Bending his head, he brushed his mouth against her own. ‘In short, I want us to be a warm, close, loving family,’ he said as he drew away again. ‘Just me, you, Santo and Mamma, in a small tight unit of four with no lies to cloud our horizon and no—What?’ he said, cutting off to frown at her as Catherine’s softened expression took on such a radical change that he couldn’t miss it. ‘What did I just say? Why are you looking like that?’
She was already trying to get away from him. ‘I...’
‘Don’t you dare claim that you don’t want these things also!’ he exploded angrily, completely misreading the reason for the sudden way she had just shut him out again. ‘Because I know that you do! I know you love me, Catherine!’ he insisted forcefully. ‘As much as I love you!’
Oh, God help me! she prayed as his angry declaration shuddered through her. ‘Please, Vito!’ she begged. ‘Don’t be angry. But—’
‘But nothing!’ he growled, and took ruthless possession of her mouth in a blatant act meant to stop her from speaking.
It was hard and it was urgent, and she loved him for it. But in all her life Catherine had never felt so wickedly wretched—because he was trembling—all of him! His mouth where it crushed her mouth, his arms where they bound her tightly to him. She could even feel his heart trembling where her hand lay trapped against the wall of his chest.
And if she had never believed a single word he had said to her before this moment, then she suddenly knew that she had to believe that any man who could be as affected as this must truly love her!
‘Y-You don’t understand,’ she groaned as she wrenched her mouth free of him. ‘I need to—’
‘I have no wish to understand,’ was his arrogant reply. But it was hoarsely said, and the look on his face was the one Luisa would call his frightened expression. ‘You are mine! You know you are!’ And on that he picked her up and began striding inside with the grim-faced, hard-eyed, burning intention of ravishing her—Catherine knew that.
‘You just said that you wanted no more lies between us!’ She tried to plead with him for reason. ‘Well, at least give me a chance to be as honest with you as you have just been with me!’
‘No.’ The refusal was blunt and uncompromising as he fell with her onto the bed.
‘I do love you!’ she cried—and effectively brought him to a stop just as his mouth was about to take hers prisoner.
‘Say that again,’ he commanded.
‘I love you,’ she responded obediently. ‘But I have a terrible confession to make, Vito!’ she hurried on anxiously. ‘And I need you to listen before you—’
‘If you are going to admit that you and Marcus Templeton were lovers,’ he cut in, ‘then believe me, Catherine, when I tell you that I do not want to hear it!’
‘Marcus and I were never lovers,’ she shakily assured him.
His eyes drew shut, long dark lashes curling over dark golden iris in an effort to hide his deep sense of relief. And Catherine’s teeth pressed deep indentations into her lower lip as she waited while some of the fierce tension began to ease out of him.
She watched those eyelids rise up again slowly to show her the eyes of a man who was not quite as driven by fear any more, though still dark and dynamic, with the kind of inherent passions that curled around the soul.
‘Okay,’ he invited grimly. ‘Make your damned confession and get it over with.’
‘I do love you,’ she repeated urgently. ‘I always have! Wh-which—which is why I just couldn’t do it!’
‘Do what?’ he frowned.
She lost courage, and with it the words to speak. So instead she kissed him gently, softly, tenderly. But her heart was beating like a hammer drill and, lying on top of her as he was, Vito had to be aware of it.
His head came up. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ he breathed. ‘It cannot be this bad, surely?’
The fear was filtering back into his eyes. She bit her bottom lip again. Then the tears began to flood her own eyes as she forced herself to say what had to be said.
‘I didn’t take the morning-after pills,’ she confessed in a frightened little rush of words that had him staring down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘I couldn’t, you see, wh-when it came right down to it. I mean—how could I destroy the chance of a new life we may make between us? It was just too—’
‘No,’ he cut in as understanding finally began to dawn on him. ‘You would not be so stupid.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed. With trembling fingers Catherine reached up to gently cover the sudden white-ringed tension circling his mouth. ‘But I couldn’t do it. I just—couldn’t do it...’
