Kitabı oku: «Love's Revenge»

About the Author

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Love’s Revenge
The Italian’s Revenge
A Passionate Marriage
The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Italian’s Revenge

Michelle Reid

CHAPTER ONE

STEPPING out of her son’s bedroom, Catherine closed the door just as quietly as she could, then wilted wearily back against it. Santo had gone to sleep at last, but she could still hear the heart-wrenching little sniffles that were shaking his five-year-old frame.

It really could not go on, she decided heavily. The tears and tantrums had been getting worse each time they erupted. And the way she had been burying her head in the sand in the vague hopes that his problem would eventually sort itself out had only managed to exacerbate the situation.

It was time—more than time—that she did something about it, even if the prospect filled her with untold dread.

And if she was going to act, then it had to be now. Luisa was due to catch the early commuter flight out of Naples in the morning, and if she was to be stopped then it must be tonight, before it caused her mother-in-law too much inconvenience.

‘Damn,’ she breatIt took ten minutes for the hed as she levered herself away from her son’s bedroom door and made her way down the stairs. The mere prospect of putting through such a sensitive call was enough to set the tension singing inside her.

For what did she say? she asked herself as she stepped into the sitting room and quietly closed that door behind her.

The straightforward approach seemed the most logical answer, where she just picked up the phone and told Luisa bluntly that her grandson was refusing to go back to Naples with her tomorrow and why. But that kind of approach did not take into consideration the fragile sensibilities of the recipient. Or the backlash of hostility that was going to rebound on her, most of which would be labelling her the troublemaker.

She sighed fretfully, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did it, then just stood staring at her own reflection.

Good grief, but she looked a mess, though in truth it didn’t particularly surprise her. The battles with Santo had been getting worse by the day as this week had drawn to a close. Now her face was showing the results of too many emotion-draining tussles and too many restless nights while she lay awake worrying about them. Her eyes were bruised and her skin looked so pale that if it hadn’t been for the natural flashes of copper firing up her golden hair then she would probably resemble some hollow-eyed little ghost.

Not so much of the little, she then mocked herself on an unexpected burst of rueful humour. For there was nothing little about her five-feet-eight-inch frame. Slender—yes, she conceded. Too slender for some people’s tastes.

Vito’s tastes.

The humour died as suddenly as it had erupted, banished by the one person who could turn laughter into bitterness without even having to try.

Vittorio Adriano Lucio Giordani—to give him his full and impressive title. Man of means. Man of might. Man at the root of her son’s problems.

Once she had loved him; now she hated him. But then that was surely Vito. Man of dynamic contrasts. Stunning to look at. Arrogant to a fault. Exquisitely versed in the art of loving. Deadly to love.

She shuddered, her arms coming up to wrap around her as if in self-protection as she turned away from that face in the mirror rather than having to watch it alter from tired to bitter, which was what it usually did when she let herself think about Vito.

Because not only did she hate him but she hated even thinking about him. He was the skeleton in her past, linked to her present by an invisible thread that went directly from her heart, straight through the heart of their son and then into Vito’s heart.

In fact Vito’s only saving grace, in Catherine’s view, was his open adoration of their five-year-old son. Now it seemed that even that fragile connection was under threat—though Vito didn’t know it yet.

‘I hate you! And I hate Papà! I don’t want to love you any more!’

She winced painfully as the echo of that angrily emotive cry pierced her like a knife in the chest. Santo had meant those words; he had felt them deeply. Too deeply for a confused and vulnerable little boy to have to cope with.

Which brought her rather neatly back to where she had started when she walked into this room, she grimly concluded. Namely, doing something about Santo’s distress and anger.

A point that sent her eyes drifting over to where the telephone sat on the small table by the sofa, looking perfectly innocent when in actual fact it was a time bomb set to explode the moment she so much as touched it.

Because she never rang Naples—never. Had not done so once since she had left there three years ago. Any communicating went on via lawyers or by letters sent to and from Santo’s grandmother Luisa. So this phone call was so unique it was likely to cause major ructions in the Giordani household. And that was before she gave her reason for calling!

Therefore it was with reluctance that she went to sit down beside the telephone table. And with her bare toes curling tensely into the carpet, she gritted her teeth, took a couple of deep breaths, then reached out for the receiver.

By the time she had punched in the required set of digits she was sitting there with her eyes pressed tight shut, half praying that no one would be home.

Coward, she mocked herself.

And why not? she then countered. With their track record it paid to be cowardly around Vito. She just hoped that Luisa would answer. At least with Luisa she could relax some of the tension out of her body and try to sound normal before she attempted to break the news to her.

No chance. ‘Si?’ a deeply smooth and seductively accented voice suddenly drawled into her ear.

Catherine jumped, her eyes flicking open as instant recognition turned her grey eyes green.

Vito.

Damn, it was Vito. A sudden hot flush went chasing through her. A thick lump formed across her throat. She tried to speak but found she couldn’t. Instead her eyes drifted shut again and suddenly she was seeing him as clearly as if he was standing here directly in front of her. Seeing the blackness of his hair, the darkness of his skin, and the long, lean, tightly muscled posture of his supremely arrogant stance.

He was wearing a dinner suit, she saw, because it was Sunday and coming up to dinnertime there in Naples, and the Giordani family always dressed formally for the evening meal on a Sunday. So the suit would be black and the shirt white, with an accompanying black bow tie.

And she could see the disturbing honeyed-gold colour of his eyes, with their long, thick, curling lashes, which could so polarise attention that it was impossible to think of anything else when you let yourself look into them. So she didn’t. Instead she moved on to his mouth and let her mind’s eye drift across its smooth, firm, sensual contours, knowing exactly what to expect when another telling little shudder hit her system.

For this was the mouth of a born lover. A beautiful mouth, a seductive mouth, a disturbingly expressive mouth that could grin and mock and snarl and kiss like no other mouth, and lie like no other, and hate like no—

‘Who is there, please?’ his deep voice demanded in terse Italian.

Catherine jumped again, then tensely sat forward, her fingers tightly gripping the telephone receiver as she forced her locked up vocal cords to relax enough to allow her to speak.

‘Hello, Vito,’ she murmured huskily. ‘It’s me—Catherine …’

The bomb went off—in the form of a stunning silence. The kind that ate away at her insides and made nerves twitch all over her. Her mouth was dry, her heart having to force blood through valves that had simply stopped working. She felt light-headed but heavy-limbed, and wanted to start crying suddenly—which was so very pathetic that at least the feeling managed to jolt her into attempting to speak again.

But Vito beat her to it. ‘What is wrong with my son?’ he lashed out, grating English replacing terse Italian. The sheer violence in his tone was enough to warn Catherine that he had instantly jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘Santo isn’t ill.’

There was another short, tense, pulsing moment while Vito took time to absorb that assurance. ‘Then why do you break your own court order and ring me here?’ he demanded coldly.

Grimacing at his right to ask that question, Catherine still had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from replying with something nasty. The break-up of their marriage had not been pleasant, and the hostility between them still ran strong three years on.

Three years ago Vito had been so incensed when she’d left him, taking Santo with her, that he had made the kind of threatening noises which at the time had made her blood run cold with fear.

She had responded by making Santo a ward of court and serving an order on Vito prohibiting him any contact with her unless it was through a third party. Catherine didn’t think Vito would ever forgive her for putting him through the indignity of having to swear before a judge that he would neither contact Catherine personally nor attempt to take Santo out of the country, before he was allowed access to his own son.

They had not exchanged a single word between them since.

It had taken him a whole year to win the legal right to have Santo visit him in Italy. Before that it had been up to him to come to London if he wanted to spend time with his son. And even to this day Santo was collected from and returned to Catherine by his grandmother, so that his parents would not come into contact with each other.

In fact the only area where they remained staunchly amicable was where their son’s opinion of the other was concerned. Santo had the right to love them both equally, without feeling the pressure of having one parent’s dislike of the other to corrupt his view—a point brought home to them both by a stern grandmother, who had found herself flung into the role of referee between them at a time when their mutual hostility had been running at its highest.

So Catherine had grown used to listening smilingly for hours and hours at a time while Santo extolled all his adored papà’s many virtues, and she presumed that Vito had grown used to hearing the same in reverse.

But that didn’t mean the animosity between them had mellowed any through the ensuing years—only that they both hid it well for Santo’s benefit.

‘Actually, I was hoping to speak to Luisa,’ she explained as coolly and briefly as she could. ‘If you would get her for me, Vito, I would appreciate it.’

‘And I repeat,’ he responded, tight-lipped and incisive. ‘What is so wrong that you dare to ring here?’

In other words, he wasn’t going to play the game and allow Luisa to stand buffer between them, Catherine made wry note.

‘I would prefer to explain to Luisa,’ she insisted stubbornly.

She sensed more than heard his teeth snapping together. ‘Then of course you may do so,’ he smoothly replied. ‘When she arrives to collect my son from you in the morning …’

‘No, Vito—wait!’ she cried out, her long, slender legs launching her to her feet as panic went rampaging through her when she realised he was actually going to put the phone down on her! And suddenly she was trembling all over as she stood there waiting to find out what he would do, while a taut silence began to buzz like static against her eardrum.

