Damiano's Return

by Lynne Graham

  But, prior to his disappearance, Damiano had given her no cause to believe that he was being unfaithful, she reminded herself urgently. Now she had this one last chance. Maybe she had run out of chances. But he was worth the effort. She tiptoed back to the bedroom doorway and feasted her fraught eyes upon him. Oh, yes, he was still worth a major effort and in just a few hours he would be gone for ever!

  Wrinkling her nose, she up-ended the glass and drank deep. Then she stripped off her clothes. She put on perfume, made careful use of her small stock of cosmetics and fussed endlessly with the blonde hair that tumbled round her shoulders in no particular style. As she usually wore her hair up, she had got lazy about getting it cut. She wondered if old vodka went off in strength and decided she had better drink some more. She was going to be everything Damiano had ever wanted just once. Not that prude he had left on the sofa. To prove that to herself, she walked naked out to the hall storage cupboard to dig out a box of keepsakes she had chosen not to leave behind in the town house.

  Damiano had sent her a box of gorgeous silk lingerie the day before their wedding. The upfront guy spelling out his expectations, fantasies, hopes. No doubt, he had not appreciated just how outright intimidated she had been by that gesture or how deeply shocked her late father had been by the sight of such an intimate gift, for naturally the older man had demanded to know what had been in that wretched box and she had just cringed.

  Eden slid into whisper-thin lilac panties and a matching low-cut bra. Better than being naked, she decided, bracing herself. She was beginning to feel a little strange…kind of skittish, enervated, gripped by the most ridiculous desire to dance. Damiano wasn’t going to know what had hit him, she told herself, psyching herself up into her new and more adventurous persona.

  Damiano was now lying on his back in a diagonal sprawl across the divan. Late afternoon sunshine was filtering through the thin cotton curtains at the window. From the foot of the bed, she eased up into the space left by the wall. She studied Damiano. The piratical dark stubble accentuating his strong jawline and beautifully moulded mouth, the riot of dark, curling hair hazing his powerful pectorals, the smooth golden skin wrapped round his sleek, strong muscles.

  Just the thought of touching him made her tingle. Awkwardly, she edged further up the bed, ludicrously fearful of awakening him. She bent over him, mesmerised by the slow rise and fall of his chest, the soft rush of his breathing and finally by the vibrance of him even asleep. She lifted her hand and rested her fingers very lightly on his arm. He shifted, muscles flexing beneath her hand. She tensed but the need to express how much she loved him in the only way that seemed left was more powerful.

  Lowering her head, Eden pressed her lips to his taut, flat stomach and ran the tip of her tongue over his skin. The taste of him made her shiver. Heat flooded her own trembling body, stirring her breasts, pinching her nipples into straining buds. The scent of him was an unbelievable aphrodisiac to senses starved for so long. Her hand settled to a powerful male thigh to balance herself and, breathing in deep, she began to ease back the sheet.

  But with a slumbrous growl, Damiano shifted, startling her. He laced his fingers into her hair to draw her up to him. Eden had barely grasped that he was wakening and that control was no longer hers before he had claimed her mouth in a devouring and hungry kiss. Raw need raced through every fibre of her shaken body in response. Settling strong hands to her waist, he lifted her over him, long fingers splaying to her slender hips to urge her into potent contact with the virile force of his arousal.

  The heat he ignited fired an almost painful ache deep in her pelvis. Eden quivered, a helpless moan of reaction escaping her. Almost instantaneously, Damiano stilled. His hands whipping up to her forearms, he held her back from him.

  Stunned dark as night eyes clashed with hers. ‘Eden?’ he faltered in apparent disbelief. ‘Che cos’ hai?’

  It was one of those ghastly moments when time hung still and she would have done anything to move it on. As she registered that Damiano had automatically responded to her caresses before he was even properly awake, a burning tide of red skimmed up her throat to scorch her discomfited face. She watched in a state of stricken paralysis as his attention zeroed in on the scanty bra and brief set she wore. He blinked. Then he looked again with the kind of fixed attention which only accentuated his shock.

  ‘Per amor di Dio…what on earth are you playing at?’

