A role? A strange way of putting it, Catherine mused. Especially when they both knew exactly the role Marcus was supposed to be playing. Still...
‘That is none of your business,’ she told him, provoking him even though she knew it was a dangerous thing to do. But she was too busy enjoying herself, giving him back what he usually gave to her, to care about the consequences.
And body language is such a rotten tale-teller she thought ruefully when she noticed the way she had folded her arms beneath her breasts in a way that could only be described as defiant.
The back door slammed shut, making her jump. A different kind of body language, she noted warily.
‘He’s your lover,’ Vito bit out condemningly.
‘But why look so shocked?’ she asked, refusing to deny the charge. ‘What’s the matter, Vito?’ she then taunted goadingly. ‘Hadn’t it occurred to you before that I might well have a personal life beyond Santo?’
A telling little nerve flicked in his jaw. Catherine enjoyed watching it happen. Did he honestly believe that she’d spent the last three years in social seclusion while he hadn’t been around to give her life meaning? The man was too arrogant and conceited for his own good sometimes, she decided. It wouldn’t hurt him one bit to discover that he wasn’t the be-all and end-all of her existence!
‘Or is it your colossal ego that’s troubling you?’ she said, continuing her thought patterns out loud and with derision. ‘Because it prefers to think me incapable of being with another man after having known you? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint your precious ego, but I have a healthy sex drive—as you very well know,’ she added before he decided to say it. ‘And I can be as discreet as you—if not more so, since it’s clear by your face that you knew nothing about Marcus, whereas I’ve had Marietta flung into my face for what feels like for ever!’
‘Leave Marietta out of this,’ he warned tightly.
‘Not while she remains a threat to my son,’ she refused.
‘The most immediate threat here, Catherine, is to yourself.’ He didn’t move a single muscle but she was suddenly aware of danger. ‘I want this man out of your life as of now!’
‘When Marietta is out of your life,’ she threw back promptly. ‘And not before.’
‘When are you going to accept that I cannot dismiss Marietta from my life!’ he said angrily. ‘Her husband was my best friend! She holds shares in my company! She works alongside me almost as my equal! She is my mother’s only godchild!’ Grimly, precisely, he counted off all the old excuses that gave Marietta power over them.
So Catherine added to it. ‘She sleeps in your bed,’ she mimicked him tauntingly. ‘She slips poison into your son’s food.’
‘You are the poisonous one,’ he sighed.
‘And you, Vito, are the fool.’
He took a step towards her. Catherine’s chin came up, green eyes clashing fearlessly with his. And the atmosphere couldn’t get any more fraught if someone had wired the room up with high-voltage cable. He looked as if he would like to shake her—and Catherine was angry enough to wish he would just try!
What he actually did try to do was put the brakes on what was bubbling dangerously between them. ‘Let’s get this discussion back where it should be,’ he gritted. ‘Which is on the question of your love-life, not mine!’
‘My love-life is flourishing very nicely, thank you,’ she answered flippantly.
It was the wrong thing to say. Catherine should have seen the signs—and maybe she had done. Afterwards she couldn’t quite say she hadn’t deliberately provoked him into action.
Whatever. She suddenly found herself being grabbed by hands that were hell-bent on punishment. ‘You hypocrite,’ he gritted. ‘You have the damned cheek to stand in judgement over my morals when your own are no better!’
‘Why should it bother you so much what I do in my private life?’ Catherine threw back furiously.
‘Because you belong to me!’ he barked.
She couldn’t believe she was hearing this! ‘Which makes you the hypocrite, Vito,’ she told him. ‘You want me—yet you don’t want me,’ she mocked him bitterly. ‘You like to play around—but can’t deal with the idea that I might play around!’
With a push, she put enough space between them to slide sideways and right away from him. But inside she was shaking. Shaking with anger or shaking with something far more basic. She wasn’t really sure.
‘Until last night—’ Was it only last night? She paused to consider. ‘We hadn’t even exchanged a single word with each other for the past three years! Then you suddenly walk in through my front door this morning and start behaving as if you’ve never been away from it!’ The way the air hissed from her lungs was self-explanatory. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you,’ she informed him grimly. ‘I have a life all right. A good one and a happy one. Which means I resent the hell out of you coming here and messing with it!’
‘Do you think that I am looking forward to having you running riot through my life a second time?’ he responded. ‘But you are my wife! Mine!’ he repeated. ‘And—’
‘What a joke!’ Catherine interrupted scornfully. ‘You only married me because you had to! Now you are taking me back because you have to! Well, hear this,’ she announced. ‘You may have walked me into a steel trap by saying what you did to Santo. But that doesn’t mean I am willing to stay meekly inside it! Anything you can do I can do,’ she warned him. ‘So if Marietta stays then Marcus stays!’
‘In your bed,’ he gritted, still fixed, it seemed, on getting her to admit the full truth about her relationship with Marcus.
‘In my bed,’ she confirmed, thinking, What the hell—why not let him believe that? ‘In my arms and in my body,’ she tagged on outrageously. ‘And so long as my son doesn’t know about it, who actually cares, Vito?’ she challenged. ‘You?’ she suggested as she watched his face darken with contempt for her. ‘Well, in case you haven’t realised it yet, I don’t care what you think. The same way that you didn’t care about me when you went from my arms to Marietta’s arms the day I lost our baby!’
