Читать книгу Love's Revenge - Michelle Reid - Страница 11

WAS he seeing her like a lost penny that really shouldn’t be where it was standing? she wondered as she watched those lush dark sensual lashes slowly lower over eyes that were determinedly giving nothing away.

The silence between them stretched into tension, and within it Catherine tried to stop her gaze from drifting over him. But it was no use. She had been drawn to this man’s physical attraction from the first moment she ever set eyes on him. And nothing had changed, she realised sadly as, dry-mouthed, she watched crystal droplets of water drip from his hair onto his wide tanned shoulders then begin trailing into the crisp dark hair covering his chest.

He was male beauty personified, his face, his body, the long lean muscular strength in his deeply tanned legs.

‘Have your things arrived yet?’ Deep and dark, and unusually sedate for him in this kind of situation, Vito’s voice held no hint of anything but casual enquiry.

Yet her skin flinched as if he’d reached out and touched it with the end of an electric live wire. ‘I … n-not that I know of,’ she replied, eyelashes fluttering as she dragged her gaze away from him. ‘I’ve been—showing myself around,’ she then added on a failed attempt at sounding casual.

‘No surprises?’ he asked, drawing her eyes back to him as he began to rub at his wet hair with the towel again.

She watched his biceps flex and his pectorals begin to tremble at the vigorous activity. ‘Only Santo’s room,’ she murmured, and wished she knew how to cure herself of wanting this man. ‘It’s nice,’ she tagged on diffidently.

‘Glad you think so.’ There should have been a hint of sarcasm when he said that, but there wasn’t. In fact he was playing this all very casual—as if the last three years had never happened and they shared this kind of conversation in this room all the time.

But then, wasn’t she trying to treat it the same way herself?

The towel was lowered and cast aside. Catherine bit her inner lip and tried desperately to come up with some excuse to leave that wouldn’t make her appear a total coward.

In the end it was Vito who solved the dilemma for her. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised suddenly, and took a step sideways. ‘Did you come here to …?’

He was asking if she needed to use the bathroom. ‘N-No,’ she murmured. Then, ‘Yes!’ she amended that, seeing the bathroom, with the lock it had on its door, as the ideal place to escape to.

But it was only as she pushed her tense body into movement that she realised she was going to have to pass very close by him to gain that escape. And Vito didn’t move another muscle as he watched her come towards him. So her tension grew with each step that she took, and by the time she reached him her heart was thumping, and her breathing was so fragile that it was all she could do to murmur a frail, ‘Thank you,’ as she went to pass by him.

‘Are you going to take a shower?’

Her senses were lost to a medley of tingles, all of which were set on high red alert. ‘Y-Yes,’ she heard herself answer, seeing yes as good as no at this precise moment, when she had absolutely no idea what she was intending to do in there! She didn’t even need to use the bathroom!

‘Then allow me …’ his smooth voice offered.

At which point she found herself freezing yet again as his hands came to rest upon her shoulders. Then his fingers began trailing downwards over her pale skin until they reached the scooped edge of her jade linen dress where the long zip lay.

Gritting her teeth, Catherine prayed for deliverance. He was standing so close she could actually feel his lightly scented dampness eddying in the air surrounding her. It was incredibly alluring, the kind of scent that conjured up evocative pictures of warm, naked bodies tangled in loving.

She shivered delicately when, with a deftness that had always been his, he sent the zip of her dress skimming downwards. By the time the fabric parted her shivers had become tremors, and she had to close her eyes and grit her teeth harder while she waited for the ordeal to be over.

But Vito didn’t stop there. Next his fingers were unclip-ping the catches on her bra and her breasts were suddenly free to swing unsupported. And in all of their long and intimate association she had never felt so wary and unsure of his intentions.

Even the way he ran the back of one long finger down the rigid length of her spine was telling her one thing while his voice, as cool as a mountain spring, was telling her another when he suggested levelly, ‘Make it a long shower, Catherine, you are as tense as a bowstring.’