The line was not severed.

As Catherine’s stress-muddied brain began to take that fact in, she also realised that Vito was not going to say another word until she said something worth him keeping the line open.

‘I’m having problems with Santo,’ she disclosed on a reluctant rush.

‘What kind of problems?’

‘The kind I prefer to discuss with Luisa,’ she replied. ‘Get her advice on w-what to do be-before she arrives here tomorrow …’

No wonder she was stammering, Catherine acknowledged grimly, because that last bit had been an outright lie. She was hoping to stop Luisa from coming here altogether. But the coward in her didn’t dare to tell that to Vito. Past experience warned her that he would just go totally ballistic.

‘You will hold the line, please,’ his cold voice clipped, ‘while I transfer this call to another telephone.’

Just like that, he was going to accede to her wishes and connect her with Luisa? Catherine could hardly believe her luck, and only just managed to disguise her sigh of relief as she murmured a polite, ‘Thank you.’

Then the line went dead. Some of the tension began seeping out of her muscles and she sank weakly back down onto the sofa, her insides still playing havoc at the shock contact with their worst enemy. But other than that she congratulated herself. The first words they had spoken to each other in years had not been that dreadful.

They hadn’t torn each other to shreds, at least.

Now she had to get her mind into gear and decide what she was going to tell Luisa. The truth seemed the most logical road to take. But the truth had always been such a sensitive issue between them all that she wasn’t sure it was wise to use it now.

So, what do you say? she asked herself once again. Blame Santo’s distress on something at school? Or on the dual life he is forced to lead where one parent lives in London and the other in Naples?

Then there were the two different lifestyles the little boy had to deal with. The first being where average normality was stamped into everything, from the neat suburban London street they lived in, with its rows of neat middle-class houses, to the neat, normal kind of families that resided in each. While several thousand miles away, in a different country and most certainly in a different world, was the other kind of life. One that was about as far away from normal and average as life could get for most people, never mind a confused little boy. For instead of suburban Naples, Vito lived out in the country. His home was a palace compared to this house, his standard of living steeped in the kind of luxury that would fill most ordinary people with awe.

When Santo visited Naples, his papà took time off from his busy job as head of the internationally renowned Giordani Investments to give his son his full attention. And if it wasn’t his papà, his beloved grandmother was more than ready to pour the same amount of love and attention upon him.

Catherine had no other family. And she worked full time all the time, whether Santo was away or not. He had to accept that he was collected from school by a child-minder and taken home with her to wait until Catherine could collect him.

But all of that—or none of that—was what the child found upsetting. Santo was not really old enough yet to understand just what it was that was disturbing him so much. It had taken several skirmishes and a lot of patience for Catherine to begin to read between the lines of his angry outbursts.

Then, tonight, the final truth had come out, in the shape of a name. A name that had sent icy chills sweeping down her spine when she’d heard it falling from her own child’s lips. And not just the name but the way Santo had said it—with pain and anguish.

She knew those emotions, had first-hand experience of what they could do to your belief in yourself, in your sense of self-worth. She also knew that if what Santo had told her was the truth then she didn’t blame him for refusing to have anything to do with his Italian family. For hadn’t she responded in the same way once herself?

‘Right. Talk,’ a grim voice commanded.

Catherine blinked, her mind taking a moment to realise what was going on. ‘Where’s Luisa?’ she demanded, beginning to stiffen up all over again at the sound of Vito’s voice.

‘I do not recall saying I was going to bring my mother to the phone,’ he responded coolly. ‘Santo is my son, I will remind you. If you are having problems with my son, then you will discuss those problems with me.’

‘He is our son,’ Catherine corrected—while busily trying to reassess a situation that had promised to be complicated and touchy enough discussing it with Luisa. The very idea of having to say what she did have to say to Vito, of all people, was probably going to be impossible.

‘So at last you acknowledge that.’

The barb hit right on its chosen mark and Catherine’s lips snapped together in an effort to stop herself from responding to it.

It was no use. The words slipped out of their own volition. ‘Try for sarcasm, Vito,’ she drawled deridingly. ‘It really helps the situation more than I can say.’

A sound caught her attention. Not a sigh, exactly, more a controlled release of air from his lungs, and then she heard the subtle creak of leather that was so familiar to her that she knew instantly which room he was now in.

His father’s old study—now Vito’s study, since Lucio Giordani had passed away eighteen months after Santo had been born.

And suddenly she was seeing that room as clearly as she had seen Vito himself only minutes before. Seeing its size and its shape and its old-fashioned elegance. The neutral-coloured walls, the richly polished floor, the carefully selected pieces of fine Renaissance furniture—including the desk Vito was sitting behind.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, having to blink her mind back into focus again.

‘Then will you please tell me what problems Santino has before I lose my patience?’

This time she managed to control the urge to retaliate to his frankly provoking tone. ‘He’s been having problems at school.’ She decided that was as good a place to start as any. ‘It began weeks ago, just after his last visit with you over there.’

‘Which in your eyes makes it my fault, I presume?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she denied, though she knew she was thinking it. ‘I was merely attempting to fill you in with what has been happening.’

‘Then I apologise,’ he said.

Liar, she thought, heaving in a deep breath in an attempt to iron out any hint of accusation from her tone—though that wasn’t easy, given the circumstances. ‘He’s been disruptive in class,’ she made herself go on. ‘Angry all the time, and insolent.’ She didn’t add that Santo had been the same with her because that wasn’t important and would only confuse the issue. ‘After one such skirmish his teacher threatened to bring his parents in to school to speak to them about his behaviour. He responded by informing the teacher that his father lived in Italy and wouldn’t come, because he was rich and too important to bother with a nuisance like him.’

Catherine heard Vito’s indrawn gasp in response, and knew he had understood the import of what she was trying to tell him here. ‘Why would he say something like that, Vito?’ she questioned curtly. ‘Unless he has been led to believe it is true? He’s too young to have come up with a mouthful like that all on his own, so someone has to have said it to him first for him to repeat it.’

‘And you think it was me?’ he exclaimed, making Catherine sigh in annoyance.

‘I don’t know who it was!’ she snapped. ‘Because he isn’t telling!’ But I can damn well guess, she tagged on silently. ‘Now, to cut a long story short,’ she concluded, ‘he is refusing to go to Naples with Luisa tomorrow. He tells me that you don’t really want him there, so why should he bother with you?’

‘So you called here tonight to tell my mother not to come and collect him,’ he assumed from all of that. ‘Great way to deal with the problem, Catherine,’ he gritted. ‘After all, Santo is only saying exactly what you have been wishing he would say for years now, so you can get me right out of your life!’

‘You are out of my life,’ she responded. ‘Our divorce becomes final at the end of this month.’

‘A divorce you instigated,’ he pointed out. ‘Have you considered whether it is that little event that is causing Santo’s problems?’ he suggested. ‘Or maybe there is more to it than that,’ he then added tightly, ‘and I need to look no further than the other end of this telephone line to discover the one who has been feeding my son lies about me!’

‘Are you suggesting that I have been telling him that you think he’s a nuisance?’ she gasped, so affronted by the implication that she shot back to her feet. ‘If so, think again, Vito,’ she sliced at him furiously. ‘Because it isn’t me who is planning to remarry as soon as I’m free of you! And it isn’t me who is about to undermine our son’s position in my life by sticking him with the archetypal step-mamma from hell!’

Oh, she hadn’t meant to say that! Catherine cursed her own unruly tongue as once again the silence came thundering down all around her.

Yet, even having said it, her body was pumping with the kind of adrenaline that started wars. She was even breathing heavily, her green eyes bright with a bitter antagonism, her mouth stretched back from even white teeth that desperately wanted to bite!

‘Who the hell told you that?’ Vito rasped, and Catherine had the insane idea that he too was on his feet, and breathing metaphorical fire all over the telephone.

And this—this she reminded herself forcefully, is why Vito and I are best having no contact whatsoever! We fire each other up like two volcanoes.

‘Is it true?’ she countered.

‘That is none of your business,’ he sliced.

Her flashing eyes narrowed into two threatening slits. ‘Watch me make it my business, Vito,’ she warned, very seriously. ‘I’ll put a block on our divorce if I find that it’s true and you are planning to give Marietta any power over Santo.’

‘You don’t have that much authority over my actions any more,’ he derided her threat.

‘No?’ she challenged. ‘Then just watch this space,’ she said, and grimly cut the connection.

It took ten minutes for the phone to start ringing. Ten long minutes in which Catherine seethed and paced, and wondered how the heck she had allowed the situation to get so out of control. Half of what she had said she hadn’t meant to say at all!

On a heavy sigh she tried to calm down a bit before deciding what she should do next. Ring back and apologise? Start the whole darn thing again from the beginning and hope to God that she could keep a leash on her temper?

The chance of that happening was so remote that she even allowed herself to smile at it. Her marriage to Vito had never been anything but volatile. They were both hot-tempered, both stubborn, both passionately defensive of their own egos.

