Love's Revenge

But the smiled instantly died, melted away by the megawatt charge of his physical presence. He looked lean and mean, with his shirt hanging open at his brown throat and his jaw darkened by a five o’clock shadow. He had the arrogant nose of a Roman conqueror, the dark honeyed eyes of a charming sneak thief, and the wickedly sensual mouth of a gigolo. His body was built to fight lions in an arena, but men no longer did that to prove their prowess.

‘And memories are made of this …’ a silk-smooth voice softly taunted.

Her eyes closed and opened very slowly, bringing her fevered brain swirling back from where it had flown off to, to find him standing there taking malicious pleasure in watching her lose herself in memories of him.

It was like being caught with her hand in the sweetie jar. Sweat suddenly bathed her body, heat flushing her fine white skin—not the heat of arousal but the heat of a humiliation that completely demolished her. She didn’t know what to do; she didn’t know what to say.

‘I’ll get dressed …’ was the wretched thing she actually came out with, and forced her shaking limbs to propel her towards the door and escape—again.

But Vito was not going to let her get off as lightly as that. Oh, no, not this man, with his lethal brand of wit, who also had so many axes to grind on her exposed rear that he was almost gleeful at being given this heaven-sent opportunity.

‘Why bother?’ he therefore drawled smoothly. ‘It is already way too late to cover up what is happening to you, mia cara.’

‘I am not your darling!’ she snapped out in retaliation, knowing she was only rising to his deliberate baiting but unable to stop herself anyway.

‘Maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘But I think you are wondering what it would be like to relive those moments when you were.’

If she didn’t suffocate in her own shame then there really was no justice in the world, because it was what she deserved to do, Catherine derided herself bitterly.

‘Not with you,’ she denied, with an accompanying little shudder. ‘Never with you again.’

‘Was that a challenge? For if it was I might just take you up on it. You never know,’ he mocked. ‘It could be an—interesting exercise to see how many times we can ravish each other in the hour and a half we have free before our son comes down. It would certainly keep our minds off all our other problems …’

If the kitchen door handle had been a gun, she would probably have fired it at him. ‘And if you need to sink yourself that low just to keep your mind occupied—then call in Marietta!’ She used words to slay him with instead. ‘She always was much better trained than me at servicing all your requirements.’

So what’s really new here? she asked herself as a large hand came to land palm flat against the door to hold it shut, making her blink as it landed. ‘You may still possess the body of a siren, Catherine,’ Vito bit out, ‘but you have developed the mouth of a slut! When are you going to listen to me, you blind bitter fool, and believe me when I tell you that Marietta is not and has never been my mistress!’

She should have left it there; Catherine knew she should. She should have remained perfectly still, pinned her ‘mouth of a slut’ shut and ignored his wretched lies until he gave up and let her out of here! But she couldn’t. Vito had always been able to bring out the worst in her—and she the worst in him. They’d used to fight like sworn enemies and make love as if nothing could break them apart. It was like meeting like. His Latin fire versus her Celtish spirit. His oversized ego versus her fierce pride.

It had been a recipe for utter disaster. But for the first few blissful months of their relationship it had been a glorious blending of both passionate temperaments fused together by that wonderfully enthralling sensation she’d used to describe as—true love.

It hadn’t seemed to matter then that the words were never actually spoken, for they had been there in each look, each touch, in the way neither had seemed able to be apart from the other for more than a few hours without making contact—if only with the intimate pitch of their voices via the telephone. Even when she’d fallen pregnant and the warring had begun, she had still believed that love was the engine which had driven them towards marriage.

Meeting Marietta on her wedding day, and learning that this was the woman Vito would have chosen to marry if she had not instead married his best friend Rocco, had placed the first fragile seeds of doubt in her mind about Vito’s true feelings for her.

Yet neither by word nor gesture had Vito revealed any hint that there could be truth in the whispers, and she had very quickly managed to dismiss them when his attention towards her remained sound right through her first troubled pregnancy and into her second.

