by Lynne Graham
They traversed the airport at speed in a crush of moving bodies, security men zealously warding off the reporters and photographers Luc deplored. He guarded his privacy with a ferocity that more than one newspaper had lived to regret.
‘Who’s the blonde, Mr Santini?’ someone shouted raucously.
Without warning, Luc wheeled round, his arm banding round Catherine in a hold of steel. ‘The future Mrs Santini,’ he announced, taking everyone by surprise, including Catherine.
There was a sudden hush and then a frantic clamour of questions, accompanied by the flash of many cameras. Luc’s uncharacteristic generosity towards the Press concluded there.
They were crossing the tarmac to the jet when it happened. Something dark and dreadful loomed at the back of her mind and leapt out at her. The sensation frightened the life out of her and she froze. She saw an elderly woman with grey hair, her kindly face distraught. ‘You mustn’t do it…you mustn’t!’ she was pleading. And then the image was gone, leaving Catherine white and dizzy and sick with only this nameless, irrational fear focused on the jet.
‘I can’t get on it!’ she gasped.
‘Catherine.’ Luc glowered down at her.
‘I can’t…I can’t! I don’t know why, but I can’t!’ Hysteria blossoming, she started to back away with raised hands.
Luc strode forward, planted powerful hands to her narrow waist and swung her with daunting strength into his arms. In the grip of that incomprehensible panic, she struggled violently. ‘I can’t get on that jet!’
‘It’s not your responsibility any more.’ Luc held her with steely tenacity. ‘I’m kidnapping you. Think of it as an elopement. Good afternoon, Captain Edgar. Just ignore my fianc;aaee. She’s a little phobic about anything that flies without feathers.’
The pilot struggled visibly to keep his facial muscles straight. ‘I’ll keep it smooth, Mr Santini.’
Luc mounted the steps two at a time, stowed Catherine into a seat and did up the belt much as though it were a ball and chain to keep her under restraint. He gripped her hands. ‘Now breathe in slowly and pull yourself together,’ he instructed. ‘You can scream all the way to Rome if you like but it’s not going to get you anywhere. Think of this as the first day of the rest of your life.’
Gasping in air, she stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘I saw this woman. I remembered something. She said I mustn’t do it…’
‘Do what?’
‘She didn’t say what.’ Already overwhelmingly aware of the foolishness of her behaviour, her voice sank to a limp mumble. ‘I had this feeling that I shouldn’t board the jet, that I was leaving something behind. It was so powerful. I felt so scared.’
‘Do you feel scared now?’
‘No, of course not.’ She flushed. ‘I’m sorry. I went crazy, didn’t I?’
‘You had a flashback. Your memory’s returning.’
‘Do you think so?’ She brightened, was faintly puzzled by his cool tone and the hard glitter of his gaze. ‘Why was I so scared?’
‘The shock and the suddenness of it,’ he proffered smoothly. ‘It couldn’t have been a comforting experience.’
The flight lasted two hours. They were not alone. There was the steward and the stewardess, the two security men, a sleek executive type taking notes every time Luc spoke, and a svelte female secretary at his elbow, passing out files and removing them and relaying messages. And the weird part of it all was that if Catherine looked near any of them they hurriedly looked away as if she had the plague or something.
Sitting in solitary state, she beckoned the stewardess. ‘Could I have a magazine?’
‘There are no magazines or newspapers on board, Miss Parrish. I’m so sorry.’ The woman’s voice was strained, her eyes evasive. ‘Would you like lunch now?’
‘Thanks.’ It was quite peculiar that there shouldn’t even be a magazine on board. Still, she would only have flicked through it. Sooner or later, she would have to tell Luc that she was dyslexic. She cringed at the prospect. She had never expected to be able to fool Luc this long. But somehow he had always made it so easy for her.
If there was a menu in the vicinity, he ordered her meals. He accepted that she preferred to remember phone messages rather than write them down for him, and was surprisingly tolerant when she forgot the details. He never mentioned the rarity with which she read a book. Occasionally she bought one and left it on display, but he never asked what it was about. And why did she go to all that trouble?
