Love's Revenge

‘Breakfast, then,’ Catherine suggested, coming to squat down beside Vito, her eyes the compassionate eyes of a mother who understood exactly what a small boy’s priorities would be. ‘No one should run away without eating a good breakfast first,’ she told him. ‘Come and sit down at the table,’ she urged, holding out an inviting hand to him, ‘and I’ll get you some juice and a bowl of that new cereal you like.’

He ignored the hand. Instead his fiercely guarded brown eyes began flicking from one adult face to the other, and a confused frown began to pucker at his brow. Vito uttered a soft curse beneath his breath as understanding hit him. Catherine was a second behind him before she realised what it was that was holding Santo’s attention so.

And now the tears really did flood her eyes, because it wasn’t Santo’s fault that this had to be the first time in his young memory that his parents’ two faces had appeared in the same living frame in front of him!

An arm suddenly arrived around her shoulders. Warm and strong, the attached hand gave her arm a warning squeeze. As a razor-sharp tactician, famed for thinking on his feet, Vito had few rivals; she knew that. But the way he had quickly assessed the situation and decided on expanding on the little boy’s absorption in their novel togetherness was impressive even to her.

‘We don’t want you to leave us, son …’ As slick as that Vito compounded on the ‘togetherness’.

Santos’s eyes fixed on Catherine. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, so pathetically in need of reassurance that she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching out for him.

‘Of course I do. I love you.’ She stated it simply. She then extended that claim to include Vito. ‘We both love you.’

But Santo was having none of it. ‘Marietta says you don’t,’ he told his father accusingly. ‘Marietta said I was a mistake that just gets in the way.’

‘You must have misunderstood her,’ Vito said grimly.

The son’s eyes flicked into insolence. ‘Marietta said that you hate my mummy because she made you have me,’ he said. ‘She said that’s why you live in Naples and I live here in London, out of your way.’

Vito’s fingers began to dig into Catherine’s shoulder. Did he honestly believe that she would feed her own son this kind of poison when anyone with eyes could see that Santo was tearing himself up with it all?

‘What Marietta says is not important, Santo,’ she inserted firmly. ‘It’s what Papà says and I say that really matters to you. And we both love you very much,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘Would Papà have gone without his sleep to fly himself here through the night just to come and see you if he didn’t love you?’

The remark hit a nerve. Catherine saw the tiny flicker of doubt enter her son’s eyes as he turned them on his father. ‘Why did you come?’ he demanded of Vito outright.

‘Because you would not come to me,’ Vito answered simply. ‘And I miss you when you are not there …’

I miss you when you are not there … For Catherine those few words held such a wealth of love in them that she wanted to weep all over again. Not for Santo this time, but for another little person, one who would always be missed even though he could never be here.

Maybe Vito realised what kind of memory his words had evoked, maybe he was merely responding to the tiny quiver she gave as she tried to contain what was suddenly hurting inside her. But his arm grew heavier across her shoulders and gently he drew her closer to his side.

With no idea what was passing through his mother’s heart, Santo too was responding to all of that love placed into his father’s statement. The small boy let out a sigh that shook mournfully as it left him, but at last some of the stiffness left his body—though he still wasn’t ready to drop his guard. Marietta had hurt him much too deeply for her wicked words to be wiped out by a couple of quick reassurances.

‘Where’s Nonna?’ he asked, clearly deciding it was time to change the subject.

His father refused to let him. ‘I promised her I would bring you back to Naples with me, if I could convince you to come,’ Vito said.

‘I don’t like Naples any more,’ Santo responded instantly. ‘I don’t ever—ever—want to go there again.’

‘I am very sorry to hear that, Santo,’ Vito responded very gently. ‘For your sudden dislike of Naples rather spoils the surprise your mamma and I had planned for you.’

‘What surprise?’ the boy quizzed warily.

Surprise? Catherine was repeating to herself, her head twisting to look at Vito with a question in her eyes, wondering just where he was attempting to lead Santo with this.

‘I’m not going to live with you in Naples!’ Santo suddenly shouted as his busy mind drew its own conclusions. ‘I won’t live anywhere where Marietta is going to live!’ he stated forcefully.

Vito frowned. ‘Marietta does not live in my house,’ he pointed out.

‘But she will when you marry her! I hate Marietta!’

