by Lynne Graham
Slinging his jacket on a chair, he swept up the internal phone to communicate terse instructions to some member of staff. As he spoke, he unknotted his tie and tossed it aside and began unbuttoning his shirt. Dry-mouthed, heartbeat accelerating, aware of the thunderous tension he was now exuding in primal waves but unable to concentrate on it, Eden watched him as he completed the call.
Languor was spreading through her body like a flood of warm honey. Even furious, he was breathtakingly beautiful to her mesmerised eyes. Her breathing fractured as he let the shirt drop where he stood. Six feet four inches of vibrant bronzed masculinity, wide, smooth shoulders, broad chest, taut, flat stomach, all rippling whipcord muscles.
Without warning, Damiano flashed a glance at her and stilled, aggressive jawline squaring. ‘What?’
Eden jerked. ‘Sorry?’
Damiano spread two not quite steady hands wide, dark eyes blazing gold. ‘I’m damned if I’m going into the bathroom to undress. Just close your eyes!’
‘But, Damiano, I wasn’t.’
‘I’ve gone nearly forty-eight hours without sleep,’ Damiano grated in a savage undertone. ‘Just get under the sheet, turn your back and pretend you’re on your own!’
Her teeth clenched. She hauled up the sheet and flipped over on to her side. Why was he so set on misunderstanding her? She tautened. He was interpreting her behaviour against a five-year-old yardstick and what else could he do?
‘I’m not as prudish as I used to be!” Eden whispered in a defensive hiss. ‘I’ve grown up a lot!’
The mattress gave, the lights snapped off and Damiano reached for her with both hands, hauling her up against him and shocking her into silence. ‘Grown women don’t need to fill up on vodka first, cara,’ he muttered thickly into her hair, dark, deep drawl steadily lowering in pitch and clarity as his big powerful frame relaxed. ‘If I had an ego problem, you’d have made me impotent. I spent seven months of marriage listening to every excuse not to have sex that has ever been invented. I spent most of the next five years between a prison cell and a quarry. I’m sure I was the only guy there who fantasised about a wife in a nightdress because he had never ever seen her naked!’
Trembling with mortification, tears stinging her eyes, Eden gulped and swallowed hard.
Damiano released a sleepy sigh. ‘But you love me. On your terms, the shoes you wore to bed this afternoon were a massive statement of devotion. Right now, I’ll settle for that.’
Right now? She opened her eyes, wildly conscious of his proximity, the sexy masculine scent of him, the heat he emanated. But he was now holding her at a slight distance from him. She swallowed again, wanting him so much she was burning all over. Finally, she moistened her lips and parted them. ‘I don’t need the vodka…’
Only silence greeted that announcement. She listened to the deep, even tenor of his breathing and rubbed her cheek helplessly against his hand where it rested loosely on the pillow. She had him back. It was enough. Whatever he wanted, he could have…she just wouldn’t make her efforts to please so obvious the next time. She loved him so much. Even the family from hell wasn’t going to part them!
At what felt like the crack of dawn the next morning, Damiano woke her up. Exuding cool self-command, Damiano was already fully dressed in a dark business suit, burgundy silk tie and a pearl-grey silk shirt. His stunning dark eyes rested on her with a slumbrous quality that drove her mind blank and sent her heartbeat racing.
‘I have a press conference set up for ten,’ Damiano drawled.
‘Oh…’ Her tummy flipping at the mere thought of attending a press conference, Eden paled.
‘It’ll be a circus and not your style. There’s no need for you to come, cara.’ Damiano sank fluidly down on the edge of the bed, brilliant eyes shimmering over her. ‘I’m spending the afternoon with a whole collection of bankers and lawyers. I think it would be wisest if we fly out to Italy separately—’
‘Separately?’
‘I’m determined to keep our destination a secret from the paparazzi. One of my bodyguards will accompany you on a private flight this afternoon. I’ll meet you at the villa…it could well be tomorrow before I make it.’
A sharp rap sounded on the door.
