Loe raamatut: «To Wear His Ring Again»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘THIS IS THE address you asked for. Grosvenor Square W1.’ The taxi driver glanced over his shoulder at his passenger, who was still sitting on the back seat, puzzled that she hadn’t climbed out of the car. ‘Is this where you want to go, love? Or do you want me to take you somewhere else?’

Butterflies danced in Isobel’s stomach as she stared out of the black cab, and for a moment she was tempted to ask the cabbie to drive on. The Georgian town house looked exactly the same as she remembered; the four storeys of mullioned windows gleamed in the spring sunshine, reflecting the trees in the park opposite. She had loved the house when she had lived there with Constantin, but now its elegant grandeur seemed to mock her.

She was surprised by how emotional she felt to return, two years after she had walked out of the front door for the last time and turned her back on her marriage. Perhaps she should just sign the divorce petition burning a hole in her handbag and post it back to Constantin’s lawyer. What was the point in seeing him again after all this time and dredging up the past?

The truth was that she had never really known her husband. When they had met three years ago, she had been dazzled by his charm and seduced by his smouldering sexuality. At first, their relationship had been a roller coaster of sizzling passion, but after their wedding Constantin had changed into a remote stranger. With hindsight, she realised that she had never truly understood the enigmatic Italian who went by the exotic title of Marchese Constantin De Severino.

She visualised the legal document in her handbag with the heading in stark black typeface: Affidavit in support of divorce—desertion, and felt a rush of anger at the reason Constantin had given for seeking a divorce. It was true that she had been the one to leave the marriage, and so technically she supposed she had deserted him. But he had given her no option but to leave him. He had driven her away with his coldness and his uncompromising attitude towards her career.

She frowned. Desertion was such a damning word and, ironically, it contained more emotion than Constantin had ever revealed during the one year of the marriage that they had spent together.

Who was she kidding? When she pictured his hard, sculpted features it was impossible to believe he had a vulnerable side. Constantin did not do emotions. It was far more likely that the reason he had given for seeking a divorce had been coldly calculated. But she would not take all the blame for the failure of their marriage, Isobel thought fiercely. Constantin needed to realise that she was not a pushover as she had been when he had married her, and he couldn’t have things all his way. Once, she had been overawed by him. But she was determined to end their marriage as his equal.

‘This is fine, thanks,’ she told the taxi driver as she stepped onto the pavement and leaned down to the cab window to pay the fare. The breeze lifted her honey-blonde hair from her shoulders.

Recognition dawned on the cabbie’s face. ‘I know who you are! You’re that singer Izzy Blake from the Stone Ladies. My daughter is a big fan.’ He thrust a notepad into Isobel’s hand. ‘Can I be cheeky and ask for your autograph for my Lily?’

She took the pen he handed her and signed her name. Being recognised by the public was something Isobel doubted she would ever be entirely comfortable with, but she never forgot that the band owed their success to their many thousands of fans worldwide.

‘Are you in London to give a concert?’ the cabbie asked her.

‘No, we finished our European tour in Berlin last week, but I think we’re due to play in London in the autumn.’ She had given up trying to remember the exact details of the band’s hectic schedule. For the past two years, her life had been a blur of airport lounges and hotel lobbies in whichever town, state, continent where the band was performing. She tore a page out of the cabbie’s notebook. ‘Give me your email address and I’ll make sure you’re sent a couple of tickets so you can take your daughter to the Stone Ladies’ next concert.’

The taxi driver thanked her, and when he drove away Isobel unconsciously clenched her fingers around the strap of her bag as she climbed the front steps of the house and rang the doorbell. Despite her determination to remain cool and calm, she could feel her heart thudding painfully hard beneath her ribs. She was not nervous at the prospect of seeing Constantin again, she assured herself. She thought of the divorce petition he had sent her, and the accusatory, condemning word desertion had the same effect on her temper as a red rag to a bull.

‘Damn you, Constantin,’ she muttered beneath her breath, just before the door was opened by a familiar figure.

‘Madam,’ Constantin’s butler greeted her gravely, his measured tone and imperturbable features revealing no hint of surprise at her sudden reappearance after two years.

‘Hello, Whittaker. Is my...husband...at home?’ She was annoyed by the huskiness in her voice as she stumbled over the word husband. He wouldn’t be for much longer and she would be free to move on with her life.

She had read in a newspaper that Constantin was in London to attend the opening of a new De Severino Eccellenza store—more commonly known by the company’s logo DSE—in Oxford Street, and she had planned her visit for Sunday morning because, even though he was a workaholic, it was unlikely that Constantin would have gone to the office on a Sunday.