The first time they met it was at a party. Having gone there with separate partners, they’d ended up leaving together. It had been a case of sheer necessity, she recalled, remembering the way they had only needed to take one look at each other to virtually combust in the ensuing sexual fall-out.

They had become lovers that same night. Within the month she was pregnant. Within the next they were married. Within three years they were sworn enemies. It had all been very wild, very hot and very traumatic from passionate start to bloody finish. Even the final break had come only days after they’d fallen on each other in a fevered attempt to recapture what they had known they were losing.

The sex had been great—the rest a disaster. They had begun rowing within minutes of separating their bodies. He’d stormed off—as usual—and the next day she’d gone into premature labour with their second child and lost their second son while Vito was seeking solace with his mistress.

She would never, ever forgive him for that. She would never forgive the humiliation of having to beg his mistress to send him home because she needed him. But he’d still arrived too late to be of any use to her. By then she had been rushed into hospital and had already lost the baby. To have Vito come to lean over her and murmur all the right phrases—while smelling of that woman’s perfume—had been the final degradation.

She had left Italy with Santo just as soon as she was physically able, and Vito would never forgive her for taking his son away from him.

They both had axes to grind with each other. Both felt betrayed, ill-used and deserted. And if it hadn’t been for Vito’s mother Luisa stepping in to play arbiter, God alone knew where the bitterness would have taken them.

Thanks to Luisa they’d managed to survive three years of relative peace—so long as there was no personal contact between them. Now that peace had been well and truly shattered, and Catherine wished she knew how to stop full-scale war from breaking out.

But she didn’t. Not with the same main antagonist still very much on the scene.

When the telephone began to ring again she went perfectly still, her heart stopping beating altogether as she turned to stare at the darned contraption. Her first instinct was to ignore it. For she didn’t feel up to another round with Vito just yet. But a second later she was snatching up the receiver when she grew afraid the persistent ring would wake Santo.

‘Catherine?’ a very familiar voice questioned anxiously. ‘My son has insisted that I call you. What in heaven’s name is going on, please?’

Luisa. It was Luisa. Catherine wilted like a dying swan onto the sofa. ‘Luisa,’ she breathed in clear relief. ‘I thought you were going to be Vito.’

‘Vito has just stormed out of the house in a fury,’ his mother informed her. ‘After cursing and shouting and telling me that I had to ring you right away. Is something the matter with Santo, Catherine?’ she asked worriedly.

‘Yes and no,’ Catherine replied. Then, on a deep breath, she explained calmly to Luisa, in the kind of words she should have used to Vito, what Santo’s problem was—without complicating the issue this time by bringing Vito’s present love-life into it.

‘No wonder my son was looking so frightened,’ Luisa murmured when Catherine had finished. ‘I have not seen that dreadful expression on his face in a long time, and I hoped never to see it again.’

‘Frightened?’ Catherine prompted, frowning because she couldn’t imagine the arrogant Vito being afraid of anything.

‘Of losing his son again,’ his mother enlightened. ‘What is the matter Catherine? Did you think Vito would shrug off Santo’s concerns as if they did not matter to him?’

‘I—no,’ she denied, surprised by the sudden injection of bitterness Vito’s mamma was revealing.

‘My son works very hard at forging a strong relationship with Santo in the short blocks of time allocated to him,’ her mother-in-law went on. ‘And to hear that this is suddenly being undermined must be very frightening for him.’

In three long years Luisa had never sounded anything but gently neutral, and Catherine found it rather disconcerting to realise that Luisa was, in fact, far from being neutral.

‘Are you, like Vito, suggesting that it’s me who is doing that undermining, Luisa?’ she asked, seeing what she’d always thought of as her only ally moving right away from her.

‘No.’ The older woman instantly denied that. ‘Of course not. I may worry for my son, but that does not mean I am blind to the fact that you both love Santo and would rather cut out your tongues than hurt him through each other.’

‘Well, thanks for that,’ Catherine replied, but her tone was terse, her manner cooling in direct response to Luisa’s.

‘I am not your enemy, Catherine.’ Luisa knew what she was thinking.

‘But if push came to shove—’ Catherine smiled slightly ‘—you know which camp to stand in.’

Luisa didn’t answer and Catherine didn’t expect her to—which was an answer in itself.

‘So,’ Luisa said more briskly. ‘What do you want to do about Santo? Do you want me to delay my journey to London until you have managed to talk him round a little?’

‘Oh, no!’ Catherine instantly vetoed that, surprising herself by discovering that somewhere during the two fraught telephone conversations she had completely changed her mind. ‘You must come, Luisa! He will be so disappointed if you don’t come for him! I just didn’t want you to walk in on his new rebelliousness cold, so to speak,’ she explained. ‘And—and there is a big chance he may refuse to leave with you,’ she warned, adding anxiously, ‘You do understand that I won’t make him go with you if he doesn’t want to?’

‘I am a mother,’ Luisa said. ‘Of course I understand. So I will come, as arranged, and we will hope that Santo has had a change of heart after sleeping on his decision.’

Some hope of that, Catherine thought as she replaced the receiver. For Luisa was labouring under the misconception that Santo’s problems were caused by a sudden and unexplainable loss of confidence in his papà—when in actual fact the little boy’s reasoning was all too explainable.

And she went by the name of Marietta, Catherine mocked bitterly. Marietta, the long-standing friend of the family. Marietta the highly trusted member of Giordani Investments’ board of directors. Marietta the long-standing mistress—the bitch.

She was tall, she was dark, she was inherently Italian. She had grace, she had style, she had unwavering charm. She had beauty and brains and knew how to use both to her own advantage. And, to top it all off, she was shrewd and sly and careful to whom she revealed her true self.

That she had dared to reveal that true self to Santo had, in Catherine’s view, been Marietta’s first big mistake in her long campaign to get Vito. For she might have managed to make Catherine run away like a silly whimpering coward, but she would not send Santo the same way.

Not even over my dead body, Catherine vowed as she prepared for bed that night …

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER spending the night tossing and turning, at around five o’clock the next morning Catherine finally gave up trying to sleep, and was just dragging herself out of bed when the distinctive sound of a black cab rumbling to a halt outside in the street caught her attention. A couple of her neighbours often commuted by taxi early in the morning if they were having to catch an early train somewhere, so she didn’t think twice about it as she padded off to use the bathroom.

Anyway, her mind was busy with other things, like the day ahead of her, which was promising to be as traumatic as the evening that had preceded it.

On her way past his room, she slid open her son’s door to check if he was still sleeping. The sight of his dark head peeping out from a snuggle of brightly printed duvet was reassuring. At least Santo had managed to sleep through his worries.

Closing the door again, she went downstairs with the intention of making herself a large pot of coffee over which she hoped to revive herself before the next round of battles commenced—but a shadow suddenly distorting the early-morning daylight seeping in through the frosted glass panel in her front door made her pause.

Glancing up, she saw the dark bulk of a human body standing in her porch. Her frown deepened. Surely it was too early for the postman? she asked herself, yet still continued to stand there expecting her letterbox to open and a wad of post to come sliding through it. But when instead of bending the dark figure lifted a hand towards her doorbell, Catherine was suddenly leaping into action.

In her urgency to stop whoever it was from ringing the bell and waking up her son she was pulling the door open without really thinking clearly about what she was doing. So it was only after the door opened wide on the motion that she realised she had gone to bed last night without putting the safety chain on.

By then it didn’t matter. It was already too late to remember caution, and all the other safety rules that were a natural part of living these days, when she found herself staring at the very last person she’d expected to see standing on her doorstep.

Her heart took a quivering dive to her stomach, the shock of seeing Vito in the actual flesh for the first time in three long years so debilitating that for the next whole minute she couldn’t seem to function on any other level than sight.

A sight that absorbed in one dizzying glance every hard-edged, clean-cut detail, from the cold sting of his eyes to the grim slant of his mouth and even the way he had one side of his jacket shoved casually aside so he could thrust a hand into his trouser pocket—though she wasn’t aware of her eyes dipping down that low over him.

He was wearing a black dinner suit and a white shirt that conjured up the picture she had built of him the night before; only the bow tie was missing, and the top button of the shirt yanked impatiently open at his lean brown throat.

Had he come here directly from storming out of his house in Naples? she wondered. And decided he had to have done to get here to London this quickly. But if his haste in getting here was supposed to impress her by how seriously he was taking her concerns about Santo—then it didn’t.

She didn’t want him here. And, worse, she didn’t want to watch those honeyed eyes of his drift over her on a very slow and very comprehensive scan of her person, as if she was still one of his possessions.

And the fact that she became acutely aware of her own sleep-mussed state didn’t enamour her, either. He had no right to study the way her tangled mass of copper-gold hair was hanging limp about her shoulders, or the fact that she was standing here in thin white cotton that barely hid what it covered.

Then his gaze moved lower, jet-black lashes sinking over golden eyes that seemed to draw a caressing line across the surface of her skin as they moved over the pair of loose-fitting pyjama shorts which left much of her slender legs on show. And Catherine felt something very old and very basic spring to life inside her.

