by Lynne Graham
‘Darcy? Why on earth are you sitting here on your own?’
Rising to her feet, coolly elegant in a flowing turquoise dress, Darcy looked amused. ‘Well, in the first fine flush of male bonding, your husband and my husband just totally forgot about me. I’ve just seen them walking along the terrace out there with drinks in their hands!’
‘Oh, dear…’ Eden glanced in the direction of the windows but the two men were no longer within view.
Darcy reached for Eden’s hands with quiet but sincere warmth. ‘I’m so happy for you and Damiano, Eden. I cried my eyes out when I heard the news.’ Her eyes took on an apologetic light. ‘And I’m afraid that Luca just couldn’t wait to see Damiano again.’
‘I can understand that,’ Eden said without hesitation for the Italian banker, Luca Raffacani, was Damiano’s oldest friend. ‘Did you bring the children with you?’
‘Good heavens, no! I thought the two of us was quite sufficient,’ Darcy said ruefully. ‘Five would have been an invasion force!’
‘Five…five?’ Eden was doing basic sums and finally appreciating just how long it had been since she had seen the other couple. ‘You’ve had another child? For goodness’ sake, of course, I’m really out of touch. Zia must be eight now and we were at Pietro’s christening shortly before Damiano disappeared,’ she recalled slowly.
‘I had another little girl two years ago…look, Eden, that’s not important,’ Darcy countered, her delicate but vivid face looking troubled and serious. ‘Do you remember the last time Luca called with you in London?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’ After Damiano had gone missing, Luca had visited her regularly when he’d been in London on business. However, Nuncio and Cosetta had always insisted on being present when anyone of Luca’s importance had called and Eden had never got the chance to talk to Luca alone.
‘Well, Luca was very disturbed by the way Damiano’s brother and sister were treating you. He described the atmosphere as “poisonous”,’ Darcy confided with characteristic bluntness. ‘We were going to ask you to come and stay with us but before we were able to do anything—’
‘I’d left London and vanished without even mentioning what I was planning to do.’ Eden’s smile was strained as she attempted both to conceal her discomfiture at the direction in which the conversation was heading and stall it. Just how much had the formidably shrewd Luca Raffacani understood about what had been happening in the Braganzi family during that period? And was Darcy hinting that Luca might well bring Damiano up to speed on the same events?
‘Luca made strenuous efforts to trace you.’
‘That was very kind of him but I honestly managed fine, Darcy. I’m afraid I needed to come to terms with Damiano’s disappearance on my own and I really wouldn’t have wanted to inflict my misery on other people.’ Eden used the distraction of lifting the phone to order refreshments. Her hand was trembling as she replaced the receiver.
‘I’ve got this awful feeling that I’ve given you the wrong impression,’ Darcy admitted anxiously. ‘Luca and I just wish we had made a move sooner and done more to help before the situation got out of hand.’
‘You did everything you possibly could and it was very much appreciated, believe me.’ What situation? What was Darcy referring to? But, ironically, Eden was much too scared to ask. She suppressed her fears by telling herself that Luca Raffacani was far too clever and worldly wise to even consider making revelations which would cause trouble in a friend’s marriage. ‘But let’s not look back. Right now, I can’t help just wanting to revel in the fact that Damiano has come home to me.’
‘Which is exactly as it should be,’ Darcy agreed immediately, but her fine skin was flushed, her eyes now veiled. ‘And in the normal way, I really would agree that family matters should stay strictly private but… Oh, dear, there I go again and Luca did warn me not to mention it!’
Eden took strength from that rueful admission and decided that it was highly unlikely that news of her supposed torrid affair nearly five years earlier had travelled as far afield as Italy. She really was getting paranoid! A single story by one British tabloid newspaper would scarcely have made news round the world, she scolded herself. She gave her outspoken companion a sympathetic smile. ‘Have you ever noticed that the minute you’re warned not to say something, it’s the one thing that you can’t get out of your mind?’
‘Isn’t it just?’ Pushing back her springy auburn curls from her brow, Darcy relaxed at that rejoinder and laughed. ‘I’m no good at keeping things in but Luca is wonderfully discreet!’
