To Wear His Ring Again (6 page)

She was melting inside. Heat flooded between her thighs and her body was impatient for more,
more
of the exquisite pleasure promised by the bold sweep of Constantin's tongue inside her mouth. She wanted him. She would always want him, she thought despairingly. But he was no good for her.

He traced his lips over her cheek and the slender arch of her neck. ‘Invite me in,' he murmured in her ear. ‘Let me remind you of how good we are together.'

‘No!'
Determination not to take a path that she knew would lead to heartache gave her the strength to push him away. ‘Sex isn't the solution. In our case, it was the problem,' she said shakily. ‘We were drawn together by desire, and if we had just had an affair it would probably have burned out as quickly as your affairs with other women. When I fell pregnant you felt obliged to marry me.' She smiled sadly. ‘I'll never forget Arianna, but it's time we both moved on with our lives, Constantin.'

That was easy for Isobel to say, he thought grimly. The Stone Ladies were hugely successful, but his career at DSE, his
life
for heaven's sake, was about to go into freefall unless he could persuade her to come back to him. He didn't doubt that he
could
persuade her back into his bed. He had felt her tremble when he'd kissed her and knew she shared his hunger. If he drew her back into his arms, he was confident that she would offer little resistance. But his conscience stayed him. Her clear hazel eyes reflected her confusion. Undoubtedly she desired him. But for her, it wasn't enough, and Constantin knew he was no more capable of satisfying her emotional needs now than he had been two years ago.

As Isobel shut the front door on Constantin and walked across the lobby to the lift, she assured herself that she was relieved he had not tried to detain her. She knew she had been right to turn down having sex with him, but her body did not agree and the dragging ache in the pit of her stomach was almost as bad as the ache in her heart.

‘Evening, Miss Blake,' the concierge greeted her. ‘The parcel that you said you were expecting to be delivered didn't arrive today.'

‘I'll have to phone the courier tomorrow. Goodnight, Albert.'

As the lift carried her to the fourth floor she focused her thoughts on the missing parcel, the friend she'd arranged to meet for lunch the following day, anything but Constantin. Her life was good the way it was. Why alter the status quo and allow him to turn her world upside down again?

She had no idea why he had suddenly decided that he didn't want a divorce. There was a time when she would have immediately given in to him, in the desperate hope that perhaps he did have feelings for her. She had been pathetic, Isobel thought grimly. But after she'd had the miscarriage Constantin had let her down badly by failing to support her. She was no longer in awe of him, and, although she had a sneaking suspicion that she would always be in love with him, she understood that he was an ordinary mortal—a complex man, certainly, but he had his faults just as she did. Unfortunately she simply could not believe that they would be able to resolve the differences that had driven them apart.

The lift stopped and the doors opened. The front door of her flat was a couple of hundred yards along the corridor. Isobel glanced down to select the appropriate key on the key ring she was holding, when something, a sixth sense, warned her that she wasn't alone.

‘Who's there...?' She looked over her shoulder down the brightly lit, empty corridor, and cursed her overactive imagination.

‘Hello, Izzy.'

She spun round, and her heart cannoned into her ribs as a man stepped out from a shadowed recess and walked towards her. She did not know him, but she had recognised his voice. ‘David?'

He was shortish, thinnish—nondescript. For a moment Isobel wondered why she had been so worried about this very ordinary-looking, middle-aged man.

‘I knew you must remember me.' He smiled pleasantly. ‘You felt the connection between us when we met at a Stone Ladies concert. We were together in a previous world and we will be together again in the next one, my darling.'

The strange expression in his eyes sent a frisson of fear through Isobel, and she sensed that beneath his outwardly benign manner he was a mass of nervous energy and excitement that she found unnerving.

‘I bought these for you.' It was only then that she registered he was holding a cardboard box. Something in the man's demeanour told Isobel to remain calm and play along with him. Hoping he did not notice that her hands were shaking, she took the box from him and opened the lid. The sickly-sweet scent of oriental lilies that pervaded the air was so strong she almost gagged.

Feeling that he expected a response from her, she murmured, ‘They're lovely.' She stared at the white flowers and repressed a shudder.

‘You remind me of a lily, beautiful and pure.' David's voice suddenly changed. ‘I thought you were pure, until I watched you kissing another man tonight.'

Isobel swallowed. ‘You were there...at the party?'

‘Where else would I be but with you, my angel? You belong to
me
, Izzy, and no other man shall try to steal you from me.'

