The Italian's Revenge

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...’