I were you, amore,’ he advised, ‘and concentrate on the scissors instead.’

‘Secateurs,’ she corrected him tensely.

His mocking half-nod acknowledged the correction. ‘Now with those you could do me some damage,’ he observed. ‘Not much,’ he added. ‘But some—enough maybe to make this new spirit you talk about feel better.’

‘I have no wish to damage you at all!’ she shakily denied. ‘I just want you to stop trying to bully me all the time!’

‘Then put down the weapons,’ he urged, ‘and we will talk about my—bullying.’

She shook her head in refusal, and the odd thing about it was that she had a feeling he would have been disappointed if she had given in to him. He was enjoying this; she could see the beginnings of amusement gleaming behind the taunt in his eyes.

‘Then make your move, cara,’ he softly advised. ‘Or I will undoubtedly make mine …’

Then he did—without any more warning, her half-second hesitation all he allowed her before his hands were suddenly snaking out to capture her two wrists, fingers closing tightly around them then forcing them up and apart until he had her standing there in front of him with her hands made useless; then his body was taking up the last bit of space separating them, chest against wildly palpitating chest, hips against hips, thighs against thighs.