by Lynne Graham
She supposed it was natural that he should have assumed that she was teaching somewhere. But explaining that the shop below was in fact hers did not seem important just then when further dialogue would mean keeping him awake.
Before she had even finished dressing, Damiano was sound asleep again. She didn’t want to leave him. Her heart was behaving as if it had wings attached. She just wanted to sit down at the foot of the bed and revel in the reality that he was physically there. Damiano had said he needed her. Damiano had confessed that it had been the memory of her and the thought of coming home to her which had sustained him through his ordeal in Montavia.
However, she had arrangements to make. Refusing to dwell on the intimidating prospect of returning to the Braganzi town house even for just a couple of nights, she packed a case. Fortunately her assistant, Pam Jenkinson, lived nearby and Eden was grateful to find the older woman at home when she called. The year before, Pam had looked after the shop for several weeks when Eden’s father had been dying. A prosperous widow, Pam had enjoyed being left in charge and indeed had already stated her interest in taking over the business should Eden ever wish to sell up. However, now, the older woman also wanted every tiny detail ironed out and it was some time before Eden was able to leave her.
As Eden hurried back to her flat, her restive mind began taking her back into the past again, back to her earliest days with Damiano, and she could not help thinking how ironic it was that neither of their families had wanted them to be together…
Damiano’s first kiss had frankly frightened the hell out of Eden. That sense of being out of control had spooked her. It had been like sin coming knocking on her door with a thunderous crash. So she’d told herself she wouldn’t see him again. Then he’d turned up the next morning and her resistance had crumbled. Right from the start, no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d been unable to fight that powerful desperate need to be with him.
That same weekend, her father had met Damiano. The name Braganzi had meant nothing to the older man but Damiano hadn’t been gone five minutes before her parent had voiced his dour disapproval. ‘Not our sort, is he? And you’re not his. He’s one of the bosses, Eden—’
‘I work for the education authority, not the Falcarragh estate—’
‘Folk will talk if you start running about with him and I don’t want to hear loose talk about my daughter,’ her father asserted grimly.
Eden had to reach the age of twenty-one before she could rebel against a stern paternal dictum. Over Damiano, she rebelled but only within certain boundaries.
‘What do you mean you have to be home by midnight?’ Damiano enquired with considerable amusement at their next meeting. ‘Even Cinderella only lost a shoe. Does your father think you’re only at risk of seduction after midnight strikes?’
‘Please don’t make fun of my father—’
Damiano meshed long fingers into her silky hair to make her raise her head again, a rueful smile chasing the mockery from his darkly handsome features. ‘You’re so ridiculously old-fashioned—’
‘By your standards, not my own.’
‘Pious too,’ he muttered, caressing her lips with his own, making her shiver and then tense. ‘I’ve been patient for three days. You want me.’
Yes and no, she might have told him had she had the courage. The more she felt that overwhelming excitement threatening, the harder she fought it to stay in control. Already she was beginning to instinctively pull back and freeze him out when he reached for her again. Somehow she set a pattern that she couldn’t free herself from even after they married.
The next time Damiano came up to Scotland, he rented a luxury hunting lodge in the hills behind the estate and invited her there for a dinner provided by a chef from a fancy restaurant. At the end of that wonderful meal, Damiano murmured with slumbrous cool, ‘Are you staying the night?’
‘No.’
Lounging back in his carved dining chair, Damiano fixed sardonic dark golden eyes on her hot face. ‘So out of academic interest and the reality that I focus best on a time frame…how many times do I have to see you for you to stay the night?’
‘For goodness’ sake, there isn’t some stupid time frame!’
‘Then it’s the bridal band of gold or nothing,’ Damiano countered drily. ‘Nothing very spontaneous about that, nothing generous either. In fact, one cannot avoid the obvious conclusion that you’re putting a price on your body just like a hooker.’
Pale with rage, Eden rose abruptly from her seat. ‘That’s it…don’t you ever dare come near me again!’
