The Mistress Wife

‘Is that a fact, cara?’ Lucca stretched with the slumberous grace of a panther and dropped a kiss to her brow.

He tried not to laugh at the way she was clutching him while secretly enjoying the power of being so indispensable. For just those few seconds it was as if he were inhabiting a time slip and then crash, bang the curtain whipped up again on his recollection of the past two years and the cold and the steel and the darkness entered back into his soul. He gazed down at her, brooding dark golden eyes semi-concealed by lush black lashes.

She spread appreciative fingers across the hard contours of bone and sinew that lay below the smooth bronzed skin of his shoulders and stared up at his lean, darkly handsome face. She breathed in deep. ‘I…I still love you.’

‘I’m honoured.’ Lucca lifted a hand and indicated a tiny space. ‘Do you love me this much? Or this much…?’ He stretched lean brown fingers wider apart.

Her shy smile crept across her reddened mouth for she believed he was teasing her. ‘Oh, at least two hand spans…’

‘But I didn’t ask for love…I only wanted sex.’

Eyes veiling, Vivien went pink and winced. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’

‘If you love me enough, you’ll forgive me,’ Lucca declared with sardonic bite.

Vivien stilled, only then recognising the jarring note in his dark deep accented drawl and grasping that something was wrong. He rolled her off him and sprang out of bed. He was all sleek power and strong muscles, a virile male in the very peak of condition. She stared, a hollow feeling in the pit of her tummy. It was as though he had cut her in two. She had given herself in trust and offered her love and he had taken one and discarded the other. I only wanted sex. Was he serious? She trembled, feeling sick with humiliation.

The phone by the bed buzzed loudly. With a muttered imprecation in his own language, Lucca swept up the phone. Suddenly he fell still, his hard jaw line squaring. ‘Yes, I am Lucca Saracino. What has happened?’

The gravity of his voice made her push herself up in the bed and stare. His natural colour had leeched from below his olive skin. ‘Which hospital? How is he?’ he demanded flatly. ‘How did this occur?’

While he listened, his lean, powerful face clenched hard and shadowed. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed gruffly. ‘I will get to the hospital as soon as possible.’

Tossing the phone aside, Lucca shot Vivien a chilling look of fierce condemnation. ‘That was the police. An hour ago they took Marco to hospital. He has cuts and bruises. He was found on the street on his own.’

Vivien could not credit what he was telling her. ‘I beg your pardon…?’

‘Your sister tried to reclaim him but was considered too drunk to be entrusted with his care a second time. Apparently, she took him to a party and he wandered out of the house without anyone even noticing that he was missing!’ Lucca framed between clenched teeth.

‘Oh, dear heaven, no!’ Gripped by fear on her son’s behalf, Vivien fought through her welter of horrified disbelief that such an event could have taken place and concentrated on what was important. ‘Hospital? Marco’s in hospital? Has he been hurt?’

Scorching golden eyes challenged her. ‘How the hell could you leave my infant son in that selfish bitch’s care?’

‘Please tell me how Marco is…is he all right?’ Vivien pressed strickenly.

‘Dannazione! What do you call “all right”? He has cuts and bruises and he’s terrified. He could have been kidnapped, killed, anything! I thank God that He was merciful and that we still have a son,’ Lucca launched at her in a black seething fury, hauling on clothes as he spoke. ‘Someone’s going to answer for this outrage!’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘SOMEONE’S going to answer for this outrage.’ That threat still echoing in her ears, Vivien sat silent and rigid in the rear of Lucca’s limousine. The buck stops here, she thought wretchedly. She was responsible for Marco and she had placed him in Bernice’s care. Out in a street without an adult looking out for him, Marco might so easily have been run over by a car. The son she adored might have died because she had utilised poor judgement.

But how could she have guessed that Bernice would lie to her? Her sister had lied to cover up the fact that she’d not been at home where she’d been pretending to be, but actually out socialising in the company of other people. How could she have known that Bernice would act in such an irresponsible way? Taking Marco from his bed to go to a party and then imbibing so much alcohol that she could not be trusted to watch over her nephew. Vivien felt sick to the stomach with guilt and the horror of what might have been. She did not feel that she could fault Lucca for the ferocious anger that had darkened his gaze to a hard black onslaught.

‘Why didn’t you arrange proper care for Marco?’ Lucca enquired coldly.

Desperate to reach her son’s side so that she could soothe his fear and his hurts, Vivien had to struggle to think straight and answer. ‘Blame Jasmine Bailey and that newspaper article—’

‘I’m blaming you,’ Lucca slotted in harshly.

Vivien knotted her hands tightly together. ‘Rosa, Marco’s nanny, only works for me part-time and she doesn’t do evenings. I used to have a student who babysat for me occasionally but she’s graduated now. This arrangement with Bernice was a last-minute thing. Rosa was to put Marco to bed for her. I didn’t expect to be so late coming back…but I’ve got to be honest,’ she muttered tightly. ‘I didn’t think that I would be taking a risk either. I trusted my sister—’

‘Inferno! You trusted Bernice?’ Brilliant black eyes struck merciless sparks off her anxious face. ‘She’s too spoilt and self-centred to put a child’s needs ahead of her own desires. How could you possibly have trusted her?’

‘I never thought for one moment that Bernice would do anything that might put Marco in jeopardy,’ Vivien countered with driven sincerity. ‘Obviously I was wrong and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that—’

A sardonic black brow lifted. ‘I’ll never forgive this,’ Lu

cca stated with chilling cool.