Rolling away from her, Vito jack-knifed to his feet, then just stood staring down at her as if he didn’t know who she was. It was awful—much, much worse than she had expected it to be.
‘What is it with you?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Do you harbour some kind of death-wish or something?’
Catherine sat up to hug her knees and murmured shakily, ‘It was too late.’
He let out a laugh—only it wasn’t a laugh but more a burst of something else entirely. ‘No, it damn well wasn’t!’ he exploded. ‘You had seventy-two hours to take the bloody things after we made love that day!’
‘I meant it was too late for me!’ she yelled back in pained rebuttal. ‘What if we’d conceived, Vito?’ She begged for understanding. ‘It would have been like killing Santino!’
‘That’s just so much rot, Catherine, and you know it,’ he denounced. ‘You have been taking the contraceptive pill for years! What difference could a couple of extra hours be to what you do every single day?’
‘Not then.’ She shrugged. ‘But the night before, when we...’
She didn’t finish, but then she didn’t need to. Vito was well ahead of her. ‘That is no excuse,’ he denounced, ‘for putting your own life on the line!’
‘We don’t know if I have done yet,’ she pointed out. ‘But at least I can be sure that I didn’t deliberately kill another baby.’
His face turned pure white. ‘You didn’t kill the last one!’ he shouted furiously.
Catherine flinched at his anger. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, and buried her face in her knees.
‘Well, you are going to talk about it!’ he rasped, and a pair of hands gently took hold of her head to pull it upwards again. ‘You are going to talk about the fact that once again you have made a decision that should have been mine to share with you!’
‘You wanted me to take the pills!’ she cried. ‘That isn’t sharing a decision; that’s me bowing down to what you decide!’
‘Well, that has to be better than this!’ he said in a voice that shook, then removed his hands and turned right away from her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered again, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he strode into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
And Catherine lowered her head again, allowing him the right to be so angry—which was why she had let him go on believing she had taken the damned—stupid—rotten pills!
And actually—she had meant to take them. It had only been when it had come to the point of actually putting them in her mouth that she’d discovered she just couldn’t do it.
Not to herself, not to the child that might already have been forming its tenuous grasp for life deep inside her. So she’d binned the pills right there in Vito’s bathroom then continued the lie with a determined blank disregard of the consequences.
Maybe Vito was right and she did harbour a secret death wish, she mused hollowly. But she knew deep down inside that this had nothing to do with death but to do with a chance of life. The maternal instinct to protect that life was as strong in a woman as the natural need to keep drawing in breath.
She hadn’t been able to fight it, and somehow she had to make Vito understand that, she decided as she dragged herself off the bed and walked on shaking limbs towards the bathroom.
It had to mean something that he hadn’t bothered to loc
k the door, she told herself bracingly as she twisted the handle and stepped bravely inside.
The room was steamy. Vito was already in the shower and his clothes lay in an angrily discarded heap over in one corner. Not really sure that she was doing the right thing here, Catherine walked over to the shower cubicle and pulled open the door.
He was standing with his back to the shower spray. Hands on narrow hips, wide shoulders braced, dark head thrown back to receive the full blast of the hot water right on his grim face.
A truly dynamic sensual animal, she mused, then smiled wryly at letting herself think of such things at a dire moment such as this.
‘Vito,’ she prompted quietly. ‘We need to talk about this...’
His dark head tilted forward, then turned towards her. And his utterly cold dark golden eyes ran slowly over her while the water sluiced down his bronze back.
‘You will ruin that dress in this steam,’ was all he said, then turned his face back up to the shower.
Catherine gritted her teeth as her old enemy anger began to raise its dangerous head. And without thinking twice about it she stepped into the shower with him, silk dress and all, and firmly pulled the door shut.
She’d surprised him, she noted with some satisfaction as his dark head shot forwards again to stare at her in disbelief. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he protested.