Exasperation flashing across his darkly handsome features, Damiano vaulted upright and strode over to answer it. Eden recognised Nuncio’s anxious voice.
Before he departed, Damiano glanced back at her with a wry smile. ‘The villa is, I believe, larger than a rabbit hutch and it is not communal,’ he assured her with admirable cool.
Just a few more hours and she would be on her way to Italy. A sunny smile curved Eden’s lips. A maid arrived with a breakfast tray laden with all Eden’s favourite dishes. She had just finished eating when the phone by the bed buzzed.
The caller was Mark.
‘How on earth did you work out where I was?’ Eden asked in confusion.
‘It hardly took genius. I was once a regular visitor to the town house,’ Mark reminded her impatiently. ‘Look, I’ve come up to London specially and I’d like to see you as soon as possible.’
And why shouldn’t she see Mark before she left for Italy? Eden suddenly asked herself. He was a good friend and, although he had his flaws, she had never forgotten his sympathetic support in the aftermath of Damiano’s disappearance. No doubt, Mark would also enjoy hearing the inside story on Damiano’s return home. And shouldn’t she tell Mark that, exactly as he had forecast, Tina was determined to lie about their affair?
Mark suggested that she meet him at his hotel. Eden called a cab to pick her up and she slipped out of the house by the rear entrance. A slimly built young man with dark blond hair and pale blue eyes, Mark, as elegantly dressed as always, was waiting for her in the lobby.
Eden accompanied him into the almost empty residents’ lounge. ‘It’s so good to see you again,’ she said warmly.
‘Tell me what’s been happening on the home front,’ Mark invited, having ordered tea for Eden and a drink for himself.
‘I was going to ask you how you’ve been doing first,’ Eden told him ruefully. ‘I haven’t heard much from you lately.’
‘I think your situation is rather more important right now.’
Eden grimaced. ‘Well, what you said over four years ago has been borne out. You said I was a real fool to take the heat for Tina and you were right. It has come back to haunt me. Tina is still treating me like her worst enemy and Nuncio is eagerly waiting for me to make a full confession to Damiano. The sooner the whole wretched business is cleared up, the better.’
‘So you will be wanting me to support your story?’
Eden flushed. ‘I hope it won’t come to that. That would be embarrassing for you—’
‘I’ll tell Damiano anything you like.’ Mark shrugged. ‘But…I’m afraid there’ll be a price.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘A price?’
‘Let me tell you a story.’ Mark’s mouth took on a sullen twist as he studied her. ‘My longest-standing friend marries a fabulously wealthy bloke and what does she do to help me?’
Eden went rigid. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘You got me a lousy first job working for peanuts on the Braganzi country estate!’ Mark derided. ‘And when I asked for the cash to set up my own business, you said you were sorry but Damiano thought I was too young to be trusted with that size of an investment.’
Mark was delving way back to events which had occurred in the first months of Eden’s marriage. At the time, those events had made Eden feel very uncomfortable with both her husband and Mark. ‘I didn’t realize you still felt like that about—’
‘No, of course you didn’t. Damiano went missing soon afterwards and I decided the rich Mrs Braganzi was a long-term investment to be nursed along.’ Beneath her stricken gaze, Mark vented a sour laugh. ‘Just two more years and Damiano would have been legally presumed dead. No matter how hard his relatives fought, you would still have copped most of the loot as Damiano’s wife! Would
you have been generous then, Eden? That was what I was waiting for—’
‘I can’t believe you really mean what you’re saying…’ A queasy sensation of mounting fear was engulfing Eden. ‘You were so kind to me after Damiano disappeared.’
‘But you’ll have to pay me to get service like that again. I won’t admit that I had that affair with Tina unless you make it well worth my while…if you don’t, I’ll take Tina’s side and drop you in it with Damiano—’
‘That’s sick!’ Eden gasped and then, realising that she had attracted the attention of the elderly woman seated at the far end of the room, she reddened fiercely.
‘Think very hard before you tell me to go ahead and do my worst,’ Mark advised thinly.
‘But to try to blackmail me…’ Eden condemned shakily.
