Wished to God that she wasn’t so useless as a woman. She wished her heart didn’t hurt so much and her brain was more able to make a clear-cut decision between what was right and what was wrong.
And she wished so very sincerely that the world would stop turning, so that she could get off it and never come back to it again!
‘Cry if you want to,’ his rusty voice encouraged.
‘No,’ she refused, but her body was already trembling with the effort it was costing her not to.
‘It was the right thing to do, Catherine. The only thing to do.’ Vito’s mouth pressed a kiss to the back of her head. ‘But that does not mean you must not mourn the decision.’
But it did—it did! And Vito was never going to understand what that decision was costing her because she was not going to tell him—or tell anyone for that matter.
‘I just want to go to sleep and forget all about it,’ she whispered thickly.
‘Then do so,’ he allowed. ‘But I will be here if you change your mind, cara. Right here beside you.’
Was this his way of making up for the time when he hadn’t been there for her? If it was then Catherine was not going to taunt him with it. Because she might be absorbed by her own torment right now, but she could feel the way his hands were tensely gripping her hands, that Vito was no less tormented.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HIS arms stayed wrapped around her throughout the long night. Each time Catherine swam up from the dark well of sleep towards reality she felt him there, and drew enough comfort from that to help sink her back into oblivion once again.
The next morning he woke her up very early and gently reminded her to take her second set of pills. Without a word she dragged herself out of the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. But it was only as she stood there in the middle of the bathroom floor, feeling a bit like a spare part that had no useful function, that the sudden realisation that something was different had her glancing down at her left hand—then going perfectly still when she saw her rings winking up at her.
The first one—an exquisite square-cut diamond set to stand on its own—she’d received a week after she’d told Vito she was pregnant with Santo. The second was the plain gold band given to her on her wedding day that matched the one Vito wore on his finger. And the third—a diamond-encrusted eternity ring—arrived the day after she’d announced the coming of their second baby.
When had he done this? she wondered frowningly, remembering that there hadn’t seemed to be a single moment during the night when she hadn’t been aware of him right there beside her. Yet he must have left her at some point and gone downstairs to his safe in the study, where she presumed he had placed her rings when she’d left them behind her, then come back upstairs to slide the rings on her finger—carefully, so as not to waken her.
But why had he done it? That was the much more disturbing question. And why last night, of all nights, when she couldn’t have felt less deserving of these rings if she’d tried?
What kind of message was he trying to convey to her? There had to be some significance in him replacing these rings on her finger last night when things could not have been more pitiable between them.
A statement of intent? ‘I am here for you, Catherine,’ he had told her. And the appearance of her rings seemed to be telling her that he wanted her to know he was seriously committing himself to this ailing marriage of theirs, when really what had happened yesterday could not have been a better reminder as to why he was better off without her!
Guilt riddled through her. The guilt of a woman who knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful with him.
But then, she asked herself, when had she ever felt that she could be? She had always only ever felt like a means to an end for Vito. First as a very compatible lover, then as the mother of his future child, and now as a necessary means of making his son happy. You couldn’t build trust and honesty on foundations as shaky as theirs were.
Rings or no rings, none of that had changed since yesterday. She still felt as alone now as she had done on the day she’d lost their baby three years ago.
‘Forgive me, Catherine,’ he had pleaded at that time. ‘If there was anything I could do to make the last twenty-four hours go away then I would do it. You have to believe me.’
But no one, not even Vito, was able to turn back time. It had already been too late for them by then. Just as it was also too late to change the consequences of the last twenty-four hours now.
And right now as she stood here, staring at these rings which seemed to be making such an important statement, she wished he hadn’t done it when it only complicated a situation that was complicated enough already. Because he didn’t know.
He didn’t know...
A point which made her manner awkward when she returned to the bedroom a few minutes later. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, making a gesture with the hand bearing the rings.
He smiled a brief, tight smile. ‘I missed them last night,’ he explained. ‘Then could not go to sleep without putting them back where they belonged.’
That word ‘belonged’ made her aching heart flinch. And for the life of her she couldn’t think of a single thing to say in reply. So a tension built between them, a different kind of tension that lacked the old hostility that usually helped to keep them going.
Vito eventually filled it. ‘So—what would you like to do today?’ he asked briskly. ‘I usually take Santo on a short horse-ride on his first day here, to brush up on his riding skills.’
‘Fine.’ It was her turn to flash a brief, brisk smile. ‘I’ll come too, if I may.’
But her light reply sent his eyes dark. ‘That was the idea, Catherine,’ he said soberly. ‘That we do things together as a family.’
‘I thought I just agreed to that,’ she countered blankly.
‘It was the way that you said it,’ Vito grimly replied. ‘As if you were afraid you may be an intrusion.’
This time Catherine’s smile was wry to say the least. ‘Let’s face it, Vito. I wouldn’t be here at all if Santino hadn’t backed you into a corner.’