Make it a long shower, she repeated to herself. Make it a long, cold shower, she helplessly extended.

‘But of course,’ he then added, and suddenly his voice was as silken as his wretched voice ever could be, ‘there are other, much more pleasurable ways to cure your tension.’

And before she could react his mouth landed against the side of her neck and, like a vampire swooping on its chosen prey, he bit sensually into the pulsing nerve there that lay alongside her jugular. At the same time his hands slid inside her dress and took possession of her recently freed breasts.

Sensation went streaking through her. After the day-long build-up of sexual tension, it was like being sprung free from the unbearable restraints that had been binding her, though she did at least try to put up some kind of protest.

‘Vito, no,’ she groaned. ‘I need a shower—’

‘I like you just the way you are,’ he huskily countermanded. ‘Smelling of you, and tasting of you.’

He was already urging her dress to slither down her body, and in seconds she was standing there in just her panties. As those long, knowing fingers moulded her breasts so his thumbpads could begin drawing circles around their tips to encourage them to peak for him, his mouth continued to suck sensually on her neck.

It was all so exquisite, the caress of his hands, the wetness of his mouth, the way he was pressing her back against him. When he stroked one hand down the flat wall of her stomach and beneath the fabric of her briefs she simply gave up trying to fight it. On a shaky little sigh that heralded her complete surrender her eyes drifted shut, and, tilting her head back against his shoulder, she allowed him to arouse her in a way only a deeply familiar lover would arouse a woman.

But not enough—not enough. Her hands reached behind him to rip away the towel so she could press him against her, and her head turned against his shoulder, searching out his mouth so she could join her own with it. ‘Kiss me properly,’ she commanded, no shrinking violet when it came to her body’s pleasures.

On an answering growl he swung her around, lifted her up his body until she was off her feet—then kissed her hard and hot and deeply. The wall not far away was a godsend as he pressed her back against it and let her feet find solid ground again. Catherine parted her thighs and pressed him even closer, then tightened herself around him.

He was very aroused, and with the towel gone it left him free to use other, far more invigorating methods to keep her riding high on the crested wave of pleasure. Dragging her mouth free from his, she tilted her head back and simply let herself concentrate on the stroke of his body.

‘You’re wearing too much,’ he murmured sensually.

‘I’ll never wear panties again,’ she agreed with him.

Vito laughed, but it was a hard, tense, very male laugh, and it set fires alight inside her that did nothing for her self-control as he caught her mouth again and began kissing her greedily.

‘I need the bed,’ she groaned, when things began to get too much for her and her legs threatened to completely give away.

‘I’m way ahead of you, cara,’ he murmured raspingly.

Opening her eyes, Catherine found herself looking directly into two hot, hard golden points of passion that were doing nothing to hide the intensity of what he too was experiencing.

And they were moving. Catherine hadn’t even noticed until that moment that he was actually carrying her. They arrived at the bed. With a complete lack of ceremony he dropped her to her feet, then bent to get rid of her last piece of clothing.

As he buried his mouth into this newly exposed part of her body, she stretched out an arm behind her and began tossing away pillows, raking back bedcovers. It was all very urgent, very hectic, very fevered. No time for lazy foreplay, no hint of romance. She wanted him now, and it was patently obvious that he was the same.

As she lowered herself onto the bed, then began sliding backwards so she could lie down flat, she remembered the door. ‘Lock us in first,’ she whispered.

‘To hell with the door,’ he refused, following her onto the bed as if they were joined at the hip. ‘I’m not stopping this if the whole house walks in to watch.’

With that he entered her, sure and swift, and as she cried out in sheer surprise he laughed again, the same very male laugh, caught her face between his hands then made her look at him.

‘Hi.’ He grinned, as her lashes flickered upwards. ‘Remember me? I am your fantastic lover.’