It was called sexual arousal. The man had always only had to look at her like this to make her make her so aware of herself that she could barely think straight.

‘What are you doing here?’ she lashed out in sheer retaliation.

Arrogance personified, she observed, as a black eyebrow arched and those incredible eyes somehow managed to disparage her down the length of his roman nose, despite the fact that she stood a deep step higher than him, which placed them almost at a level.

‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Vito coolly replied. ‘I am here to see my son.’

‘It’s only five o’clock,’ she protested. ‘Santo is still asleep.’

‘I am well aware of the time, Catherine,’ he replied rather heavily, and something passed across his face—a weariness she hadn’t noticed was there until that moment.

Which was the point when she began to notice other things about him. He looked older than she would have expected, for instance. The signs of a carefully honed cynicism were scoring grooves into his handsome face where once none had been. And the corners of his firm mouth were turned down slightly, as if he never let himself smile much any more.

Seeing that for some reason made her insides hurt. And the sensation infuriated her because she didn’t want to feel anything but total indifference for this man’s state of mind.

‘How did you get here so quickly, anyway?’ she asked with surly shortness.

‘I flew myself in overnight,’ he replied. ‘Then came directly here from the airport.’

Which meant he must have been on the go all night, she concluded. Then another thought sent an icy chill slithering down her spine.

After flying half the night, had he then driven himself here in one of the supercharged death-traps he tended to favour? Glancing over his shoulder, she expected to see some long, low, sleek growling monster of a car crouching by the curbside, but there wasn’t one.

Then she remembered hearing a taxi cab pulling up a few minutes earlier and realised with a new kind of shock that Vito must have used it to travel here from the airport.

Now that must have been a novelty for him, she mused, eyeing him curiously. Vito always liked to be in the driver’s seat, whether that be behind the controls of his plane or the wheel of a car—or even in his sex-life!

‘Which airport did you fly in to?’ she asked, the thrifty housekeeper in her wanting to assess the cost of such a long cab journey.

‘Does it matter?’ He flashed her a look of irritation. ‘And do we have to have this conversation here on the doorstep?’ he then added tersely, his dark head turning to take in the neat residential street with its rows of neat windows—some of which had curtains twitching curiously because their voices must be carrying on the still morning air.

Vito wasn’t a doorstep man, Catherine mused wryly. He was the greatly admired and very respected head of the world-renowned Giordani Investment Bank, cum expert troubleshooter for any ailing business brought under his wing. People valued his opinion and his advice—and welcomed him with open arms when he came to call.

But she was not one of those people, she reminded herself sternly. She owed Vito nothing, and respected him not at all. ‘You’re not welcome here,’ she told him coldly.

‘My son may beg to differ,’ he returned, responding to her hostile tone with a slight tensing of his jaw.

Much as she would have liked to protest that claim, Catherine knew that she couldn’t. ‘Then why don’t you come back—in a couple of hours’, say, when he is sure to be awake?’ she suggested, and was about to shut the door in his face when those golden eyes began to flash.

‘Shut that door and you will regret it,’ he warned very grimly.

To her annoyance, she hesitated, hating herself for being influenced by his tone. And the atmosphere between them thrummed with a mutual antagonism. Neither liked the other; neither attempted to hide it.

‘I would have thought it was excruciatingly obvious that you and I need to talk before Santo is awake,’ he added with rasping derision. ‘Why the hell else do you think I have knocked myself out trying to get here this early?’

Once again, he had a point, and Catherine knew she was being petty, but it didn’t stop her from standing there like a stone wall protecting her own threshold. Old habits died hard, and refusing to give an inch to Vito in case he took the whole mile from her had become second nature during their long and battle-zoned association.

‘You called me, Catherine,’ he then reminded her grimly. ‘An unprecedented act in itself. You voiced your concerns to me and I have responded. Now show a little grace,’ he suggested, ‘and at least acknowledge that my coming here is worthy of some consideration.’

As set-downs went, Catherine supposed that that one was as good as any Vito had ever doled out to her, as she felt herself come withering down from proudly hostile to childishly petty in one fell swoop.

She stepped back without uttering another word and, stiff-faced, eyes lowered, invited her husband of six long years to enter her home for the first time. He did it slowly—stepping over her threshold in a measured way which suggested that he too was aware of the significance of the occasion.

Then suddenly he was there right beside her, sharing the narrow space in her small hallway and filling it with the sheer power of his presence. And Catherine felt the tension build inside her as she stood there and absorbed—literally absorbed—his superior height, his superior breadth, his superior physical strength that had not been so evident while she’d kept him outside, standing nine inches lower and therefore nine inches less the man she should have remembered him to be.

She could smell the unique scent of his skin, feel the vibrations of his body as he paused a mere hair’s breadth away from her to send her nerve-ends on a rampage of wild, scattering panic in recognition of how dangerous those vibrations were to them.

Six years ago it had taken one look for them to fall on each other in a fever of sexual craving. Now here they were, several years of bitter enmity on—and yet she could feel the same hunger beginning to wrap itself around her.

Oh, damn, she cursed silently, though whether she was cursing herself for being so weak of the flesh or Vito for being the sexual animal he undoubtedly was, she wasn’t quite certain.

‘This way,’ she mumbled, snaking her way around him so that their bodies did not brush.

She led the way to her sitting room, shrouded still by the curtains drawn across the window. With a jerk she stepped sideways, to allow him to enter, then watched defensively as his eyes moved over his strange surroundings.

Plain blue carpet and curtains, two small linen sofas, a television set, a couple of low tables and a bookcase was all the small room would take comfortably, except for a special corner of the room dedicated to Santo, where his books, games and toys were stacked on and around a low play table.

It was all very neat, very—ordinary. Nothing like the several elegant and spacious reception rooms filled with priceless antiques in Vito’s home. Or the huge playroom her son had all to himself, filled with everything a little boy could possibly dream of. A point Catherine was made suddenly acutely aware of when she glimpsed the brief twitch along Vito’s jawline as he too made the comparison.

‘I’ll go and get dressed,’ she said, dipping her head to hide her expression as she turned for the door again and—she admitted it—escape, before she was tempted to say something nasty about money not being everything.

But his hand capturing her wrist stopped her. ‘I am no snob, Catherine,’ he murmured sombrely. ‘I know and appreciate how happy and comfortable Santo has been living here with you.’

‘Please let go of my wrist,’ she said, not interested in receiving his commendation on anything. She was too concerned about the streak of heat that was flowing up her arm from the point where his fingers circled her.

‘I am no woman-beater either,’ he tagged on very grimly.

‘That’s very odd,’ she countered as he dropped her wrist. ‘For I seem to remember that the last time we stood alone in a room you were threatening to do just that to me.’

‘Words, Catherine,’ he sighed, half turning away from her. ‘I was angry, and those words were empty of any real threat to you, as you well know.’

‘Do I?’ Her smile was wry to say the least. ‘We were strangers, Vito. We were strangers then and we are strangers now. I never, ever knew what you were thinking.’

‘Except in bed,’ he said, swinging back to look at her, the grimness replaced by a deeply mocking cynicism. ‘You knew exactly what I was thinking there.’

Catherine tossed her head at him, matching him expression for cynical expression. ‘Shame, then, that we couldn’t spend twenty-four hours there instead of the odd six,’ she said. ‘And I really don’t want to have this kind of conversation with you,’ she added. ‘It proves nothing and only clouds the issues of real importance where Santo is concerned.’

‘Our relationship—or the lack of it—is the important issue for Santo, I would have thought.’

‘No.’ She denied that. ‘The important issue for Santo is the prospect of his father marrying a woman his son is actively afraid of.’

Vito stiffened. ‘Define “afraid”,’ he commanded.

Catherine stared at him. ‘Afraid as in frightened—how else would you like me to put it?’

‘Of Marietta?’ His frown was strong with disbelief. ‘He must have misunderstood something she said to him,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘You must know his Italian is not as well-formed as his English.’

Oh, right, Catherine thought. It couldn’t possibly be Marietta’s fault. Not in a Giordani’s eyes!

‘I’m going to get dressed,’ she clipped, abandoning the useless argument by moving back into the hallway.

‘Do you mind if I make myself a cup of coffee while you do that?’

Without a word, she diverted towards the kitchen—but, aware that Vito was following her, Catherine sensed him pause to glance up the stairwell, as if he was hoping his son would suddenly appear.

He didn’t—and he wouldn’t, she predicted, as she continued on into the kitchen. Santo was by nature a creature of habit. His inner alarm clock was set for seven, so seven o’clock was the time he would awaken.

She was over by the sink filling the kettle with water by the time Vito came in the room. The hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle, picking up on his narrowed scrutiny of her, which once again made her acutely aware of the unsuitability of her present clothing.

Not that she was in any way underdressed, she quickly assured herself. The pair of shorts and a shirt-style top she was wearing were adequate enough—it was the lack of anything beneath them that was making her feel so conscious of those oh, too knowing eyes.

‘I don’t suppose you expect to hear from him until seven,’ he murmured suddenly.