Then Rocco had been killed in a tragic boating accident, followed within weeks by Vito’s father dying from a massive stroke. And before she’d realised quite what was happening, Vito and Marietta had hardly ever been seen apart.

‘A shared grief’, Vito used to call it. Marietta had called it—inevitable. ‘What do you think Vito did when you trapped him into marriage—put on a blindfold and forgot it was me he was in love with? While Rocco was alive he may have been willing to accept second best in you. But with Rocco gone …?’

‘I’ll believe Marietta’s not your mistress when hell freezes over.’ Catherine came out of her bitter reverie to answer Vito’s question. ‘Now get away from me,’ she commanded, trying to tug open the door.

But Vito’s superior strength held it shut. ‘When I am good and ready,’ he replied. ‘For you started this, so we may as well finish it right here and now, before my son arrives.’

‘Finish what?’ she cried, spinning to stare at him in angry bewilderment. ‘I don’t even know what it is we’re fighting about!’

‘This thing you have against Marietta,’ he grimly enlightened her, ‘is your obsession, Catherine. It always has been. So it therefore follows that it must be you who has been filling Santo’s head full of this nonsense about Marietta and me.’

Catherine stared at him as if she didn’t know him. How a man as intelligent and shrewd as Vito was could be so fatally flawed was a real mystery to her.

‘You are the blind one, Vito,’ she informed him. ‘You are a blind, stubborn and conceited fool who could never see through the charm she lays on you that Marietta is as evil as they come!’

‘And you are sick,’ he responded, his dark face closing into a mask of distaste as he stepped right away from her. ‘You have to be sick, Catherine, to think such things about a person who only wanted to befriend you.’

Befriend me—? ‘I’m sorry if this offends you, Vito.’ She laughed, almost choking on her own fury. ‘But I don’t make friends of my husband’s lovers!’

Honeyed eyes began to flash dire warnings of murder. ‘She has never been my lover!’ he repeated furiously.

‘And you are such a dreadful liar!’ she sliced right back.

‘I do not lie!’

‘I know Marietta has been feeding her poison to Santo just as she once fed it to me,’ she doggedly persisted.

‘I will not continue to listen to this,’ Vito said, reaching out as if to grab her arm so he could shift her away from the door and leave himself.

‘Then will you listen to Santo?’ she challenged.

The hand dropped away, his chin lifting stiffly. ‘It is what I am here for, is it not?’

Why did his accent always thicken when he was under stress? she found herself wondering. Then blinked the silly question away because it had no bearing on what was happening here.

‘But will you believe him?’ she wanted to know. ‘If he tells you that what I have been telling you is the truth?’

‘And what if it is you who has fed him his version of the truth?’ he countered.

Catherine sighed in disgust. ‘Which I presume means that you have no intention of believing your own son’s word—any more than you once believed mine!’

‘I repeat,’ he said. ‘You are the one with the obsession. Not Santo and not me.’

And I am banging my head against a brick wall here, Catherine decided grimly. But what’s new about that? she asked herself, with a deriding twist of her mouth that seemed to set his tense frame literally pulsing.

‘Then I think you should leave,’ she said, moving away from the door and crossing the room to get right away from him. ‘Now, before Santo wakes up and finds you here. Because he will not thank you any more than I do for showing such little faith in his word.’

‘I did not say that I disbelieve what Santo is thinking, only that I disbelieve his source.’

‘Same thing.’ Catherine shrugged that line of argument away. ‘And all I can say is that I find it very sad that you can put your feelings for Marietta before your feelings for your son—which makes your journey here such a wasted gesture.’

Vito said nothing, his face locked into a tight, grim mask as he went over to the kettle and began pouring boiling water into the coffee jug. From her new place by kitchen sink Catherine watched him with an emptiness that said she saw no hope for happiness for him. The man was bewitched by the devil. He had to be if he was so prepared to risk the love of his son for the love of that woman.

But was he? Catherine then pondered thoughtfully. For he was here, wasn’t he? Breaking a court order, willing to risk his visitation rights, because it was more important at present for him to be where his troubled son was. Be of help, if he could. Reassure, if he could …?