He wasn’t even moving. He was playing with her, toying with her. He had fired her up until she didn’t know her own name any more. Now he was trying to lighten the whole thing!

With a flash from vengeful green eyes, she tightened the muscles around her abdomen. The motion made him suck in his breath. ‘Want to play, Vito?’ she taunted, and raked her fingernails along his lean flanks where some of this man’s most vulnerable erogenous zones were situated.

The breath left his lungs on a driven hiss. Catherine put out her tongue and licked the sound right off his warm, moist, pulsing lips. He began cursing in Italian, and there was no hint of humour left in him when he began moving on her with a fierceness that sent her reeling away into a pool of hot sensation.

When she shattered her arms flew out, wide, like a swimmer floating on its back. Vito slid his hand beneath her head to her nape, then lifted her towards him. It was a need he’d always had, to capture her desperate little gasps as she went into orgasm, and Catherine didn’t deny him them now as she breathed those helpless little sounds into his mouth and felt his body quicken as he too came nearer to his peak.

After that she remembered nothing. Not his own intense climax, not the swirling aftermath, not even the way he slid away from her, then lay fighting for recovery.

Outside it was still daylight. Inside the air-conditioning was keeping the room temperature at a constant liveable level. But Catherine was bathed in sweat from tingling toes to hairline. And beside her she could see the same film of sweat glistening on Vito’s skin.

She watched him for a little while, enjoying the way he was just lying there, heavy-limbed and utterly spent. Yet, even spent, Vito was physically imposing. A man with the normal potency of ten.

Potent …

Catherine stiffened—then went perfectly still, the sweat slowly chilling her flesh as she lay there, held by a sudden thought so terrible that her mind literally froze rather than dare let her face it. Beside her, sensing the change in her, Vito turned his dark head, then began frowning as he watched her steadily draining pallor.

But before he had a chance to say anything she sat up with a jerk, then began sliding frantically for the edge of the wide bed. Her long legs hit the ground at a run, her hair flying out behind her as she streaked like a sprinter for the bathroom.

Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there, because she appeared again almost immediately. To say she was in shock was an understatement. White-faced, and shaking so badly that her teeth chattered, she looked at Vito, who was only just pulling himself into a sitting position.

‘My things,’ she shot out in a taut staccato. ‘Where are my things?’

Still frowning in complete bewilderment as to what was going on, he shrugged. ‘They have not arrived yet, remember?’

‘Not arrived,’ she repeated, then her eyes went blank, and Vito shot off that bed like a bullet from a gun because he thought she was actually going to pass out where she stood!

‘For goodness’ sake, cara,’ he rasped. ‘What is wrong with you?’

‘M-my bag, then,’ she whispered shakily, and when all he did was come striding towards her without bothering to answer she hit the hysteria button. ‘My handbag, Vito!’ she actually screamed at him. ‘Where is it? My handbag—my handbag!’

It brought him to a stop in sheer astonishment. ‘Catherine—what the hell is this?’ he demanded, beginning to sound shaken himself.

She didn’t answer, instead she suddenly burst into action again. Darting down to snatch up her dress, she began to pull it on. She was trembling so badly she could barely manage the simple task, but when he attempted to help her she slapped him away.

‘I can’t believe I let you do this!’ she launched at him shrilly. ‘I can’t believe I let myself!’

‘Do what, for God’s sake?’ he shouted back angrily. ‘Make love?’ He decided that was the only answer. ‘Well, that’s rich coming from the woman who just ravished me!’

If anything, her face went even whiter, though it didn’t seem possible. And, on a pained whimper that did nothing for his temper, she turned and ran for the bedroom door with her fingers still grappling with the zip on her dress and the rest of her still completely naked.

‘Catherine!’ Vito barked at her in a command meant to stop her leaving the room.

But Catherine was already out of it and running down the stairs. Outside in the late-afternoon sunshine she found her handbag, still lying where she had left it on the floor of the red Mercedes.