‘The Marquis is downstairs in the gymnasium.’ The butler stepped back to allow her to enter the house. ‘I will inform him on the internal phone that you are here.’

‘No!’ Isobel stopped him. She wanted to retain the element of surprise. As Whittaker’s brow pleated in a faint frown she added quickly, ‘He...he’s expecting me.’ It was the truth of sorts, she assured herself. No doubt Constantin was waiting for her to meekly sign the divorce petition, but he probably did not expect her to deliver the document in person. She hurried along the hall towards the stairs that led down to the basement.

Constantin had had the gym installed soon after their marriage so that he could work out at home rather than stop off at his private health club after he’d spent all day at the office. Descending the stairs, Isobel could hear a rhythmic pounding noise. The door to the gym was open, and she had a clear view of him slamming his fists into a punchbag. He was totally focused on what he was doing and did not notice her.

Her mouth ran dry as she stood in the corridor and studied him. She had forgotten how big he was! He owed his six-feet-plus height to his American mother, who—on one of the rare occasions when he had spoken about his family—Constantin had told Isobel had been a successful model before she had married his father.

She guessed his slashing cheekbones and classically sculpted features were also a result of his mother’s genes, but in every other way he was pure Italian male, with exotic olive skin and dark, almost black, glossy hair that grew in luxuriant waves and refused to be completely tamed by the barber’s scissors. His shorts and gym vest revealed his powerful thigh and shoulder muscles, and the curling black hairs on his chest were damp with sweat as he powered his fists into the punchbag.

He would need to take a shower after his punishing workout, Isobel mused. An unbidden memory slid into her mind of the early days of their marriage when she had often come down to the gym to watch Constantin work out, and afterwards they had shared a shower. The two years that they had been apart melted away as she remembered running her hands over his naked, muscular thighs and stretching her fingers around his powerful erection while he smoothed a bar of soap over her breasts and continued down her quivering, shivering body until she begged him to end the torment and take her hard and fast, leaning against the wall of the shower cubicle.

Dear heaven! Scalding heat swept through her veins, and she could not repress a choked sound in her throat that immediately alerted Constantin to her presence. His head shot round, and for perhaps thirty seconds Isobel saw a stunned expression on his face before his chiselled features hardened and became unreadable. He pulled off his boxing gloves and strolled towards her.

‘Isabella!’

His deep voice was as sensuous as bittersweet chocolate, and his use of the Italian version of her name evoked a flood of molten desire in the pit of Isobel’s stomach. How could he have such a devastating effect on her after all this time? Working in the music industry, she was often in the company of good-looking men, but she’d never felt a spark of desire for anyone she’d met. She had put her lack of interest down to the fact that she was still legally married—for although she and Constantin had parted on bad terms she believed in fidelity within marriage. But with a flash of near despair she realised that no other man excited her as her husband did. For the past two years her sexual desires had lain dormant, but one look at Constantin was all it had taken to arouse her body to a fever pitch of lustful longing.

Utterly thrown by her reaction to him, she felt an urge to turn and flee back up the stairs. But it was too late; he halted in front of her, standing unnervingly close so that she inhaled the sensual musk of his maleness.

Beads of sweat glistened on his skin. Isobel found herself wanting to run her fingers through the lock of sable hair that had fallen forwards onto his brow and trace the close-trimmed black stubble that shaded his jaw and upper lip. Every muscle in her body tautened defensively as she fought the effect he had on her. She was unaware that she reminded Constantin of a nervous colt who might bolt at any second.

‘Don’t hide in the shadows, cara,’ he drawled. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, but I assume you have a very good reason to let yourself into the house, two years after you ran away.’

His cynical tone hurtled Isobel back in time to the dying days of their marriage when they had been at constant loggerheads.

‘I didn’t run away,’ she snapped.

His heavy black brows rose, but it was his eyes that held her spellbound. The first time Isobel had met him—when she had been a temporary secretary sent by the agency to work for the CEO at the London office of the exclusive jewellery and luxury goods company, De Severino Eccellenza—she had been mesmerised by Constantin’s brilliant blue eyes that were such an unexpected contrast to his swarthy, Latin looks.

He shrugged. ‘All right, you didn’t run. You sneaked out while I was on a business trip. I came home to find your note informing me that you had gone on tour with the band and wouldn’t be coming back.’

Isobel gritted her teeth. ‘You knew I was going to go with the Stone Ladies—we had discussed it. I left because, if I hadn’t, we would have destroyed each other. Don’t you remember the row we had the morning before you went to France, or the argument we’d had the day before, or the day before that? I couldn’t take it any more.’ Her voice shook. ‘We couldn’t even be together in the same room without tension flaring. It was time to end our train wreck of a marriage.’