Only now was she recalling Mark’s bitter resentment when Damiano had refused to invest in him until he had more business experience. She had chosen to forget that unpleasant episode but Mark had just made it brutally clear that he had only continued their friendship beyond that point because he had expected to profit from it. Damiano’s survival must have come as a very unwelcome surprise to Mark, she conceded painfully.
‘So now I’ll tell you what I want…’ With complete calm, Mark went on to mention a sum of money that made Eden pale.
‘Not all up front at once of course; he conceded grudgingly. ‘But I expect a down payment as a guarantee of your good faith. Since you’ve always been so frank with me, I know exactly what you’ve got in your bank account. You won’t be needing that money for your own use any more so I’ll take a cheque now—’
‘Mark, please—’
‘Make your choice. Tina will not hesitate for a second if I approach her with a similar offer,’ Mark warned her smugly. ‘Then it’ll be goodbye to Damiano, Eden.’
Picturing both Tina and Mark conspiring together to destroy her marriage made Eden feel trapped and physically ill. What would her word be worth to Damiano if everybody else swore that she was guilty as hell? With a trembling hand that seemed to have developed a will of its own, Eden dug into her handbag for her cheque-book. Without looking back at Mark again, she scrawled out the cheque and left it sitting on the table. Then she stood up and walked out of the hotel lounge.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE shattered emotional state she was in, Eden wandered round the shops for a while until she got a grip on herself again. She asked herself what sort of a fool she was that she had not seen through Mark to the greed and resentment beneath the surface. She had trusted him absolutely and now he was blackmailing her!
How on earth was she to get out of the dreadful nightmare she had brought down on herself? She was bitterly ashamed of having simply surrendered to Mark’s threats. But most of all she now loathed her own blind, trusting stupidity. When the press had exposed that affair and wrongly identified the woman involved, she should not have kept silent to protect Tina. How could she have been that foolish? But she knew how and why. Distraught over losing Damiano, she had been an easy mark for Tina’s guile.
As she walked by the electrical section of a big store, Eden’s attention was caught by the shock value of seeing Damiano on several television screens at once. The press conference was being televised and a bunch of shoppers was glued to the screens. Having come to a dead halt, Eden moved slowly closer to watch.
The cameras loved Damiano. As he fielded questions with assurance and humour, his natural charisma made him a class act. Every so often a different camera angle would take in the people standing near him. Nuncio, proudly intent on his big brother. A couple of directors of the Braganzi Bank, glowing at Damiano’s every witty response, no doubt highly relieved that the male once dubbed a genius in the money markets should have returned with all his faculties intact.
A powerful surge of guilt engulfed Eden then and she turned away. In retrospect, she was ashamed that she had snatched at the excuse Damiano had given her and avoided the press conference. From the moment that tabloid story had been printed nearly five years earlier, she had been terrified of the media. Instead of giving way to that cowardice, she should have fought it and, even though Damiano had not appeared to be in much need of wifely support, she would have been prouder of herself had she at least offered it.
Eden was really running quite late by the time she got back to the town house. As she crossed the hall, Tina emerged from the drawing room, looking extremely smug. ‘You have about ten minutes to freshen up before you leave for your second honeymoon in Italy.’
Ignoring the blond’s honeyed scorn, Eden asked, ‘Is Damiano back yet?’
‘No, but he did try to call you. He wasn’t very pleased when I told him that I hadn’t a clue where you were.’ A malicious smile curved the older woman’s voluptuous mouth. ‘Then I took the trouble to call him back and mention that just before you went out, dear old Mark had phoned, given his name and asked to speak to you. Mark was never discreet, was he?’
Paling at Tina’s venom but determined not to respond in kind, Eden raced upstairs to change. Over an hour later, she entered the airport, accompanied by a single bodyguard. She was totally unprepared for what happened next. A man with a camera appeared about ten feet away and blinded her by taking a flash photo. Within the space of sixty seconds, she was the centre of a heaving crowd of reporters shouting questions.
‘Why weren’t you with your husband at the press conference?’
‘Is your marriage in trouble, Mrs Braganzi?’
