Gold Ring Of Betrayal

‘You’re seeing him now,’ he murmured huskily.

And she was, seeing him in all his golden-skinned, sensually sinewed, naked glory.

But for the first time ever she turned away from the invitation his husky words had offered. ‘We’ve been married for almost a year,’ she said. ‘And I can count on the fingers of one hand how many weeks we’ve actually spent together. This isn’t even my home, it’s your father’s!’ she sighed. ‘And on the rare occasions you do find time to come here your father takes priority.’

‘I refuse to pander to your unnatural jealousy of my relationship with my father,’ he clipped.

‘And I hate living here,’ she told him bluntly. ‘And if you can’t be here more than you are then I want to go home, to London. I want to get a job and work to fill my days. I want a life, Nicolas,’ she appealed to his steadily closing face, ‘that doesn’t revolve around couture shops and beauty parlours and feeling the outsider with all these tight-knit, clannish Sicilians!’

‘A life with an Englishman, perhaps.’

She sighed again, irritably this time. ‘This has nothing to do with Jason.’

‘No?’

‘No!’ she denied. ‘It is to do with you and me and a marriage that isn’t a marriage because you aren’t here enough! It’s to do with me being unhappy here!’ Tears, honest tears, filled her eyes at that point; she could see him blur out of focus as she appealed to him to understand. ‘I can’t go on like this—can’t you see? They—your father, your friends—overwhelm me! I’m frightened when you’re not here!’

An appeal from the heart. It should have cut into him, reminded him of the soft, gentle creature he had originally fallen in love with. The one who had been so timid that she used to cling to him when he’d introduced her to someone he knew, or had reached for his hand if they’d crossed the road, or could be tongue-tied by a painful shyness when teased.

But he was Sicilian. And a Sicilian man was by nature territorial and possessive. And if Sara dismissed Jason Castell from her mind as unimportant Nicolas didn’t. Because she hadn’t voiced all of these complaints before the Englishman’s name had begun cropping up in conversations around the island. She hadn’t dared to argue with him like this before the man had come on the scene.

And she had never turned away from the blatant invitation of his body before the Englishman’s appearance.

‘Get into bed,’ he gritted.

‘No.’ She began to quiver at the expression on his face. ‘I w-want to talk this through...’

He began striding around the bed towards her. She backed away, her hands outstretched to ward him off, long, delicately boned fingers trembling. ‘Please don’t,’ she whispered unsteadily. ‘You’re frightening me. I don’t want to be frightened of you too...’

But he wasn’t listening, or maybe didn’t care at that moment that he was about to murder the one firm bit of faith she had—that he, this hard-headed, ruthless hunter she had married, would not, could not hurt her.

He hurt her. Oh, not in the physical sense, but with a hard, ruthless sensuality that left her feeling ravaged to the point of shock. ‘Go near the Englishman and I shall kill you both,’ he then vowed tautly. ‘What’s mine I keep, and you are most definitely mine!’

‘What’s mine I keep...’

He never retracted that vow. Not throughout the following month when she never saw him, never heard from him, never left the villa. She didn’t even hear Alfredo’s mocking little jibes about her failing marriage and his son’s preference for being anywhere but with his pathetic little wife.

She didn’t so much as suspect the neat little trap that Alfredo was setting for her when he delivered a message from Nicolas one evening telling her to meet him in Catania in a hotel they had sometimes stayed in when attending some function in the city.

She arrived at the appointed suite, nervous, a little frightened, praying that he had asked her to come here because he was at last beginning to accept that she was unhappy and they needed to be alone to talk without fear of interruption. She let herself in with the provided key, took the overnight bag Nicolas had told her to bring with her through to the bedroom, then went back into the sitting room to wait.

He didn’t come. By ten o’clock she was feeling let down and angry. By eleven she’d grimly got ready for bed. By twelve she was trying hard to fall asleep when she heard another key in the door. Elation sent her scrambling in her lovely cream silk nightdress out of the bed and towards the bedroom door just as it opened inwards.

Then came the shock, the horror, the confusion, because it wasn’t Nicolas who came through the door but Jason. Jason, who paused in the open doorway, smiled, and murmured, ‘Sara, darling, you look exquisite—as always.’

Blank incomprehension held her stunned and silent. He stepped closer, pulling her into his arms and she let him do it, utterly incapable of working out how to deal with the situation.

A mistake, she was thinking stupidly. Jason had somehow made a terrible, terrible mistake!

A hand landing hard against its wood sent the door flying open. And then Nicolas stood there. Nicolas, with his face turned to rock. Nicolas, who stared at her with his hunter’s gold eyes turned yellow with shock while she stared helplessly back, the frissons of confusion, alarm, horror and shock wild inside her.

‘So my father was right. You bitch,’ he said. That was all.

Guilty as charged. Her silence damned her. Her blushing cheeks damned her. The way Jason made a lurching dive for the balcony doors and disappeared through them to go she neither knew nor cared where damned her. And the sheer silk nightdress bought especially for this meeting and which showed every contour of her slender body beneath damned her.

He still didn’t move and neither could she. Her mind was rocketing through all the reasons why Jason could have come here believing that she was waiting for him. Then it hit her, and she went white—not with shame but with fury.

Alfredo. Alfredo had set her up—set this up! Alfredo.

‘Nic-please!’ Her blue eyes were slightly wild and begging. ‘This isn’t what you—’

He took a step towards her, his face turning from rock to murderous threat. His hand came up, the back of it aimed to lash out at her.