His eyes began to flash. And, snap—just like that the antagonism was back. ‘Well, you are here,’ he grated. ‘And this is your home. We are your family and the sooner you come to terms with that, the sooner you will stop being an intrusion!’
With that, Catherine watched him slam himself into the bathroom, leaving her to wonder what the hell had motivated it.
Going back over the conversation, the only thing she could come up with that could have ignited his temper was her silence after he had explained about her rings.
Had he been expecting a whole lot more than a blank stare? A declaration of mutual intent, maybe? But why he should expect or even want that baffled her. He had never looked for those kind of declarations before when—marginally—they’d had something more substantial to work with than they had now.
And anyway, she concluded as she went to find something suitable to wear to go riding in, she felt more comfortable with antagonism than she did with the terrible lost and vulnerable feeling that she’d woken up with this morning. So let him stew, she decided. Let him bash his ego against the brick wall of her defences if that was what he wanted to do. Because there was no way that even Vittorio Giordani could really believe he had a right to expect more from her than he was willing to give out himself!
Yet something fundamental had altered inside him, Catherine had to admit as her first week in Naples drew to a close. For after that one show of his Italian temperament Vito had never uttered another harsh word to her, and seemed to be very careful not to give her the opportunity to flash hers at him.
He had allotted this week to spend with Santo, and work had been set to one side so he could play the loving family game their son had been promised. So they’d filled in their days by riding and swimming, and with trips out around Naples. And their nights had been spent in each other’s arms, without even the slightest question of sex rearing its emotive he
ad between them.
And slowly—slowly—Catherine had begun to relax her guard a little, begun to cautiously enjoy herself. And without the sex to complicate matters, they had actually managed to achieve a kind of harmony that was almost as seductive as the sex used to be.
But it couldn’t last. Did she honestly believe that it could? Catherine asked herself as she lay, supposedly relaxing with a book at the poolside, left entirely to her own devices for the first time since she had arrived back here. Luisa had announced her intention to take Santo and a group of his friends off to the beach for the day, and Vito had informed her that he planned to spend the day in his study, putting in some work for his neglected company.
Nothing particularly life-changing in those events, you would think, she mused to herself. But, for reasons she refused to let herself delve into, the book she was reading wouldn’t hold her attention. After having pounded out a dozen or so laps of the pool, she had hoped she would just collapse on the sunbed in exhaustion, but she hadn’t.
She felt tense and edgy, and kept glancing at the sky, as if she expected to find thunderclouds gathering on the horizon, which would explain this strange tension she was experiencing. But no hint of grey spoiled the perfect blue. In the end she gave up trying to be relaxed when she so obviously wasn’t, and went back indoors to shower the suncream from her skin and get dressed with the vague intention of driving herself into Naples in an effort to kill some time.
She had rubbed herself dry, and was just in the process of smoothing body lotion into one of her long slender thighs when the bathroom door swung open. Standing there completely naked and with one foot lifted onto the bathroom stool to make her task easier, she glanced up, saw Vito filling the doorway—and knew in that instant that the storm she had been expecting all day had finally arrived.
It was a storm called desire. Pure and simple, hot and hungry, tense and tight. It raged in the burning intensity of his eyes and pulsed in the tautness of his stance.
He was wearing a casual wine-red shirt and a pair of lightweight black linen trousers, but as his gaze glittered over her she saw his hand lift up and begin unfastening shirt buttons—and the frisson of response which went shimmering through her was electric.
She had to move. It was a point of necessity that she drop her raised foot to the floor so she could squeeze her pulsing thighs together. The shirt fell apart to reveal a wide bronzed breastplate covered in short, crisp devil-black hair.
‘I w-was about to go out,’ she heard herself stammer, really as a vehicle to break the raging tension now filling the space between them. ‘Drive in-into Naples.’
‘Later,’ he murmured as the shirt landed on the bathroom floor. Then he half bent so he could slide off his shoes and socks before moving his attention to his trousers.
This was one hell of a strip show. Catherine clutched the bottle of lotion in one hand and felt her flesh begin to tingle. As the trousers parted to reveal that dark patch of body hair she knew thickened beneath the covering of his briefs panic erupted, though it was a very sexual kind of panic and had nothing to do with any dismay at what he was clearly intending.
Yet something made her put up a protest. Maybe it was the knowledge that the trousers were about to go, as she saw his fingers grip at the waistband in readiness to rake them down his legs.
‘I... Vito, you—I—we c-can’t,’ she mumbled incoherently.
‘Why not?’ he countered.
‘Y-your mother—Santo...’
But he shook his dark head. ‘I’ve waited a full week for you to tell me it is okay for us to do this,’ he said rawly. ‘I am not waiting any longer, Catherine. I cannot wait any longer—’
Was that what had been holding him back for all of this time? Because he had assumed she would be rendered unavailable by the pill-induced menstrual cycle?
Chagrined heat blushed her skin from toes to hairline. Seeing it happen brought his strip show to a taut standstill. ‘Is it okay?’ he then demanded, and his consternation was so great that Catherine almost let out a giggle.