She remembered how often she had been called stupid before the condition was diagnosed at school. She remembered all the potential foster parents who had backed off at the very mention of dyslexia, falsely assuming that she would be more work and trouble than any other child. She also remembered all the people who had treated her as though she were illiterate. And if Luc realised he was taking on a wife to whom the written word was almost a blur of disconnected images, he might change his mind about marrying her.
When they landed in Rome, he told her that they were completing their journey by helicopter. ‘Where will we be staying?’ she prompted.
‘We won’t be staying anywhere,’ he countered. ‘We’re coming home.’
‘Home?’ she echoed. ‘You’ve bought a house?’
Luc shifted a negligent hand. ‘Wait and see.’
‘I haven’t been there before, have I? It’s not something else that I’ve forgotten, is it?’
‘You’ve never been in Italy before,’ he soothed.
She hated the helicopter and insisted on a rear seat, refusing the frontal bird’s-eye view that Luc wanted her to have. The racket of the rotors and her sore head interacted unpleasantly, upsetting her stomach. She kept her head down, only raising it when they touched down on solid ground again.
Luc eased her out into the fresh air again, murmuring, ‘Lousy?’
‘Lousy,’ she gulped.
‘I should’ve thought of that, but I wanted you to see Castelleone from the air.’ Walking her way from the helipad, he carefully turned her round. ‘This is quite a good vantage point. What do you think?’
If he hadn’t been supporting her, her knees would have buckled at the sight which greeted her stunned eyes. Castelleone was a fairy-tale castle with a forest of towers and spires set against a backdrop of lush, thickly wooded hills. Late-afternoon sunlight glanced off countless gleaming windows and cast still reflections of the cream stone walls on the water-lily-strewn moat. She should have been better prepared. She should have known to think big and, where Luc was concerned, think extravagant. He might have little time for history but with what else but history could he have attained a home of such magnificence and grandeur?
‘It wasn’t for sale when I found it, and it wasn’t as pretty as it is now…’
‘Pretty?’ she protested, finding her tongue again. ‘It’s beautiful! It must have cost a fortune.’
‘I’ve got money to burn and nothing else to spend it on.’ Idle fingertips slid caressingly through her hair. ‘It’s a listed building, which is damnably inconvenient. The renovations had to be restorations. Experts are very interfering people. There were times when I wouldn’t have cared if those walls came tumbling down into that chocolate-box moat.’
‘You’re joking!’ she gasped.
‘Am I? Have you ever lived with seventeenth-century plumbing, cara? It was barbaric,’ Luc breathed above her head. ‘The experts and I came to an agreement. The plumbing went into a museum and I stopped threatening to fill in the moat. We understood each other very well after that.’
‘You said it wasn’t for sale when you first saw it.’
‘For everything there is a price, bella mia.’ With a soft laugh, he linked his arms round her. ‘The last owner had no sentimental attachment to the place. It had been a drain on his finances for too long.’
‘Did you ever tell me about it?’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’ He guided her towards the elaborate stone bridge spanning the moat. Tall studded doors stood wide on
a hall covered with exquisitely painted frescoes.
‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘Admittedly not everyone has a foyer full of fat cherubs and bare-breasted nymphs. I’ll concede that if I concede nothing else,’ Luc said mockingly. ‘The original builder wasn’t over-endowed with good taste.’
‘If you don’t like it, why did you buy it?’ she pressed, struggling to hold back her tiredness.
He moved a broad shoulder. ‘It’s an investment.’
‘Does that mean you plan to sell it again?’ Her dismay was evident.
‘Not if you feel you can live with all those naked women.’
‘I can live with them!’
‘Somehow,’ he murmured softly, ‘I thought you would feel like that.’
Luc appraised her pallor, the shadows like bruises below her eyes, and headed her to the curving stone staircase. ‘Bed, I think.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed. I want to see the whole castle.’ If it was a dream that Luc should want to marry her and live in this glorious building, she was afraid to sleep lest she wake up.
