watchful eyes. And for a moment—a brief but stinging moment—she had a feeling he knew exactly what she had been thinking.
Then the connection was broken because Nicolas heard them and turned around. But all through dinner she felt Toni’s eyes on her, and stung with the uncomfortable feeling that he had sensed her thirst for revenge.
He was Sicilian. And Sicilians claimed exclusive rights on vendettas. He would not take kindly to the idea of a mere English woman encroaching on those rights. Especially against a fellow Sicilian.
The meal was an ordeal. Sara forced down a couple of small bites of the braised chicken placed in front of her but other than that could swallow nothing. Nicolas and Toni ate with her, their occasional bursts of conversation to do with some business deal they were presently involved in. But these exchanges were brief, and largely they respected her desire to keep silent.
‘Excuse me.’ At last she stood up from the table, bringing both dark heads up sharply. ‘I’ve had enough. I think I’ll go and take a shower …’
‘Try to rest,’ Nicolas quietly advised. ‘I promise I will come and tell you the moment I have any news.’
She nodded, wearied—too weary to want to argue. She wouldn’t rest—she knew she wouldn’t—but it was easier to let him think that she might than to battle.
She didn’t think she would sleep again until she had her baby back in her arms.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS a long night. Sara dozed fitfully and came down to breakfast the next morning hollow-eyed and wan-faced, to find Nicolas sitting alone at the breakfast table, a newspaper spread out in front of him.
He folded it away when he saw her, though, making a narrow-eyed study of the obvious evidence of strain in her face.
She gave an inward grimace, entirely aware of exactly how terrible she looked.
She was wearing no make-up, and the peaches-and-cream bloom that her skin usually wore was missing. She had brushed her hair, but only so she could tie it at the back to keep the long, heavy mass out of the way. And she was wearing a simple, sprigged muslin skirt teamed with a long, loose silk knit jumper in a delicate shade of blue. Under normal circumstances the pastel colour would have suited her, but today it just enhanced the washed-out look—not that she cared. She didn’t care about anything to do with herself right now.
He didn’t look too hot either, she noted. His lean face had a drawn quality about it that suggested he hadn’t slept much himself last night. But at least the slick silk business suit had gone, his casual beige linen trousers and long-sleeved polo shirt in mint-green softening the harder edges of his tycoon persona. And the shirt was big enough not to mold his impressive torso but soft enough to make her aware of the muscled breast flexing beneath it as he moved.
‘What has happened to the nanny?’ she asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I went to see how she was this morning, but she wasn’t there, and her room has been cleared out.’
‘She was taken home to her parents last night,’ he informed her. ‘She was too distressed to be any use here so …’ His concluding shrug said the rest.
No use, so remove her. Sara found a small smile. ‘I never wanted a nanny in the first place,’ she remarked.
‘You were ill,’ he reminded her, getting up to go over to the internal telephone. ‘Tea for my wife,’ he ordered curtly to whoever it was who answered. ‘And whatever she usually eats for breakfast.
‘You needed help with the child,’ he continued as he returned to his seat.
That filled her eyes with a rueful wryness that rid them of a little bit of strain. ‘Have I managed to make a single move during the last three years that you don’t know about?’ she mocked, not expecting an answer—and not getting one.
She knew how Nicolas worked. ‘What’s mine I keep,’ et cetera. And that was exactly what he had done over the last three years—kept his wife and her child in the kind of comfort that would be expected of a man of his stature.
So when Sara had gone down with a severe bout of flu several months ago Julie, the nanny, had appeared to take over caring for Lia. Since then, she’d stayed, not by Sara’s request but probably because this man had ordained it so. Now the nanny had been banished again. For being of no use. For falling into a fit of hysterics in the park instead of responding as she should have responded when her charge was snatched from right beneath her nose and coming straight home to inform Lucas, the chauffeur, who would have then immediately informed Nicolas, his boss—probably before he would have informed Sara. Because Lucas the chauffeur was not just a chauffeur. He was Sara’s guard, and she chose the word selectively. Lucas was paid to guard one of Nicolas Santino’s possessions, namely his wife—not the child, who he did not believe was his child and therefore did not warrant her own guard to watch her every move. Which was why someone had managed to take her.
The breakfast-room door opened and Mrs Hobbit came in carrying a tray loaded with tea things and some lightly toasted wholemeal bread. She smiled nervously at Nicolas and warmly at Sara.
‘Now, you eat this toast,’ she commanded sternly, her busy hands emptying the tray onto the table in front of Sara. ‘Or I shall just follow you around with it until you do.’
‘I will,’ Sara whispered, her eyes filling with a sudden burst of weak tears at the older woman’s rough kind of affection. ‘Thank you.’
‘Oh!’ the housekeeper exclaimed in dismay when she saw the tears. And suddenly Sara was being engulfed by a big, homely bosom. ‘Now, there, there,’ Mrs Hobbit murmured soothingly. ‘You need a good cry, and don’t we all?’ Her soft bosom quivered on a sigh. ‘But the little princess will be back here before you know it, all safe and sound; you wait and see.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ With a mammoth drag on her energy, Sara pulled herself together, straightening out of the older woman’s arms. ‘I’m sorry. It was just …’ Her words trailed off, lost in the helplessness she was feeling inside.
‘I know exactly what it was,’ Mrs Hobbit said grimly. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me, madam. Not a thing …’
With that she patted Sara’s arm and walked out, leaving Sara alone with a very still Nicolas who had observed the whole exchange without uttering a single word.
Sara didn’t look at him—couldn’t. She had an idea that he had been rather shocked by Mrs Hobbit’s affectionate display.
‘They all—care for you a great deal, don’t they?’ he commented at last. ‘I’ve already had Lucas in this morning enquiring about how you are coping. And Mr Hobbit stopped me in the garden earlier to do the same.’
Was he making a comparison with the cold, stiff way his Sicilian servants had treated her? He should do. The difference was palpable. ‘Surprised, are you?’ she countered drily, reaching out with an unsteady hand for the teapot. ‘That anyone could care for the likes of me?’
To her surprise he got up and stepped tensely over to the window. ‘No,’ he replied, the single negative raking over a throat that sounded usually dry for him.
A silence fell, and Sara poured herself a cup of tea then cupped it in her fingers, bringing it to her lips to sip lightly