Catherine smiled a wry smile to herself as she transferred the kettle to its base and switched it on. So, his attention was firmly fixed on Santo—which put her well and truly in her place!

‘You know his routine, then,’ she answered lightly. ‘And, knowing it, you must also know that if I try to waken him any earlier—’

‘He will not be fit to live with,’ Vito finished for her. ‘Yes, I am aware of that.’

She glanced up at the kitchen clock, heard a sound of rustling cloth behind her and had an itchy feeling that Vito was also checking the time on his wristwatch.

Five thirty, she noted. That meant they had a whole hour and a half to endure each other’s exclusive company. Could they stand it? she wondered, counting coffee scoops into the filter jug.

‘Your hair is shorter than I remember.’

Her mind went blank, the next scoopful of coffee freezing on its way to the jug. After only just reassuring herself that he wasn’t interested in anything about her personally, it came as a shock to discover that her instincts had indeed been working perfectly.

What else had he noticed? The way her shorts tended to cling to the cleft between her buttocks? Or, worse, that as she stood like this, in profile to him, he could see the shadowy outline of her right breast through the thin white cotton?

‘I’m three years older,’ she replied, though what that was supposed to mean even she didn’t know, because she was too engrossed in a whole host of sensations that were beginning to attack her. All of them to do with sex, and sexual awareness, and this damn man, who had always been able to do this to her!

‘You don’t look it.’

And did he have to sound so grim about that?

‘You do,’ she countered in outright retaliation.

The rollercoaster of her own thoughts sent the coffee into the jug and saw the scoop abandoned onto the worktop with an angry flick of her slender wrist before she turned almost defiantly to face him, with a flat band of a false smile slapped on her face meant to show a clear disregard for his feelings.

But the smiled instantly died, melted away by the megawatt charge of his physical presence. He looked lean and mean, with his shirt hanging open at his brown throat and his jaw darkened by a five o’clock shadow. He had the arrogant nose of a Roman conqueror, the dark honeyed eyes of a charming sneak thief, and the wickedly sensual mouth of a gigolo. His body was built to fight lions in an arena, but men no longer did that to prove their prowess.

‘And memories are made of this …’ a silk-smooth voice softly taunted.

Her eyes closed and opened very slowly, bringing her fevered brain swirling back from where it had flown off to, to find him standing there taking malicious pleasure in watching her lose herself in memories of him.

It was like being caught with her hand in the sweetie jar. Sweat suddenly bathed her body, heat flushing her fine white skin—not the heat of arousal but the heat of a humiliation that completely demolished her. She didn’t know what to do; she didn’t know what to say.

‘I’ll get dressed …’ was the wretched thing she actually came out with, and forced her shaking limbs to propel her towards the door and escape—again.

But Vito was not going to let her get off as lightly as that. Oh, no, not this man, with his lethal brand of wit, who also had so many axes to grind on her exposed rear that he was almost gleeful at being given this heaven-sent opportunity.

‘Why bother?’ he therefore drawled smoothly. ‘It is already way too late to cover up what is happening to you, mia cara.’

‘I am not your darling!’ she snapped out in retaliation, knowing she was only rising to his deliberate baiting but unable to stop herself anyway.

‘Maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘But I think you are wondering what it would be like to relive those moments when you were.’

If she didn’t suffocate in her own shame then there really was no justice in the world, because it was what she deserved to do, Catherine derided herself bitterly.

‘Not with you,’ she denied, with an accompanying little shudder. ‘Never with you again.’

‘Was that a challenge? For if it was I might just take you up on it. You never know,’ he mocked. ‘It could be an—interesting exercise to see how many times we can ravish each other in the hour and a half we have free before our son comes down. It would certainly keep our minds off all our other problems …’

If the kitchen door handle had been a gun, she would probably have fired it at him. ‘And if you need to sink yourself that low just to keep your mind occupied—then call in Marietta!’ She used words to slay him with instead. ‘She always was much better trained than me at servicing all your requirements.’

So what’s really new here? she asked herself as a large hand came to land palm flat against the door to hold it shut, making her blink as it landed. ‘You may still possess the body of a siren, Catherine,’ Vito bit out, ‘but you have developed the mouth of a slut! When are you going to listen to me, you blind bitter fool, and believe me when I tell you that Marietta is not and has never been my mistress!’

She should have left it there; Catherine knew she should. She should have remained perfectly still, pinned her ‘mouth of a slut’ shut and ignored his wretched lies until he gave up and let her out of here! But she couldn’t. Vito had always been able to bring out the worst in her—and she the worst in him. They’d used to fight like sworn enemies and make love as if nothing could break them apart. It was like meeting like. His Latin fire versus her Celtish spirit. His oversized ego versus her fierce pride.

It had been a recipe for utter disaster. But for the first few blissful months of their relationship it had been a glorious blending of both passionate temperaments fused together by that wonderfully enthralling sensation she’d used to describe as—true love.

It hadn’t seemed to matter then that the words were never actually spoken, for they had been there in each look, each touch, in the way neither had seemed able to be apart from the other for more than a few hours without making contact—if only with the intimate pitch of their voices via the telephone. Even when she’d fallen pregnant and the warring had begun, she had still believed that love was the engine which had driven them towards marriage.

Meeting Marietta on her wedding day, and learning that this was the woman Vito would have chosen to marry if she had not instead married his best friend Rocco, had placed the first fragile seeds of doubt in her mind about Vito’s true feelings for her.

Yet neither by word nor gesture had Vito revealed any hint that there could be truth in the whispers, and she had very quickly managed to dismiss them when his attention towards her remained sound right through her first troubled pregnancy and into her second.

Then Rocco had been killed in a tragic boating accident, followed within weeks by Vito’s father dying from a massive stroke. And before she’d realised quite what was happening, Vito and Marietta had hardly ever been seen apart.

‘A shared grief’, Vito used to call it. Marietta had called it—inevitable. ‘What do you think Vito did when you trapped him into marriage—put on a blindfold and forgot it was me he was in love with? While Rocco was alive he may have been willing to accept second best in you. But with Rocco gone …?’

‘I’ll believe Marietta’s not your mistress when hell freezes over.’ Catherine came out of her bitter reverie to answer Vito’s question. ‘Now get away from me,’ she commanded, trying to tug open the door.

But Vito’s superior strength held it shut. ‘When I am good and ready,’ he replied. ‘For you started this, so we may as well finish it right here and now, before my son arrives.’

‘Finish what?’ she cried, spinning to stare at him in angry bewilderment. ‘I don’t even know what it is we’re fighting about!’

‘This thing you have against Marietta,’ he grimly enlightened her, ‘is your obsession, Catherine. It always has been. So it therefore follows that it must be you who has been filling Santo’s head full of this nonsense about Marietta and me.’

Catherine stared at him as if she didn’t know him. How a man as intelligent and shrewd as Vito was could be so fatally flawed was a real mystery to her.

‘You are the blind one, Vito,’ she informed him. ‘You are a blind, stubborn and conceited fool who could never see through the charm she lays on you that Marietta is as evil as they come!’

‘And you are sick,’ he responded, his dark face closing into a mask of distaste as he stepped right away from her. ‘You have to be sick, Catherine, to think such things about a person who only wanted to befriend you.’

Befriend me—? ‘I’m sorry if this offends you, Vito.’ She laughed, almost choking on her own fury. ‘But I don’t make friends of my husband’s lovers!’

Honeyed eyes began to flash dire warnings of murder. ‘She has never been my lover!’ he repeated furiously.

‘And you are such a dreadful liar!’ she sliced right back.

‘I do not lie!’

‘I know Marietta has been feeding her poison to Santo just as she once fed it to me,’ she doggedly persisted.

‘I will not continue to listen to this,’ Vito said, reaching out as if to grab her arm so he could shift her away from the door and leave himself.

‘Then will you listen to Santo?’ she challenged.

The hand dropped away, his chin lifting stiffly. ‘It is what I am here for, is it not?’

Why did his accent always thicken when he was under stress? she found herself wondering. Then blinked the silly question away because it had no bearing on what was happening here.

‘But will you believe him?’ she wanted to know. ‘If he tells you that what I have been telling you is the truth?’

‘And what if it is you who has fed him his version of the truth?’ he countered.

Catherine sighed in disgust. ‘Which I presume means that you have no intention of believing your own son’s word—any more than you once believed mine!’

‘I repeat,’ he said. ‘You are the one with the obsession. Not Santo and not me.’

And I am banging my head against a brick wall here, Catherine decided grimly. But what’s new about that? she asked herself, with a deriding twist of her mouth that seemed to set his tense frame literally pulsing.

‘Then I think you should leave,’ she said, moving away from the door and crossing the room to get right away from him. ‘Now, before Santo wakes up and finds you here. Because he will not thank you any more than I do for showing such little faith in his word.’

‘I did not say that I disbelieve what Santo is thinking, only that I disbelieve his source.’

‘Same thing.’ Catherine shrugged that line of argument away. ‘And all I can say is that I find it very sad that you can put your feelings for Marietta before your feelings for your son—which makes your journey here such a wasted gesture.’