‘I’m not apologising. I just want a reason that I can understand and I want a warm, giving adult woman—’
‘Yes, I imagine you’ve been with plenty of that sort!’ Eden declared in unhidden disgust. ‘And where are they now? Do you even remember their names?’
‘I can promise you that I’m going to remember you.’ Damiano sighed.
‘Don’t phone me again!’ Eden snapped, stalking to the door.
‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so,’ Damiano purred like a jungle cat flexing his claws. ‘But you’re going to miss me…’
He drove her home without trying to change her mind. She walked in, told her father, ‘It’s over’ and went to bed. That soon, she missed him but she would have stood torture rather than admit it. Over the following two weeks, she lost weight, tormented herself with visions of Damiano finding solace with a more sexually available woman and told herself a thousand times that that had really been all he’d been interested in.
At the end of the second week, Damiano landed a helicopter in the field below her home. She was feeding the dogs outside and watched in astonishment as he emerged from the bright yellow chopper. Like a school-girl, she climbed the fence and ran to greet him.
‘Have you got that reason I can understand worked out for me yet?’
Colouring, she studied the rough grass at his feet and the long dragging silence stretched while he waited. ‘I want getting married to feel really special,’ she finally admitted jerkily.
‘The whole fairy tale. I’m not trying to mock your aspirations but I hear that first-time experiences aren’t always that great—’
‘That doesn’t matter—’
‘You missed me?’
‘Yes—’
‘How much?’
‘Too much,’ she whispered shakily.
‘Good…come fly with me the only place you’ll let me fly you, cara,’ Damiano drawled wryly, closing a possessive arm round her and urging her back towards the helicopter. From that moment on, he respected her boundaries.
He returned to London that same night. Home from agricultural college, Mark Anstey called in the next day. ‘Dad tells me you’re dating Damiano Braganzi…wow!’
And from Mark, she heard all that she should have heard first from Damiano. About the bank, the estate, the fabulous wealth, the top-drawer blue-blooded pedigree.
‘Why didn’t your father say anything?’ she mumbled in shock. ‘Even to my father?’
‘Braganzi expressed a desire for what he termed “privacy”. And as my father said, if a billionaire wants privacy and you like your job, you keep your mouth shut.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Eden asked Damiano in bewilderment that night on the phone.
‘I didn’t not tell you anything. You simply didn’t ask the right questions.’
And he had told no lies either but she had definitely picked up the feeling that Damiano would have preferred her to remain in the dark until he himself chose to disclose his true status in life.
‘What are you doing with someone like me?’ she muttered, although she tried hard not to ask that question.
‘The guy who has everything needs a challenge? Do you think your father might now do something other than grunt antisocially in my direction?’
‘No, he’s more likely to lock the door and pretend we’re out the next time you come calling!’ Eden groaned.
But only one short month
later, Damiano suggested that they get married. ‘I haven’t got the time to keep on flying up here—’
‘You hardly know me—’
‘You want me to do seven years and then another seven years like Jacob in the bible?’
‘Marriage is a big step—’
‘Sì, tesoro mio…but we get to share a bed, don’t we?’
And she got nowhere when she tried to pin him down to saying anything more serious.
‘It’ll not work,’ her father forecast dourly to Damiano’s face. ‘You’ll both be sorry. Eden’s got no more idea of your life than you have of ours. She won’t fit and she’ll be miserable.’
‘Nothing like being greeted with open arms by the in-law-to-be,’ Damiano quipped out of her parent’s hearing in the aftermath of the longest, bluntest speech Eden had ever heard the older man make.
Damiano then applied for a special licence and persuaded her into agreeing to a quiet ceremony the very next week. In her heart, she had known it was all too quick and that he was too casual altogether in his attitude. He told her how much he wanted her but he never mentioned love. But loving him as she did, she suppressed her every misgiving. He was marrying her. It was her ultimate dream.
She did not meet Damiano’s family until they came north for the wedding.
