by Lynne Graham
‘After the first year, the military government awarded political status to all rebel prisoners. Good move. If you’ve banged up about a quarter of the entire male population and the country is so poor you can’t afford to feed them, you have to prepare the footwork for an amnesty to let them out again,’ Damiano explained levelly. ‘And put them to work in the short-term so that they can produce enough not to be a burden on the economy.’
‘A quarry…’ Eden framed in shaken disbelief, emotion overpowering her even in the face of that deadpan recitation. ‘Your poor hands…you had s-such beautiful hands—’
‘Dio mio…I was glad to work! Beautiful hands?’ Damiano countered with very masculine mockery. ‘What am I? A male model or something?’
Squeezing her eyes tightly shut against the stinging tears already blinding her, Eden lifted his hand to her face and kissed his fingers. She couldn’t have spoken or explained why to save her life, but she could no more have prevented herself from doing it than she could have stopped breathing.
In the aftermath of that gesture, the silence was so charged it just about screamed out loud.
Damiano withdrew his hand. Eden raised her face and clashed with stunned dark eyes and her face began to burn up like a bonfire.
‘What’s got into you?’ Damiano demanded raggedly, his disconcertion over her emotional behaviour unconcealed.
‘I’m…I’m sorry…’ she mumbled, wishing a big hole would open up and swallow her, suddenly feeling so absolutely foolish.
‘No…don’t apologise for possibly the only spontaneous affection you have ever shown me!’ Damiano urged, studying her with bemused intensity.
‘That’s not true,’ she whispered in dismay at that charge, uttered with such assurance as if it were a fact too well-known to be questioned.
But Damiano forestalled any further protest on her part by suddenly leaning forward to frown out at the suburban street the limo was now traversing to ask in honest bewilderment, ‘Where on earth are we going?’
Eden tensed, ‘My flat. It’s on the outskirts of town—’
‘You left our home to move into a town flat?’ Damiano demanded in astonishment. ‘I assumed that you had moved to Norfolk so that you could live in a country house!’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that, Damiano. For a start I wouldn’t have had the money to buy myself a house and what would I have lived on? Air?’ Eden heard herself respond with helpless defensiveness. ‘The bank may have continued trading after your disappearance but all your personal assets were frozen which meant that I couldn’t touch any of your money—’
‘Naturally I am aware of that fact,’ Damiano cut in drily. ‘But are you seriously trying to tell me that my brother was not prepared to support you?’
It was amazing just how swiftly they had contrived to arrive at the very nub of the problem. The hard reality that Eden had become estranged from his family during his absence, news that would never, ever have gone down well with a male as family orientated as Damiano. And news which would go down even less well should he be told the truth of why the bad feeling had reached such a climax that she had no longer felt able to remain under the same roof.
‘No, I’m not trying to tell you that,’ Eden countered tightly, unable to bring her eyes to meet his in any direct way, playing for time while she attempted to come up with a credible explanation. ‘I just felt that it was time I moved out and stood on my own feet—’
‘After only four months? It did not take you long to give up all hope of my return!’ Damiano condemned grittily.
The sudden silence reverberated.
And then Damiano made an equally abrupt and dismissive movement with one lean brown hand. ‘No, forget that I said that! It was cruelly unfair. Nuncio himself admitted that he had believed me to be dead the first month and you never grew as close to my family as I had once hoped. The crisis of my disappearance divided you all rather than bringing you closer together—’
‘Damiano,’ Eden interceded tautly on the defensive.
‘No, say no more. I would accept no excuses from Nuncio and I will accept none from you. That my brother should have flown out to Brazil without bringing my wife with him struck me as beyond the bounds of belief!’ Damiano admitted grimly, his firm mouth hardening. ‘Only nothing could have more clearly illustrated how deep the divisions between you had become—’
‘Yes…but—’
‘My disappointment at that reality was considerable but it is not something which I wish to discuss right now,’ Damiano interrupted with all the crushing dismissal he could bring to any subject which annoyed him and which she well recalled from the distant past.
Eden had gone from shrinking terror at what might be revealed if she dared to protest her own innocence to instinctive resentment of that innately superior assurance. Dear heaven, did he think they were all foolish children to be scolded and set to rights on how they ought to be behaving? And then just when she was on the very brink of parting her lips and disabusing him of that illusion, it occurred to her that it would be wiser to let him think as he did for the present. Let sleeping dogs lie…only for how long would they lie quiet? Stifling that ennervating thought, Eden swallowed hard.
However, she need not have worried about where the conversation was going for at that point the limo drew up outside the narrow building where she both lived and worked. Damiano gazed out at the very ordinary street of mixed housing and shops with raised ebony brows.
‘It may not be what you’re used to but it’s not as bad as it looks.’ Eden took advantage of his silence to hurriedly climb out and lead the way, only to find herself hovering when Damiano paused to instruct the chauffeur in Italian. The limo pulled away from the kerb again and drove off.
Well aware that Damiano would not associate her with the name James etched in small print below the sign, ‘Garment Alterations,’ on the barred door, Eden hastened on past and mounted the steep stairs. The shop was shut. On Wednesday, most of the local shops took a half-day.