  Prior to getting into the bed, Eden had nourished a comforting vision of Damiano waking up to snatch her to him with keen hands and mercifully silent enthusiasm. Instead, Damiano had pulled back from her to reassert control and was now asking what had to be the craziest question he had ever asked her.

  ‘And why are you dressed like that?’ Damiano enunciated with a level of incredulity which only seemed to be increasing with every second that passed. He now focused on the high-heeled shoes which she had put on and kept on.

  ‘I…I don’t know what you expect me to say…’ Her admission emerged hopelessly slurred, the words tumbling together, provoking an even deeper frown between Damiano’s winged ebony brows.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ Damiano questioned rawly.

  ‘Well, er…a bit—’

  ‘So…’ Damiano framed in a wrathful, low-pitched growl, black eyes blazing to gold as he scanned her guilt-stricken face. ‘You had to hit the bottle to get back into bed with me?’

  ‘Yes… I mean no!’ she gasped, floundering in dismay and confusion at the anger he was revealing.

  ‘So drunk you get into bed with your shoes on,’ Damiano said thickly, fabulous bone-structure rigid as he swept her from him and dumped her back down on the mattress. ‘I left behind a shy, uptight wife and now you’re coming on to me tarted up like some high-class hooker!’

  Aghast at that condemnation and utterly at a loss in the situation developing, Eden began to crawl backwards off the bed. ‘No…no, it’s not like that—’

  ‘So who was it?’ Damiano shot at her, his lean, dark features flushed with black fury, his dark drawl fracturing, long fingers snapping like handcuffs round her wrist before she could get out of reach. ‘Who was it who worked this miraculous transformation while I was away? Don’t you think I have the right to know who’s been sleeping with my wife when I couldn’t do anything about it?’

  Her feverish colour had now ebbed to leave her pale. She stared back at him with shocked eyes. The savage tension churning up the atmosphere tore cruelly at her already frayed nerves. Damiano snatched in a starkly audible breath, lashes lowering on his smouldering gaze as he abruptly released her from his hold.

  Eden scrambled off the bed and snatched up the dressing gown lying on the chair, pulling it on with shaking hands. ‘Like some high-class hooker?’ Was that how she had seemed to him? Mortification and shame churned up her stomach. He didn’t want her…why had she imagined he would? Why had she got the crazy idea that five years on she might make good where she had failed before? Too little, too late. And now, thanks to her own foolishness, a nightmare seemed to be erupting around her: Damiano was already accusing her of having slept with some other man.

  ‘Mark, I suppose…’ Damiano gritted unevenly, his hands curling into fierce fists. ‘Sneaking, smooth little jerk just waiting his chance!’

  For a split second Eden froze and then she backed out the door and fled into the bathroom. She thrust home the bolt on the door. So panicked by that final comment she could barely get air back into her lungs, she fought to get a hold of herself again. Did Damiano know, after all? Why else would he have mentioned Mark? Had someone already told him about those filthy lies printed about her by the tabloid press within months of his disappearance? What else was she supposed to think? Why else would he be thinking such a thing of her?

  Damiano tried the handle. He rapped on the door. ‘Open up, Eden. I’ve calmed down and we have to talk.’

  But Eden retreated from the door and stared at the barrier, imagining herself growing old and grey behind it.
Her brain felt like mush. She couldn’t cope with this right now, couldn’t cope with Damiano. Shedding the dressing gown, she tore off the scanty bra and briefs and thrust them into the waste bin with a shudder of chagrin. She kicked off the shoes and hauled on the dressing gown again, her face stiff with distress. Everything had gone horribly wrong; everything always seemed to go horribly wrong for her with Damiano.

  ‘Eden…I’m going to break down this door if you don’t come out.’

  But she knew he wouldn’t do anything like that. It wouldn’t be cool. But then there had been nothing cool about the manner in which those accusations had come flying out of nowhere at her. ‘You’re leaving me anyway. Why am I letting you upset me? I’m not coming out!’ she sobbed with sudden ferocious bitterness.