* * *
Seven o’clock, and Vito still hadn’t come back.
Catherine stood by her bedroom window staring down at the street below and wondered anxiously whether she had finally managed to finish it for them.
She shouldn’t have said it, she acknowledged uncomfortably. True though it might have been, those kind of bitter words were best kept hidden within the dark recesses of one’s own mind. For it served no useful purpose to drag them all out, and if anything only added more pain where there was already enough pain to be felt.
She knew that he had felt the loss of their second child just as deeply as she had done. And had suffered guilt in knowing that she had known exactly where he had been and with whom he had been when she’d needed him. But in the thrumming silence which had followed her outburst, while she’d stood there sizzling in her own corrosive bitterness, she’d had to watch that tall, dark, proudly arrogant man diminish before her very eyes.
His skin had slowly leached of its colour, his mouth began to shake, and with a sharp jerk of his head he wrenched his eyes from her—but not before she’d seen the look of hell written in them.
‘Oh, God, Vito.’ On a wave of instant remorse she’d taken a step towards him. ‘I’m so...’
‘Sorry,’ she had been going to say. But he didn’t give her the chance to, because he’d just spun on his heel and walked out of the house.
And if the kitchen floor had opened up and swallowed her whole at that moment, she would have welcomed the punishment. For no man deserved to be demolished quite so thoroughly as she had demolished Vito.
Par for the course, she thought wearily now, as she stood there in the window. For when had she and Vito not been hell-bent on demolishing each other? They seemed to have been at loggerheads from day one of their marriage—mostly over Marietta. And the final straw had been her miscarriage.
In the ensuing dreadful hours after
being rushed into hospital she had almost lost her own life. She’d certainly lost the will to live for several long black months afterwards. She felt she had failed—failed her baby, failed in her marriage and failed as a woman. And the only thing that had kept her going through those months was Santino, and a driven need to wage war on Vito for coming to her hospital bed straight from Marietta’s arms.
But that was three years ago, and she had truly believed that she had put all of that anger and bitterness behind her. Now she knew differently, and didn’t like herself much for it. Especially when she knew that downstairs in the sitting room, already fed and bathed and in his pyjamas, was their son, kneeling on the windowsill doing exactly the same as his mother was doing. Staring out of the window anxiously waiting for his father’s return even though she’d assured him that his papà had merely rushed off to keep an appointment in the City and would be back as soon as he was able.
The throaty roar of a powerful engine reached her ears just before she saw the sports car turn the corner and start heading down the street towards them.
And Catherine’s hand shot up to cover her mouth as tears of relief, of aching gratitude, set her tense mouth quivering.
From the excited whoop she heard from her son, Santo had heard the sound and recognised it instantly.
Low, long, black and intimidating, Vito’s car hadn’t even come to a halt when she heard the front door open then saw her son racing down the path towards him. As he climbed out on the roadside, Vito’s face broke into a slashing grin as he watched his son scramble up and over the gate without bothering to open it.
He must have gone back to his London home as he had changed his clothes, she noticed. The creased suit and shirt swapped for crease-free and stylishly casual black linen trousers and a dark red shirt that moulded the muscular structure of his torso. And his face was clean shaven, the roguish look wiped away so only the smooth, dark, sleek Italian man of means was visible.
Coming around the long bonnet of the car, Vito only had time to open his arms as his son leapt into them. Leaning back against the passenger door of the car, he then proceeded to listen as Santo rattled on to him in a jumble of words that probably didn’t make much sense he was so excited. But that didn’t matter.
What Santo was really saying was all too clear enough. I’ve got my papà back. I’m happy!
Glancing up, Vito saw her standing there watching them, and his eyes froze in that instant. Take this away from me if you dare, he seemed to be challenging.
But Catherine didn’t dare—she didn’t even want to dare.
Turning away from the window, she left them to it and went to sink weakly down on her bed while she tried to decide where they went from here.
To Naples, of course, a dryly mocking voice inside her head informed her. Where you will toe the line that Vito will draw for you.
And why will you do that? she asked herself starkly.
Because when you brutally demolished him today, what you actually did was demolish your will to fight him.
Getting wearily to her feet, she grimly braced herself, ready to go down and face Vito. She found them in the sitting room and paused on the threshold to witness the easy intimacy with which Santo sat on Vito’s lap with his latest reading book open. Between them they were reading it in English then translating into Italian in a way that told Catherine that they did this a lot back in Naples.
And still she didn’t know what her place was going to be in this new order of things. But when Vito glanced up at her and she saw the residue of pallor that told her he still had not recovered from all of that ugliness earlier, she knew one thing for an absolute certainty as shame went riddling through her.
Vito might be feeling the weight of his own guilt but he would never forgive her for making him remember it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, because it had to be said now or never, even if their son was there to hear it. ‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘Santo and I are going to spend the day out tomorrow,’ Vito coolly cut in. ‘To give you chance to close up your life here. We fly back to Naples the day after...’