Receiving that as a reassuring declaration, Eden recalled how envious she had once been of the strength of Luca and Darcy’s happy marriage. Such different personalities yet they complemented each other: Darcy so guileless and down-to-earth, Luca, infinitely more complex and reserved. The two women walked along the terrace, taking in the wonderful views of the Tuscan countryside drowsing in the afternoon heat and eventually found Luca and Damiano.
Both men interrupted their keen conversation to glance at their wives with the slightly wary expressions of males belatedly recalling their existence. Eden was tense until Luca Raffacani greeted her with a lazy smile, his legendary reserve nowhere in evidence with friends. Damiano dropped his arm round Eden and drew her possessively close, the heat and proximity of his sun-warmed body soothing the last of her concerns and firing a glow of happiness in her eyes. In times gone by, Damiano would not have been so demonstrative in front of other people.
Eden watched Luca tug at a strand of Darcy’s tumbling pre-Raphaelite curls, his wife’s answering smile up into her husband’s eyes. And then she found Damiano looking down at her, his burnished golden gaze pinned to her tense face, a slight frown-line drawing his expressive dark brows together. The memory of that rather questioning look stayed with her.
The conversation roved on to the theatrical grandeur of the Villa Pavone which had been restored right down to the smallest detail. Damiano explained that his late grandmother, Livia Braganzi, had left architectural historians in charge of the project. ‘They had four years in which to complete their work—’
‘And the only power showers are in the pool complex,’ Eden chipped in with amusement, recalling Damiano’s comical horror in the early hours when he had gone into the massive en suite bathroom to take a shower and found only a giant bath in the shape of a clam shell.
‘So there’s still a few improvements to be made because I have no intention of living in the eighteenth century,’ Damiano commented feelingly. ‘We have a pool only because Nonna was a keen swimmer.’
‘Your grandmother brought you and your siblings up after your parents died, didn’t she?’ Darcy prompted Damiano with interest. ‘To manage that and devote her life to restoring historic buildings, she must have been a very active woman.’
Only a great deal less active in the parenting stakes, Eden reflected inwardly. Livia Braganzi had been an extremely rich intellectual. Widowed with only one child while she was still a young woman, she had been obsessed by her restoration projects and not remotely maternal. Damiano’s parents had died in a car crash when he was thirteen. His grandmother had idolised him, he had once admitted to Eden, purely because he was so clever. His brother and sister had fared less well against that demanding yardstick of approval. Damiano’s protective attitude towards his siblings had been fostered from an early age.
Pressed to do so, Darcy and Luca stayed to dinner before taking their leave.
‘Why were you uncomfortable with Luca?’ Damiano enquired within minutes of the departure of their guests.
They were sitting over fresh coffee in the picturesque vine-covered loggia watching the sun sink down behind the hills. Eden flushed and tried not to stiffen. ‘Was I?’
‘Initially noticeably ill at ease, then you seemed to relax.’ His lean, strong face taut, Damiano studied her with cool condemnation. ‘It bothers me that I should have to hear from someone else what I should have been told by you.’
; To mask her growing nervous tension, Eden had begun stirring her coffee, and, so stricken was she by what Damiano was saying, she kept on stirring as though her life depended on it. The affair…it had to be that he was talking about! She could feel the blood draining from her features, the sudden clamminess of her skin, the sick sensation of foreboding turning her tummy queasy.
‘Dio mio…I am genuinely grateful that Luca chose to be so frank with me,’ Damiano continued, his hard mouth ruthlessly cast. ‘Why couldn’t you tell me that, virtually from the moment of my disappearance, my family began treating you like dirt?’
At that revealing question which told her that her guilty conscience had provoked near panic far in advance of any true threat, Eden’s head jerked up. ‘Well…er, I—’
Anger now clearly evident in his splintering dark gaze, Damiano rammed back his chair and rose to his full commanding height. ‘Luca said he noticed their hostility towards you the very first time he visited. He said my sister embarrassed you in front of the staff by countermanding your instructions and indeed went out of her way to stress that she was the hostess in what was your home!’