Except that this was no moment for humour. The man in front of her was suffering too badly to appreciate it—as his next gruff statement clearly illuminated. ‘For goodness’ sake, answer me, Catherine,’ he commanded. ‘The tension is starting to kill me, very slowly and very painfully.’
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered.
Honey-gold eyes grew suddenly darker, their heat piercing her in all the right places. The trousers went the same way as the shirt, taking his underwear with them to leave only the man in his full and sexual glory to come walking towards her.
The tip of her tongue came out to moisten her lips as he took the bottle of lotion from her nerveless fingers then set it aside. And, without taking his eyes from her eyes, he bent his dark head to capture the tongue-tip between his own lips and draw it into his mouth in an act so inherently erotic that she whimpered in protest when he withdrew again almost immediately.
But his eyes continued to make love to her eyes as one of his hands slid around her waist while the other hand reached up to release her hair from the knot she had it twisted in for her shower. As her hair tumbled down over his fingers to brush sensually against her naked shoulders, he slowly drew her against him.
The contact was utterly scintillating, a fine brushing of warm flesh against flesh that set every nerve-end she possessed singing. Then he kissed her again, slowly and deeply, while stroking her with featherlight fingertips until she was breathless and trembling.
It was all too much for her to just stand there passive while he did this to her. With a sigh that was about as tactile as a sigh could be, she wound her arms around his shoulders, caught his head in her palms and began kissing him hungrily.
It was all the encouragement he needed to pick her up in his arms and carry her to the bed. The pillows went the way they usually did, to the floor, sent there by his urgent hands while Catherine dragged back the covers.
They came together in a tangle of limbs on the smooth, cool linen. It was all very deep, very unconstrained—very erotic, very definitely them at their most sensuously intense. Nothing was taboo, no means to give pleasure ignored—no words uttered. And their silence in itself was deeply seductive. Only the sounds of their breathing and their bodies moving in unison towards the kind of finale that stripped the soul.
Afterwards they lay just touching and kissing, communicating by all other means than talking, because words were dangerous, and neither of them wanted to spoil the special magic they had managed to create, that enclosed them in this wonderful bubble of tactile contentment. Of course they made love again several times during that long, quiet, lazy afternoon, then eventually slept in a possessive love-knot while the sun died slowly out of the room. This was fulfilment at its most sweetest.
Catherine came awake to find herself lying on the bed with a sheet draped strategically across her. Vito had gone from his sleeping place beside her, but her initial sense of loss was quickly replaced with a gasp of shock when she glanced at the bedside clock and actually saw what time it was!
Seven o’clock—Luisa and Santo would have been home for ages! What must they be thinking of her? What had Vito given as an excuse for her being so lazy? How could he just leave her to sleep like this?
‘You rat, Vito,’ she muttered to herself as she scrambled off the bed, then hurried to find some clothes to drag on.
The thin blue summer dress she had been intending to put on after her shower earlier still lay draped over a chair where she had left it. Scrambling into her underwear, then the dress, she was acutely aware of a series of deep inner aches that offered a good reason why she had slept so heavily. She had never been so thoroughly ravished!
She even felt herself begin to blush as she slid her bare feet into a pair of casual sandals, remembering just what they had done to each other. Or for each other, she then corrected, and on an agitated mix of pleasure and embarrassment she began finger-combing her tumbled hair as she ma
de for the door.
The moment that she stepped out onto the landing she knew something was wrong, when the first thing that she heard was Santo’s voice raised in anger.
What could be the matter? she wondered frowningly as she followed the sound of her son’s angry voice down the stairs and into the main drawing room.
The sight that hit her eyes as she arrived in the doorway sent her still in dismay. Both Luisa and Vito were staring at a surly-faced Santo, who was standing there belligerently facing up to—none other than Marietta.
Of course it had to be Marietta causing all of this mayhem, Catherine grimly acknowledged as she watched the other woman bend at her slender waist to smile sweetly at Santo and say gently. ‘But, darling, you told me that you would like your papà to marry me.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Santo angrily denied it. ‘Why would I say that when I don’t even like you?’
‘Santino!’ his father cautioned sternly. ‘Apologise—now!’
If Catherine thought Santo had been difficult enough during the week before Vito arrived, when she’d endured some spectacular tantrums from him, she was now seeing he had not even got started.
For his face was hot, his eyes aflame, and his stance was more than ready for combat. Turning his glare on his father, he spat, ‘No!’ with enough force to make Vito stiffen. ‘She’s lying, and I won’t let her!’
‘Oh, please...’ It was Luisa who tried to play peacemaker, by hurrying forward in an attempt to put herself between Santo and Vito. ‘This is just a silly misunderstanding that has got out of hand,’ she said anxiously. ‘Please don’t be alarmed by it, Vito.’
‘Alarmed?’ Vito bit out. ‘Will you explain to me, then, why I walk in this room to the alarming sounds of my son being rude to a guest in this house?’
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