Kitabı oku: «Love's Revenge», sayfa 3

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.