Kitabı oku: «Love's Revenge», sayfa 2

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.’