To Wear His Ring Again (9 page)

‘I kept the clothes you left behind two years ago,' he said, opening a wardrobe to reveal a rail full of elegant designer outfits that she had worn on the occasions when she had accompanied him to glamorous social events.

At least she would not have to immediately go shopping, Isobel thought. All she'd brought with her from England was the bag containing a few items of clothes and make-up that she'd taken to Ryan's and she'd had with her when the stalker had attacked her.

Her eyes were drawn to the vase of yellow roses on the dressing table. Following her gaze, Constantin explained, ‘I asked the housekeeper to put yellow roses in your room because I know they are your favourite flowers.'

Isobel recalled that when they had returned from their honeymoon he had filled the house in London with yellow roses and her foolish heart had leapt as she'd taken the gesture as a sign that he cared for her.

‘You remembered,' she whispered, feeling a sudden rush of tears to her eyes. Needing time to regain her composure, she leaned forwards to inhale the roses' heady perfume. ‘They're beautiful. Thank you.'

He grimaced. ‘Perhaps I should not have told you of my involvement, knowing how you dislike accepting anything from me. No doubt you'll consign the roses to the rubbish bin.'

She was startled by the bitterness in his voice. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You left every single gift that I'd given you behind when you abandoned our marriage, including the diamond necklace I gave you for a birthday present.'

She pictured the exquisite pear-drop diamond pendant that he had fastened around her neck on the evening of her birthday, when they had been about to host a dinner party for some of Constantin's business associates. Isobel would have preferred to celebrate her birthday quietly, maybe dinner at a country pub, but he had insisted on holding a lavish dinner in her honour.

‘Only the finest quality diamonds will do for my wife,' Constantin had told her as she'd stared in the mirror at the glittering necklace that had felt cold and hard against her skin. His words had made her feel cold inside as she'd wondered if he had given her the necklace to make a statement of his wealth.

‘The necklace must have cost thousands of pounds. I didn't feel comfortable wearing something so valuable.'

‘Why don't you be honest, and say you didn't want the necklace or the other items of jewellery and the clothes I bought you because, although you were happy to accept birthday presents from your friends, you hated accepting anything from me?' Constantin growled. ‘You accused me of being distant, but when I tried to bridge the gap between us you pushed me away.'

‘I didn't want presents, I wanted...' Isobel broke off, frustrated that she could not make him understand that she hadn't been interested in material things. What she had longed for was for him to share himself with her, to open up his thoughts and emotions that he kept locked away. ‘I wanted you to take an interest in me as a person,' she muttered. ‘I wanted our marriage to be an equal partnership, but you seemed to think that if you gave me expensive presents I should be content, and not want anything else such as to see my friends or pursue my music career.' Her resentment and unhappiness had increased until the only answer had been for her to leave him.

‘Everything had to be your way, Constantin,' she accused him bitterly. ‘My hopes and dreams didn't count. You reminded me of my father. My mother was a wonderful pianist, and years ago she had the chance to play professionally with an orchestra, but Dad persuaded her that she wasn't good enough. He said she should carry on working as a piano teacher and not give up her job for a silly dream.'

‘In our case, there was no need for you to work,' Constantin said curtly. ‘I provided you with a good lifestyle.'

Isobel sucked in a breath, trying to control her temper. ‘That statement shows just how little you understood me. I didn't want to be provided for. It was,
is,
important for me to work and provide for myself, to feel independent...'

‘Your desire for independence did nothing to help our marriage.'

‘Our marriage was beyond help. After we lost our baby there was nothing to hold us together.'

Her throat suddenly ached. ‘Constantin...' She swung round to face him and thought she glimpsed hurt in his eyes, but his lashes swept down and hid his emotions. ‘I admit I felt uncomfortable when you gave me expensive gifts. I felt like a...a charity case, like Cinderella. I was the penniless secretary, who landed herself a billionaire husband,' she reminded him. She bit her lip.

‘When we announced our engagement, your PA, Julie, made a snide remark in front of many people in the office that I was a gold-digger and I must have deliberately engineered falling pregnant with your baby so that you would marry me.'

‘Why did you care what my PA said? You knew as well as I did that it was my fault you conceived,' he said curtly. ‘You had told me on the weekend we spent together here that you were not on the pill. Contraception was my responsibility, but I wasn't as careful as I should have been.'

Isobel felt her face grow warm as she recalled the occasion Constantin had made love to her in the shower. Their scorching desire had been as uncontrollable as a wildfire, and she had only remembered that he hadn't used protection that one time when she had stared at the blue line on the pregnancy test and felt sick with worry at the prospect of telling her father that she was going to be a single mother.