‘You’ve had all the excitement you can take for one day.’ Luc whipped her purposefully off her feet when she showed signs of straying in the direction of an open doorway. ‘Why are you smiling like that?’
‘Because I feel as though I’ve died and gone to heaven and—’ she hesitated, sending him an adoring look ‘—I love you so much.’
Dark blood seared his cheekbones, his jawline hardening. Unconcerned, she linked her arms round his throat. ‘I’m not a plaster saint,’ he breathed.
‘I can live with your flaws.’
‘You’ll have to live with them,’ he corrected. ‘Divorce won’t be one of your options.’
She winced, pained by that response. ‘It isn’t very romantic to talk about divorce before the wedding.’
‘Catherine…as you ought to know by now, I’m not a very romantic guy. I’m not poetic, I’m not sentimental, I’m not idealistic,’ he spelt out grimly.
‘You make love in Italian,’ she said in a small voice.
‘It’s the first language I ever spoke!’
For some peculiar reason, he was getting angry. She decided to let him have his own way. If he didn’t think sweeping her off to a castle in Italy and marrying her within days was romantic, he had a problem. It might be wise, she decided, to share a little less of her rapture. But it was very difficult. Feeling weak and exhausted didn’t stop her from wanting to pin him to the nearest horizontal surface and smother him with grateful love and kisses.
At the top of that unending staircase, Luc paused to introduce her to a little man called Bernardo, who rejoiced in the title of major-domo. Catherine beamed at him.
‘Do you think you could possibly pin those dizzy feet of yours back to mother earth for a while?’ Luc enquired sardonically.
‘Not when you’re carrying me,’ she sighed.
Thrusting open a door, he crossed a large room and settled her down on a bed. It was a four-poster, hung with tassels and fringes and rich brocade. She rested back with a groan of utter contentment, lifted one leg and kicked off a shoe, repeated the action with the other. It was definitely her sort of bed.
His expressive mouth quirked. ‘I’ve arranged for a doctor to see you in half an hour. Do you think you could manage to look less as though you’ve been at the sherry?’
‘What do I need another doctor for?’
A smile angled over her. ‘Amnesia is a distressing condition, or so the story goes. I’ve never seen you like this…at least,’ he paused, ‘not in a long time.’
‘You’ve never asked me to marry you before,’ she whispered shyly.
‘A serious oversight. You’ve never tried to seduce me in the back of a limousine before, either.’ Golden eyes rested on her intently and then, abruptly, he took his attention off her again. ‘I don’t think you’ll find Dr Scipione too officious. He believes that time heals all.’ He strolled back to the door, lithe as a leopard on the prowl. ‘Bernardo’s wife will come up and help you to get into bed.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘Catherine,’ he interrupted, ‘one of the minor advantages of being my wife is being waited on hand and foot, thus saving your energy for more important pursuits.’
Her eyes danced. ‘And one of the major ones?’
Hooded dark eyes wandered at a leisurely pace over her, and heat pooled in her pelvis, her stomach clenching. ‘I’ll leave that to your imagination, active as I know it to be. Buona sera, cara. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ She sat up in shock.
‘Rest and peace.’ Luc made the reminder mockingly and shut the door.
She stared up at the elaborately draped canopy above her. You were flirting with him, a little voice said. What was so strange about that? She couldn’t ever recall doing it before. As a rule, she guarded and picked and chose her words with Luc in much the same fashion as one trod a careful passage round a sleeping volcano. Only at the beginning had she been na;auive enough to blurt out exactly what was on her mind.
But she wasn’t conscious of that barrier now, hadn’t been all day or even last night. She was no longer in awe of Luc. When had that happened? Presumably some time during this past year. And yet Luc had said he had never seen her like this in a long time. What was this? This, she conceded, hugging a pillow dripping lace and ribbons to her fast-beating heart, was being wonderfully, madly and utterly without restraint…happy.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE rails of clothing in the dressing-room bedazzled Catherine. Encouraged, the little maid, Guilia, pressed back more doors: day-wear, evening-wear, leisure-wear, shelves of cobwebby, gorgeous lingerie and row upon row of shoes, everything grouped into tiny bands of colour. Co-ordination for the non-colour-clever woman, she thought dazedly. Luc had bought her an entire new wardrobe.