  With a thunderous crash the door smashed open and banged off the wall behind it. Her compressed lips fell open in shock. Pale as parchment, she surveyed Damiano. He had pulled on his jeans but, bare-chested and in need of a shave, his black hair tousled and his brilliant eyes shimmering like starlight, he was an intimidating sight.

  ‘Relax…’ he urged in an evident attempt to soothe her.

  Eden was closer to collapse than relaxation. She stared back at him with huge, shaken eyes. He had lost his temper with her. He had smashed open the door without hesitation. For that split second in her bewilderment at such unfamiliar behaviour, she was incapable of response.

  Damiano strode forward and just reached for her. He pulled her unresisting body close. His own heart was hammering as fast as her own. He urged her back into the sitting room. Her legs felt as weak as cotton wool beneath her. She was shaking like a leaf.

  ‘Why are you accusing me of leaving you?’ Damiano chided, evidently not having taken that accusation seriously. ‘Why can’t you just fly back to London with me? It will only be for a couple of days. As soon as I get these meetings over with, we’re flying out to Italy.’

  ‘Italy?’ Finally, it dawned on Eden that she had misunderstood his intentions earlier. He might be leaving her apartment but he was not planning to leave her behind as well. Sheer relief washed over her in such a gigantic wave that she felt dizzy.

  ‘One of the first things my brother told me was that Nonna died over four years ago.’

  Eden was appalled to appreciate that she had forgotten that that news would greet Damiano on his return. Old news to everybody else but not to him. When Damiano had gone missing, his grandmother had been devastated. Stress had undoubtedly contributed to the heart attack which had killed her and Damiano had to know that, Eden conceded painfully, for Damiano was no fool.

  ‘I gather Nonna was in the midst of yet another grand restoration project at the time.’ Repressed emotion roughened Damiano’s vowel sounds and she swallowed hard on the thickness in her own throat. ‘In her will, she specified that the Villa Pavone should be completed and maintained until I had been legally presumed dead. Since that fact is not generally known, I hope this Tuscan palazzo will supply us with a peaceful bolt-hole free from the attentions of the paparazzi.’

  Finally daring to accept that Damiano intended them to stay together in the immediate future at least, Eden slowly released her pent-up breath, her worst fear now banished.

  Damiano curved long, sure fingers below her chin and turned up her face, dark, deep-set eyes demanding that she stop evading his gaze. ‘I shouldn’t have pitched that stuff at you in the bedroom,’ he asserted with cool clarity. ‘You believed I was never coming back. You thought I was dead. I haven’t got the right to interrogate you about the past five years. Rationally, I know that. But for a few minutes, waking up as I did, I over-reacted—’

  ‘But I went on feeling married… I went on thinking about you even though you weren’t there,’ Eden protested with urgent tautness.

  ‘Sì…I checked the dust pattern below the photograph of me by the bed,’ Damiano said with a wry self-mockery that just tore at her heart. ‘I know you didn’t just drag it out of the closet for show today.’

  Tears lashed the back of her eyes as she thought of him checking in such a way. ‘You mentioned Mark,’ she reminded him tremulously, dropping her head again, still metaphorically waiting for the axe to fall.

  ‘I’m afraid I never did warm to your childhood playmate.’ Damiano shrugged as if to stress how trivial he considered that former response on his own part. Yet Eden was surprised for she had never realised that he disliked the younger man. Indeed, at her request, more than five years earlier, Damiano had hired the younger man to help manage the Braganzi country estate outside Oxford. However, by the time a tabloid photographer had taken a covert picture of Mark passionately embracing a small slim blonde woman, Mark had actually been working out his notice for the Braganzi family. The estate had been joint-owned by the brothers. Nuncio, challenged by the prospect of maintaining the same high-rolling lifestyle without Damiano’s assistance, had sold it.

  But Damiano definitely didn’t know about her supposed affair with Mark, Eden registered with heady relief. He couldn’t know and still refer to Mark in that dismissive tone of disinterest. Furthermore, Damiano was taking her to Italy with him. This was not the time to start making awkward confessions and explanations, was it? Most particularly when she herself was innocent of any wrongdoing. Why dredge up all that nonsense now? Of course, she would raise the thorny subject some time with him, but at that moment all Eden wanted to concentrate on was holding onto her long-lost husband by any means within her power.