By the time Vito had pulled some clothes on and followed her Catherine was just sitting there on the bottom step in front of the house, with the bag and its spilled contents lying beside her.

And there was such an air of fragility about her that he made his approach with extreme caution, walking down the steps to come and squat down in front of her. ‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about now?’ he requested carefully.

She shook her head and there were tears in her eyes. He sighed, his mouth tightening as he began flicking his gaze across the contents of her bag as if the answer would show itself there.

But it didn’t. All he saw was the usual clutter of personal things women tended to carry around with them. Lipstick, wallet, the passport she’d needed to get her into the country. A packet of paper tissues, a couple of spare clips she used to hold back her hair sometimes, and a hair comb. He looked back at Catherine, looked at the way she was staring out at nothing, and automatically looked down, expecting to find the cause of all of this—trauma clutched in her hands. But her hands were empty, their palms pressed together and trapped between her clenched knees.

It was then that he spied it, lying on the ground between her bare feet, and slowly, warily, he reached out and picked it up.

It took him about five seconds after that to realise what was wrong with her. Then the cursing started. Hard words, hoarse words, words that had him lurching to his feet and swinging around to slam his clenched fist into the shiny bodywork of the Mercedes.

After that, he too went perfectly still, frozen by the same sense of numbing horror that was holding Catherine. And the ensuing silence throbbed and punched and kicked at the both of them.

Until a sound in the distance grabbed Vito’s attention. His dark head went up, swinging round on his shoulders so he could scan the furthest corner of the garden, where a gate out onto the road served as a short cut to their nearest neighbours.

Then suddenly he was bursting into action again, spinning back to Catherine and stooping down to gather her into his arms before turning to dump her into the passenger seat of the Mercedes.

‘What—?’ she choked, coming out of her stunned stupor on a gasp of surprise.

‘Stay put,’ he gritted, then turned back to the house and disappeared inside it, only to come back seconds later with a bunch of keys in his hands. On his way past her bag he bent to gather in its contents; it landed on the back seat beside two pairs of sunglasses as he climbed behind the wheel.

The engine fired first time, and with the efficiency of a born driver he turned the car around and took off at speed down the driveway.

‘Santo and my mother are on their way back.’ He grimly explained his odd behaviour. ‘I did not think you would want them to see you looking like this.’

Like this … Catherine repeated to herself, looking down at herself with the kind of blank eyes that said she couldn’t see, as he could see, the changes that had come over her in a few short, devastating minutes.

Stopping at the end of the drive, Vito Giordani looked at this woman who had known more than her fair share of pain, heartache and grief in her life, and felt the air leave his lungs on a constricted hiss.

‘How many have you missed?’ he questioned flatly.

Catherine lifted those wretched dull grey eyes to him and a nerve began ticking along his jawline as he set the car going again, taking them not down the hillside but up it, out into open country.

‘You can count as well as I can,’ she answered dully.

Vito grimaced. ‘I am afraid my eyes glazed over when I noticed that yesterday’s was still there.’

Yesterday’s, the day before—and the day before, Catherine counted out bleakly. A contraceptive pill for each day since Vito had come back into her life, in fact.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been messing up my life since I was twenty-three years old, and here you are, six years on, still messing it up.’

About to remind her that it wasn’t him who’d forgotten to take the damn pills, Vito bit the words back again. ‘Getting embroiled in a fight about whose fault it is is not going to solve the problem,’ he threw at her instead.

‘Nothing can solve it,’ Catherine countered hopelessly. ‘The damage has already been done.’

Mouth set in a straight line, Vito said not another word as he drove them higher and higher, until eventually he pulled the car off the road and onto a piece of scrub land that overlooked the kind of views people paid fortunes to see.

They didn’t see the beauty in it, though. There could have been pitch-blackness out there in front of them for all they knew. And they were surrounded by perfect silence. Not a bird, not a house, not another car, not even a breeze to rustle the dry undergrowth. In fact they could have been the only two people left in the world, which suited exactly how they were both feeling.