‘You do realise that my brother is still in love with Annabel?’ Cosetta remarked casually at the small reception which followed at the hunting lodge.
‘Who’s Annabel?’ Eden whispered, never having heard that name before.
‘A lady who wouldn’t be seen dead in that homemade wedding shroud you’re wearing! But then Annabel is one of us,’ Cosetta asserted cuttingly. ‘Privately educated and from a decent social background. Damiano hasn’t even mentioned her, has he? What does that tell you?’
‘That she wasn’t as important to him as you seem to think,’ Eden dared to suggest.
‘The woman he was engaged to for two years? Think again. He’s on the rebound. They only broke up three months ago. He was crazy about her and then they had some stupid argument. Damiano’s far too macho to admit himself at fault. He’ll live to regret that when he starts comparing the two of you.’
The flight to their honeymoon in Sicily started with an argument, Eden making tearful accusations on the score of her not having been told about Annabel, Damiano telling her that getting married didn’t mean she had the right to interrogate him about his past. Then she began feeling unwell.
‘Wedding-night nerves add to the pressure,’ Damiano informed her. ‘I did warn you that the fairy tale might be hard to capture in reality.’
She fainted when they landed in Sicily. A doctor came out to their fabulous villa and diagnosed the flu.
‘In sickness and in health…you do love to throw me in the deep end, cara.’ Damiano teased, trying to calm her down and comfort her while she sobbed out repeated apologies and felt like a total bridal let-down.
It was well over a week before they finally shared the same bed and consummated their marriage. And that long-awaited experience was…disastrous! Damiano then rode roughshod over her every mortified, indeed hysterical protest and insisted on getting the doctor out again to examine her to ensure that she was essentially undamaged by his attentions.
‘You’ve just been one of the unlucky ones,’ the medical man said.
The barrier of her virginity had been more than usually resistant. Making love for the first time had hurt much more than she had expected. In the circumstances that had been unavoidable but Damiano had still shouldered guilt for having caused her pain. Eden had been utterly wretched after what she had considered absolute humiliation.
‘I suppose I’m really, really lucky that I didn’t make it into bed with you before we got to the altar, cara,’ Damiano commented on a reflective footnote. ‘You would never have agreed to see me again in this lifetime.’
And looking back from the vantage point of five years of greater maturity, Eden returned to the present with a stifled groan over her own behaviour. She had come back from their honeymoon full of self-pity and hurt pride. She had leapt at the idea of separate bedrooms.
Throwing off that memory, knowing that she was a lot wiser than she had once been, Eden hurried back upstairs to her flat. In the hall, she froze at the sight of the rumpled but empty bed she could see through the bedroom door. Then she heard Damiano talking in husky Italian in the sitting room and she just sagged, skin turning clammy with relief. The truth was that, right now, she really could not bear Damiano out of her sight. Leaving him even briefly had entailed overcoming the ridiculously childish terror that if she left him alone, he might vanish again!
As she appeared in the doorway Damiano tossed aside his mobile phone. His black hair still damp from the shower, he was fully dressed again but not in the casual jeans he had worn earlier. A superb charcoal-grey suit, worn with a white shirt and silk tie, now sheathed his tall, well-built frame. Smooth expensive cloth outlined his wide shoulders and long powerful thighs with the exquisite perfection of fit only obtainable from a master tailor.
For a split second, it was as if time had swept her back five years. He was the very image of a rich and powerful banker again. He looked fantastic but at the same time as he stirred her senses he also intimidated her. ‘I thought you would still be in bed,’ she began uneasily. ‘Where did you get that suit?’
‘It was delivered to me at Heathrow. Nuncio had my measurements faxed to my tailor before we even left Brazil,’ Damiano drawled, a wry curve to his expressive mouth. ‘I think he thought shares might crash if I made a public appearance in denim. I’ve also moved up our departure from here by half an hour. Where have you been?’