With a taut hand, she unlocked the door of her flat. Damiano strode in. In one all-encompassing and astonished glance he took in the compact living area and the three doors leading off to bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. ‘I can’t believe you left our home to live like this!’
‘I wish you’d stop referring to the town house as our home. It may have been yours but it never felt like mine,’ Eden heard herself respond, surprising herself with her own vehemence as much as she could see she had surprised him, for he had come to an arrested halt.
Damiano frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Living in the town house was like living in a commune—’
‘A commune?’
‘The communal Italian way of living; no matter how big the house is, there is never one corner you can call your own,’ Eden extended jerkily.
‘I was not aware that you felt like that about living with my family.’ Damiano’s outrage purred along every syllable of his response.
Eden knotted her trembling hands together. She was shaken by the strength of her desire to shout back at him for his refusal to accept the obvious and understand. That lack of privacy had contributed to their problems.
‘Although I consider it beneath me to make the reminder, you came from a home no bigger than a rabbit hutch where I am quite sure it was an even bigger challenge to find a corner you could call your own,’ Damiano framed with sardonic bite.
It was so crazy to be arguing about such a thing now. Her brain acknowledged that reality but, hurt that he should refer to the vast difference between their backgrounds, she could not keep her tongue still. ‘So because you viewed our marriage as being along the lines of King Cophetua and the beggar maid—’
‘King…who?’
‘I was supposed to be grateful to find myself in a house that belonged to not just one but two other women!’
‘What other women?’ Having given up on establishing who the fabled King was, Damiano was studying her now
as if she were slow-witted.
Eden’s hands parted and then knotted into fists. ‘Nuncio’s wife, Valentina, and your sister, Cosetta. It was their home long before I came along—’
‘I cannot believe we are having this absurd argument.’
‘I couldn’t even redecorate my own bedroom without offending someone…and you think I should have liked living like that? Always guests with us at meal times, always having to be polite and on my best behavior, never being able to relax, never being alone anywhere with you but in a bedroom—’
‘And there least of all if you could help it,’ Damiano slotted in reflectively. ‘You would fall asleep in company before you would go upstairs at night. I did get the message.’
At that unanswerable reminder and assurance, Eden turned pale. The pained resentment went out of her then as if he had punched a button. She was both taken aback and embarrassed that she should have dragged up something which was so outstandingly trivial and inappropriate in the light of what he had endured since. And so great was that sense of shamed self-exposure, she just turned round jerkily and hurried off into the kitchen, muttering feverishly, ‘You must want a coffee.’
She left behind her a silence, a huge silence.
With a trembling hand, she put on the kettle. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘No, thanks,’ Damiano countered. ‘With Nuncio fussing round me like a mother hen, I was practically force-fed all the way from Brazil!’
He had followed her as far as the doorway. Out of the corner of her eye, she snaked a nervous glance at his enervating stillness. So tall, so dark, so heartbreakingly handsome. He was here, he was home—well, in her home temporarily. She loved this guy, she really, really loved this guy. And here she was raving at him about stuff that was five years out of date and of about as much relevance to him now as an old weather report!
Was she out of her mind? It wasn’t fair to hold his shock at the way she was living against him. He had left her behind in a mansion with twenty-five bedrooms and a full quota of domestic staff. Evidently, he had assumed that she would be protected by his brother’s wealth from the usual financial problems of a wife with a husband who had vanished. So it was understandable that he should be astonished, even annoyed to find her ensconced in a tiny flat, existing on a budget that wouldn’t have covered what his sister spent on shoes in a week.
‘I didn’t realize that you disliked living with my family…I never thought about that possibility,’ Damiano admitted flatly.
‘It’s all right…I don’t know why I mentioned it,’ Eden gabbled in an apologetic surge, desperate to placate. ‘It’s so unimportant now—’
‘No, it’s not. I’ll stay here until this evening but…’
Oh, dear heaven, he was going to leave her again! In a short space of time, it seemed she had alienated him, driven him off. A chill so deep it pierced her like a knife spread through Eden.
‘I just need more space around me right now…OK?’
‘OK…’ Eden whispered so low she was almost drowned out by the boiling kettle. Space? Personal space and freedom, the sort of psychological stuff the Foreign Office advisor had tried to give her a crash course in understanding, she presumed, feeling sick. He wanted space away from her, he wanted to escape from her after less than a hour. She felt as if the roof were coming down on her, crushing the breath from her body.
‘I’ve got twenty-four hours of meetings mapped out ahead of me already,’ Damiano said levelly. ‘There are legal niceties to be dealt with, press announcements to be made, new arrangements to be set in motion at the bank. I can’t stay here. I have to be in London.’
He had never intended to stay. This had just been a flying visit. Literally! While he’d spoken, she had started to make the coffee on automatic pilot but as he continued to speak, and her heart sank, automatic pilot failed her. She didn’t even notice that the cup she was filling was overflowing.
‘Porca miseria!’ Suddenly Damiano was right there behind her, his hands closing urgently over her taut shoulders as he yanked her back out of reach of the pool of boiling water about to cascade off the edge of the worktop. ‘You almost scalded yourself!’