Two people alone with the kind of problem that shut out the rest of the world.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vito murmured.

Maybe he felt he needed to say it, but Catherine shrugged. ‘Not your fault,’ she absolved him. ‘It’s me who’s been unforgivably stupid.’

‘Maybe we will get lucky and nothing will come of it,’ he suggested, in an attempt to place a glimmer of light into their darkness.

‘Don’t count on it,’ Catherine replied heavily. ‘Twice before we’ve taken risks, and twice I got pregnant. Why should this time be any different?’

Why indeed? was the echo that came back from the next drumming silence.

‘There has to be something we can do!’ he muttered harshly. And on a sudden flash of inspiration said, ‘We will drive to the doctor’s. Get that—morning-after pill—or whatever it is they call it …’

Catherine flinched as if he had plunged a knife in her. ‘Do you know what they call those pills, Vito?’ she whispered painfully. ‘Little abortions,’ she informed him starkly. ‘Because that’s what they do. They abort the egg whether it is fertilised or not.’

‘But you also know what they told you,’ he reminded her. ‘Another pregnancy like the last one could be dangerous.’

Her tear-washed eyes shimmered in the sunlight. ‘So I abort one life to safeguard my own life?’

The anguish she saw in his eyes was for her; Catherine knew that. But she couldn’t deal with it. And on the dire need to escape from both him and the whole wretched scenario, she opened the car door and climbed out.

Leaving Vito sitting there staring ahead of him, she walked, barefooted, across the dusty ground to a lonely cypress tree and leaned against its dry old trunk.

First she had almost lost Santo, due to mid-term complications. She had managed to hold onto him until he was big enough to cope outside his mother’s womb, and the doctors had assured her that the same condition rarely struck twice in the same woman. But they had been wrong. And the next time it had happened she’d almost lost her own life along with her baby.

‘No more babies,’ they had announced. ‘Your body won’t take the physical trauma.’

No more babies …

A movement beside her made her aware that Vito had come to lean a shoulder on the other side of the tree. For a man who had only had enough time to drag on the first clothes that came to hand he looked remarkably stylish in his light chinos and a plain white tee shirt. But then, that was Vito, she mused hollowly. A man so inherently special that no one in the world would believe that anything in his life would ever go wrong for him.

His marriage had. From its unfortunate beginning to its tragic ending.

Catherine didn’t count this latest encounter. Because in truth she no longer felt married to Vito; if anything, she felt more as she had done when she first met him: alive, excited, electrifyingly stimulated. Which was why they’d ended up in bed making love like there was no tomorrow. It was a taste of the old days—irresistible.

And now the piper demands his payment, she concluded dully.

‘Santo needs his mother, Catherine,’ Vito stated levelly—nothing more. He didn’t need to elaborate. Catherine knew exactly what he was telling her here.

They were back to celebrating the living, she supposed. Santo needs his mother alive and well and very much kicking. Tears burned her eyes again. She blinked them away. ‘I’ll take the pill,’ she said.

He didn’t say anything. Instead he just continued to lean there, staring out at his homeland as if he was watching Naples sink beneath a sea of lava and was as helpless to stop that from happening as he was to stop Catherine from having to make that decision.

Without another word, she walked back to the car and climbed into it. Vito followed her, got in, fired the engine and drove them away, down the hillside this time, and into Naples proper, where he took grim pleasure in fighting with the unremitting flood of traffic before eventually turning into an arched alleyway which led through to a private courtyard belonging to his offices.

Climbing out of the car, he came around to Catherine’s side, opened her door and helped her to alight. She didn’t put up any protest, not even when he silently turned her around and did up the rest of her zip before leading the way into the building. His concierge took one look at his face and with only a brief nod of his head backed warily away, but his glance swept curiously over Catherine’s dusty bare feet and tangled mane of bright hair as the lift doors shut them away.