Isobel tensed as the stalker took a step closer. Her key was digging into the palm of her hand and she glanced along the corridor, trying to estimate the distance to her front door, wondering what her chances were of getting past David and making it to the safety of her flat. She did not dare risk it. Although he was not physically imposing, she sensed that he was stronger than he looked. His pale eyes were watching her intently and the manic gleam in his gaze chilled her blood.

‘Come away with me.' His voice hardened when she shook her head. ‘It is time that you and I left this earthly world.'

The hell it was!
Isobel's survival instinct kicked in. She threw the box of lilies at the stalker's face before she spun round and raced down the corridor. Of course the flowers were not a substantial weapon, but her actions had surprised him and given her a vital few seconds' head start. She heard his angry shout, heard his footsteps as he chased after her, but she resisted the temptation to look behind her as she reached the lift, which was thankfully still waiting at the fourth floor. She hit the button to open the doors. Come on,
come on!
she pleaded as they slid apart agonisingly slowly. She heard heavy breathing close to her, and she screamed as a hand grabbed her bare shoulder.

In desperation she rammed her elbow hard into the stalker's stomach. He groaned and released his grip. She fell into the lift and held down the button to close the doors. Only then did she look round and glimpse his crazed expression before the metal doors obliterated him from view.

As the lift descended she tried to marshal her thoughts. How had David gained entry to the apartment building? The concierge always vetted visitors, and some of her friends had joked that it would be easier to break into the Bank of England than slip past Albert. Reaction was setting in, and she felt sick as the lift arrived at ground level.

‘Miss Blake?' The concierge looked up from his desk. ‘Is something the matter?'

Isobel did not reply. Through the glass doors of the building she saw Constantin's tall figure illuminated by the street lamp. He was not looking in her direction as he lowered his mobile phone from his ear and walked towards his car. Impelled by an instinct she did not even try to question, she flew across the lobby.

‘Constantin—
wait
!'

The sound of Isobel's voice drew Constantin's thoughts from the phone conversation he'd just had with the finance director at the New York office. The East Coast of the USA was five hours behind England, and Jeff Zuckerman had seemed blithely unconcerned that it was midnight in London.

Constantin glanced round and dismissed work issues from his mind when he saw Isobel running towards him. Her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders and he felt a tightening in his groin as he watched the bounce of her firm breasts as she ran.

‘Have you changed your mind about inviting me up to your flat, Isabella?' His smile disappeared along with his sense of pleasurable anticipation when he saw the look of terror on her face.
‘Santa Madre!
' He caught her as she literally threw herself into his arms and held her tightly as tremors shook her body. ‘What the hell...?'

‘He was waiting for me outside my flat. He's so weird.' Her words were jumbled and incoherent. ‘He wanted me to go with him, and he gave me funeral flowers.'

Constantin cupped her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘
Who
was waiting for you,
cara
?'

‘David...the man who has been stalking me.' Isobel released her breath on a ragged sigh as the fear drained out of her. She felt safe with Constantin. It did not even occur to her that her blind trust in him revealed perhaps too much of her deepest feelings.

‘Stalking you?'
Constantin's eyes glittered fiercely. ‘Do you mean to say that your safety has been threatened by this man? For how long has this been going on? Why didn't you tell me? I would have arranged security measures, hired a bodyguard to protect you.'

‘I don't need a bodyguard.' The stark terror that had gripped Isobel when David had confronted her outside her flat seemed like an overreaction now, and she felt embarrassed that she had involved Constantin. The determined set of his jaw warned her that he would not let up until she had told him everything.

‘I've been getting nuisance calls from a man called David for a few months. I've changed my landline number and mobile-phone number, but somehow he managed to get hold of my new numbers.

‘He said we had met at a Stone Ladies concert...but I don't remember meeting him. He phoned me just before I went on stage tonight and said that he would be watching me tonight.' She bit her lip. ‘I spent all evening wondering if one of the guests was the stalker. When I stepped out of the lift after you'd brought me home he appeared in the corridor.'

The memory of David's wild-eyed expression sent a shiver through Isobel. ‘He said it was time that he and I left this earthly world. I'm not sure what he meant.' She hadn't waited around to find out, she thought, and shivered again.

A nerve flickering in Constantin's jaw was the only indication of his barely restrained fury. Give him two minutes alone with the guy who got his kicks out of frightening Isobel, and the stalker wouldn't be able to walk, let alone
stalk
a defenceless woman, he thought grimly. The glimmer of tears in Isobel's eyes and the realisation that she was not nearly as calm as she was pretending to be stopped him from rushing up to the fourth floor to look for the intruder.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘I'll call the police.'