In response, Vito turned to Catherine with a look meant to turn her to stone. He still thought it was she who had been feeding his son all this poison against his precious Marietta!

I’ll make you pay for this! those eyes were promising. And as Catherine’s emotions began the see-sawing tilt from pain to bitterness, her green eyes fired back a spitting volley of challenges, all of which were telling him to go ahead and try it—then go to hell for all she cared!

He even understood that. ‘Then hell it is,’ he hissed in a soft undertone that stopped the threat from reaching their son’s ears.

Then he was turning back to Santo, all smooth-faced and impressive puzzlement. ‘But how can I marry Marietta when I am married to your mamma?’ he posed, and watched the small boy’s scowl alter to an uncertain frown—then delivered with a silken accuracy the dart aimed to pierce dead centre of his son’s vulnerability. ‘And your mamma and I want to stay married, Santino. We love each other just as much as we love you. We are even going to live in the same house together.’

It was the ultimate coup de grâce, delivered with the perfect timing of a master of the art.

And through the burning red mists that flooded her brain cells Catherine watched Vito’s head turn so he could send her the kind of smile that turned men into devils. Deny it, if you dare, that smile challenged.

She couldn’t. And he knew she couldn’t, because already their son’s face was lighting up as if someone had just switched his life back on. So she had to squat there, seething but silent, as Vito then pressed a clinging kiss to her frozen lips as still he continued to build relentlessly on the little boy’s new store of ‘togetherness’ images.

Then all she could do was watch, rendered surplus to requirements by his machiavellian intellect, as he turned his attention back to their little witness and proceeded to add the finishing touches with an expertise that was positively lethal.

‘Will you come too, Santo?’ he murmured invitingly. ‘Help us to be a proper family?’

A proper family, Catherine repeated silently. The magic words to any child from a broken home.

‘You mean live in the same house—you, me and mummy?’ Already Santo’s voice was shaky with enchantment.

Vito nodded. ‘And Nonna,’ he added. ‘Because it has to be Naples,’ he warned solemnly. ‘For it is where I work. I have to live there, you understand?’

Understand? The little boy was more than ready to understand anything so long as Vito kept this dream scenario flowing. ‘Mummy likes Naples,’ he said eagerly. ‘I know she does because she likes to listen to all the places we’ve visited and all the things that we do there.’

‘Well, from now on we can do those things together, as a family.’ His papà smoothly placed yet another perfect image into his son’s mental picture book.

At which point Catherine resisted the power of the arm restraining her and got up, deciding that she was most definitely surplus to requirements since the whole situation was out of her control now.

‘I’m going to get dressed,’ she said. They didn’t seem to hear her. And as she stepped around Santo he was already moving towards his darling papà. Arms up, eyes shining, he landed in Vito’s lap with all the enthusiasm of a well-loved puppy …

‘If you still possess a healthy respect for your health, then I advise you to keep your distance,’ Catherine warned as Vito’s tall, lean figure appeared on the periphery of her vision.

She was in her small but sunny back garden hanging out washing, in the vague hopes that the humdrum chore would help ease some the angst that had built up in her system after having a great morning playing happy families.

Together, they had eaten a delightful breakfast where the plans had flown thick and fast on what to do in Naples during a long hot summer. And she’d smiled and she’d enthused and she’d made suggestions of her own to keep it all absolutely super. Then Santo had taken Vito off to show him his bedroom with all the excitement of a boy who felt as if he was living in seventh heaven.

Now Santo was at his best friend’s house, several doors away, where he was excitedly relaying all his wonderful news to a captivated audience, who would no doubt be seeing Santo’s change in fortune in the same guise as the child equivalent to winning the lottery.

Which clearly left Vito free to come in search of her, which was, in Catherine’s view, him just begging for trouble.

He knew she was angry. He knew she was barely managing to contain the mass of burning emotion which was busily choking up her system at the cavalier way he had decided her life for her.

‘Don’t you have an electric dryer for those?’ he questioned frowningly.

For a man she’d believed had no concept of what a tumble dryer was, the question came as a surprise to her. But as for answering it—she was in no mood to stand here explaining that shoving the clothes into a tumble dryer was no therapy at all for easing what was screaming to escape from her at this moment.

