Damiano's Return

‘It’ll not work,’ her father forecast dourly to Damiano’s face. ‘You’ll both be sorry. Eden’s got no more idea of your life than you have of ours. She won’t fit and she’ll be miserable.’

‘Nothing like being greeted with open arms by the in-law-to-be,’ Damiano quipped out of her parent’s hearing in the aftermath of the longest, bluntest speech Eden had ever heard the older man make.

Damiano then applied for a special licence and persuaded her into agreeing to a quiet ceremony the very next week. In her heart, she had known it was all too quick and that he was too casual altogether in his attitude. He told her how much he wanted her but he never mentioned love. But loving him as she did, she suppressed her every misgiving. He was marrying her. It was her ultimate dream.

She did not meet Damiano’s family until they came north for the wedding.

‘You do realise that my brother is still in love with Annabel?’ Cosetta remarked casually at the small reception which followed at the hunting lodge.

‘Who’s Annabel?’ Eden whispered, never having heard that name before.

‘A lady who wouldn’t be seen dead in that homemade wedding shroud you’re wearing! But then Annabel is one of us,’ Cosetta asserted cuttingly. ‘Privately educated and from a decent social background. Damiano hasn’t even mentioned her, has he? What does that tell you?’

‘That she wasn’t as important to him as you seem to think,’ Eden dared to suggest.

‘The woman he was engaged to for two years? Think again. He’s on the rebound. They only broke up three months ago. He was crazy about her and then they had some stupid argument. Damiano’s far too macho to admit himself at fault. He’ll live to regret that when he starts comparing the two of you.’

The flight to their honeymoon in Sicily started with an argument, Eden making tearful accusations on the score of her not having been told about Annabel, Damiano telling her that getting married didn’t mean she had the right to interrogate him about his past. Then she began feeling unwell.

‘Wedding-night nerves add to the pressure,’ Damiano informed her. ‘I did warn you that the fairy tale might be hard to capture in reality.’

She fainted when they landed in Sicily. A doctor came out to their fabulous villa and diagnosed the flu.

‘In sickness and in health…you do love to throw me in the deep end, cara.’ Damiano teased, trying to calm her down and comfort her while she sobbed out repeated apologies and felt like a total bridal let-down.

It was well over a week before they finally shared the same bed and consummated their marriage. And that long-awaited experience was…disastrous! Damiano then rode roughshod over her every mortified, indeed hysterical protest and insisted on getting the doctor out again to examine her to ensure that she was essentially undamaged by his attentions.

‘You’ve just been one of the unlucky ones,’ the medical man said.

The barrier of her virginity had been more than usually resistant. Making love for the first time had hurt much more than she had expected. In the circumstances that had been unavoidable but Damiano had still shouldered guilt for having caused her pain. Eden had been utterly wretched after what she had considered absolute humiliation.

‘I suppose I’m really, really lucky that I didn’t make it into bed with you before we got to the altar, cara,’ Damiano commented on a reflective footnote. ‘You would never have agreed to see me again in this lifetime.’

And looking back from the vantage point of five years of greater maturity, Eden returned to the present with a stifled groan over her own behaviour. She had come back from their honeymoon full of self-pity and hurt pride. She had leapt at the idea of separate bedrooms.

Throwing off that memory, knowing that she was a lot wiser than she had once been, Eden hurried back upstairs to her flat. In the hall, she froze at the sight of the rumpled but empty bed she could see through the bedroom door. Then she heard Damiano talking in husky Italian in the sitting room and she just sagged, skin turning clammy with relief. The truth was that, right now, she really could not bear Damiano out of her sight. Leaving him even briefly had entailed overcoming the ridiculously childish terror that if she left him alone, he might vanish again!

As she appeared in the doorway Damiano tossed aside his mobile phone. His black hair still damp from the shower, he was fully dressed again but not in the casual jeans he had worn earlier. A superb charcoal-grey suit, worn with a white shirt and silk tie, now sheathed his tall, well-built frame. Smooth expensive cloth outlined his wide shoulders and long powerful thighs with the exquisite perfection of fit only obtainable from a master tailor.

For a split second, it was as if time had swept her back five years. He was the very image of a rich and powerful banker again. He looked fantastic but at the same time as he stirred her senses he also intimidated her. ‘I thought you would still be in bed,’ she began uneasily. ‘Where did you get that suit?’