‘I'll do it,' Isobel said shakily. ‘I have a direct number to report any incidents with the stalker.'

The terror she had felt when David had accosted her was fading, and she felt angry with herself for not telling the man to get lost. He was probably a harmless overenthusiastic fan, she told herself, although the wild expression in his eyes suggested the possibility that he had mental-health issues.

She remained in the lobby with Albert while Constantin went up to the fourth floor. The concierge was adamant that no one fitting the stalker's description had entered the apartment building, and he was deeply upset when he explained that the CCTV system had developed a fault and was due to be repaired the next day.

The police arrived to take a statement. An officer joined Constantin in searching every floor of the apartment block, but all they found were a few white lily petals. ‘The intruder must have somehow accessed the building by the fire escape,' the police officer in charge told Isobel. ‘It's a pity for us and lucky for him that the CCTV is down or we would have his face on film.'

Because the stalker had not assaulted her, or made a specific threat to harm her, there was little more that the police could do except to advise Isobel on measures she should take to ensure her personal safety. While she was giving her statement she saw Constantin walk out of the flat. She assumed he felt he had done all that he could to help her, but she wished he had stayed a few minutes longer so that she could have thanked him.

After the police had gone, she purposefully concentrated on the mundane tasks of removing her make-up and washing her face, before exchanging the gold evening gown for her favourite item of nightwear—namely one of Constantin's tee shirts that she had taken with her when she had called time on their marriage. Despite her best efforts not to think about the stalker, the memory of his strangeness lingered in her mind, and although she knew she was being ridiculous she checked inside the wardrobe and the hall cupboard to make sure he had not somehow gained entry to her flat.

There was no question of trying to sleep. She would make a milky drink and watch TV for a while. Walking into the sitting room, she stopped dead and drew a sharp breath.

‘How did you get in here?'

CHAPTER FIVE

C
ONSTANTIN
HAD
DISCARDED
his tuxedo and tie and unfastened the top buttons on his shirt to reveal the bronzed skin of his throat, and a few curling black chest hairs. He was leaning back against the sofa cushions, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his arms crossed behind his head in an attitude of indolent relaxation that was far removed from the stomach-squirming tension that gripped Isobel as she stared at his handsome face.

‘I saw you leave and assumed you had gone home.'

‘I went to get something from my car and borrowed your door key so that I could let myself back into the flat. You were talking to the police officer, and I guess you didn't notice me go into the kitchen.' He nodded to the cup and saucer on the coffee table. ‘I made you a cup of tea.'

Isobel was less interested in the tea than the holdall on the floor by his feet.

‘I always keep an overnight bag in the car,' he explained, following her gaze, ‘in case I decide to stay away from home for some reason.'

No doubt ‘some reason' meant an invitation from a woman to spend the night together. Isobel felt a shaft of pain at the idea of him making love to one of the numerous gorgeous females he had been photographed with in the newspapers during the past two years. Jealousy burned hotly inside her—another unwanted emotion to add to the list of unpleasant experiences tonight, she thought grimly.

The discernible gleam of amusement in his eyes was the last straw. She gave him a tight smile. ‘I hope you find somewhere comfortable to stay tonight.'

He laughed softly and patted the cushion. ‘I'm sure your sofa is very comfortable. I'll let you know in the morning.'

‘There's absolutely no reason for you to stay.' Constantin made her feel more unnerved than David did, albeit in a different way, Isobel thought ruefully. ‘I'll put the double lock on the front door, and, unless the stalker is Spiderman, he won't be able to climb through a window on the fourth floor.'

Constantin merely gave her a lazy smile. ‘Humour me, hmm,
cara
?'

‘This is ridiculous. I don't want you here.' Her tone was unknowingly desperate. He unsettled her way too much for
her
comfort.

He stood up and strolled towards her. Isobel sensed that beneath his laid-back manner he was utterly determined to have his own way. ‘If I leave, I will demand the immediate return of my personal property, which you took without my consent.'

‘What personal property...?' She stiffened as he took hold of the hem of her tee shirt,
his
tee shirt. The shirt reached to just below her hips, and the light brush of his fingers against her thigh felt as if a flame had burned her flesh. Her breath caught in her throat as he slowly began to raise the hem.

‘You really want this old shirt back?' she said in a choked voice.