Pale and trembling, Eden focused on the hot water pouring down on to the floor with dismayed eyes.
‘Just go and sit down…I’ll deal with the flood,’ Damiano asserted, thrusting her towards the door with determination. ‘I think you’re still in shock.’
From the sitting room Eden paused to look back and watch Damiano mopping up. ‘It just doesn’t seem real…you doing something domesticated like that, you being here,’ she mumbled unevenly.
She encountered brilliant dark eyes as intent on her as she was on him. ‘You’re as white as a sheet, cara. Sit down.’
She sat because she was honestly afraid that, if she didn’t, she might fall down. It seemed just a minute later but of course it must have been longer than that by the time Damiano reappeared and placed a cup of coffee in front of her. Damiano, who had once pressed a bell to get a cup of coffee or anything else he fancied. Yes, she thought in the disorientated manner of someone too strung up to reason rationally: Annabel would have come running back had Damiano so much as snapped his fingers. Even after he’d married! Struggling to get her wandering mind back under control, Eden fought for some semblance of composure.
‘You’re just coming apart at the seams…’ Damiano groaned, bending over her without warning and lifting her up, only to lay her down again full length on the sofa. He snatched up the throw from the arm of one of the chairs and carefully arranged it over her. He hunkered down on a level with her, smoothed her hair back from her drawn face and breathed in a ragged undertone of regret. ‘I’ve always been such a selfish bastard.’
The rawness of his emotions was etched in every line of his lean strong face. In the whole of their marriage, Damiano had never behaved as he just had or indeed looked or spoken as he did then. Eden was transfixed. Guilt…was this guilt she was hearing, guilt that he had hurt her? For she had made a hash of things within the first minute of seeing him again. Telling him she loved him! Dear heaven, where had her wits and her pride been? Five years on from a marriage he had long known to be a mistake! It was a wonder that he had even been prepared to give her these few hours. He was trying to let her down gently but equally impatient to get back to his own life. Back to the bank, back to the family from hell…
‘I have had a long time to think about our marriage,’ Damiano stated almost harshly.
‘I know…’ She shut her eyes because she just wanted to shut him up before he said more than she could stand to hear. She did not want the full spotlight of his attention on her. She just might break down and start sobbing and pleading.
‘I was cruel…’
She jerked her chin in dumb acknowledgement and then whipped over on to her side, turning her narrow back to him, so much tormented emotion swilling about inside her, she was afraid she would break apart under the pressure. She crammed a fist against her wobbling mouth, willing herself into silence.
‘I tried to make you into something you couldn’t be…’
Sexy, adventurous, wanton, seductive. That was what he had wanted. That was what he hadn’t got. The sort of female who pranced about in front of him in silk underwear and was willing to have sex somewhere other than in a bed with all the lights switched off. The sort of female who played a more active part, who did something more than simply lie there. The sort of female who was able to show him that she wanted him.
‘I had unrealistic expectations,’ Damiano breathed in a driven admission.
Formed by a vast experience of other women to who such outdated inhibitions had evidently been unknown, she reflected with a bitter sense of squirming failure.
‘I wasn’t used to hearing that word, “no”…’
Well, he had certainly heard it a lot both before and after he’d married. Would it really have killed her to take her clothes off in front of him or let him undress her ju
st once? Couldn’t she have said, ‘yes’ that time he had started kissing her in the car when he had come back from a long business trip?
‘What I’m trying to say is that I was wrong to make the bedroom such an issue…do you think you could say something?’ Damiano murmured tautly.
‘Nothing to say,’ Eden whispered, keeping her back turned to him, tears running down her cheeks.
The silence fizzed like the shaken bottle of a soft drink, threatening explosion from pent-up pressure. She had done the wrong thing again. He wanted her to talk but what on earth did he expect her to say? Everything he had said meant just one thing to Eden: he wanted a divorce, a civilised one where blame was shared and platitudes were mouthed and nobody held spite. So he was smoothing over the past, trying to change it. What else could he be doing when he said he should not have made the bedroom such an issue?
For wasn’t sexual satisfaction of major importance to most men? And, to a male of Damiano’s ilk, a taken-for-granted expectation. After years of being pursued, flattered and treated to every feminine wile available, a rich and powerful man took it as his due that he would marry a sensual woman. But then she knew why Damiano had ended up asking someone as unsuitable as she had been to marry him, didn’t she? Her tummy turned over. On the rebound from Annabel, he had been a male used to winning every time, and had been challenged by Eden’s refusal to sleep with him.
‘I’ve got some calls to make,’ Damiano said flatly.
‘I’m sorry, I—?’
‘No!’ Damiano countered with grim disapproval. ‘I do not want to hear you always apologising. You weren’t like that when I married you…I made you that way by acting like a bully!’
So taken aback was Eden by that declaration that she opened her eyes and lifted her head with a jerk, but the only reward she received was the decisive snap of the bedroom door closing. A bully? Was that how she had made him feel with her inability to talk or respond on the level he required? That idea pained her even more and sent her thoughts winging back into the distant past…