Wincing at the implication, he reached out to touch a gentle fingertip to that telling little quiver. ‘I?
?m sorry,’ he said huskily.
It didn’t seem enough somehow. And Catherine turned away from him to stare bleakly out across a now dark and very silent garden while beside her Vito did the same thing, their minds in tune to the heaviness Marietta had left behind her.
‘She was out here that night, sitting on the next balcony listening to us bash out the same old arguments that we always used to share,’ Vito said eventually. ‘She must have lapped it all up. My continued lying, our lack of trust in each other, the mention of Marcus that must have seemed like a heaven-sent gift to her to use as yet another weapon.’
Standing in more or less the same place they had been standing that night, Catherine felt her skin begin to crawl at the mere prospect of anyone—worst of all Marietta—sitting there on the next balcony, eavesdropping on what should have been a very private conversation.
‘How did you know she was there?’ Catherine murmured.
‘After you had gone back inside I remained out here, if you remember,’ Vito explained. ‘I was thinking—trying to come to terms with the very unpalatable fact that if your version of what happened the day you lost the baby was true, then a lot of other things you had said to me could also be true,’ he admitted grimacingly. ‘At which point I heard a movement on the next balcony—a chair scraping over the tiles, then a sigh I recognised, followed by the waft of a very distinctive perfume. Then I heard her murmur ‘‘Grazie Caterina,’’ and the way she said it made my blood run cold.’
He even shuddered. So did Catherine. Then, on a sigh that hissed almost painfully from him, he hit the stone balustrade with a clenched fist. ‘How can you know someone as well as you think you know them—yet not really know them at all?’ he thrust out tragically.
‘She loved you.’ To Catherine it seemed to explain everything.
But not for Vito. ‘That is not love, it is sick obsession,’ he denounced. And his golden eyes flashed and his grim mouth hardened. ‘I decided she was out of my house by the morning and I didn’t care what it took to achieve it,’ he went on. ‘So I went in to the office, worked all night clearing her desk, not my desk, and the rest you know—except that I used that week in Paris with her to let her know that her place in this family was over.’
‘What did she say to that?’ Catherine asked curiously.
‘She reminded me that my mother may not like to hear me say that,’ he dryly responded. ‘So I countered that piece of blatant blackmail—by sacking her from the bank.’
Catherine stared at him in stunned disbelief. ‘Can you do that?’ she gasped.
His answering smile wasn’t pleasant. ‘She may own a good-size block of stock in the bank, but not enough to sway the seat of power there. And, although this is going to confirm your opinion about my conceit, I am the main force that drives Giordani’s. If I say she is out, then the board will support me.’
‘But what about her client list—won’t you lose a lot of very lucrative business?’
‘Given the option between going elsewhere with their investment portfolios or transferring them to me, her client list, to the last one, transferred to me,’ Vito smoothly informed her.
‘No wonder she was out for revenge tonight,’ Catherine breathed, feeling rather stunned by the depths of his ruthlessness. ‘You frighten me sometimes,’ she told him shakily.
Catching hold of her shoulders, he turned her to face him. ‘And you frighten me,’ he returned very gently. ‘Why else do you think we fight so much?’
Because I love you and I still daren’t tell you, Catherine silently answered the question. ‘We married for all the wrong reasons,’ she said instead. ‘You resented my presence in your life and I resented being there.’
‘That is not entirely true, Catherine,’ he argued. ‘At the time I truly believed we were marrying because we could not bear to be apart from one another. ‘
‘The sex has always been good.’ She nodded.
His fingers tightened. ‘Don’t be flippant,’ he scolded. ‘You know we have always had much more than that.’
Did she? Catherine smiled a wry smile that made his eyes flash with anger.
‘Is it too much to ask of you to give an inch?’ he rasped out. ‘Just a single small inch and I promise you I will repay you with a whole mile!’
‘Meaning what?’ she demanded, stiffening defensively in his grasp.
A nerve began to tick along his jaw. ‘Meaning I married you because I was, and still am, head over heels in love with you,’ he raked out. ‘Will that help you to respond in kind?’
‘Don’t,’ she protested, trying to turn away from him, knowing it wasn’t true. ‘You don’t have to say things like that to make me stay here. Marietta didn’t do that kind of damage.’
‘It is the truth!’ he insisted. ‘And it should have been said a long time ago—I know that,’ he admitted tightly. ‘But now it has been said you could at least do me the honour of believing me!’
Staring up into those swirling dark gold burning eyes of his, Catherine wished—wished she dared let herself do just that. But...
Lifting her shoulders in a helplessly vulnerable gesture, she murmured dully, ‘A man in love doesn’t go from the arms of a woman he loves straight into the arms of another.’