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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ mouth down to her own.

      It was punishment. It wasn’t meant to be anything else. His lips crushed hers back against her clenched teeth until, on a strangled gasp, she gave in to the pressure and opened her mouth. From then on it was both a punishment and a revelation. A terrible, terrible revelation because from the moment their tongues met all sense of now went flying, and she found herself tossed back three years into a hot, throbbing world where this man reigned supreme. It was the smell of him, the taste, touch, texture.

      Texture. The texture of his angry lips forcing her own apart, the texture of his moist tongue sliding against her own, the texture of his smooth, tight cheek rubbing against the softness of hers, and there was the sensation of his breath mingling with hers, and the drowningly sensual sound of his groan as she gave into it all and buried her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, hungry, greedy for something she had not known she had been starving for until this bright, burning moment.

      When he eventually wrenched himself away she sank weakly back against the bench behind her, unable to do anything but wilt there while her shattered senses tried to regroup.

      The air inside the shed was hot and stifling, the sun beating down on the roof filling it with the musty smell of baking wood, old oil and earth.

      He stood about a foot away, his breathing harsh and his body tense. Violence still skittered all around them, the threat of it dancing tauntingly in the motes of dust skittering in the musty air.

      Then came the distinctive sound of a telephone, shattering the tension like glass. He raked his hand into his trouser pocket, came out with a small mobile telephone and pressed it to his ear.

      ‘Right,’ he gritted after listening for a moment. ‘I’m on my way.’

      ‘What?’ Sara choked out, coming upright with an alarmed jerk.

      He didn’t answer. Did not even spare her a glance as he turned to walk out of the shed.

      ‘Don’t you dare shut me out as if I don’t count!’ Sara spat hoarsely after him. ‘She is my child! Mine! If that was a call to say they are making contact again, then I have a right to know!’

      His big shoulders flexed, the muscles bracing and stretching beneath the fine covering of his shirt. ‘They are making contact,’ he said, then walked off, out into the sunshine and away, leaving her standing there, trembling, wanting to throw something after him, wanting to scream, wanting to tear the whole world down!

      ‘You bastard,’ she whispered wretchedly. ‘You cruel and unfeeling bastard.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘Why can’t you care? Why can’t you care?’

      She was sternly composed, though, by the time he opened the study door long, agonising minutes later to come to a sudden halt when he saw her sitting in a chair across the hall.

      She looked like a schoolgirl who had been told to wait outside the headmaster’s office, all big eyes and pensive uncertainty.

      Only her mouth was not the mouth of a schoolgirl. Her mouth was the full, pulsing mouth of a woman. A woman who had recently been quite violently kissed.

      She shot to her feet. ‘Well?’

      He shook his dark head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It was a false alarm. A hoax caller.’

      ‘H-hoax?’ She mouthed the word in numb disbelief.

      ‘We have had several of them.’

      Her head twisted at that, the gesture sharp with pained disgust at a fellow human being who could be so cruel as to try to cash in on other people’s anguish. She didn’t say another word, but simply walked away, taking the stairs with her spine erect and her chin up.

      Alone, as only a woman in her situation could be.

      ‘She did that like a princess,’ Toni Valetta remarked with quiet respect from Nicolas’s side.

      To his consternation the remark acted like a lighted fuse on a time bomb. The other man turned on him, his eyes sparking yellow murder. ‘Go to hell,’ he rasped, stepped back into the study and closed the door, right in Toni’s surprised face.

      If Toni Valetta had been present at the breakfast table that morning, he would have understood all of that. As it was, he stared blankly at the door, gave a bewildered shrug and walked away.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      THE afternoon dragged on interminably. Lunch, which Sara didn’t even bother to turn up for, came and went. Then more hours, hours where she roamed from room to room, drifting out if someone else came in, wanting to be alone, needing to be alone because there was no one she could share her torment with.

      Dinner that evening was another grim, silent affair, if only because none of them were prepared to pretend that there was anything even vaguely normal about it. Sara had joined Nicolas and Toni for the meal, but only because Nicolas had sent up a message to her room ordering her to attend, and she just didn’t have it in her even to try to argue.

      So she sat at the table, played lip-service to Mrs Hobbit’s delicious chicken soup, cut up the light, fluffy omelette that must have been specially prepared to tempt her failed appetite because the other two were served thick, tender steaks, managed to swallow a couple of mouthfuls, accepted a glass of water, refused dessert and coffee then excused herself and left the two men to it without so much as uttering a single word except the pleases and thank-yous that good manners required.

      ‘She can’t take much more of this,’ Toni grimly observed as the door closed behind her.

      Nicolas flashed him a deadly glance. ‘Do you think I am blind?’ he gritted.

      And that was that, the atmosphere at the table no better with Sara gone from it. They too finished their meal in silence.

      A couple of hours later Nicolas Santino opened the door to Sara’s bedroom to find the room empty. He frowned, eyes skimming over to the bathroom where the door stood open and its inner darkness told its own story.

      He strode back down the stairs again and checked in every room before returning to the study where Toni sat at the desk with his eyes fixed on the television screen across the room. ‘It’s on the news,’ he informed his employer. ‘They’re intimating Mafia connections and God knows what else. I thought you’d put a blackout on this.’

      ‘I did.’ He stepped further into the room. He had just taken a shower and had changed his clothes for buff cords and a fleecy cotton shirt. ‘Has Sara been looking for me while I was showering?’ he asked the other man.

      ‘No.’ Toni glanced up, frowning. ‘Isn’t she in her room?’

      Nicolas didn’t answer, his expression tightening. ‘Get hold of whoever is running that bloody news station and put a block on it,’ he commanded.

      ‘A bit like locking the door after the horse has bolted, Nic,’ Toni said drily.

      ‘This whole thing is an illustration of that remark,’ he clipped. ‘She can’t have got out of the house, could she?’

      It took a moment for Toni’s mind to swap subjects. ‘Sara?’ he said then. ‘No chance. Alarm bells would have gone off, bringing ten men running and СКАЧАТЬ