A throb of pain shot across her brow, causing her to draw a sharp breath and reminding her of the tension headaches she’d suffered during her marriage. She and Constantin were arguing already, mere moments after meeting each other again.

‘Besides, I didn’t let myself into the house,’ she said in a carefully controlled voice. ‘I left my door key with my wedding ring on your desk two years ago.’ The symbolic gesture of pulling her gold wedding band from her finger had dealt the final devastating blow to her heart, Isobel remembered painfully. ‘Whittaker let me in.’ She opened her handbag and pulled out the divorce petition. ‘I came to return this.’

Constantin flicked his eyes to the document. ‘You must be in a desperate hurry to officially end our marriage, if you couldn’t wait until tomorrow to put the paperwork in the post.’

Riled by his mocking tone, she opened her mouth to agree that she was impatient to sever the final links between them. She was wearing four-inch heels but Constantin towered over her and she had to tilt her head to meet his cobalt-blue gaze. It was an unwise move, she realised as her eyes dropped to his sensual, full-lipped mouth and her pulse quickened. Her tongue darted out to moisten her suddenly dry lips, and she glimpsed a dangerous glitter in his eyes as he followed the betraying gesture before he roamed his gaze over her in a leisurely inspection that made Isobel’s skin tingle.

‘You’re looking good, Isabella,’ he drawled.

Her stupid heart performed a somersault, but she managed to respond coolly, ‘Thank you.’ The old Isobel had struggled to accept compliments graciously, but maturity had given her the self-assurance to be able to look in a mirror and acknowledge that she was attractive.

That did not mean she hadn’t spent ages debating what to wear for her meeting with Constantin. Her aim had been to look sophisticated yet give the impression that she hadn’t tried too hard and she had eventually settled on dark blue jeans from her favourite designer, teamed with a plain white tee shirt and—for a confidence booster—a pillar-box-red jacket. She had left her long, layered hair loose, and wore minimum make-up—just mascara to emphasise her hazel eyes, and a slick of rose-coloured gloss on her lips.

She saw Constantin glance at her handbag. ‘From the new De Severino Eccellenza collection,’ he noted. ‘Rather ironic, seeing that you always made a fuss when I gave you DSE items while we were together. When you bought your bag I hope you explained that you are my wife, and asked for a discount.’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Isobel said stiffly. ‘I can afford to pay the full price.’

There seemed no point trying to explain that when they had been together she had felt guilty when Constantin had given her DSE jewellery and accessories because everything in the collection was incredibly expensive, and she hadn’t wanted to seem like a gold-digger who had married him for his money.

In the last two years her successful singing career had earned her an income that was unbelievable to a girl who had grown up in an ex-colliery village in the north of England, where poverty and deprivation had sucked the life and soul out of the men who had been unemployed since the pit had closed a decade ago. She doubted Constantin would understand how good it made her feel to be able to pay for her own clothes and jewellery after the shame she’d felt as a teenager, knowing that her family relied on handouts from the state.

She glanced at his autocratic features and her heart sank. She had always been conscious of the social divide between them. Constantin was a member of the Italian aristocracy, a man of noble birth and incredible wealth and sophistication, and it was perhaps unsurprising that a miner’s daughter had struggled to fit into his exclusive lifestyle. But she was no longer plagued by the insecurities of her youth. Her successful career had given her a sense of self-assurance and pride.

‘I don’t want to rake up the past,’ she told him firmly.

His eyes narrowed appraisingly on her face, and she sensed he was surprised by her new confidence. ‘What do you want?’

Isobel’s intention had been to make it clear that she would not accept responsibility for the collapse of their marriage. But her fiery words were replaced by a different kind of fire in her belly as she watched him pick up a towel and rub it over his arms and shoulders. He pulled off his gym vest and dragged the towel across the whorls of sweat-damp dark hairs that grew thickly on his chest and arrowed down over his flat abdomen.

She jerked her eyes guiltily from where the fuzz of hairs disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts, and clenched her hand to prevent herself from reaching out and skimming her fingers over his rock-hard abdominal muscles. She had often thought about him in the past two years, but her memory had not done him justice. He was so gorgeous he made her insides melt.

Her skin prickled as every nerve-ending on her body became acutely attuned to Constantin’s raw sex appeal. Something primitive and purely instinctive stirred in the pit of her stomach. Her brain sensed that he represented danger, but the alarm bells ringing inside her head were obliterated by the sound of her blood thundering in her ears.

