CHAPTER ONE
STEPPING out of her son’s bedroom, Catherine closed the door just as quietly as she could, then wilted wearily back against it. Santo had gone to sleep at last, but she could still hear the heart-wrenching little sniffles that were shaking his five-year-old frame.
It really could not go on, she decided heavily. The tears and tantrums had been getting worse each time they erupted. And the way she had been burying her head in the sand in the vague hopes that his problem would eventually sort itself out had only managed to exacerbate the situation.
It was time—more than time—that she did something about it, even if the prospect filled her with untold dread.
And if she was going to act, then it had to be now. Luisa was due to catch the early commuter flight out of Naples in the morning, and if she was to be stopped then it must be tonight, before it caused her mother-in-law too much inconvenience.
‘Damn,’ she breathed as she levered herself away from her son’s bedroom door and made her way down the stairs. The mere prospect of putting through such a sensitive call was enough to set the tension singing inside her.
For what did she say? she asked herself as she stepped into the sitting room and quietly closed that door behind her.
The straightforward approach seemed the most logical answer, where she just picked up the phone and told Luisa bluntly that her grandson was refusing to go back to Naples with her tomorrow and why. But that kind of approach did not take into consideration the fragile sensibilities of the recipient. Or the backlash of hostility that was going to rebound on her, most of which would be labelling her the troublemaker.
She sighed fretfully, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did it, then just stood staring at her own reflection.
Good grief, but she looked a mess, though in truth it didn’t particularly surprise her. The battles with Santo had been getting worse by the day as this week had drawn to a close. Now her face was showing the results of too many emotion-draining tussles and too many restless nights while she lay awake worrying about them. Her eyes were bruised and her skin looked so pale that if it hadn’t been for the natural flashes of copper firing up her golden hair then she would probably resemble some hollow-eyed little ghost.
Not so much of the little, she then mocked herself on an unexpected burst of rueful humour. For there was nothing little about her five-feet-eight-inch frame. Slender—yes, she conceded. Too slender for some people’s tastes.
Vito’s tastes.
The humour died as suddenly as it had erupted, banished by the one person who could turn laughter into bitterness without even having to try.
Vittorio Adriano Lucio Giordani—to give him his full and impressive title. Man of means. Man of might. Man at the root of her son’s problems.
Once she had loved him; now she hated him. But then that was surely Vito. Man of dynamic contrasts. Stunning to look at. Arrogant to a fault. Exquisitely versed in the art of loving. Deadly to love.
She shuddered, her arms coming up to wrap around her as if in self-protection as she turned away from that face in the mirror rather than having to watch it alter from tired to bitter, which was what it usually did when she let herself think about Vito.
Because not only did she hate him but she hated even thinking about him. He was the skeleton in her past, linked to her present by an invisible thread that went directly from her heart, straight through the heart of their son and then into Vito’s heart.
In fact Vito’s only saving grace, in Catherine’s view, was his open adoration of their five-year-old son. Now it seemed that even that fragile connection was under threat—though Vito didn’t know it yet.
‘I hate you! And I hate Papà! I don’t want to love you any more!’
She winced painfully as the echo of that angrily emotive cry pierced her like a knife in the chest. Santo had meant those words; he had felt them deeply. Too deeply for a confused and vulnerable little boy to have to cope with.
Which brought her rather neatly back to where she had started when she walked into this room, she grimly concluded. Namely, doing something about Santo’s distress and anger.
A point that sent her eyes drifting over to where the telephone sat on the small table by the sofa, looking perfectly innocent when in actual fact it was a time bomb set to explode the moment she so much as touched it.
Because she never rang Naples—never. Had not done so once since she had left there three years ago. Any communicating went on via lawyers or by letters sent to and from Santo’s grandmother Luisa. So this phone call was so unique it was likely to cause major ructions in the Giordani household. And that was before she gave her reason for calling!
Therefore it was with reluctance that she went to sit down beside the telephone table. And with her bare toes curling tensely into the carpet, she gritted her teeth, took a couple of deep breaths, then reached out for the receiver.
By the time she had punched in the required set of digits she was sitting there with her eyes pressed tight shut, half praying that no one would be home.
Coward, she mocked herself.
And why not? she then countered. With their track record it paid to be cowardly around Vito. She just hoped that Luisa would answer. At least with Luisa she could relax some of the tension out of her body and try to sound normal before she attempted to break the news to her.
No chance. ‘Si?’ a deeply smooth and seductively accented voice suddenly drawled into her ear.
Catherine jumped, her eyes flicking open as instant recognition turned her grey eyes green.
Vito.
Damn, it was Vito. A sudden hot flush went chasing through her. A thick lump formed across her throat. She tried to speak but found she couldn’t. Instead her eyes drifted shut again and suddenly she was seeing him as clearly as if he was standing here directly in front of her. Seeing the blackness of his hair, the darkness of his skin, and the long, lean, tightly muscled posture of his supremely arrogant stance.
He was wearing a dinner suit, she saw, because it was Sunday and coming up to dinnertime there in Naples, and the Giordani family always dressed formally for the evening meal on a Sunday. So the suit would be black and the shirt white, with an accompanying black bow tie.
And she could see the disturbing honeyed-gold colour of his eyes, with their long, thick, curling lashes, which could so polarise attention that it was impossible to think of anything else when you let yourself look into them. So she didn’t. Instead she moved on to his mouth and let her mind’s eye drift across its smooth, firm, sensual contours, knowing exactly what to expect when another telling little shudder hit her system.
For this was the mouth of a born lover. A beautiful mouth, a seductive mouth, a disturbingly expressive mouth that could g
rin and mock and snarl and kiss like no other mouth, and lie like no other, and hate like no—
‘Who is there, please?’ his deep voice demanded in terse Italian.
Catherine jumped again, then tensely sat forward, her fingers tightly gripping the telephone receiver as she forced her locked up vocal cords to relax enough to allow her to speak.
‘Hello, Vito,’ she murmured huskily. ‘It’s me—Catherine...’
The bomb went off—in the form of a stunning silence. The kind that ate away at her insides and made nerves twitch all over her. Her mouth was dry, her heart having to force blood through valves that had simply stopped working. She felt light-headed but heavy-limbed, and wanted to start crying suddenly—which was so very pathetic that at least the feeling managed to jolt her into attempting to speak again.
But Vito beat her to it. ‘What is wrong with my son?’ he lashed out, grating English replacing terse Italian. The sheer violence in his tone was enough to warn Catherine that he had instantly jumped to all the wrong conclusions.
‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘Santo isn’t ill.’
There was another short, tense, pulsing moment while Vito took time to absorb that assurance. ‘Then why do you break your own court order and ring me here?’ he demanded coldly.
Grimacing at his right to ask that question, Catherine still had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from replying with something nasty. The break-up of their marriage had not been pleasant, and the hostility between them still ran strong three years on.