‘Well, as a tit-for-tat kind of thing,’ she murmured slowly, ‘let’s just test your love for Marietta against your love for your son, Vito.’

‘It isn’t a competition,’ he denounced.

‘I am making it one,’ she declared. ‘And I’m going to do it by giving you a straight choice. So listen to me, Vito, for I am deadly serious. Either you renounce all intention of ever marrying Marietta,’ she said, ‘or you marry her and forfeit all rights of access to Santino.’

Turning with his coffee cup in hand, he murmured levelly, ‘Word of warning, cara, You will not come between my son and me again, no matter what tricks you try to pull.’

‘Yet pull them I will,’ she instantly promised. And the tension between them began to edge up to dangerous levels again, because she wasn’t bluffing and Vito knew that she wasn’t.

Her father had been an eminent lawyer before his premature demise. He’d had friends in the profession, powerful friends, who specialised in marital conflicts and had been more than willing to come to Catherine’s aid three years ago when she had needed their expertise. They’d tied Vito up in legal knots before he’d even known what had hit him.

She would let them do it again if she felt she had to protect Santo from the evil that was threatening to take up permanent residence in his father’s house. Vito must be as aware as she was that he had already given her the ammunition to fire at him by breaking a court order to come here like this today.

One phone call and she could make good her threat; he knew that.

‘So, what is it to be?’ She flashed him the challenge. ‘Is it Marietta out of your life—or is it going to be Santo?’

He dared to laugh—albeit ruefully. ‘You sound very tough, Catherine. Very sure of yourself,’ he remarked. ‘But you seem to have overlooked one small but very important thing in all your clever plotting.’

‘What?’ she prompted, frowning, because as far as she could tell she had all the aces stacked firmly in her hand.

‘Our son’s clear insecurity and what you mean to do to ease it,’ he said, taking a sip of thick black coffee. ‘The last time you went to war against me, Santo was too young to know what was going on. But not any longer. Now he is old enough and alert enough to be aware of everything that takes place between the two of us.’

Pausing to watch as the full weight of his words settled heavily on her, he then gently offered a direct counter-challenge. ‘Are you willing to risk hurting his love for me with yet another one of your vindictive campaigns aimed to make me toe the line …?”

CHAPTER THREE

‘NO COME-BACK?’ Vito softly prompted when she just stood there, staring at him while the full import of what he was pointing out to her slowly drained all the colour out of her face. ‘Am I to assume, then, that your lust for revenge on sins imagined done to you does not run to hurting your son also?’

No, she thought on a chilled little shudder that spoke absolute volumes, she wasn’t prepared to risk hurting her son’s love for his papà.

‘Well, that makes a refreshing change,’ drawled a man who sounded as if he was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘It almost—almost—restores my faith in you as the loyal loving mother of my son cara—even if it does nothing for my faith in you as the loyal and loving wife.’

Her chin went up, green eyes suddenly awash with derision. ‘If we are going to get onto the subject of loyalty, then you’re moving onto very shaky ground, Vito,’ she warned him darkly.

‘Then of course we will not,’ he instantly conceded. ‘Let us see instead if we can come up with a more—sensible compromise between us, that will adequately meet both our own requirements and fulfil our son’s needs in one neat move …’

Was there such a thing? Catherine’s eyes showed a blankness that said she couldn’t think of one. ‘So, don’t keep me in suspense,’ she snapped. ‘Tell me this compromise.’

He smiled an odd smile, not quite wry, not quite cynical. ‘I am not sure that you are going to like this,’ he murmured.

‘So long as it will put Marietta out in the cold, I’ll be agreeable to anything,’ Catherine assured him recklessly.

He didn’t answer immediately, but the way his eyes began to gleam in a kind of unholy way made her flesh turn cold on the absolute certainty that she was about to be led somewhere she had no wish to go.

‘Look, either cut to the bottom line of what all this taunting is about or get out of here!’ she snapped in sheer nervous agitation.