‘It was delivered to me at Heathrow. Nuncio had my measurements faxed to my tailor before we even left Brazil,’ Damiano drawled, a wry curve to his expressive mouth. ‘I think he thought shares might crash if I made a public appearance in denim. I’ve also moved up our departure from here by half an hour. Where have you been?’

She told him about her garment alterations business on the ground floor. Damiano listened in silence, stunning dark eyes flaring with sudden exasperation. ‘You’ve been sewing to make a living? What necessity was there for you to sink to that level?’

Colour flew into Eden’s cheeks. ‘I—’

‘I spoke to Nuncio while you were out,’ Damiano informed her drily. ‘I believe he repeatedly attempted to set up a financial support package for you before you left our home but you refused it.’

In the tense silence, the phone began ringing.

Eden ignored it, dismayed that Damiano was already making judgements about events which had taken place during his absence. ‘Damiano—’

‘Answer the phone,’ Damiano interrupted with stark impatience. ‘It’s been ringing every ten minutes since you went out!’

No darned wonder he had got back out of bed and given up on getting any further rest! And, of course, he would not have answered her phone when he would not have wished to identify himself and risk having his whereabouts confirmed, thereby inviting the descent of the press on her doorstep. Her conscience twanging as if she had been that incessant caller, she answered the phone.

‘Eden?’

It was Mark Anstey’s voice. As it had been a couple of months since she had heard from him, she was a little surprised but she smiled. ‘Mark?’

‘Glad I’ve finally got hold of you!’ Mark said urgently. ‘I caught a news bulletin on the radio at lunch-time. Tell me, is there any truth in the wild rumour that your long-lost husband has turned up alive and kicking and is now back in England?’

Eden tensed at the apparent fact that word of Damiano’s return had already moved into the public domain. ‘Yes…yes, there is—’

‘Incredible! Is Damiano there with you right now?’

‘Yes—’

‘Can he hear what you’re saying?’ Mark continued in a conspiratorial tone.

Discomfited by that question, Eden reddened. ‘Well, yes but why—?’

‘Have you got around yet to mentioning those dirty weekends we’re supposed to have enjoyed together?’

Eden froze in dismay at that brutally blunt question and lost colour. ‘No…’

‘Don’t mention that tabloid story! Take my advice and keep it quiet for now. Tina will

never tell the truth,’ Mark asserted with even stronger emphasis. ‘In fact, I think we need to meet up to discuss this situation face to face as soon as possible—’

At that moment the very last thing Eden wanted to think about was the unpleasant consequences of Mark’s affair with Nuncio’s wife, Tina, four years earlier. ‘I’m sorry but I really couldn’t manage that right now—’

‘Eden…this isn’t something you can run away from.’ Something in Mark’s voice roused the oddest sense of foreboding inside Eden.

‘Look, I’ll be in touch with you very soon!’ Eden swore in a rush and she replaced the receiver in equal haste before Mark could say anything else to upset her.

She turned back to Damiano, rigid with discomfiture. Mark had just urged her to keep a secret from her husband. Her conscience could have done without that reminder of what she was already doing! But being so short with Mark also left her feeling disloyal and ungrateful for, in the aftermath of his disastrous affair with Tina, Mark had promised that should the occasion ever arise he would tell Damiano the truth and clear Eden’s name.

Damiano was very still, his strong bone-structure fiercely taut. Scorching golden eyes connected with her evasive gaze and held her fast before she could look away again.

‘So Mark, the love of your life, is still hanging around five years on,’ Damiano breathed chillingly. ‘What are you trying to hide from me?’

In the electric silence of her appalled paralysis, the doorbell buzzed.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE chauffeur carted Eden’s case down the steep stairs and out to the limousine.

What are you trying to hide from me? Deeply unsettled by Damiano’s shrewd recognition of her unease during that phone call from Mark, Eden slid into the limousine. However, just as quickly, she reminded herself that she was innocent of being anything other than her sister-in-law Tina’s dupe and she lifted her head high again.

Chagrined colour warmed her complexion for she was affronted by Damiano’s derisive reference to Mark as ‘the love of your life’. Ironically, Damiano had merely employed the same phrase she had once used in rueful self-mockery before they’d married! Since then, she had read magazine articles which urged women to keep a still tongue when men asked nosy questions about previous attachments. How right those articles were!