‘You are going to have to listen some time.’ She shrugged determinedly. ‘So it might as well be now.’
Forever the man to think fast on his feet, Vito responded by taking a small step sideways. Doing so gave the water spray unrestricted passage towards her, and, with a grim intention that galled, he leaned his shoulders into the corner of the shower, folded his arms across his impressive chest, then watched uncaringly as the water turned her red silk dress almost transparent before his ruthless eyes.
Diamonds glittered at her throat, at her ears, and on her finger. Her chin was up, her eyes flashing green fire at him at his black-hearted retaliation. But she didn’t so much as gasp as the hot water hit her.
‘Okay,’ he said coolly. ‘Talk.’
‘I am a woman,’ she announced, earning herself the mocking arch of an arrogant brow in response. Gritting her teeth, she ignored it. ‘Being a woman, the urge to nurture and protect new life is so deeply entrenched in my very psyche that I would probably find it easier to shoot myself than harm that new life.’
‘This is not the Dark Ages,’ he grimly derided. ‘In case you have forgotten, your sex stopped being slaves to your hormones a long time ago.’
‘I’m not talking about hormones,’ Catherine refuted. ‘I am talking about instinct—the same kind of instinct that gives your sex the desire to impregnate mine!’
‘Once again, my sex stopped being slaves to our sperm banks with the advent of condoms.’ He also derided that. ‘It is called free sex—enjoyed by millions for its pleasure, not its original function.’
‘Since when have you ever thought of using a condom?’ Catherine scoffed at that. ‘I don’t remember you considering protection, even when you knew it was dangerous for me to risk getting pregnant!’
His jaw clenched on a direct hit, and Catherine noted it with a nod in acknowledgement. ‘You left the protecting up to me, Vito,’ she reminded him. ‘Which therefore gives me the right to call the shots when that protection is breached!’
‘Not at the risk of your own life,’ he denied.
‘You said it,’ she agreed. ‘It is my life. I made a decision that might risk everything—but might also be risking absolutely nothing, depending on how my pregnancy goes. That’s a fifty-fifty chance either way,’ she told him. ‘Fifty-fifty odds are just too even for me to justify stealing from any child the right to survive them!’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ he rasped. ‘Your own mother died in childbirth, Catherine! What does that tell you about the risk you are taking!’
Tears burst into her eyes, making them glint like the diamonds she was wearing. ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t frightened,’ she whispered shakily.
On the kind of curse that turned the air blue Vito snapped off the gushing water, then reached out to drag her against him.
‘You stupid woman,’ he condemned, but it was a darkly possessive and very needy condemnation. ‘How could you do this to us now, when we are actually beginning to know each other?’
‘I need you to be strong for me—not angry,’ Catherine sobbed against his shoulder.
‘I will be strong,’ he promised gruffly. ‘But not yet, while I still cannot make up my mind whether I want to kill you for doing this to us!’
Despite the tears, Catherine lifted her face to smile wryly at him. ‘That was a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one.’
He gave a muttered growl of frustration and bent to kiss her. Then, ‘Turn around,’ he commanded gruffly, and without waiting for her to comply he twisted her round himself, then began dealing with the sodden length of zip down one of her sides which helped hold the dress in place. With an efficiency that had always been his, he stripped her bare, and, leaving her clothes in a wet puddle on the shower floor, he led her out of the cubicle, found a towel and began drying her with all the grimness of a man still at war with himself.
Or with her, Catherine corrected as she gazed at the top of his dark head while he briskly dried her legs for her.
‘It might never happen,’ she huskily pointed out.
‘With our past record?’ His mouth took on a scornful grimace as he rose to his full height. ‘You are pregnant, Catherine,’ he announced as he wrapped the towel around her and neatly tucked the ends in between her breasts. ‘You know it and I know it. We don’t need to await the evidence to be that sure.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured yet again, with a glum sense of utter inadequacy.