‘Why did it matter what anyone else thought about our relationship?' he demanded.

‘Julie was right when she guessed that you only married me because I was expecting your baby. When she said those things in the office, I felt humiliated,' Isobel said in a low voice. ‘For most of my childhood my father was out of work. It wasn't his fault. He was injured in an accident in the coal mine, but the pit was closed down and he didn't receive the compensation he was owed. There was a shortage of jobs where we lived, and Dad's injuries limited the type of work he could do, so the family survived on his unemployment benefit. Mum earned a small income from teaching piano lessons, but I know my parents struggled to make ends meet.'

She sighed. ‘Kids at school can be cruel. I wasn't the only one who was taunted for being a scrounger. That was the name the pupils from better-off families called those of us whose families depended on social welfare payments. I felt ashamed that my family lived on handouts, and when I left school I vowed that I would always work and be independent. I guess it was a pride thing, but I was determined never to accept anything from anyone.'

‘Surely that did not include gifts from your husband?' Constantin said harshly. ‘I enjoyed buying you things. It gave me pleasure to see you dressed in beautiful clothes, and I chose pieces of jewellery that I thought would suit you and because I hoped they would give you pleasure. But instead you acted as if I had insulted you.'

‘I didn't want you to think I had married you for your money.' She glanced at him and saw incomprehension in his eyes. ‘I didn't belong in your world,' she said huskily.

‘You might have believed that, but I certainly didn't.' Constantin frowned, trying to absorb what Isobel had told him about herself. She had clearly been deeply affected by her childhood and her family's financial situation, but he had been unaware that she felt sensitive of other people's opinion that she had married him because he was wealthy. Of the many women he had met who deserved the label gold-digger, Isobel was definitely not one of them.

‘How is your headache?' he asked abruptly.

‘Completely gone. The couple of hours that I slept on the plane worked wonders.'

‘If you feel up to it, we'll go out for dinner.' He strode across the room and glanced back at her from the doorway. It was early evening, and the sun sinking below the horizon emitted golden rays that streamed through the window and gilded her slender frame. ‘I never thought you married me for financial gain, Isabella
,
' he said gruffly. He hesitated. ‘And, contrary to what I told you when you came to see me in London a few weeks ago, I did not marry you only because you were carrying my child.'

Isobel was stunned into silence by Constantin's enigmatic statement, and as she watched him walk out of the room she wondered if she dared to believe him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘T
RATTORIA
P
EPE
!'
I
SOBEL
SMILED
as she recognised the charming trattoria tucked in a corner of a small piazza, which was rarely discovered by tourists. Constantin had shown her many of Rome's hidden gems when they had lived together, and the trattoria had been their favourite place to eat traditional, expertly prepared Roman food. ‘You brought me here the first time I visited Rome.'

‘Pepe's signature dish of
porchetta
served with herbs, olives and mozzarella is still the best dish you'll find in all of Rome, in my opinion,' Constantin said as he ushered her inside the tiny restaurant.

They were welcomed by Pepe himself, and the trattoria's owner greeted Isobel like a long-lost relative, kissing her on both cheeks as he spoke to her mainly in Italian, with the odd English word thrown in.

‘
Sono lieto di incontrarvi di nuovo.
I am happy to meet you again,' she replied, when Pepe finally paused to draw a breath. The conversation continued for several minutes before the trattoria's patron and head chef hurried back to his kitchen.

A young, good-looking waiter came to take their order and flirted outrageously with Isobel, until he saw the warning gleam in Constantin's eyes and beat a hasty retreat.

‘I'm impressed by your fluency in Italian,' he told Isobel drily when they were alone.

She shrugged. ‘It seemed a shame not to continue the lessons that I'd started when we were together.' When she had married Constantin, she had been keen to learn his language, aware that he wanted to bring their child up to speak Italian. But there had not been a baby, she thought painfully, and soon she would no longer be his wife.

The waiter returned with their first course and gave Isobel a lingering look, before a terse word from Constantin sent him scurrying away.

She frowned. ‘Why were you rude to the waiter? He was just being friendly.'

‘If he had been any
friendlier,
he would have made love to you on the table.' Constantin's jaw hardened as he struggled to control the hot rush of possessiveness that had swept through him when the waiter had smiled at Isobel. He had felt a burning desire to rearrange the waiter's handsome features with his fist. ‘We might get served quicker if you refrain from flirting with the restaurant staff,' he growled.

‘I wasn't flirting with the waiter.' Isobel's temper simmered. ‘You're being ridiculous.'