Vito said nothing, his face locked into a tight, grim mask as he went over to the kettle and began pouring boiling water into the coffee jug. From her new place by kitchen sink Catherine watched him with an emptiness that said she saw no hope for happiness for him. The man was bewitched by the devil. He had to be if he was so prepared to risk the love of his son for the love of that woman.

But was he? Catherine then pondered thoughtfully. For he was here, wasn’t he? Breaking a court order, willing to risk his visitation rights, because it was more important at present for him to be where his troubled son was. Be of help, if he could. Reassure, if he could …?

‘Well, as a tit-for-tat kind of thing,’ she murmured slowly, ‘let’s just test your love for Marietta against your love for your son, Vito.’

‘It isn’t a competition,’ he denounced.

‘I am making it one,’ she declared. ‘And I’m going to do it by giving you a straight choice. So listen to me, Vito, for I am deadly serious. Either you renounce all intention of ever marrying Marietta,’ she said, ‘or you marry her and forfeit all rights of access to Santino.’

Turning with his coffee cup in hand, he murmured levelly, ‘Word of warning, cara, You will not come between my son and me again, no matter what tricks you try to pull.’

‘Yet pull them I will,’ she instantly promised. And the tension between them began to edge up to dangerous levels again, because she wasn’t bluffing and Vito knew that she wasn’t.

Her father had been an eminent lawyer before his premature demise. He’d had friends in the profession, powerful friends, who specialised in marital conflicts and had been more than willing to come to Catherine’s aid three years ago when she had needed their expertise. They’d tied Vito up in legal knots before he’d even known what had hit him.

She would let them do it again if she felt she had to protect Santo from the evil that was threatening to take up permanent residence in his father’s house. Vito must be as aware as she was that he had already given her the ammunition to fire at him by breaking a court order to come here like this today.

One phone call and she could make good her threat; he knew that.

‘So, what is it to be?’ She flashed him the challenge. ‘Is it Marietta out of your life—or is it going to be Santo?’

He dared to laugh—albeit ruefully. ‘You sound very tough, Catherine. Very sure of yourself,’ he remarked. ‘But you seem to have overlooked one small but very important thing in all your clever plotting.’

‘What?’ she prompted, frowning, because as far as she could tell she had all the aces stacked firmly in her hand.

‘Our son’s clear insecurity and what you mean to do to ease it,’ he said, taking a sip of thick black coffee. ‘The last time you went to war against me, Santo was too young to know what was going on. But not any longer. Now he is old enough and alert enough to be aware of everything that takes place between the two of us.’

Pausing to watch as the full weight of his words settled heavily on her, he then gently offered a direct counter-challenge. ‘Are you willing to risk hurting his love for me with yet another one of your vindictive campaigns aimed to make me toe the line …?”

CHAPTER THREE

‘NO COME-BACK?’ Vito softly prompted when she just stood there, staring at him while the full import of what he was pointing out to her slowly drained all the colour out of her face. ‘Am I to assume, then, that your lust for revenge on sins imagined done to you does not run to hurting your son also?’

No, she thought on a chilled little shudder that spoke absolute volumes, she wasn’t prepared to risk hurting her son’s love for his papà.

‘Well, that makes a refreshing change,’ drawled a man who sounded as if he was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘It almost—almost—restores my faith in you as the loyal loving mother of my son cara—even if it does nothing for my faith in you as the loyal and loving wife.’

Her chin went up, green eyes suddenly awash with derision. ‘If we are going to get onto the subject of loyalty, then you’re moving onto very shaky ground, Vito,’ she warned him darkly.

‘Then of course we will not,’ he instantly conceded. ‘Let us see instead if we can come up with a more—sensible compromise between us, that will adequately meet both our own requirements and fulfil our son’s needs in one neat move …’

Was there such a thing? Catherine’s eyes showed a blankness that said she couldn’t think of one. ‘So, don’t keep me in suspense,’ she snapped. ‘Tell me this compromise.’

He smiled an odd smile, not quite wry, not quite cynical. ‘I am not sure that you are going to like this,’ he murmured.

‘So long as it will put Marietta out in the cold, I’ll be agreeable to anything,’ Catherine assured him recklessly.

He didn’t answer immediately, but the way his eyes began to gleam in a kind of unholy way made her flesh turn cold on the absolute certainty that she was about to be led somewhere she had no wish to go.

‘Look, either cut to the bottom line of what all this taunting is about or get out of here!’ she snapped in sheer nervous agitation.

‘The bottom line,’ he drawled, dropping his eyes down her body, ‘is resting approximately midway down your sensational thighs and has the delicious potential of dropping to your lovely bare feet with a bit of gentle encouragement.’

Glancing down to look where his eyes were looking, she almost suffocated in the sudden wave of heat that went sizzling through her when she realised he was referring to her shorts!

‘Will you just stop being so bloody provocative?’ she choked, not sure if she was angry with him for saying such an outrageous thing or angry with herself for responding to it!

‘I wish I could.’ He grimaced, taking a languid sip of his coffee. ‘But seeing those exquisite legs so enticingly presented has been driving me crazy since I arrived here.’

It was sheer instinct that made Catherine take a step forward with the intention of responding with a slap to his insufferable face!

But his hand deftly stopped her. ‘You still have a great body, Catherine,’ he told her, his eyes pinning her eyes with a look that made her feel as if she was drowning. ‘All long sensual lines and supple curves that stir up some very exciting memories. So exciting in fact,’ he murmured, gently stroking his thumb over the delicate flesh covering her wrist where the pulse-point was fluttering wildly, ‘that it occurred to me—long before you showed your attraction to me, I should add—that with you back in my bed I would not need to look elsewhere to fill that particular place in my life.’

A stunning silence followed. One that locked the air inside her throat and closed down her brain in complete rejection of what he was actually suggesting here!

‘How dare you?’ she breathed in harsh denunciation. ‘How dare you make such a filthy suggestion?’

‘I need a woman in my bed.’ He shrugged with no apology. ‘And, since my son must be protected from the seedier side of that need, then that woman must therefore be my wife. My proper wife,’ he then succinctly extended. ‘One who will proudly grace my table, eagerly grace my bed, and love my son as deeply as I do.’

‘And you think Marietta fills all of those requirements?’ she scoffed in outright contempt for him.

His golden eyes darkened. ‘We are not talking about Marietta now,’ he clipped. ‘We are talking about you, Catherine. You,’ he repeated, putting down his cup so he could free his other hand to slide it around her waist. Her flesh tightened in rejection. He countered its response by pulling her that bit closer to the firmness of his body. ‘Who, even dressed as you are, would still manage to grace any man’s table with your beauty and your inherent sense of style. And as for the sex,’ he murmured in that sinfully sensual tone that helped make him such a dynamic lover. ‘Since I know your rich and varied appetite as well as I know my own, I see no problem in our resurrecting what used to be very satisfying interludes for both of us.’

Interludes? He called what she would have described as giving herself body and soul to him satisfying interludes? She almost choked on her own outrage, feeling belittled and defiled.

But—maybe that had been his intention! ‘You’re disgusting!’ she snapped.

‘I am a realist,’ he said.

‘A realist who is hungry for revenge,’ Catherine extended deridingly, well aware of his real motive.

‘The Italian in me demands it,’ he freely admitted. ‘Just think, though,’ he added softly, ‘how your very British yen for martyrdom could be given free rein. How you could reside in my home with your head held high and pretend that you are only there because of Santo. How you could even share my bed and enjoy every minute of what we do there while pretending to yourself that keeping me happy is the price you have to pay to keep your son happy.’

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you aim to get out of such a wicked scenario?’

‘This …’ he murmured, and with a tug she was against him, his mouth capturing hers with the kind of kiss that flung her back too far and too swiftly into the realms of darkness, where she kept everything to do with this man so carefully hidden.

Well, they were not hiding now, she noted painfully as the heat from his kiss ignited flaming torches that lit their escape. And suddenly she was incandescent with feeling. Hot feelings, crazed feelings, feelings that went dancing wildly through her on a rampage of sheer sensual greed.

Only Vito could do it. Only he had ever managed to fire her up this way. Her body knew his body, exalted in its hardness pressing against her. His tongue licked the flames; his hands staked their claim on her by skimming skilfully beneath the hem of her top, then more audaciously beneath the elasticated band of her shorts.

She must have whimpered at the shock sensation of his flesh sliding against her flesh, because his mouth left hers and his eyes burned black triumph down at her.

‘And I get my pride back,’ he gritted. ‘A pride you took from me and wiped the floor with the day you forced me into court to beg for the right to love my own son!’

And without warning she was free.

Standing there swaying dizzily, it took several moments for her to realise just what he had done to her. Then the shock descended, the appalled horror of how easy she had made it for him, followed closely by an all-consuming shame.

And all in the name of pride, revenge and of course passion, she listed grimly.

Her chin came up, her green eyes turning as grey as an arctic ocean now as she opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with his rotten proposition, his lousy sex appeal—and himself! when a sound beyond the closed kitchen door suddenly caught their attention.