‘Why did the Braganzi family fly out to Brazil without you?’
‘Why have you been in hiding all these years?’
If the airport security men hadn’t come to their rescue, they would never have managed to escape. White and trembling, Eden only began breathing evenly again when the small private plane took off for Italy. Somebody must have tipped the press off that she would be arriving at the airport. Who? Tina? Or was she so strung up now that she was imagining things?
Whatever, her every worst fear seemed to be coming true. Damiano was big news and, by the same definition, so was the state of his marriage. Her absence from the press conference had evidently created comment. How long did she have before that old scandal about her was dug up again?
Late that afternoon, the car which had whisked Eden out of Pisa turned off a twisting mountain road into an avenue hedged and shadowed by tall cypresses. Through a break in the trees, Eden saw a lake with a surface like a silver mirror and then she caught her first glimpse of the Villa Pavone.
The magnificent building was sited on the hilltop. Ornate stucco decorations and a grand run of Ionic columns embellished the villa’s impressive frontage. As she got out of the car, the glorious warmth of early summer enfolded her. Citrus trees in giant metal urns dispelled an aromatic scent which hung heavy in the still air. As she moved towards the entrance, an eerie plaintive shriek made her glance nervously over her shoulder. She was just in time to see a glimmer of ghostly white disappear behind a topiary tree. An instant later, a glorious white peacock strutted into view, his fantastic plumage spread like filigree lace. The bird regarded her with expectant beady eyes, seemingly awaiting a burst of appreciative applause.
Eden grinned, the last of her anxiety falling away. She strolled towards the huge front doors which stood wide. The paparazzi were behind her in London along with Damiano’s dreadful relatives and Mark, she reminded herself cheerfully. In a few hours surely at most, Damiano would be with her again.
She walked into a breathtaking foyer, so big it echoed loudly with her footsteps. The walls were adorned with fabulous classical frescos. Far above her hung a superb gilded and painted ceiling.
‘Where the hell were you this morning?’
Eden almost jumped right out of her skin. She spun round, green eyes very wide and startled. Damiano had magically appeared in a doorway which she had not previously noted in her awed scrutiny of her surroundings. ‘You’re here already?’ she gasped in delighted surprise.
&nbs
p; He looked incredibly attractive in well-cut beige chinos and a short-sleeved cream cotton shirt that accentuated his bronzed skin and black hair. But Damiano was surveying her with glittering dark eyes, his lean, strong face hard as granite, megawatt tension emanating from the stillness of his long, lithe, powerful frame.
‘You were with Mark—’
Eden blinked, tautening. ‘Yes,’ she conceded jerkily, determined to stick as close to the truth as was possible.
‘For hours?’ Damiano derided harshly. ‘You almost missed your flight!’
‘No, I didn’t cut it that fine,’ she countered tightly and curled her tense fingers into her damp palms, the happy sensation draining away, leaving only stress in its wake. ‘And I wasn’t with him all that time. I walked round the shops for a while—’
‘You’re not telling me the truth.’
The silence started feeling like a giant black hole spreading to within inches of her feet, ready to suck her in at any moment. The confidence with which Damiano made that charge was pure intimidation. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a sneaky carrot designed to draw her into speech and trip her up. No, what she was hearing was the challenge of a very shrewd male, who had not the slightest shred of doubt that she was concealing something from him.
‘Why…why do you think that?’ Eden prompted dry-mouthed.
His spectacular golden eyes struck sparks off hers. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he demanded with ice-cool clarity. ‘You’re squirming like a fish on a hook.’
Eden worried at her lower lip with her teeth and stared back at him, horribly impressed by his power of perception. ‘I…’
‘Yes?’ Damiano grated in the explosive silence.
‘I only trailed round the shops because I was upset and that’s why I was so late getting back to the house,’ Eden volunteered in a driven rush. ‘No big mystery.’ She shrugged awkwardly. ‘I just saw Mark as I hadn’t managed to see him before…and I didn’t like what I saw. So for that reason, I won’t be seeing him again.’