It was getting late by now. The working day was over so the place was empty of people. Leading the way to his own office suite, Vito pointed to a door. ‘Take a shower,’ he instructed, and walked off to his desk to pick up the telephone.

As she stepped into the bathroom she heard him talking to his mother, making some excuse about them going shopping on impulse and forgetting to tell anyone before leaving.

It was as good an excuse as any, she supposed, so long as no one had thought to check their bedroom, where the evidence of what they had been doing before they went out was painfully clear to see.

The next call Vito made was out of her hearing. It was curt, it was tight, and it didn’t improve his temper as he began his third call, instructing a fashion boutique a short block from here, that knew him through his mother, to deliver the full range of whatever they had in stock to fit a British size ten, including shoes and underwear.

Catherine still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom by the time the concierge came in, laden down with the boutique’s delivery. In any other mood Vito might have been interested in what he had got for his money, but since most of the items were simply a bluff to fool his mother, he merely told the man to place the purchases on the low leather sofa beneath the window, then dismissed him.

But before he went the concierge handed him a different kind of purchase entirely. It was small, it was light, and it bore the name of a well-respected medical practice in Naples.

Vito was still staring grimly down at it when Catherine emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in his own short white towelling robe that was way too big for her. She looked wet, she looked clean—and utterly miserable.

‘I couldn’t find a hairdryer,’ she said, indicating her head, where her hair hung straight and at least five shades darker against the whiteness of her face.

‘I’ll find it in a minute,’ he replied, walking towards her.

She wasn’t looking at him, but then she hadn’t done so since they’d made love earlier—not with eyes that could see him anyway.

‘Here,’ he said gruffly, and handed her the small package.

She knew what it was the moment she looked at it, even though her eyes couldn’t focus on the writing. ‘Two now, two more in twelve hours,’ he instructed.

A cold chill went sweeping through her, turning her fingers to ice as she reached out and took the packet from him.

‘I need a drink,’ she said.

He nodded briskly and moved away. ‘Tea, coffee, iced water?’ he enquired, opening the doors to a huge drinks cabinet equipped with everything from kettle to cocktail shaker.

‘Water,’ she chose, then slid her hands into the cavernous pockets of the robe before lifting herself to take a forced interest in her surroundings.

This place hadn’t changed much since she’d last been here either, she saw. Same classic trappings of a well-to-do businessman, same hi-tech equipment, only a lot more of it.

He turned with the glass of water. ‘Catherine—’

‘Shut up,’ she said flatly, and, ignoring the grim tension in his stance, she made herself walk over to the sofa where the concierge had placed Vito’s purchases. ‘For me?’ she asked.

‘Take your pick,’ he replied. ‘There should be a selection of everything you will require.’

‘The man thinks of everything,’ she dryly mocked as her fingers flicked open boxes and checked out bags with about as much interest as a hungry dog being offered a plastic bone to eat. ‘Troubleshooter extraordinaire.’

He didn’t answer, but then, why should he bother? It was only the truth after all. For who else did she know who could achieve so much in the time it took her to have a shower?

‘I’ll take these,’ she said, choosing at random a teal blue silk dinner dress and some matching underwear. Going back towards the bathroom, she paused in the doorway. ‘The hairdryer?’ she prompted him.

He walked over to her, then stopped to silently hand her the requested glass of water that she seemed to have had already forgotten about, before he slid past her into the bathroom and unearthed a hairdryer from the back of a vanity unit.

Grimly plugging it in, he left it ready for her on the marble top, then turned to leave her to it. In her hand was the glass of water. The water was to help her swallow the medication he had given to her. He walked past her, then stopped, tensely swung back. ‘Catherine—’

She shut the door in his face.

Fifteen minutes later she came out again, hair dried into some semblance of a style, her clothes looking unexpectedly fantastic, considering the way they had been chosen. The dress was short, slim, and edged with a layer of fine black lace. Standing staring out of the window, Vito turned when he heard her, then went still, his sombre eyes hooding over as they slid down her.