‘The bottom line,’ he drawled, dropping his eyes down her body, ‘is resting approximately midway down your sensational thighs and has the delicious potential of dropping to your lovely bare feet with a bit of gentle encouragement.’

Glancing down to look where his eyes were looking, she almost suffocated in the sudden wave of heat that went sizzling through her when she realised he was referring to her shorts!

‘Will you just stop being so bloody provocative?’ she choked, not sure if she was angry with him for saying such an outrageous thing or angry with herself for responding to it!

‘I wish I could.’ He grimaced, taking a languid sip of his coffee. ‘But seeing those exquisite legs so enticingly presented has been driving me crazy since I arrived here.’

It was sheer instinct that made Catherine take a step forward with the intention of responding with a slap to his insufferable face!

But his hand deftly stopped her. ‘You still have a great body, Catherine,’ he told her, his eyes pinning her eyes with a look that made her feel as if she was drowning. ‘All long sensual lines and supple curves that stir up some very exciting memories. So exciting in fact,’ he murmured, gently stroking his thumb over the delicate flesh covering her wrist where the pulse-point was fluttering wildly, ‘that it occurred to me—long before you showed your attraction to me, I should add—that with you back in my bed I would not need to look elsewhere to fill that particular place in my life.’

A stunning silence followed. One that locked the air inside her throat and closed down her brain in complete rejection of what he was actually suggesting here!

‘How dare you?’ she breathed in harsh denunciation. ‘How dare you make such a filthy suggestion?’

‘I need a woman in my bed.’ He shrugged with no apology. ‘And, since my son must be protected from the seedier side of that need, then that woman must therefore be my wife. My proper wife,’ he then succinctly extended. ‘One who will proudly grace my table, eagerly grace my bed, and love my son as deeply as I do.’

‘And you think Marietta fills all of those requirements?’ she scoffed in outright contempt for him.

His golden eyes darkened. ‘We are not talking about Marietta now,’ he clipped. ‘We are talking about you, Catherine. You,’ he repeated, putting down his cup so he could free his other hand to slide it around her waist. Her flesh tightened in rejection. He countered its response by pulling her that bit closer to the firmness of his body. ‘Who, even dressed as you are, would still manage to grace any man’s table with your beauty and your inherent sense of style. And as for the sex,’ he murmured in that sinfully sensual tone that helped make him such a dynamic lover. ‘Since I know your rich and varied appetite as well as I know my own, I see no problem in our resurrecting what used to be very satisfying interludes for both of us.’

Interludes? He called what she would have described as giving herself body and soul to him satisfying interludes? She almost choked on her own outrage, feeling belittled and defiled.

But—maybe that had been his intention! ‘You’re disgusting!’ she snapped.

‘I am a realist,’ he said.

‘A realist who is hungry for revenge,’ Catherine extended deridingly, well aware of his real motive.

‘The Italian in me demands it,’ he freely admitted. ‘Just think, though,’ he added softly, ‘how your very British yen for martyrdom could be given free rein. How you could reside in my home with your head held high and pretend that you are only there because of Santo. How you could even share my bed and enjoy every minute of what we do there while pretending to yourself that keeping me happy is the price you have to pay to keep your son happy.’

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you aim to get out of such a wicked scenario?’

‘This …’ he murmured, and with a tug she was against him, his mouth capturing hers with the kind of kiss that flung her back too far and too swiftly into the realms of darkness, where she kept everything to do with this man so carefully hidden.

Well, they were not hiding now, she noted painfully as the heat from his kiss ignited flaming torches that lit their escape. And suddenly she was incandescent with feeling. Hot feelings, crazed feelings, feelings that went dancing wildly through her on a rampage of sheer sensual greed.

Only Vito could do it. Only he had ever managed to fire her up this way. Her body knew his body, exalted in its hardness pressing against her. His tongue licked the flames; his hands staked their claim on her by skimming skilfully beneath the hem of her top, then more audaciously beneath the elasticated band of her shorts.

She must have whimpered at the shock sensation of his flesh sliding against her flesh, because his mouth left hers and his eyes burned black triumph down at her.