Constantin took a long sip of wine. ‘It's not surprising that you command attention from other men. You are very beautiful.' He leaned back in his chair and subjected her to a slow appraisal, noting the glossy sheen of her long blonde hair and the sensual shape of her mouth. ‘But it's not only your looks that make you noticeable. It's something more than that. You were beautiful when I met you three years ago but you were painfully shy. You blushed every time I spoke to you,' he said softly, ‘whereas now you have an air of self-confidence that most men would find undeniably attractive.'

Did he include himself with most men? Isobel wondered. ‘I have grown more confident.' She gave him a wry smile. ‘It was something of a necessity to overcome my shyness when the band became successful and I had to sing in front of huge audiences.' She chased a prawn around her plate with her fork, remembering the first time Constantin had brought her to the trattoria she had been so nervous that she had clumsily knocked over her glass of wine.

‘When I first met you, I was a nobody, just an ordinary office assistant who dreamed of making it as a singer but never really believed it would happen. When I fell pregnant, my hopes and plans for the future were centred on being a mother to our baby and nothing else seemed as important.' A shadow of pain crossed her expressive face. ‘But after we lost Arianna, I felt...irrelevant. I wasn't a mother and I sensed from the widening gap between us that I didn't live up to your expectations of a good wife.'

She shook her head when he looked as though he was going to argue. ‘We both know that our marriage wasn't working. I guess we dealt with our grief about the baby in different ways. I wanted to talk about Arianna but you withdrew into yourself, and I had no idea what you were thinking...or feeling.'

‘So you turned to your friends who you had known since you were a child,' Constantin said heavily. In his heart, he knew he had not been able to give her the support she had needed from him. He had shied away from acknowledging the pain of losing their baby. It had been easier to lock his emotions away and ignore them—just as he had done as a young boy when his mother had died—but in doing that he had also ignored Isobel's need for them to grieve together for Arianna.

‘I poured my feelings into the songs I wrote, and found some small comfort playing the piano and creating music. When I'd moved to London from Derbyshire with the rest of the band, we played gigs in pubs, but I stopped performing after I married you. I hadn't thought about the band becoming successful when we started performing again, it was just something to take my mind off the miscarriage. But to my amazement the Stone Ladies were spotted by a record producer and everything quickly escalated.'

She leaned across the table and trapped Constantin's gaze. ‘When the Stone Ladies were offered a record contract it was a chance for all of us in the band to have the music career that we had longed for since we were teenagers. My father had told me I was a fool to chase a dream, but the dream was coming true. I had an opportunity to be someone in my own right, not a daughter, or a wife, but
me,
a girl from nowhere who was suddenly a serious musician earning more money that I'd ever imagined.'

Constantin frowned. ‘You were married to a billionaire and did not need to earn money.'

‘Yes
,
I did,'
Isobel said fiercely. ‘It was important to me to make my own way in the world. On our wedding day, at the reception, I overheard a comment from one of the guests that I had landed myself a meal ticket for life.'

The memory of that excruciating moment still made Isobel shudder. The catty remark had been made by Contessa Ghislaine Montenocci, a member of the Italian nobility who looked down her thin, aristocratic nose at anyone who did not have a title. ‘I felt embarrassed, like I'd felt when the kids at school called my family scroungers because my father claimed unemployment benefit.

‘Being a professional singer gave me a sense of pride.' Her voice became husky. ‘I wanted to make my father proud of me, although I'm not sure he ever was. I...I also hoped that you might be more interested in me if I had a successful career,' she admitted. ‘The women we met at social events, the wives of your friends, were all sophisticated and well educated,' she explained when he looked surprised. ‘I felt I couldn't compete with them.'

‘I never wanted you to compete with them,' Constantin said tersely. ‘I was happy with you the way you were.'

‘If that was true, why did you become so cold towards me? The truth is that you didn't feel proud of me as your wife, and no amount of designer dresses or expensive jewellery could turn me into a glamorous
marchesa
.'

Isobel stared at Constantin's chiselled features and felt frustrated that she could not make him understand. ‘You told me once that your appointment as CEO of De Severino Eccellenza, and your success in driving the company forwards and making it one of Italy's highest earning businesses, was your greatest achievement.' She sighed. ‘Being part of a successful band is
my
greatest achievement. But my career was one of the things that drove us apart.'

A nerve jumped in his jaw. ‘We weren't driven apart.
You
walked out.'

Isobel tore her eyes from the angry gleam in his and looked down at her half-eaten dinner. Suddenly she had lost her appetite, and it seemed that Constantin was no longer hungry because he called the waiter over and requested the bill.

They walked back to the penthouse in silence, both of them lost in their private thoughts. Isobel's statement that her singing career had given her a sense of self-worth had touched a chord in Constantin. DSE's increased profits, and the fact that the company had become a globally recognised brand name since he had taken over as CEO, were the two things in his life that he felt proud of.