  ‘Damiano…there hasn’t been anybody else—’

  ‘I don’t need you to say that just for the sake of it. I’m not asking.’ His sculpted cheekbones might have been carved from bronze as he made that assurance.

  ‘But I’m telling you all the same.’ Eden gazed up at him with clear eyes. ‘Just for the record, there hasn’t been.’

  Damiano studied her with glittering intensity. ‘If that’s true, what was that astonishing seduction scene all about?’

  Finally Eden grasped why he doubted her plea of innocence. Hot pink flooded her complexion. Her own unusually bold behaviour in the bedroom had roused his suspicions and brought on the very accusations which she had most feared!

  ‘I know I made a mess of it,’ she muttered in mortified discomfiture, studying the carpet, ‘but I just wanted to…I just wanted to do something you would like for a change—’

  ‘Something I would like,’ Damiano repeated in a roughened undertone that sent a current of alarm down her spine. ‘Like a sort of big reward for me coming home alive—’

  Eden paled. ‘It wasn’t like that—’

  ‘You had to jump off the teetotal wagon to do it too,’ Damiano continued grittily as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘A sexual invitation in broad daylight, no less—’

  The tension in the atmosphere gave her a panicky sensation in her tummy and once again she tried to intercede. ‘Damiano—’

  ‘I think I need to make one thing clear before we go to Italy,’ Damiano murmured with a chilling bite that took her back five long years. ‘I don’t want you doing anything solely to please me.’

  ‘Sorry…?’

  Damiano studied her bewildered face with grim intensity. ‘Do you think I want you pandering to me like some harem slave trying to gratify her owner?’ he demanded with icy distaste. ‘Do you really think I’m that desperate?’

  ‘I was just trying to show you how much you meant to me,’ Eden framed with desperate dignity, hurriedly turning away from him before she broke down. Like some harem slave? She cringed at that label.

  His long, lean, powerful body tensing in receipt of that patently sincere response, Damiano expelled his breath in an abrupt hiss. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘No, I’m sorry that I’m still such a big let-down—’

  From behind her, Damiano closed his arms around her but Eden was rigid with the pain she was holding in. ‘That’s not true, cara—’

  ‘Yes, it is…you didn’t want me,’ she pointed out chokily.

  ‘
Per amor di Dio! Is that what you think?’ Damiano groaned above her head, his strong arms wound round her tightly. ‘What do you think kept me going in that bloody hell-hole of a prison? Inspiring recollections of making deals at the bank?’ His dark, deep drawl dismissed that idea with incredulous scorn. ‘It was the thought of you…and the prayer that you would still be waiting for me when I got out of there!’

  In astonishment, Eden stiffened, afraid to believe and then desperately wanting to believe what he was telling her. Tears of joy and relief shone in her eyes. ‘Then wh-why—?’

  ‘Am I ranting and raving at you?’ Damiano filled in jaggedly and, unusually, he hesitated before continuing. ‘I think possibly lack of sleep and feeling very claustrophobic in these surroundings.’

  Claustrophobic? Eden was suddenly aghast at her own stupidity. When he had mentioned needing space around him, she had totally misunderstood. It was indeed a very small flat, the sitting room the only area where two people could move without one continually standing back to let the other pass. And why on earth had she woken Damiano up when he was so exhausted? What strange madness had possessed her?

  ‘You go back to bed,’ she urged protectively and she tugged free of his arms with regretful determination. ‘If we’re being picked up at seven, I have a lot of things to take care of—’

  ‘Sì…’ Damiano sank down on the bed with lithe grace. ‘I suppose you’ll need to inform the school that you’re resigning—’

  ‘The school?’

  ‘Wherever you’re teaching now.’ Long lashes lowered over his eyes as he settled back against the pillows and slowly stretched. Still clad in his jeans, he was a devastatingly attractive vision of relaxed masculinity. So powerful was her own response to that awareness that she looked away from him in embarrassment. ‘I’m sure you don’t like leaving your pupils in the lurch but my need for you is greater, cara.’