So instead she bent down to pluck one of Santo’s tee shirts out of the washing basket, then straightened to peg it to the line, unaware of the way the sunlight played across the top of her neatly tied hair as she moved, picking out the red strands from the gold strands in a fascinating dance of glistening colour.

Nor was she aware of the way the simple straight skirt she was wearing stretched tight across the neat curve of her behind as she bent, or that her tiny white vest top gave tantalising glimpses of her breasts cupped inside her white bra.

But Vito Giordani was certainly aware as he stood there in the shade thrown by the house, leisurely taking it all in.

And a lack of sun didn’t detract from his own dark attraction—as Catherine was reluctantly aware. Though you would be hard put to tell when she had actually looked at him long enough to note anything about him.

A sigh whispered from her, and her fingers got busier as a whole new set of feelings began to fizz into life.

‘Could you leave that?’ Vito asked suddenly. ‘We need to talk while we have the chance to do so.’

‘I think I’ve talked myself out today,’ Catherine answered satirically.

‘You’re angry,’ he allowed.

‘I am?’ With a deft flick she sent the rotating line turning, so she could gain access to the next free bit of washing line. ‘And here was I thinking I was deliriously ecstatic,’ she drawled.

His brows snapped together as her sarcastic tone carried on the crystal-clear morning air. Out there, beyond the low fencing that formed the boundaries between each garden, children’s voices could be heard. Any one of them could be Santo, and Vito, it seemed, was very aware of that, because he started walking towards her, closing the gap between them so that their voices wouldn’t carry.

‘You must see that I really had no alternative but to say what I did,’ he said grimly.

‘The troubleshooter at work, thinking on his feet and with his mouth.’ She nodded, fingers busy with pegs and damp fabric. ‘I was very impressed, Vito,’ she assured him. ‘How could I not be?’

‘I would say that you are most unimpressed.’ He sighed, stooping to pick up the next piece of washing for her.

Another first, Catherine mused ruefully. Vittorio Giordani helping to hang out washing. For some stupid reason the apparition set her lower abdomen tingling.

‘I have a life here, Vito,’ she replied, ignoring the sensation. ‘I have a job I love doing and commitments I have no wish to renege on.’ Carefully, so she didn’t have to make contact with his fingers, she took Santo’s little school shirt from him.

‘With your language and secretarial qualifications you could get a job anywhere.’ He dismissed that line of argument. ‘Templeton and Lang are not the only legal firm that specialise in European law.’

‘You know where I work?’ Surprise sent her gaze up to his face. He was smiling wryly—but even that kind of smile was a sexy smile. She looked away again quickly before it got a hold on her.

‘Santo has been very vocal about how busy his mamma’s important job keeps her.’

‘You don’t approve,’ Catherine assumed by his tone.

‘Of you working?’ Bending again, he selected the next piece of washing. ‘I would rather you had been here at home for Santo,’ he said, with no apology for his chauvinistic outlook.

‘Needs must,’ was all she said, not willing to get into that particular argument. They’d had it before, after all, when she’d insisted on continuing to work after they married. Then it had been easy for her, because her multilingual expertise had been well sought after in many fields of modern business. In Naples, for instance, she had managed to pick up a job working for the local Tourist Information Board. Vito had been furious, his manly ego coming out for an airing when he’d wanted to know what the hell people would think of him allowing his pregnant wife to work!

Just another heated row they’d had amongst many rows.

‘But the devil in this case is definitely not me,’ Vito said dryly. ‘It is you who refused any financial support when you left me,’ he reminded her.

‘I can support myself.’ Which she always had done, even while she’d been living with Vito in his big house with its flashy cars and its even flashier lifestyle.

She had never been destitute. Her father had seen to that. Having brought her up himself from her birth, he had naturally made adequate provision for the unfortunate chance of his own demise. She owned this little house in middle-class suburbia outright, had no outstanding debts and still had money put away for the rainy days in life. And being reared in a single-parent professional house meant she’d grown up fiercely independent and self-confident. Marrying an arrogant Italian steeped in old-fashioned values had been a test on both qualities from the very start.

But the only time her belief in herself had faltered had been when she was pregnant for a second time and too sick and weakened to fight for anything—and that had included her husband’s waning affections.

An old hurt began to ache again, the kind of hurt that suddenly rendered her totally, utterly, helplessly desolate.