‘It was always like that when you weren’t around,’ Eden admitted grudgingly.
Damiano stared at her in complete shock. She saw that he had listened to what Luca had said but had undoubtedly hoped that Luca had somehow misinterpreted what he had seen during his visits to the town house. ‘Even before I went missing?’ he emphasised rawly.
Eden sighed and then nodded.
‘Yet you never uttered a single word of complaint!’ Damiano surveyed her with thunderous incredulity.
‘You told me that your family was the most important thing in your life. Furthermore, the last thing a new wife wants to do is to start criticising her husband’s relatives when she has to live with them,’ Eden responded flatly. ‘I’m afraid they had got used to the idea of you marrying Annabel and I was a very unwelcome surprise.’
‘But Tina, at least, was your friend…’
‘Not if it was likely to bring her into conflict with Nuncio or Cosetta. Tina would never cross Cosetta. That’s how she keeps the peace.’
Deprived of even the comfort of believing that his sister-in-law had been supportive, Damiano expelled his breath in a stark kiss. ‘I understand that Nuncio implied within Luca’s hearing that it was somehow your fault that I had gone to Montavia.’
Eden gave a second reluctant nod of affirmation.
‘Porca miseria!’ Damiano exclaimed in outrage. ‘How the hell could my own brother make such a ridiculous charge against you?’
Eden paled. ‘Your brother and your sister were aware that our marriage was under strain before you left. They believed that if you had been more happily married you would have let one of the bank executives make that trip.’
Damiano was now white with rage below his bronzed complexion. ‘Accidenti! To say such a thing to my wife when she was grieving for me was unforgivable!’
‘Damiano…when you went missing, everybody went haywire,’ Eden tried to explain gently. ‘But, let’s face it, I should have stood up for myself long before that happened. Instead I let your family walk all over me and sat feeling sorry for myself, rather than doing something about the situation.’
‘Do not attempt to excuse them for their appalling behaviour!’ Damiano grated. ‘You were my wife—’
‘Yes, but—’
‘My wife, who stood to inherit everything I possessed once I was officially declared dead. No doubt that in itself made you a target for their resentment,’ Damiano interposed, settling on mercenary motives for his family’s attitude with a cynical speed that shook Eden. ‘Forgive me for ever questioning your refusal to accept my brother’s financial support!’
‘Don’t go over the top about this.’ Dismayed by his attitude, Eden got up from her chair. ‘Your brother and sister were devastated by your disappearance and their distress was genuine—’
‘Santo Cielo…how could I have been so blind?’ Damiano demanded abruptly, his brilliant dark eyes bleak. ‘How much did my own thoughtless behaviour contribute to what you suffered at their hands?’
‘Don’t make such a big deal of it now,’ Eden urged, seeing no benefit to anyone in his fury so long after the event. ‘As long as you never ask me to live with them again, I can let bygones be bygones.’
‘You are much too forgiving and generous, tersoro mio. There will, nevertheless, be a calling to account,’ Damiano delivered with grim assurance. ‘I will not let this matter die. Indeed, I cannot. I trusted my family to look after you when I could not be there for you.’
‘But I didn’t need looking after,’ Eden protested.
Damiano pulled her into his arms, crushing her into the heat and solidity of his big powerful frame with strong hands. ‘I’d have gone mad in Montavia if I had known that you were being victimised and hurt by those closest to me!’ he bit out in a still wrathful undertone above her head.
‘I still would prefer you to let all this stay buried. Everybody’s been upset enough and I do wish Luca Raffacani had minded his own business!’
‘Since it’s obvious you weren’t going to tell me, I’m glad he had the sense to do so,’ Damiano countered without hesitation. ‘Dio mio…one needs to know who one can trust.’