Such an extensive collection could not have been put together overnight. Overwhelming as the idea was, she could only see one viable explanation—Luc must have been planning to bring her to Italy for months! As her fingertips lingered on a silk dress, Guilia looked anxious and swung out a full-length gown, contriving to be very apologetic about the suggested exchange.
‘Grazie, Guilia.’
‘Prego, signorina.’ With enthusiasm, Guilia whipped out lingerie and shoes and carried the lot reverently through to the bedroom. Catherine recognised a plant when she saw one. Guilia was here to educate her in the nicest possible way on what to wear for every possible occasion. Luc excelled on detail. Guilia had probably been programmed to bar the wardrobe doors if presented with a pretty cabbage-rose print.
It was eight in the evening. She had slept the clock round, slumbering through her first day at Castelleone. Last night, Bernardo’s wife, Francesca, had fussed her into bed with the warmth of a mother hen. Dr Scipione had then made his d;aaebut, a rotund little man with a pronounced resemblance to Santa Claus and an expression of soulful understanding.
Only when he had gone had she realised that she had chattered her head off the whole time he was there. He had only made her uneasy once by saying, ‘Sometimes the mind forgets because it wants to forget. It shuts a door in self-protection.’
‘What would I want to protect myself from?’ she laughed.
‘Ask yourself what you most fear and there may well lie the answer. It could be that when you fully confront that fear your mind will unlock that door,’ he suggested. ‘I suspect that you are not ready for that moment as yet.’
What did she most fear? Once it had been losing Luc, but since Luc had asked her to marry him that old insecurity had been banished forever. And the truth was that a little hiccup in her memory-banks did not currently have the power to alarm her—despite a nagging anxiety which she resolutely banished.
Attired in the fitting cerise-hued sheath, which was tighter over the fullness of her breasts than Guilia seemed to have expected, judging by the speed with which she had w
hipped out a tape-measure, Catherine sat down at the magnificent Gothic-styled dressing-table and smiled at the familiarity of the jewellery on display there. Her watch, stamped with the date she had first met Luc; clasping it to her wrist, she marvelled at how long it seemed since she had worn it. A leather box disclosed a slender diamond necklace and drop earrings; a second, a shimmering delicate bracelet. Christmas in Switzerland and her birthday, she reflected dreamily.
Leaving the bedroom, she peered over the stone balcony of the vast circular gallery. Bernardo’s bald-spot was visible in the hall far below. She hurried downstairs and said in halting Italian, ‘Buona sera, Bernardo. Dov’;aae Signor Santini?’
Bernardo looked anguished. He wrung his hands and muttered something inaudible. Abruptly she turned, her eyes widening. Raised voices had a carrying quality in the echoing spaces around them.
One of the doors stood ajar. A tall black-haired woman, with shoulder-pads that put new meaning into power-dressing, was ranting, presumably at Luc, who was out of view. Or was she pleading? It was hard to tell.
Catherine tensed. She had no difficulty in recognising Rafaella Peruzzi. She was the only person Catherine knew who could argue with Luc and still have a job at the end of the day. She inhabited a nebulous grey area in Luc’s life, somewhere between old friend and employee. She was also Santini Electronics’ most efficient hatchet-woman. She lived, breathed, ate and slept profit…and Luc.
She had grown up with him. She had modelled herself on him. She was tough, ruthless and absolutely devoted to his interests. At some stage she had also shared a bed with Luc. Nobody had told Catherine that. Nobody had needed to tell her. Rafaella was a piece of Luc’s past, but the past was a hopeful present in her eyes every time she looked at him. The women who blazed a quickly forgotten trail through his bedroom didn’t bother Rafaella. Catherine had.