‘I can’t do this!’ she muttered aloud to herself. ‘I can’t go through with it. Can’t face…’
Abruptly she shook her head, fighting to drive away the unhappy thoughts. She had to face things, had to go through with it. Because inside that villa, as well as the terrible memories of some of the worst months of her life, there was also the one thing that mattered most to her in the world. The one thing that made her life now worth living.
Her feet followed the indistinct path with the ease of instinct built up in her time living on San Felice. She found the small gate into the private gardens in the same way, easing it open carefully and wincing in distress as the weathered wood creaked betrayingly.
‘Please don’t let anyone come,’ she prayed under her breath as she dashed across the soft grass and into the concealment of the lush shrubbery that grew beside the lowest level of the stone paved terraces.
‘Please don’t let anyone see me.’
She had barely hidden herself again when she heard the sound of a door opening above her. The patio doors that led from the big sitting room, she recalled. The same doors through which she had made her escape not quite seven months before when she had fled this house, not daring to look back, terrified of what might happen if someone realised what she was planning and stopped her.
‘Buona sera…’
The voice from inside the house floated down to her, making her heart stop dead in her chest so that she gasped in shock. A moment later it had kick-started into action again, setting her pulse racing.
Ricardo.
She recognised that voice instantly; would know it anywhere. Only one man possessed those dark, sultry tones or had that slightly husky note in every word he spoke.
How many times had she heard him speak her name in so many different ways? In amusement, in scorn, in anger. And yet, at other times—times she could no longer bear to remember—she had heard him speak to her in burning ardour, taking the simple ordinariness of her name and turning it into magic as he called her his Lucia, his delight, his passion…
…His wife.
Her heart flinched away from the memory of that word and the way that Ricardo Emiliani had once used it with a note of pride—or so she had thought at the time.
‘My wife,’ he had said as he took her hand to lead her away from the altar where the priest had just declared that they were married. ‘Mia moglie.’
And for a time she had gloried in the title. She had let herself enjoy being called Signora Emiliani. She had buried the doubts that assailed her deep under the cloak of happiness that shielded her from reality. She had smiled until her jaw ached and she had played the role of the happy young bride who had all that she could dream of.
When all the time, deep down inside, she had known the truth—the only reason why Ricardo had married her in the first place.
And love had had nothing to do with it.
‘If you hear anything more, then let me know…’
The once-loved voice came again, startling her because it spoke in English and not his first language of Italian.
So who was he talking to in English? And why?
A nervous shiver ran down Lucy’s spine as the sudden thought struck her that perhaps she might have made a fatal mistake in coming out of hiding and getting back in touch with Ricardo after so long. By writing to him, however desperate her need, she had let him know where she was. And Ricardo, being the hugely wealthy, hugely powerful man that he was, would have no difficulty in using that information to find out more. He had only to click his fingers and he had an army of men at his disposal—private detectives, investigators, ready to do anything needed to find out more, to track her down and…
And what?
What would the man who in one last dreadful row had declared to her face that marrying her had been the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life do once he found out where she was?
‘I want to see this matter sorted out and finished with.’
‘I’ll get on to it right away. The contracts will be ready for you to sign tomorrow.’
Somehow it was the other man’s voice that brought her back to reality with such a bump that she almost laughed out loud, only just catching herself in time before she gave herself away.
Who was she trying to kid? Why would Ricardo want anything to do with her? He had let her go without a second thought, hadn’t he? No one had come after her to try and drag her back to this house and all she had left behind in it. And hadn’t the message of the letter returned to her been loud and clear?
Contracts and signing—of course. What else would be on Ricardo’s mind other than his huge luxury car business?
Ricardo Emiliani wanted nothing to do with her. He would never forgive her for what she had done, so now he was glad that she was out of his life and he wanted it to stay that way. She was a fool if she allowed herself even to dream that it could be anything else.
She shrank back into the shadowed space between the shrubs and the stone wall of the terrace as slow, heavy footsteps brought Ricardo down the last flight of steps and into the garden. Watching him stroll away from her, Lucy felt as if something or someone had suddenly punched her hard in the chest, driving all the breath from her body and making her heart jump painfully in her throat.
Even from behind like this, he still had such a potent physical impact that it made her freeze and just stare, unable to look away.
He had been walking away from her when she had first seen him. So the first impression she had had been of that proud, black-haired head, held so arrogantly high on a strong, deeply tanned neck. Her eyes had been drawn to those broad, straight shoulders, the powerful length of his back sweeping down to narrow hips and long, long legs. Then, as now, he had been wearing denim jeans so worn and tight that they had clung to his powerful thighs like a second skin. But that day on the beach, two years before, he had been wearing no shirt, nothing to conceal the bronzed skin of his torso, stretched tight across honed muscles that flexed and tightened with every movement, making her mouth dry in sensual response as she’d watched. He’d been barefoot too, seeming nothing but the casual holidaymaker she was herself, his appearance giving no sign of the wealthy, powerful man he really was.
She had been halfway in love with him before she had found out the truth.
Today he wore a white polo shirt, untucked at the waist and hanging loose. But she knew what was under that shirt. She had let her hands slide underneath his clothing so many times, stroking hungry fingers over the warm satin of his skin, feeling his shuddering tension as he responded to her provocative caress. She had closed her palms over the tight muscles of his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh in yearning hunger as she had ridden his passion hard and hot until it had taken her right over the edge into ecstasy.
Oh, no, no, no, no! She must not think of that! She must not let herself remember how it had been, how she had once responded to him so fast, so easily. She couldn’t let herself remember that or she would be finished before she started, her plan ruined before it even began.
She had come here for one reason only and that was…
A sudden sound, new and unexpected, broke into her thoughts, stopping them dead. For a moment it was as if it was so much an echo of what was in her thoughts that she almost imagined that she had conjured it up inside her head, wishing—dreaming—that she had heard it, rather than actually catching it in reality.
But then the sound came again, a snuffling, choking sort of wail, not too far away, faintly muffled, as if being held against something soft.