‘Shoes,’ was all he said, though, pointing to a pair of teal-blue strappy sandals standing neatly by the sofa. Everything else had gone—where to Catherine didn’t know, nor care.

She found out when they arrived back at the car and saw the back seat was full of packages. The car’s roof had been raised, and as they climbed inside she felt the difference as a humid heat quickly enveloped her. Vito started the car and switched on the air-conditioning system, then they drove off, back home to their twisted version of normality.

It was growing quite dark by the time they arrived at the house. Lights were burning on the driveway, offering a warm welcome that didn’t touch Catherine.

As they walked into the house Santo appeared, already dressed for bed in his pyjamas. With a delighted whoop he came running towards them. Whether it was deliberate, Catherine wasn’t certain, but Vito took a small step backwards then slid stealthily behind her, as if he was trying to reduce Santo’s options so he would run into his mother’s arms and not his father’s.

If it was deliberate then it was a very selfless gesture, one that showed a deep sensitivity to her needs right now. And an understanding that her emotions had taken a big enough battering today without having her son giving it a further knock by choosing to hug his father before hugging her.

So she received her warm bundle of love and hugged him to her as if her life depended on holding this precious child of theirs. And with his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist Santo chatted away about what he had been doing, with absolutely no idea that his mother was frantically fighting a battle with tears again.

It was only when she eventually set her son down again, so he could go to his father, and she saw the way Vito held Santo to him in much the same way that she had done, that she allowed herself to acknowledge that he too was suffering.

It was too much—much too much for her to cope with right now, when she could barely cope with her own inner agony. So she walked away, wishing she could just go and crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head and stay there for ever.

But she couldn’t do that, because Luisa was waiting for them and expected bright smiles and conversation. Catherine played the game to the best of her ability, and even managed to smile at Luisa teasing Vito about the new wardrobe of clothes he had just bought Catherine because her own luggage hadn’t arrived.

‘But it came while you were out!’ her mother-in-law laughingly informed them. ‘How terribly impatient and extravagant of you, darling!’ Her eyes twinkled teasingly at her son, and why were they twinkling? Because Luisa was seeing the gesture as a demonstration of how wonderfully romantic things must be between her son and his wife—when really things couldn’t be more wretched. ‘And what a lovely treat for you, Catherine …!’

Dinner that night was just another ordeal she had to force herself to get through. She had to eat when she didn’t want to, smile when she didn’t want to, had to make pleasant innocuous conversation when she didn’t want to. And through it all she had to watch Vito watch her from beneath heavily veiled eyes, as if he was expecting her at any moment to jump up and start screaming the place down.

She didn’t really blame him, for she knew that beneath her relaxed exterior she was so uptight it was actually beginning to hurt. She had been avoiding him like the plague since they got back. If he walked into a room then she walked out of it; if he went to speak to her she pretended she didn’t hear. Now, across the dinner table, if she found herself being forced into making eye contact with him she did it from behind a frosted veil, which thankfully kept him out of focus.

But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware of his tension, or of the greyish pallor sitting just beneath the surface of his golden skin that had been there ever since he had handed her that packet in his office.

‘… Marietta …’

Suddenly feeling as though a thousand sharp needles were embedding themselves into her flesh, Catherine blinked her mind back into focus on the conversation at the table.

‘She was sorry she couldn’t be here to welcome you home today,’ Luisa was saying innocently. ‘But Vito saw fit to send her off to New York on some wild-goose chase she insists did not really warrant her attention.’ A censorious glance at her son gained no response whatsoever. ‘Still, since Vito’s priority had to be here with you and Santo, one of them had to go, I suppose,’ Luisa allowed, with a little shrug meant, Catherine presumed, to dismiss her son’s silence. ‘She will be back by the weekend, though, so maybe we could all get together then for a celebratory dinner—which would be nice, don’t you think, Catherine? The two of you were such good friends once upon a time. I’m sure you must be looking forward to reviving the friendship.’