The trauma of witnessing his father and stepmother's fatal accident, and the terrible suspicion that Franco might have been responsible for the tragedy, haunted Constantin. Since that dreadful day, he had avoided relationships that demanded his emotional involvement and instead focused his energy and passion on the company.

But his uncle Alonso was threatening to award the chairmanship of DSE to his gutless cousin Maurio
.

It would make all his hard work over the past decade a waste of time, Constantin thought savagely. The company would not last five minutes with Maurio in charge. When he had asked Isobel to give their marriage another chance his sole aim had been to convince his uncle to appoint him Chairman. He glanced at her walking beside him, and his jaw tensed as he noted the admiring looks she attracted from every red-blooded male they passed. Somewhere along the line his priorities had changed, he acknowledged.

Isobel looked up at the full moon suspended like a huge silver disc in an indigo sky. The night air was warm and the bars and street cafés were busy. It was the first time in months that she had walked down a street without glancing over her shoulder and wondering if the stalker was watching her. The police still hadn't caught David, but she felt able to relax while she was in Rome with Constantin.

Although she did not feel very relaxed as he curved his arm around her waist when they walked past a group of young men. The close contact with his body sent molten heat surging through her veins, and memories of happier times they had shared tugged on her heart. When they had stayed in Rome soon after they were married he had taken her to dinner at Pepe's, and on the way home he had paused at every street corner to kiss her. By the time they had reached the apartment they'd been so hot for one another that they had only made it as far as the nearest sofa, she remembered.

Her face grew warm as she visualised him stripping her naked and pushing her back against the cushions, slipping his hand between her thighs to find her wet and ready for him. She had
always
been ready for him, she thought ruefully.

‘Would you like a nightcap?' he enquired as they entered the penthouse.

‘No, thanks. I think I'll go straight to bed.' Isobel could not meet his gaze when her mind was full of images of him making love to her. ‘Hopefully we'll hear from the British police tomorrow that they have caught the stalker. I'll be able to go home, and once the divorce is finalised we will be free of each other.'

Constantin's eyes narrowed. ‘Is that really what you wish for
,
Isabella?'

‘Yes.' Emotion choked her voice. Dinner at Pepe's had been a poignant reminder of everything she had lost, everything that might have been. ‘I admit I had wondered if perhaps there was a chance we could get back together, but our conversation tonight proved that our differences are too great.'

She did not trust herself to continue and turned away from him before he saw the tears she was trying to hold back. ‘It's like you said, Constantin. There's no point dwelling on the past. We need to move forwards, in our case,
on separate paths
.'

* * *

Constantin stood in front of the sliding glass doors in his bedroom, which led outside to a balcony that ran the length of penthouse and overlooked the piazza. Not that he ever ventured onto the balcony, but the view across the city even through the pane of glass was spectacular. Tonight, however, as he nursed a crystal tumbler of single malt, he barely registered Rome's famous historical skyline. Instead his thoughts were focused on his wife, who was occupying the guest room next door to his suite.

It was happening again. He had spent less than twenty-four hours in her company and already his resolve to keep his distance from her was under threat. He swallowed a mouthful of whisky and seriously contemplated drinking the entire bottle in the hope that it would dull the ache in his gut.

It was her smile that did it, he brooded. When Isobel smiled her whole face lit up—like when she'd recognised Pepe's Trattoria, and when she'd noticed the yellow roses in her room. She was the only woman he knew who would prefer to be given roses than diamonds.

He frowned as he recalled her telling him that her father had been out of work for much of her childhood and the family had been dependent on social welfare. Finally he understood why she was so fiercely independent. She had said that her career with the Stone Ladies had given her a sense of pride, but he had believed that she had left him because she was in love with the band's guitarist Ryan Fellows.

Jealousy was a poisonous emotion, he thought grimly. It festered in your soul like a vile worm. It was a shameful secret that he was determined to keep hidden from Isobel. For her safety he
must
control the green-eyed monster that he was convinced he had inherited from his father.
Dio
, tonight at the restaurant he had wanted to
kill
the young waiter who had flirted with her.

Was that how his father had felt when his beautiful young wife had smiled at other men?

Constantin pictured his stepmother's laughing face. He saw her tossing her hair and leaning forwards so that her breasts almost fell out of her tiny bikini top.
Be an angel and put sun cream on my back, Con, sweetie.

He had gone home to Casa Celeste for the school holidays and had spent all summer having erotic fantasies about his stepmother. His father had noticed him following Lorena around like a lovesick puppy and there had been a huge row. He had never seen Franco as angry as he had been that day. Later, he had heard his father and Lorena arguing on the balcony.