‘And I get my pride back,’ he gritted. ‘A pride you took from me and wiped the floor with the day you forced me into court to beg for the right to love my own son!’

And without warning she was free.

Standing there swaying dizzily, it took several moments for her to realise just what he had done to her. Then the shock descended, the appalled horror of how easy she had made it for him, followed closely by an all-consuming shame.

And all in the name of pride, revenge and of course passion, she listed grimly.

Her chin came up, her green eyes turning as grey as an arctic ocean now as she opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with his rotten proposition, his lousy sex appeal—and himself! when a sound beyond the closed kitchen door suddenly caught their attention.

It had them both turning towards the door, and freezing as they listened to Santo coming down the stairs, bumping something which sounded rather heavy down behind him. And in perfect unison they both then glanced up at the kitchen clock to note that it was only six-thirty, before they looked back at the door again.

The time was significant. It meant that their son was so disturbed by his worries that they’d woken him early.

From the corner of her eye Catherine saw Vito swallow tensely and his hands clench into fists at his sides. His face was suddenly very pale, his eyes dark, and the way his lips parted slightly in an effort to help his frail breathing brought home to her just how worried he was about what his son’s reaction was going to be towards him.

She then suggested to herself an alternative. Afraid? Was Vito’s expression the one Luisa had described as his frightened look?

Her heart began to ache for him, despite her not wanting it to. Vito loved his son; she had never doubted that. In a thousand other doubts she had never once doubted his love for his son.

Yet still he didn’t deserve the way her hand reached instinctively out to touch his arm in a soothing gesture. And beyond the residue of her anger with him over that kiss she felt tungsten steel flex with tension as the kitchen door flew open, swinging back on its hinges against the wall to reveal their son standing there in the opening.

Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, a baseball cap placed firmly on his dark head and his travel hold-all, packed to bursting by the look of it, sitting on the floor beside him, while one little fist had a death grip on the bag’s thick strap.

If he’d already been aware that his father was here, then the complete lack of expression on his solemn little face would have been understandable. But he hadn’t known; Catherine was sure of it. Their home was old and the walls were thick. And no matter how heated their verbal exchanges had grown on occasion, neither of them had raised their voices enough for the sound to filter out of this room.

So her heart stopped aching for the father to begin aching for the son as Santo completely ignored Vito’s presence in the room to level his defiant dark brown eyes on his mother.

‘I’m running away,’ he announced. ‘And you’re not to follow.’

It could have been comical. Santo certainly looked and sounded comical standing there like that and making such a fantastic announcement.

But Catherine had never felt less like laughing in her life. For he meant it. He truly meant to run away because he believed that nobody loved him.

And if Marietta had done Catherine the favour of walking in here right now she would have scratched her wicked eyes out.

She went to go to him, needed to go to him and simply hug him to her, wrap him in as much love as she could possibly muster.

Only Vito was there before her—and he was wiser. He didn’t so much as attempt to touch the little boy as he hunkered down on his haunches in front of him. Instead, he began talking in a deep and soft husky Italian.

Santo responded by allowing himself brief—very brief—eye to eye contact with his papà. ‘English,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t speak Italian any more.’

To Vito’s deserving credit, he switched languages without hesitation, though the significance of his son’s rejection must have pierced him like a knife.

‘But where will you go?’ he was asking gently. ‘Have you money for your trip? Would you like me to lend you some?’ he offered when the little boy’s eyes flickered in sudden confusion because something as unimportant as money hadn’t entered into his thoughts while he had been drawing up his plans to run away.

What was in his bag didn’t bear thinking about unless Catherine wanted to weep. But she could hazard a fairly accurate guess at several treasured toys, a couple of his favourite tee shirts and his new trainers, since he didn’t have them on. And tucked away hidden at the bottom of the bag would be a piece of tatty cotton that the experts would euphemistically call his comforter, though only she was supposed to know about it and he would rather die than let his papà find it.

‘I don’t want your money.’ Vito’s son proudly refused the offer.