‘I particularly like this shirt.'

If he continued to lift the tee shirt up he would reveal her bare breasts. She gave a little shiver—half excitement and half apprehension—as she imagined him stripping her and cupping her breasts in his hands. She would be a fool to take this route again, but when had she ever behaved sensibly where Constantin was concerned?

Constantin was tempted to whip the shirt over her head and then pull her close, trace his hands over her body to rediscover every delicious dip and curve before taking the same path with his mouth. It was how they had always communicated best, two bodies joined and moving in perfect accord. The suspicious brightness in Isobel's eyes warned him that her emotions were on a knife-edge. The stalker had scared her more than she had admitted to him or the police, and what she needed from him now was not passion but compassion.

‘Stop fighting me, Isabella,' he said gently. ‘You know you won't win. Sit down and drink your tea before it gets cold.'

If she didn't feel like a wrung-out rag she would tell him where to go, Isobel thought. But she must be suffering from delayed shock or something because her legs refused to support her and she sat down abruptly. She wished she had chosen an armchair when Constantin joined her on the sofa, and she sipped her tea, trying to ignore her awareness of him.

‘I was looking at your photos,' he remarked, glancing at the montage of photographs on the wall.

‘I've kept a pictorial record of every city where the Stone Ladies have performed.' She recognised his ploy to keep her mind off the stalker and went along with it. ‘Often we only play at a venue for one night before moving on to the next town but I have a list of places I'd like to go back and visit properly.'

‘I've always wondered about the name of the band,' he mused. ‘Why did you call yourselves Stone Ladies when two of the band members are male?'

She smiled, and Constantin was glad to see evidence that some of her tension had eased. ‘The name refers to an ancient stone circle on the moors near to the village in Derbyshire where we all grew up. The legend says that a group of ladies from the royal court loved to dance so much that they risked the wrath of the king by dancing on the Sabbath, and as a penalty they were turned to stone.

‘Our group, Carly, Ben, Ryan and I, felt a lot of sympathy for the ladies because we had similar difficulties playing our music when we wanted to. None of us were allowed to practise at home.' She sighed. ‘My father thought I should be studying, not singing, and Ryan's father expected him to spend all his spare time working on the family farm. Our parents couldn't understand how much our music meant to us. I had countless arguments with my father, who thought music was a waste of time and that I should focus on passing my exams and getting a proper job.'

The bleakness in her voice caught Constantin's attention. ‘Your father must be proud of you now that you and the band are so successful?'

‘Dad died a few months ago.' Isobel shrugged. ‘He wasn't interested in my music or how well the band was doing. I couldn't live up to the expectations he'd had of me.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘My brother was Dad's favourite. Simon was really clever at school and had planned to go to university and train to be a doctor. My father was so proud of his son and he was devastated when Simon died. I'm afraid I was no substitute. I wasn't interested in academic subjects and Dad ridiculed my dreams of making a living as a musician. I couldn't be the person my father wanted me to be.' She glanced at Constantin. ‘When we married, I couldn't be the person
you
wanted me to be, either,' she said flatly.

He frowned. ‘I did not have expectations of you. When we married I thought,
hoped
that you would be happy to fulfil the role of my wife.' His face darkened. ‘But it wasn't enough for you.'

‘What you wanted was a glamorous hostess who would organise dinner parties and impress your guests with her witty conversation and sublime sense of style,' Isobel said bitterly. ‘I failed miserably as a hostess, and the designer clothes I wore were not
my
style, they were what you decided I should wear.'

‘I admit there were occasions when your hippy-chick clothes were not suitable. DSE is synonymous with style and superb quality, and I needed my wife to help me to represent those qualities. The tie-dyed, flowers-in-your-hair look was not a good advertisement for the company,' he said sardonically.

‘But it was
me
. The hippy look, as you call it, was
my
style. You didn't object to the way I dressed when we first met.'

He had not taken much notice of her clothes because he had been more interested in getting her out of them as quickly as possible, Constantin acknowledged cynically.

‘You were determined to mould me into the perfect wife, in the same way that my father had tried to mould me into the perfect daughter,' Isobel rounded on him, her eyes flashing. ‘But neither you nor my dad were interested in me as a person. And like my dad, you never showed any interest in my music or encouraged my singing career.'

His mouth tightened. ‘When we were first married, you were not hell-bent on pursuing a music career. You've said yourself that we were happy living in London at the time, and you gave the impression that you were content to be a wife and soon-to-be mother to our child.'