* * *
‘Damn...’ Catherine muttered as she lost the end to the roll of sticky tape—again. ‘Damn, damn, blasted damn...’
With an elbow trying to keep the cardboard box lid shut, she used a fingernail to pick carefully at the tape while her teeth literally tingled with frustration.
She’d had a lousy day and this stupid sticky tape was just about finishing it. First of all she’d had a row with Santo just before he’d gone off with his father and she’d walked into his bedroom to find it in complete upheaval.
‘Santino—get up here and clean this mess up!’ she’d yelled at him down the stairwell.
He’d come, but reluctantly. ‘Can’t you do it, this once?’ he’d asked her sulkily. ‘Papà is ready to go now!’
‘No, I cannot,’ she refused. ‘And Papà can wait.’
‘I never have to do this in Naples,’ her son muttered complainingly as he slouched passed her.
In the mood she was in, mentioning Naples was the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull.
‘Well, in this house we clean up after ourselves, and before we get treats out!’ Catherine fired back. ‘And guess what, sweetie?’ she added for good measure. ‘From now on Mummy is going to be in Naples to make sure you don’t get away with such disgraceful behaviour!’
‘Maybe you should stay here, then,’ the little terror responded.
‘Santino!’
Catherine hadn’t realised that Vito called his son Santino, as she did, when the boy was in trouble. And it had a funny little effect on her to hear him doing it this morning.
‘Apologise to your mother and do as she tells you!’
The apology was instant. And Catherine sighed, and seethed, and resented the hell out of Vito for getting from her son what she had been about to get from him herself.
But then that was just another little thing about herself she’d learned that she didn’t like. She was jealous of Santo’s close relationship with his father. It had shown its ugly green head when Santo had insisted Vito take him to bed last night, leaving her feeling pathetically rejected.
And the pendulum had swung back the other way, just like that, putting her right on the attack again. So when Vito had come down half an hour later and coolly informed her that their son was expecting him to stay the night—she exploded.
‘You’ve got your own house only two miles up the road. Use it!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘I don’t want you staying here.’
‘I didn’t say that I wanted to stay,’ he’d drawled. ‘Only that our son expects it.’
‘Well, I expect you to leave,’ she’d countered. ‘Now, if possible. I’ve got things to do and you—’
‘Or people to see?’ he’d silkily suggested. ‘Like your lover, for instance?’
So, they were back to that already, she’d noted angrily, realising that neither seemed to have learned much from their row that morning. ‘I do not bring my lovers into this house,’ she’d informed him haughtily. ‘Behaviour like that might be acceptable in Italy but it certainly isn’t here!’
As a poke at Marietta without actually saying her name, it had certainly hit its mark. His hard face had shut down completely. ‘Then where do you meet him? In a motel under assumed names?’
‘Better that than allocating him the room next to my room,’ she’d said.
The remark had sent his eyes black. ‘Marietta never occupied a room within ten of ours, Catherine,’ he’d censured harshly.
But at least he had voiced whom it was they were talking about. ‘Well, rest assured she won’t be occupying any room when I move back in,’ she’d informed him. ‘And if I see her with so much as a toothbrush in her hand, I’ll chuck her through the nearest window.’
To her annoyance he’d laughed. ‘Now that I would like to see,’ he’d murmured. ‘After all, Marietta stands a good two inches taller than yo
u and there is a little bit more of her—in every way.’
‘Well, you should know,’ she’d drawled, in a tone that had wiped that grin right off his face!
He’d left soon after that, stiffly promising to return before Santo woke up the next morning. He’d left soon after her argument with Santo this morning too, she recalled now, with a grimace. One glance at her face as she’d walked down the stairs must have told him she was gunning for yet another round with him.
Next she’d had to beg an immediate release from her contract, which Robert Lang had not taken kindly. Then she’d had to say her goodbyes to people she had been working with for over two years, and that had been pretty wretched. Then—surprise, surprise—something nice had happened! One of the new recruits at the company had come to search her out because he’d heard she was leaving London and wanted to know if he could lease her house from her.
Why not? she’d thought. It was better than leaving it unlived in, and she liked the idea of him and his small family looking after the place for her.
But she hadn’t bargained on the extra work it would entail to leave the house fit for strangers. Instead of just doing the usual preparations, then shutting the front door on everything as she left it, she’d had to go hunting round for anything and everything of a personal nature and box it up ready to go into storage, arrange for that darned storage, and also arrange for a company of professional cleaners to come in and get the place ready for her new tenants.
Now she was tired and fed-up and harassed, and all she wanted to do was sit down and have a good weep because everything she’d grown to rely on for security in her life had been effectively dismantled today!
But she couldn’t weep because Vito and her son were due back at any minute, and she would rather die than let Vito catch her weeping!
But none of that—or even all of that put together—compared with the awful lunch she had endured with Marcus Templeton.
Okay, she reasoned, so their relationship was not quite on the footing that she had led Vito to believe. But it had been getting there—slowly. And she liked Marcus—she really did! He was the first man she had allowed to get close to her after the disastrous time she’d had with Vito.
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