‘I can’t live with you again, Vito,’ she said, turning eyes darkened by a deep sadness on him. ‘I can’t …’ she repeated huskily.

The sudden glint of pain in his own eyes told her that he knew exactly what had brought that little outburst on, but where compassion and understanding would have been better, instead anger slashed to life across his lean, dark features.

‘Too late,’ he clipped. ‘The luxury of choice has been denied to you. This is not about what you want any more, Catherine,’ he stated harshly. ‘Or even what I want. It is what our son wants.’

‘Our surviving son,’ she whispered tragically.

Again the anger pulsed. ‘We mourn the dead but we celebrate the living,’ he ruthlessly declared. ‘I will not allow Santo to pay the price of his brother’s tragic ending any longer!’

Or maybe his tactics were the right ones, Catherine conceded as she felt his anger ignite her anger, which sent the pain fleeing. ‘You truly believe that’s what I’ve been doing?’ she gasped.

His broad shoulders flexed. ‘I do not know what motivates you, Catherine,’ he growled. ‘I never did, and now I have no wish to know. But the future for both of us is now set in stone. Accept it and leave the past where it belongs, because it has outplayed its strength and no longer has any bearing on what we do now.’

With that, he turned away, his black scowl enough to put the sun out.

‘Does that include Marietta?’ she demanded of his back.

He’d already stopped listening—his attention suddenly fixing on something neither of them had noticed while they’d been so busy arguing. But they certainly noticed now the rows of boundary hedges with varying adult heads peering over the top of them, all of them looking curiously in their direction.

‘Oh, damn,’ Catherine cursed. At which point, the sound of the telephone ringing inside the house was a diversion she was more than grateful for. Smiling through tingling teeth, she excused herself and went inside, leaving him to be charming to the neighbours, because that was really all he was fit for!

Snatching up the phone from its kitchen wall extension, she almost shot her name down the line.

‘Careful, darling, I have delicate eardrums,’ a deeply teasing voice protested.

It was like receiving manna from heaven after a fall-out of rats. ‘Marcus,’ she greeted softly, and leaned back against the kitchen unit with her face softened by its first warm smile of the day. ‘What are you doing calling so early in the morning?’

‘It’s such a beautiful morning, though. So I had this sudden yen to spend it with my favourite person,’ he explained, unaware that he had already lost Catherine’s attention.

For that was fixed on her kitchen doorway, where Vito was standing utterly frozen, and a hot blast of vengeful pleasure went skating through her when she realised he had overheard her words—and, more importantly, the soft intimacy with which she had spoken them.

‘So when I remembered that this was also the day that your son goes to Italy,’ Marcus was saying, ‘I thought, Why not drag Catherine out for a leisurely lunch by the river, since she will be free of her usual commitments?’

But ‘free’ was the very last word that Catherine would use to describe her situation right now. In truth she felt trapped, held prisoner by a pair of gold-shot eyes that were threatening retribution.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE fine hairs all over her body began to prickle as they stood on end in sheer response. ‘I’m so sorry, Marcus,’ she murmured apologetically, but the way her lungs had ceased to function made every syllable sound soft and breathless and disturbingly sensual. ‘But Santo’s trip has been—delayed,’ she said, for want of a less complicated way of putting it.

‘Oh.’ He sounded so disappointed.

‘Can I call you back?’ she requested. ‘When I have a clearer idea of when I will be free? Only it isn’t—convenient to talk right now…’

‘There is someone there,’ Marcus realised, the sharp-minded lawyer in him quick to read the subtle intonations in her voice.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Catherine confirmed with a swift smile.

‘Man, woman or child?’ he enquired with sardonic humour.

More like frozen beast about to defrost, Catherine thought nervously, but kept that observation to herself. ‘Thanks for being so understanding,’ she murmured instead. ‘I’ll—I’ll call you,’ she promised. ‘Just as soon as I can.’ And said a hurried farewell before ringing off.

The phone went back on its cradle with the neat precision required of fingers that were trembling badly. ‘That was Marcus,’ she said, turning a flat-edged smile on Vito meant to hide the flurry of nervous excitement that had taken up residence inside her stomach.

‘And?’ he prompted, arching an imperious brow at her when she didn’t bother to extend on that. ‘I presume this—Marcus has a role to play here?’

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.