His words sliced through Isobel's heart. ‘But I didn't get the chance to be a mother.' Her voice was raw. ‘It's true that in the early months of our marriage I was absorbed in my pregnancy,' and in
you
, she thought to herself, remembering the man she had married. Constantin had been a charming and attentive husband and she had let herself believe that her happiness would last.

‘After we lost Arianna I was left with nothing. For reasons I didn't understand, you had become a remote stranger and I felt that I hardly knew you. All I had was my music. Writing songs and singing with the band were my only comfort in those terrible days when I sometimes wondered if I would go mad with grief.'

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Revisiting the past was always painful, but tonight, when her emotions were ragged after her scare with the stalker, being bombarded with memories was unendurable.

‘This conversation is pointless,' she told Constantin as she jerked to her feet. ‘We should have had it two years ago, but we didn't and now it's too late. One of the reasons I left was because you refused to talk about the things that mattered, like the miscarriage. You might have been able to forget about our baby but I felt desolate and unsupported by you.'

He leapt up and raked a hand through his hair. ‘Perhaps we might have talked more if you had spent more time at home. I lost count of the number of times that I arrived home from work to be told by Whittaker that you were out with your friends.' His blue eyes glittered as cold and hard as sapphires. ‘Don't put all the blame on me, Isobel. We couldn't work on the problems with our marriage because you were never there.'

She shook her head. ‘It was you who was absent from our relationship. I don't mean in a physical sense, but on an emotional level you had distanced yourself from me. My friends gave me what you seemed incapable of giving—emotional support. You never allowed us the opportunity to
share
our feelings about the loss of our daughter. Even now, whenever I mention Arianna you clam up.'

‘What's the point in going over and over it?'
Constantin saw Isobel flinch at his raised voice and knew she was startled by his violent outburst, as well she might be, he thought grimly. He
never
lost control.

Only once in his life had he seen his father show emotion—on the day of Constantin's mother's funeral. He had been eight years old, and had managed to get through the church service and watching his mother's coffin being lowered into her grave without crying because he knew it was what was expected of him. ‘De Severino men never cry,' his father had told him many times. But later, on his way up to bed, Constantin had heard a noise from his father's study, a sound like a wounded animal in great pain that had chilled his blood.

Peeping round the door, he had been startled to see his father lying curled up on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Franco's outpouring of grief had been shocking and terrifying to witness for an impressionable young boy. Constantin had felt sad that his mother had died, but his father's agony had scared him. At the age of eight he had decided that he never wanted to feel such pain. He never wanted to love so intensely that love's dark side, loss, would bring him to his knees.

He dragged his mind from the past and found Isobel staring at him with a bitter expression in her eyes.

She might have guessed that Constantin would not show even a flicker of response to their daughter's name, Isobel thought angrily.

‘You really are made of stone, aren't you? On the surface you are a man who has everything: looks, wealth, power, but you're an empty shell, Constantin. Inside, you are an emotional void and I actually feel sorry for you.'

Her words rankled. What did she know about the emotions he kept buried deep inside him? What did she really know about
him
? But the fact that she did not know him was his fault, taunted a voice inside Constantin's head. He had not dared open up the Pandora's box of his emotions to Isobel for fear of what he might reveal about himself.

He looked at her wearing the baggy tee shirt that disguised her shape, and was infuriated by the realisation that even if she wore a sack that covered her from head to toe he would still want her more than he had ever wanted any other woman. Goaded by the accusation in her eyes, and by the knowledge that he
had
failed her when she'd had the miscarriage, he shot out his hand and caught hold of her wrist.

‘I don't need your pity,
mia bella
. There's only one thing I ever needed from you,' he told her, pulling her towards him. ‘You keep saying that you wished we had talked more, but the truth is neither of us wanted to waste time talking because we were so damned hungry for each other.'

‘Sex would not have solved our problems,' Isobel cried, panic filling her as she tried vainly to break free from him. In truth, his grip on her wrist was not very tight. It was his grip on her heart that prevented her escape.

As she watched his dark head descend she wondered if, when their marriage had been falling apart, sex might have been a solution that would have given them a way to communicate again. But ever since Constantin had suggested that they make love two months after the miscarriage, and she had rejected him, a chasm had opened up between them and he had not approached her again.

At the time she had been angry with him for what she had perceived as his lack of support. But perhaps he had been trying to reach out to her, she thought with hindsight. In bed they had always understood each other perfectly and their desire had been mutually explosive and fulfilling.