‘But not regretful,’ he said, clearly not very impressed by the apology.
Catherine gave a mute shake of her head. He reached for another towel, which he tucked around his own lean waist, then grabbed hold of her hand to lead her back into the bedroom.
The bed awaited. He trailed her directly to it, bent to toss back the covers—then paused. ‘Your hair is wet,’ he observed belatedly.
‘Just the loose ends,’ she dismissed, not in the least bit interested in her wet hair because she was too busy waiting for whatever it was he had damped down inside him to come bursting through the restraints of his control.
‘I love you,’ she said, and inadvertently helped it to explode when he turned on her, grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her an angry shake.
‘You don’t deserve me, Catherine,’ he informed her darkly. ‘You give me nothing but arguments, heartache and grief and yet I love you. You mistrust me, leave me, and make me go through the horror of fighting to see my own son, and still I continue to love you!’
‘I didn’t know that then,’ she reminded him.
‘Well, you damn well do now!’ he grimly responded. ‘So now what do I have?’ he asked her. ‘I have you back where you belong, is what I have. I have you back in my home, in my bed and in my life, and what do you do? You tell me I have to go through the worry and stress and fear of losing you all over again because you hold your own life in lower regard than I do.’
‘It isn’t that simple—’
‘It is from where I stand,’ he informed her. ‘In fact it is elementary from where I stand! Because this time you are going to do as you are told. Do you understand me?’
His hands gave her another small shake. ‘Yes,’ she answered meekly.
‘No more working for money we do not need. No more fights to establish your precious independence. You will rest when I tell you to, and eat when I tell you to, and sleep when I tell you to!’
‘You’re being very masterful,’ she said.
‘You think this is masterful?’ he questioned darkly. ‘Wait until you have lived for nine months with me as your jailer and you will be very intimate with just how masterful I am going
to be!’
‘Sounds exciting,’ she said, her green eyes glinting up at him with the kind of suggestion that had him tensing.
‘Well, that is just something else you are going to have to learn to do without,’ he informed her deridingly. ‘Because sex is out for the next nine months, if you recall.’
‘Are you joking?’ she flashed. ‘I’m not giving up sex until I have to!’
‘You will do as you are told,’ he informed her coldly.
That’s what you think, Catherine thought, with the light of battle burning in her eyes. On an act of rebellion she whipped both towels away, then, with a push to his arrogant chest, sent him toppling backwards onto the mattress.
‘I want you now, while you are still wet from your shower and I am dripping in diamonds!’ she informed him as she followed him down so she was stretched out down his full length. Then she kissed him so sensuously that he didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of arguing the point with her.
‘You are right; you are a witch,’ he muttered when she eventually released him.
‘A happy witch, though,’ she said. ‘I love you. You love me. It makes me feel so wickedly aroused,’ she confessed as she trailed the heart-shaped diamond locket across his kiss-warmed mouth. ‘So, do you want to fight some more or make love?’ she asked. ‘Bearing in mind, of course, that you have just ordained that we are not allowed to fight any more...’
* * *
Eight months later, Catherine was relaxing on one of the sun loungers reading a book while Santo played around in the pool. It was April, and the weather had only just turned warm enough to indulge in this kind of lazy pastime. But she put her book aside when Vito suddenly appeared around the corner of the house and came to join her.
‘You’re home early,’ she remarked, accepting his warm kiss as he bent over her.
‘I have some news for you,’ he explained. ‘But first—how are my two precious females?’
Catherine smiled serenely as his hand reached out to lay a gentle stroke across her swollen stomach. Learning the sex of their baby had been a decision they had made together very early on in her pregnancy, when neither knew what the future was going to offer them. Catherine had wanted to know as much about her baby as she could know—just in case. And Vito had not demurred. So Abrianna Luisa had become a very real little person to all of them, and that included her brother and her grandmother. But in the end they needn’t have worried, for she had sailed through this pregnancy without so much as a hiccup to spoil its calm, smooth development.
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