It had them both turning towards the door, and freezing as they listened to Santo coming down the stairs, bumping something which sounded rather heavy down behind him. And in perfect unison they both then glanced up at the kitchen clock to note that it was only six-thirty, before they looked back at the door again.

The time was significant. It meant that their son was so disturbed by his worries that they’d woken him early.

From the corner of her eye Catherine saw Vito swallow tensely and his hands clench into fists at his sides. His face was suddenly very pale, his eyes dark, and the way his lips parted slightly in an effort to help his frail breathing brought home to her just how worried he was about what his son’s reaction was going to be towards him.

She then suggested to herself an alternative. Afraid? Was Vito’s expression the one Luisa had described as his frightened look?

Her heart began to ache for him, despite her not wanting it to. Vito loved his son; she had never doubted that. In a thousand other doubts she had never once doubted his love for his son.

Yet still he didn’t deserve the way her hand reached instinctively out to touch his arm in a soothing gesture. And beyond the residue of her anger with him over that kiss she felt tungsten steel flex with tension as the kitchen door flew open, swinging back on its hinges against the wall to reveal their son standing there in the opening.

Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, a baseball cap placed firmly on his dark head and his travel hold-all, packed to bursting by the look of it, sitting on the floor beside him, while one little fist had a death grip on the bag’s thick strap.

If he’d already been aware that his father was here, then the complete lack of expression on his solemn little face would have been understandable. But he hadn’t known; Catherine was sure of it. Their home was old and the walls were thick. And no matter how heated their verbal exchanges had grown on occasion, neither of them had raised their voices enough for the sound to filter out of this room.

So her heart stopped aching for the father to begin aching for the son as Santo completely ignored Vito’s presence in the room to level his defiant dark brown eyes on his mother.

‘I’m running away,’ he announced. ‘And you’re not to follow.’

It could have been comical. Santo certainly looked and sounded comical standing there like that and making such a fantastic announcement.

But Catherine had never felt less like laughing in her life. For he meant it. He truly meant to run away because he believed that nobody loved him.

And if Marietta had done Catherine the favour of walking in here right now she would have scratched her wicked eyes out.

She went to go to him, needed to go to him and simply hug him to her, wrap him in as much love as she could possibly muster.

Only Vito was there before her—and he was wiser. He didn’t so much as attempt to touch the little boy as he hunkered down on his haunches in front of him. Instead, he began talking in a deep and soft husky Italian.

Santo responded by allowing himself brief—very brief—eye to eye contact with his papà. ‘English,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t speak Italian any more.’

To Vito’s deserving credit, he switched languages without hesitation, though the significance of his son’s rejection must have pierced him like a knife.

‘But where will you go?’ he was asking gently. ‘Have you money for your trip? Would you like me to lend you some?’ he offered when the little boy’s eyes flickered in sudden confusion because something as unimportant as money hadn’t entered into his thoughts while he had been drawing up his plans to run away.

What was in his bag didn’t bear thinking about unless Catherine wanted to weep. But she could hazard a fairly accurate guess at several treasured toys, a couple of his favourite tee shirts and his new trainers, since he didn’t have them on. And tucked away hidden at the bottom of the bag would be a piece of tatty cotton that the experts would euphemistically call his comforter, though only she was supposed to know about it and he would rather die than let his papà find it.

‘I don’t want your money.’ Vito’s son proudly refused the offer.

‘Breakfast, then,’ Catherine suggested, coming to squat down beside Vito, her eyes the compassionate eyes of a mother who understood exactly what a small boy’s priorities would be. ‘No one should run away without eating a good breakfast first,’ she told him. ‘Come and sit down at the table,’ she urged, holding out an inviting hand to him, ‘and I’ll get you some juice and a bowl of that new cereal you like.’

He ignored the hand. Instead his fiercely guarded brown eyes began flicking from one adult face to the other, and a confused frown began to pucker at his brow. Vito uttered a soft curse beneath his breath as understanding hit him. Catherine was a second behind him before she realised what it was that was holding Santo’s attention so.

And now the tears really did flood her eyes, because it wasn’t Santo’s fault that this had to be the first time in his young memory that his parents’ two faces had appeared in the same living frame in front of him!

An arm suddenly arrived around her shoulders. Warm and strong, the attached hand gave her arm a warning squeeze. As a razor-sharp tactician, famed for thinking on his feet, Vito had few rivals; she knew that. But the way he had quickly assessed the situation and decided on expanding on the little boy’s absorption in their novel togetherness was impressive even to her.

‘We don’t want you to leave us, son …’ As slick as that Vito compounded on the ‘togetherness’.

Santos’s eyes fixed on Catherine. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, so pathetically in need of reassurance that she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching out for him.

‘Of course I do. I love you.’ She stated it simply. She then extended that claim to include Vito. ‘We both love you.’

But Santo was having none of it. ‘Marietta says you don’t,’ he told his father accusingly. ‘Marietta said I was a mistake that just gets in the way.’

‘You must have misunderstood her,’ Vito said grimly.

The son’s eyes flicked into insolence. ‘Marietta said that you hate my mummy because she made you have me,’ he said. ‘She said that’s why you live in Naples and I live here in London, out of your way.’

Vito’s fingers began to dig into Catherine’s shoulder. Did he honestly believe that she would feed her own son this kind of poison when anyone with eyes could see that Santo was tearing himself up with it all?

‘What Marietta says is not important, Santo,’ she inserted firmly. ‘It’s what Papà says and I say that really matters to you. And we both love you very much,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘Would Papà have gone without his sleep to fly himself here through the night just to come and see you if he didn’t love you?’

The remark hit a nerve. Catherine saw the tiny flicker of doubt enter her son’s eyes as he turned them on his father. ‘Why did you come?’ he demanded of Vito outright.

‘Because you would not come to me,’ Vito answered simply. ‘And I miss you when you are not there …’

I miss you when you are not there … For Catherine those few words held such a wealth of love in them that she wanted to weep all over again. Not for Santo this time, but for another little person, one who would always be missed even though he could never be here.

Maybe Vito realised what kind of memory his words had evoked, maybe he was merely responding to the tiny quiver she gave as she tried to contain what was suddenly hurting inside her. But his arm grew heavier across her shoulders and gently he drew her closer to his side.

With no idea what was passing through his mother’s heart, Santo too was responding to all of that love placed into his father’s statement. The small boy let out a sigh that shook mournfully as it left him, but at last some of the stiffness left his body—though he still wasn’t ready to drop his guard. Marietta had hurt him much too deeply for her wicked words to be wiped out by a couple of quick reassurances.

‘Where’s Nonna?’ he asked, clearly deciding it was time to change the subject.

His father refused to let him. ‘I promised her I would bring you back to Naples with me, if I could convince you to come,’ Vito said.

‘I don’t like Naples any more,’ Santo responded instantly. ‘I don’t ever—ever—want to go there again.’

‘I am very sorry to hear that, Santo,’ Vito responded very gently. ‘For your sudden dislike of Naples rather spoils the surprise your mamma and I had planned for you.’

‘What surprise?’ the boy quizzed warily.

Surprise? Catherine was repeating to herself, her head twisting to look at Vito with a question in her eyes, wondering just where he was attempting to lead Santo with this.

‘I’m not going to live with you in Naples!’ Santo suddenly shouted as his busy mind drew its own conclusions. ‘I won’t live anywhere where Marietta is going to live!’ he stated forcefully.

Vito frowned. ‘Marietta does not live in my house,’ he pointed out.

‘But she will when you marry her! I hate Marietta!’

In response, Vito turned to Catherine with a look meant to turn her to stone. He still thought it was she who had been feeding his son all this poison against his precious Marietta!

I’ll make you pay for this! those eyes were promising. And as Catherine’s emotions began the see-sawing tilt from pain to bitterness, her green eyes fired back a spitting volley of challenges, all of which were telling him to go ahead and try it—then go to hell for all she cared!

He even understood that. ‘Then hell it is,’ he hissed in a soft undertone that stopped the threat from reaching their son’s ears.

Then he was turning back to Santo, all smooth-faced and impressive puzzlement. ‘But how can I marry Marietta when I am married to your mamma?’ he posed, and watched the small boy’s scowl alter to an uncertain frown—then delivered with a silken accuracy the dart aimed to pierce dead centre of his son’s vulnerability. ‘And your mamma and I want to stay married, Santino. We love each other just as much as we love you. We are even going to live in the same house together.’

It was the ultimate coup de grâce, delivered with the perfect timing of a master of the art.

And through the burning red mists that flooded her brain cells Catherine watched Vito’s head turn so he could send her the kind of smile that turned men into devils. Deny it, if you dare, that smile challenged.

She couldn’t. And he knew she couldn’t, because already their son’s face was lighting up as if someone had just switched his life back on. So she had to squat there, seething but silent, as Vito then pressed a clinging kiss to her frozen lips as still he continued to build relentlessly on the little boy’s new store of ‘togetherness’ images.

Then all she could do was watch, rendered surplus to requirements by his machiavellian intellect, as he turned his attention back to their little witness and proceeded to add the finishing touches with an expertise that was positively lethal.

