She supposed it was natural that he should have assumed that she was teaching somewhere. But explaining that the shop below was in fact hers did not seem important just then when further dialogue would mean keeping him awake.
Before she had even finished dressing, Damiano was sound asleep again. She didn’t want to leave him. Her heart was behaving as if it had wings attached. She just wanted to sit down at the foot of the bed and revel in the reality that he was physically there. Damiano had said he needed her. Damiano had confessed that it had been the memory of her and the thought of coming home to her which had sustained him through his ordeal in Montavia.
However, she had arrangements to make. Refusing to dwell on the intimidating prospect of returning to the Braganzi town house even for just a couple of nights, she packed a case. Fortunately her assistant, Pam Jenkinson, lived nearby and Eden was grateful to find the older woman at home when she called. The year before, Pam had looked after the shop for several weeks when Eden’s father had been dying. A prosperous widow, Pam had enjoyed being left in charge and indeed had already stated her interest in taking over the business should Eden ever wish to sell up. However, now, the older woman also wanted every tiny detail ironed out and it was some time before Eden was able to leave her.
As Eden hurried back to her flat, her restive mind began taking her back into the past again, back to her earliest days with Damiano, and she could not help thinking how ironic it was that neither of their families had wanted them to be together…
Damiano’s first kiss had frankly frightened the hell out of Eden. That sense of being out of control had spooked her. It had been like sin coming knocking on her door with a thunderous crash. So she’d told herself she wouldn’t see him again. Then he’d turned up the next morning and her resistance had crumbled. Right from the start, no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d been unable to fight that powerful desperate need to be with him.
That same weekend, her father had met Damiano. The name Braganzi had meant nothing to the older man but Damiano hadn’t been gone five minutes before her parent had voiced his dour disapproval. ‘Not our sort, is he? And you’re not his. He’s one of the bosses, Eden—’
‘I work for the education authority, not the Falcarragh estate—’
‘Folk will talk if you start running about with him and I don’t want to hear loose talk about my daughter,’ her father asserted grimly.
Eden had to reach the age of twenty-one before she could rebel against a stern paternal dictum. Over Damiano, she rebelled but only within certain boundaries.
‘What do you mean you have to be home by midnight?’ Damiano enquired with considerable amusement at their next meeting. ‘Even Cinderella only lost a shoe. Does your father think you’re only at risk of seduction after midnight strikes?’
‘Please don’t make fun of my father—’
Damiano meshed long fingers into her silky hair to make her raise her head again, a rueful smile chasing the mockery from his darkly handsome features. ‘You’re so ridiculously old-fashioned—’
‘By your standards, not my own.’
‘Pious too,’ he muttered, caressing her lips with his own, making her shiver and then tense. ‘I’ve been patient for three days. You want me.’
Yes and no, she might have told him had she had the courage. The more she felt that overwhelming excitement threatening, the harder she fought it to stay in control. Already she was beginning to instinctively pull back and freeze him out when he reached for her again. Somehow she set a pattern that she couldn’t free herself from even after they married.
The next time Damiano came up to Scotland, he rented a luxury hunting lodge in the hills behind the estate and invited her there for a dinner provided by a chef from a fancy restaurant. At the end of that wonderful meal, Damiano murmured with slumbrous cool, ‘Are you staying the night?’
‘No.’
Lounging back in his carved dining chair, Damiano fixed sardonic dark golden eyes on her hot face. ‘So out of academic interest and the reality that I focus best on a time frame…how many times do I have to see you for you to stay the night?’
‘For goodness’ sake, there isn’t some stupid time frame!’
‘Then it’s the bridal band of gold or nothing,’ Damiano countered drily. ‘Nothing very spontaneous about that, nothing generous either. In fact, one cannot avoid the obvious conclusion that you’re putting a price on your body just like a hooker.’
Pale with rage, Eden rose abruptly from her seat. ‘That’s it…don’t you ever dare come near me again!’
‘I’m not apologising. I just want a reason that I can understand and I want a warm, giving adult woman—’
‘Yes, I imagine you’ve been with plenty of that sort!’ Eden declared in unhidden disgust. ‘And where are they now? Do you even remember their names?’
‘I can promise you that I’m going to remember you.’ Damiano sighed.
‘Don’t phone me again!’ Eden snapped, stalking to the door.
‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so,’ Damiano purred like a jungle cat flexing his claws. ‘But you’re going to miss me…’
He drove her home without trying to change her mind. She walked in, told her father, ‘It’s over’ and went to bed. That soon, she missed him but she would have stood torture rather than admit it. Over the following two weeks, she lost weight, tormented herself with visions of Damiano finding solace with a more sexually available woman and told herself a thousand times that that had really been all he’d been interested in.
At the end of the second week, Damiano landed a helicopter in the field below her home. She was feeding the dogs outside and watched in astonishment as he emerged from the bright yellow chopper. Like a school-girl, she climbed the fence and ran to greet him.
‘Have you got that reason I can understand worked out for me yet?’
Colouring, she studied the rough grass at his feet and the long dragging silence stretched while he waited. ‘I want getting married to feel really special,’ she finally admitted jerkily.
‘The whole fairy tale. I’m not trying to mock your aspirations but I hear that first-time experiences aren’t always that great—’
‘That doesn’t matter—’
‘You missed me?’
‘Yes—’
‘How much?’
‘Too much,’ she whispered shakily.
‘Good…come fly with me the only place you’ll let me fly you, cara,’ Damiano drawled wryly, closing a possessive arm round her and urging her back towards the helicopter. From that moment on, he respected her boundaries.
He returned to London that same night. Home from agricultural college, Mark Anstey called in the next day. ‘Dad tells me you’re dating Damiano Braganzi…wow!’
And from Mark, she heard all that she should have heard first from Damiano. About the bank, the estate, the fabulous wealth, the top-drawer blue-blooded pedigree.
‘Why didn’t your father say anything?’ she mumbled in shock. ‘Even to my father?’
‘Braganzi expressed a desire for what he termed “privacy”. And as my father said, if a billionaire wants privacy and you like your job, you keep your mouth shut.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Eden asked Damiano in bewilderment that night on the phone.
‘I didn’t not tell you anything. You simply didn’t ask the right questions.’
And he had told no lies either but she had definitely picked up the feeling that Damiano would have preferred her to remain in the dark until he himself chose to disclose his true status in life.
‘What are you doing with someone like me?’ she muttered, although she tried hard not to ask that question.
‘The guy who has everything needs a challenge? Do you think your father might now do something other than grunt antisocially in my direction?’
‘No, he’s more likely to lock the door and pretend we’re out the next time you come calling!’ Eden groaned.
But only one short month
later, Damiano suggested that they get married. ‘I haven’t got the time to keep on flying up here—’
‘You hardly know me—’
‘You want me to do seven years and then another seven years like Jacob in the bible?’
‘Marriage is a big step—’
‘Sì, tesoro mio…but we get to share a bed, don’t we?’
And she got nowhere when she tried to pin him down to saying anything more serious.