Silence quivered between them like an overstretched elastic band. Constantin frowned when she failed to respond to his question, but he glimpsed the unguarded expression in her eyes and his lips curled into a predatory smile.

‘Ah, I think I understand, cara. Were you hoping we could get together for old times’ sake, before we make our separation legal?’

‘Get together?’ For a moment Isobel didn’t understand. She could not control the heat that surged through her when Constantin’s gaze lingered on her breasts, and to her horror she felt her nipples harden and prayed he could not see their jutting points outlined beneath her clingy tee shirt.

‘There were no problems with one aspect of our marriage,’ he murmured. ‘Our sex life was so explosive it was off the Richter scale.’

He was talking about sex! Her eyes clashed with his glittering gaze and her fingers itched to wipe the mockery from his face. ‘You think I came here to...proposition you? In your dreams,’ she told him furiously.

Her blood boiled. How dared Constantin suggest that the reason for her visit was because she wanted to sleep with him—for old times’ sake? But her treacherous mind responded to his provocative suggestion and she visualised them naked and writhing on the gym mat, limbs entangled and their skin damp with sweat as he drove his body into hers in a relentless rhythm.

Heat scalded her cheeks, and she did not trust herself to say anything else to him that wouldn’t result in them having one of the vicious arguments that had been a regular feature of the last months of their marriage. Dignified silence seemed her best strategy, but as she swung away from him his gravelly, accented voice stopped her from marching up the stairs.

‘You have often been in my dreams these past two years, Isabella. The nights can be long and lonely...can’t they?’

Could she possibly have heard regret in his voice? Was there any chance that he had missed her even half as much as she had missed him? Slowly, she turned back to face him, and immediately realised that she had indulged in wishful thinking. He was lounging in the doorway, bare-chested, beautiful and totally aware that he turned her on.

How could she have thought that Constantin might hide a vulnerable side beneath his arrogance? The idea that she had hurt him when she had left two years ago was laughable, Isobel thought bitterly. If he had a heart, he kept it locked behind a wall of impenetrable steel that nothing and no one could breach.

‘I don’t imagine you have spent many nights alone,’ she said tautly, ‘not if the stories in the tabloids linking you with numerous beautiful models and socialites are to be believed.’

He shrugged. ‘There were occasions when it was necessary for me to invite women to social events—’ he sent her a piercing glance ‘—since my wife wasn’t around to accompany me. Unfortunately the gutter press thrive on scandal and intrigue, and if none exist they fabricate lies.’

‘Are you saying that you didn’t have affairs with those women?’

His mocking expression gave nothing away. ‘If you’re trying to lead me into admitting adultery as a reason for us to divorce—forget it,’ he said coolly. ‘You’re the one who walked out of our marriage.’

Frustration surged through Isobel and she wanted to demand a straight answer from him. The idea that he had slept with the women he had been photographed with made her feel sick with jealousy. But as Constantin had pointed out, she had been the one to leave, and she had no right to ask him about his personal life. He was a red-blooded male with a high sex drive, and common sense told her that he was unlikely to have remained celibate for the past two years.

The adrenalin that had pumped through her veins when she had psyched herself up to see Constantin drained away, and she suddenly felt weary and strangely deflated. It had been a stupid idea to come here.

She looked down at the divorce petition in her hand and calmly ripped it in half.

‘I want a divorce as much as you do, but for the reason that we have lived apart for more than two years. If you continue to state my desertion as a reason, I’ll begin divorce proceedings against you, citing your unreasonable behaviour.’

He jerked his head back as if she had slapped him and his eyes glittered with anger. ‘My behaviour? What about how you behaved? You were hardly a devoted wife, were you, cara?’ He made the endearment sound like an insult. ‘In fact you went out with your friends so often that I almost forgot I had a wife.’

‘I saw my friends because, for some reason that I have never understood, you had turned into the ice man. We were two strangers who happened to live in the same house. But I needed more, Constantin. I needed you...’

Isobel broke off as the hard gleam in Constantin’s eyes told her she was wasting her breath. ‘I refuse to take part in a slanging match,’ she muttered. She gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s a telling indictment of our marriage that we can’t even agree on how we’re going to end it.’

She swung away from him and marched up the stairs, her back ramrod-straight. Reaching the ground-floor level, she hurried towards the front door but was forced to halt as the butler finished speaking on the house phone and moved to stand in front of her.

Whittaker held open the door to the sitting room. ‘The Marquis requested that you wait in here while he takes a shower, and he will join you shortly.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m leaving.’