She told him about her garment alterations business on the ground floor. Damiano listened in silence, stunning dark eyes flaring with sudden exasperation. ‘You’ve been sewing to make a living? What necessity was there for you to sink to that level?’
Colour flew into Eden’s cheeks. ‘I—’
‘I spoke to Nuncio while you were out,’ Damiano informed her drily. ‘I believe he repeatedly attempted to set up a financial support package for you before you left our home but you refused it.’
In the tense silence, the phone began ringing.
Eden ignored it, dismayed that Damiano was already making judgements about events which had taken place during his absence. ‘Damiano—’
‘Answer the phone,’ Damiano interrupted with stark impatience. ‘It’s been ringing every ten minutes since you went out!’
No darned wonder he had got back out of bed and given up on getting any further rest! And, of course, he would not have answered her phone when he would not have wished to identify himself and risk having his whereabouts confirmed, thereby inviting the descent of the press on her doorstep. Her conscience twanging as if she had been that incessant caller, she answered the phone.
‘Eden?’
It was Mark Anstey’s voice. As it had been a couple of months since she had heard from him, she was a little surprised but she smiled. ‘Mark?’
‘Glad I’ve finally got hold of you!’ Mark said urgently. ‘I caught a news bulletin on the radio at lunch-time. Tell me, is there any truth in the wild rumour that your long-lost husband has turned up alive and kicking and is now back in England?’
Eden tensed at the apparent fact that word of Damiano’s return had already moved into the public domain. ‘Yes…yes, there is—’
‘Incredible! Is Damiano there with you right now?’
‘Yes—’
‘Can he hear what you’re saying?’ Mark continued in a conspiratorial tone.
Discomfited by that question, Eden reddened. ‘Well, yes but why—?’
‘Have you got around yet to mentioning those dirty weekends we’re supposed to have enjoyed together?’
Eden froze in dismay at that brutally blunt question and lost colour. ‘No…’
‘Don’t mention that tabloid story! Take my advice and keep it quiet for now. Tina will
never tell the truth,’ Mark asserted with even stronger emphasis. ‘In fact, I think we need to meet up to discuss this situation face to face as soon as possible—’
At that moment the very last thing Eden wanted to think about was the unpleasant consequences of Mark’s affair with Nuncio’s wife, Tina, four years earlier. ‘I’m sorry but I really couldn’t manage that right now—’
‘Eden…this isn’t something you can run away from.’ Something in Mark’s voice roused the oddest sense of foreboding inside Eden.
‘Look, I’ll be in touch with you very soon!’ Eden swore in a rush and she replaced the receiver in equal haste before Mark could say anything else to upset her.
She turned back to Damiano, rigid with discomfiture. Mark had just urged her to keep a secret from her husband. Her conscience could have done without that reminder of what she was already doing! But being so short with Mark also left her feeling disloyal and ungrateful for, in the aftermath of his disastrous affair with Tina, Mark had promised that should the occasion ever arise he would tell Damiano the truth and clear Eden’s name.
Damiano was very still, his strong bone-structure fiercely taut. Scorching golden eyes connected with her evasive gaze and held her fast before she could look away again.
‘So Mark, the love of your life, is still hanging around five years on,’ Damiano breathed chillingly. ‘What are you trying to hide from me?’
In the electric silence of her appalled paralysis, the doorbell buzzed.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE chauffeur carted Eden’s case down the steep stairs and out to the limousine.
What are you trying to hide from me? Deeply unsettled by Damiano’s shrewd recognition of her unease during that phone call from Mark, Eden slid into the limousine. However, just as quickly, she reminded herself that she was innocent of being anything other than her sister-in-law Tina’s dupe and she lifted her head high again.
Chagrined colour warmed her complexion for she was affronted by Damiano’s derisive reference to Mark as ‘the love of your life’. Ironically, Damiano had merely employed the same phrase she had once used in rueful self-mockery before they’d married! Since then, she had read magazine articles which urged women to keep a still tongue when men asked nosy questions about previous attachments. How right those articles were!