‘Will you come too, Santo?’ he murmured invitingly. ‘Help us to be a proper family?’

A proper family, Catherine repeated silently. The magic words to any child from a broken home.

‘You mean live in the same house—you, me and mummy?’ Already Santo’s voice was shaky with enchantment.

Vito nodded. ‘And Nonna,’ he added. ‘Because it has to be Naples,’ he warned solemnly. ‘For it is where I work. I have to live there, you understand?’

Understand? The little boy was more than ready to understand anything so long as Vito kept this dream scenario flowing. ‘Mummy likes Naples,’ he said eagerly. ‘I know she does because she likes to listen to all the places we’ve visited and all the things that we do there.’

‘Well, from now on we can do those things together, as a family.’ His papà smoothly placed yet another perfect image into his son’s mental picture book.

At which point Catherine resisted the power of the arm restraining her and got up, deciding that she was most definitely surplus to requirements since the whole situation was out of her control now.

‘I’m going to get dressed,’ she said. They didn’t seem to hear her. And as she stepped around Santo he was already moving towards his darling papà. Arms up, eyes shining, he landed in Vito’s lap with all the enthusiasm of a well-loved puppy …

‘If you still possess a healthy respect for your health, then I advise you to keep your distance,’ Catherine warned as Vito’s tall, lean figure appeared on the periphery of her vision.

She was in her small but sunny back garden hanging out washing, in the vague hopes that the humdrum chore would help ease some the angst that had built up in her system after having a great morning playing happy families.

Together, they had eaten a delightful breakfast where the plans had flown thick and fast on what to do in Naples during a long hot summer. And she’d smiled and she’d enthused and she’d made suggestions of her own to keep it all absolutely super. Then Santo had taken Vito off to show him his bedroom with all the excitement of a boy who felt as if he was living in seventh heaven.

Now Santo was at his best friend’s house, several doors away, where he was excitedly relaying all his wonderful news to a captivated audience, who would no doubt be seeing Santo’s change in fortune in the same guise as the child equivalent to winning the lottery.

Which clearly left Vito free to come in search of her, which was, in Catherine’s view, him just begging for trouble.

He knew she was angry. He knew she was barely managing to contain the mass of burning emotion which was busily choking up her system at the cavalier way he had decided her life for her.

‘Don’t you have an electric dryer for those?’ he questioned frowningly.

For a man she’d believed had no concept of what a tumble dryer was, the question came as a surprise to her. But as for answering it—she was in no mood to stand here explaining that shoving the clothes into a tumble dryer was no therapy at all for easing what was screaming to escape from her at this moment.

So instead she bent down to pluck one of Santo’s tee shirts out of the washing basket, then straightened to peg it to the line, unaware of the way the sunlight played across the top of her neatly tied hair as she moved, picking out the red strands from the gold strands in a fascinating dance of glistening colour.

Nor was she aware of the way the simple straight skirt she was wearing stretched tight across the neat curve of her behind as she bent, or that her tiny white vest top gave tantalising glimpses of her breasts cupped inside her white bra.

But Vito Giordani was certainly aware as he stood there in the shade thrown by the house, leisurely taking it all in.

And a lack of sun didn’t detract from his own dark attraction—as Catherine was reluctantly aware. Though you would be hard put to tell when she had actually looked at him long enough to note anything about him.

A sigh whispered from her, and her fingers got busier as a whole new set of feelings began to fizz into life.

‘Could you leave that?’ Vito asked suddenly. ‘We need to talk while we have the chance to do so.’

‘I think I’ve talked myself out today,’ Catherine answered satirically.

‘You’re angry,’ he allowed.

‘I am?’ With a deft flick she sent the rotating line turning, so she could gain access to the next free bit of washing line. ‘And here was I thinking I was deliriously ecstatic,’ she drawled.

His brows snapped together as her sarcastic tone carried on the crystal-clear morning air. Out there, beyond the low fencing that formed the boundaries between each garden, children’s voices could be heard. Any one of them could be Santo, and Vito, it seemed, was very aware of that, because he started walking towards her, closing the gap between them so that their voices wouldn’t carry.

‘You must see that I really had no alternative but to say what I did,’ he said grimly.

‘The troubleshooter at work, thinking on his feet and with his mouth.’ She nodded, fingers busy with pegs and damp fabric. ‘I was very impressed, Vito,’ she assured him. ‘How could I not be?’

‘I would say that you are most unimpressed.’ He sighed, stooping to pick up the next piece of washing for her.

Another first, Catherine mused ruefully. Vittorio Giordani helping to hang out washing. For some stupid reason the apparition set her lower abdomen tingling.

‘I have a life here, Vito,’ she replied, ignoring the sensation. ‘I have a job I love doing and commitments I have no wish to renege on.’ Carefully, so she didn’t have to make contact with his fingers, she took Santo’s little school shirt from him.

‘With your language and secretarial qualifications you could get a job anywhere.’ He dismissed that line of argument. ‘Templeton and Lang are not the only legal firm that specialise in European law.’

‘You know where I work?’ Surprise sent her gaze up to his face. He was smiling wryly—but even that kind of smile was a sexy smile. She looked away again quickly before it got a hold on her.

‘Santo has been very vocal about how busy his mamma’s important job keeps her.’

‘You don’t approve,’ Catherine assumed by his tone.

‘Of you working?’ Bending again, he selected the next piece of washing. ‘I would rather you had been here at home for Santo,’ he said, with no apology for his chauvinistic outlook.

‘Needs must,’ was all she said, not willing to get into that particular argument. They’d had it before, after all, when she’d insisted on continuing to work after they married. Then it had been easy for her, because her multilingual expertise had been well sought after in many fields of modern business. In Naples, for instance, she had managed to pick up a job working for the local Tourist Information Board. Vito had been furious, his manly ego coming out for an airing when he’d wanted to know what the hell people would think of him allowing his pregnant wife to work!

Just another heated row they’d had amongst many rows.

‘But the devil in this case is definitely not me,’ Vito said dryly. ‘It is you who refused any financial support when you left me,’ he reminded her.

‘I can support myself.’ Which she always had done, even while she’d been living with Vito in his big house with its flashy cars and its even flashier lifestyle.

She had never been destitute. Her father had seen to that. Having brought her up himself from her birth, he had naturally made adequate provision for the unfortunate chance of his own demise. She owned this little house in middle-class suburbia outright, had no outstanding debts and still had money put away for the rainy days in life. And being reared in a single-parent professional house meant she’d grown up fiercely independent and self-confident. Marrying an arrogant Italian steeped in old-fashioned values had been a test on both qualities from the very start.

But the only time her belief in herself had faltered had been when she was pregnant for a second time and too sick and weakened to fight for anything—and that had included her husband’s waning affections.

An old hurt began to ache again, the kind of hurt that suddenly rendered her totally, utterly, helplessly desolate.

‘I can’t live with you again, Vito,’ she said, turning eyes darkened by a deep sadness on him. ‘I can’t …’ she repeated huskily.

The sudden glint of pain in his own eyes told her that he knew exactly what had brought that little outburst on, but where compassion and understanding would have been better, instead anger slashed to life across his lean, dark features.

‘Too late,’ he clipped. ‘The luxury of choice has been denied to you. This is not about what you want any more, Catherine,’ he stated harshly. ‘Or even what I want. It is what our son wants.’

‘Our surviving son,’ she whispered tragically.

Again the anger pulsed. ‘We mourn the dead but we celebrate the living,’ he ruthlessly declared. ‘I will not allow Santo to pay the price of his brother’s tragic ending any longer!’

Or maybe his tactics were the right ones, Catherine conceded as she felt his anger ignite her anger, which sent the pain fleeing. ‘You truly believe that’s what I’ve been doing?’ she gasped.

His broad shoulders flexed. ‘I do not know what motivates you, Catherine,’ he growled. ‘I never did, and now I have no wish to know. But the future for both of us is now set in stone. Accept it and leave the past where it belongs, because it has outplayed its strength and no longer has any bearing on what we do now.’

With that, he turned away, his black scowl enough to put the sun out.

‘Does that include Marietta?’ she demanded of his back.

He’d already stopped listening—his attention suddenly fixing on something neither of them had noticed while they’d been so busy arguing. But they certainly noticed now the rows of boundary hedges with varying adult heads peering over the top of them, all of them looking curiously in their direction.

‘Oh, damn,’ Catherine cursed. At which point, the sound of the telephone ringing inside the house was a diversion she was more than grateful for. Smiling through tingling teeth, she excused herself and went inside, leaving him to be charming to the neighbours, because that was really all he was fit for!

Snatching up the phone from its kitchen wall extension, she almost shot her name down the line.

‘Careful, darling, I have delicate eardrums,’ a deeply teasing voice protested.

It was like receiving manna from heaven after a fall-out of rats. ‘Marcus,’ she greeted softly, and leaned back against the kitchen unit with her face softened by its first warm smile of the day. ‘What are you doing calling so early in the morning?’

‘It’s such a beautiful morning, though. So I had this sudden yen to spend it with my favourite person,’ he explained, unaware that he had already lost Catherine’s attention.