Whittaker’s polite smile did not falter. ‘Mr De Severino hopes that you will stay and continue the discussion you began a few minutes ago. Shall I bring you some tea, madam?’

Before she could argue, Isobel found that she had been steered into the sitting room, and there was a faint click as Whittaker departed and shut the door behind him. She didn’t understand what Constantin was playing at. It was clear they had nothing to discuss that could not be dealt with by their respective divorce lawyers. Her immediate thought was that she was not going to be a puppet controlled by the master puppeteer as had so often happened during their marriage.

She reached for the door handle just as the door opened and the butler entered carrying a tray with a silver teapot and a cafetière.

‘I remembered that you prefer Earl Grey tea, madam,’ he said, smiling as he held out a cup and saucer.

Good manners prevented Isobel from storming out of the house. She had always got on well with Whittaker, and her problems with her marriage were not the elderly butler’s fault. Suppressing her irritation that Constantin had got his own way as he had so often done in the past, she wandered over to the window. The view of the park was familiar and evoked painful memories.

‘I’ve just spoken to my lawyer and instructed him to send a new divorce petition for you to sign. You’ll also have to give a written statement saying that we have lived apart for two years.’

At the sound of Constantin’s clipped voice Isobel jolted and slopped tea into her saucer. She spun round, disconcerted to find him standing close to her. For such a big man he moved with the silent menace of a panther stalking its prey, she thought ruefully. The black jeans and polo shirt he had changed into emphasised his lethal good looks. His hair was still damp from his recent shower and the citrusy fragrance of soap mixed with his spicy cologne teased her senses.

‘Giles still thinks I have good grounds to divorce you for desertion.’ Constantin’s anger that she had thwarted him was evident in his harsh tone. ‘But the legal advice is that it will be quicker to go with the fact that we have been separated for two years. The one thing we can both agree on is that we want a swift end to our marriage,’ he drawled sardonically.

Determined to hide the pang of hurt that his words evoked, Isobel turned her gaze back to the window and stared once more at the pretty park at the centre of Grosvenor Square.

‘When I was pregnant, I often used to stand here and imagine pushing our baby in a pram around the gardens,’ she said softly. ‘Our little girl would have been almost two and a half now.’

The shaft of pain in her chest was not as sharp as it had once been, but it was enough to make her catch her breath. Coming back to the house where she had lived when she had been pregnant had opened up the wound in her heart that would never completely heal. She had chosen one of the bedrooms at the back of the house for a nursery, and had been busy planning the colour scheme before she and Constantin had made that fateful trip to Italy.

She watched him pour himself a cup of coffee and felt a surge of anger that he had not reacted to the mention of their daughter. Nothing had changed, Isobel thought grimly. When she had lost their baby, twenty weeks into her pregnancy, she had been numb with grief. A few times she had tried to talk about the miscarriage with Constantin, but he had rebuffed her and become even more distant, and eventually she had stopped trying to reach him.

‘Do you ever think about Arianna?’ The nurse at the hospital had advised them to choose a name for their baby, even though she had been born too early to survive.

He sipped his coffee, and Isobel noted that he did not meet her gaze. ‘There’s no point dwelling on the past,’ he said shortly. ‘Nothing can change what happened. All we can do is move forwards.’

Two years ago, she had been chilled by his lack of emotion, but as she looked closely at him and saw a nerve flicker in his cheek she realised that he was tenser than he appeared.

‘Is that why you’ve begun divorce proceedings? You want to bury the past?’

He winced at her deliberate use of the word bury, and Isobel wondered if his mind pictured, as hers did, the small white marble tombstone in the grounds of the chapel at Casa Celeste—the De Severino family’s historic home on the shores of Lake Albano—where they had laid Arianna to rest.

Constantin’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is there a point to this conversation? I haven’t heard a word from you in two years. Why have you turned up out of the blue?’

He did not try to disguise his frustration. He had not anticipated this meeting with his soon-to-be ex-wife, and Constantin hated surprises. His shock when he had caught sight of Isobel standing in the doorway of the gym had sparked his anger that she had left him—even though he acknowledged that he had driven her away. She had a hell of a nerve to stroll back into the house, looking so beautiful that he’d been instantly and embarrassingly aroused.

His temper was not improved when he felt his hand shake as he lifted his cup to his lips and gulped down his coffee, scalding the back of his throat in the process. He did not want her here, stirring up memories of the past that he had successfully kept locked away. An image flashed into his mind of their tiny, perfectly formed baby girl who had never lived. Pain flared inside him, but he controlled it as he always did, by force of will, and blocked out the memories.