That phrase sent a stabbing little chill down Eden’s spine. Would Damiano still trust her if he knew what she was keeping to herself? And then her eyes flashed angrily as she registered the astonishing level of her own guilt. What had she done? Nothing! It was time she reminded herself of that fact. Why shouldn’t she protect their wonderful togetherness from all malign influences? Why should she have to make an awkward explanation about the sordid scandal which Tina and Mark had selfishly created? Well, she would tell Damiano when she was good and ready and in the meantime? In the meantime, she was determined not to allow that business to hang over her like an executioner’s axe, filling her with fear and unease as it had this afternoon when Darcy had spoken rather too frankly.
Damiano anchored his hands round her and lifted her high. A wry smile chased the remnants of anger from his lean, strong face. ‘You look really cross with me—’
‘Not with you.’ Her heart in her eyes, Eden gazed down at him with helpless tenderness. ‘With Luca for laying all that on you now.’
Damiano strode indoors with his arms still firmly wrapped round her. ‘I was surprised but evidently what he witnessed left a deep impression on him. I dare say he was shocked. However, I’m tough, cara mia. Why do we have to trek a mile to get to our bedroom in this house?’ he lamented, lowering her slowly down the length of his taut, muscular physique, catching her up again halfway through that manoeuvre to take her lips with passionate hunger.
She clung to him with feverish force, stretching up on tiptoe to let her fingers plunge into his springy black hair and hold him close. Her body was coming alive all on its own. He was kissing her with the same deep, driving sensuality with which he made love. He fired a tide of hot, quivering longing that made her breasts ache and her thighs tremble. He sank down on a gilded chair that creaked in alarming complaint beneath their combined weight.
Dragging his mouth from hers, he got up again in haste and vented a rueful laugh. ‘Right, you can put the twee dainty chairs into storage for starters. I’ll choose comfort over authenticity any day!’
‘One, power shower,’ she whispered, utterly dazzled by his glorious smile, heart racing to such an extent she could hardly catch her breath. ‘Two, chairs to do more than sit in—’
‘Did I say that?’ Damiano asked mockingly as he headed for the stairs.
‘For once, I’m ahead of you.’
‘And without the vodka too—’
Eden reddened and mock-punched a broad shoulder. ‘That was low—’
‘No, low would be discussing the episode in depth and telling you that I really do wish that I had kept my mouth shut five minutes longer…’ Damiano regarded her with smouldering eyes and a thoroughly
wicked grin ‘…just to see what you had planned for me—’
‘Damiano—’
‘Instead of which I blew a gasket but you can blame Ramon Alcoverro for that development,’ Damiano informed her without warning. ‘Do you know what Ramon said very quietly to me one minute before I left Brazil?’
Eden frowned in bewilderment as Damiano lowered her down onto their bed. ‘No…what?’
“‘Your wife’s been playing away…thought I should mention it since your little brother didn’t have the guts!” Bastard!’ Damiano ground out feelingly, adding something in Italian that sounded extremely derogatory, mercifully not looking at her as he slipped off her shoes. ‘So I had the entire flight back to London to wonder about what I was coming home to and work out this trite little speech about how I understood if there had been other guys…like hell would I have understood!’
Eden closed her shattered eyes and now remembered how incredibly tense Damiano had been with her those first few minutes at the airfield. ‘I—’
‘Sì…I agree. That is a totally unreasonable attitude considering that you spent a good four and a half years of your life thinking you were a widow,’ Damiano conceded, into full, unstoppable flow now on a subject which had patently disturbed him a great deal. ‘But a guy who’s been caged like an animal for the same length of time is not reasonable, I assure you. I put you on a pedestal like a little saint. I couldn’t bear even to consider the idea that you might have slept with another man—’
Eden sidled back into the shadows cast by the bed curtains. She was pale as death.
Damiano breathed in deep, shimmering dark eyes full of raw emotion as he came down on the edge of the bed. ‘If I had lost you, I would have felt as if I had lost everything,’ he confessed with roughened urgency. ‘I had so much faith in you…but I was very scared that Ramon might be telling me the truth!’
It was the moment when she should have spoken up, explained why Ramon had said such a thing. Evidently that nasty little tabloid story had travelled as far as Brazil in terms of gossip at the least. But she lay there like a stone on a riverbed resisting the force of the current and said unevenly, ‘Would you have divorced me?’