‘Excuse me.’ She stood up with an abruptness that surprised everyone. ‘Forgive me, Luisa, but I’m afraid I can’t sit here any longer—’

‘Aren’t you well, Catherine?’ It was a logical conclusion to make, bearing in mind that her dinner plate was sitting untouched, right in front of her. And at last Luisa seemed to notice Catherine’s strained pallor, while, with the kind of good manners that had been bred into him, Vito rose gracefully to his feet also. But he was still watching her like a hawk, and Catherine wanted to scratch his blasted eyes out because he knew his mother had just advantageously stopped her from saying something she would have regretted later about Luisa’s precious Marietta!

‘Just tired, that’s all.’ She smiled a weak smile that was really an acknowledgement of her own sense of relief at Luisa’s interruption. For hadn’t it always been easier to leave Luisa with her rose-tinted glasses in place than be the one to rip them from her? ‘It has been a long day in one way or another.’

‘Of course, dear,’ Luisa murmured understandingly. ‘And you are not used to our late dining habits—which probably accounts for your lack of appetite tonight …’

‘Yes.’ Catherine kept on smiling the wretched smile and bent to brush a kiss across Luisa’s cheek before mumbling some incoherent remark about seeing Vito later as she stumbled wearily from the table.

By the time she had prepared for bed and carried out her most dearest wish by crawling beneath the sheets and pulling them right over her, she had hardly any energy left to do much more than switch her brain off.

So she was completely lost to a blessed oblivion when a pair of arms firmly gathering her in brought her swimming back to consciousness.

‘No.’ Her response was instant rejection.

‘Be still,’ Vito’s deep voice flatly countered, and, drawing her into the warm curve of his body, he firmly clamped her there. ‘You may wish to pretend that I do not exist right now, but I do, and I am here—’

‘While your lover is several thousand miles away,’ she tagged on waspishly.

‘Marietta is your obsession, not mine,’ he replied. ‘But since you have decided to bring her into this bed with us, may I remind you that you are here to replace her? So stop fighting me, Catherine.’ Once again his arms tightened to subdue her wriggling struggles. ‘You may like to believe that you are the only miserable one in this bed, but you are not. And I need to hold you as much as you need to be held like this.’

He wasn’t talking about Marietta now, she realised. He was talking about something far more emotive. Impulsively she opened her mouth to say something about that—then changed her mind, for her emotions were in such a dreadful mess that remaining silent seemed wiser at this moment than saying anything that could well start another quarrel.

So she subsided, reluctantly, into the warmth of his embrace, felt his muscles relax when he recognised her surrender. And as she began taking on board other things, like his nakedness against her thin cotton pyjamas, she bitterly wished that the man wasn’t so physically alluring.

Wished to God that she wasn’t so useless as a woman. She wished her heart didn’t hurt so much and her brain was more able to make a clear-cut decision between what was right and what was wrong.

And she wished so very sincerely that the world would stop turning, so that she could get off it and never come back to it again!

‘Cry if you want to,’ his rusty voice encouraged.

‘No,’ she refused, but her body was already trembling with the effort it was costing her not to.

‘It was the right thing to do, Catherine. The only thing to do.’ Vito’s mouth pressed a kiss to the back of her head. ‘But that does not mean you must not mourn the decision.’

But it did—it did! And Vito was never going to understand what that decision was costing her because she was not going to tell him—or tell anyone for that matter.

‘I just want to go to sleep and forget all about it,’ she whispered thickly.

‘Then do so,’ he allowed. ‘But I will be here if you change your mind, cara. Right here beside you.’

Was this his way of making up for the time when he hadn’t been there for her? If it was then Catherine was not going to taunt him with it. Because she might be absorbed by her own torment right now, but she could feel the way his hands were tensely gripping her hands, that Vito was no less tormented.