Slinging his jacket on a chair, he swept up the internal phone to communicate terse instructions to some member of staff. As he spoke, he unknotted his tie and tossed it aside and began unbuttoning his shirt. Dry-mouthed, heartbeat accelerating, aware of the thunderous tension he was now exuding in primal waves but unable to concentrate on it, Eden watched him as he completed the call.
Languor was spreading through her body like a flood of warm honey. Even furious, he was breathtakingly beautiful to her mesmerised eyes. Her breathing fractured as he let the shirt drop where he stood. Six feet four inches of vibrant bronzed masculinity, wide, smooth shoulders, broad chest, taut, flat stomach, all rippling whipcord muscles.
Without warning, Damiano flashed a glance at her and stilled, aggressive jawline squaring. ‘What?’
Eden jerked. ‘Sorry?’
Damiano spread two not quite steady hands wide, dark eyes blazing gold. ‘I’m damned if I’m going into the bathroom to undress. Just close your eyes!’
‘But, Damiano, I wasn’t.’
‘I’ve gone nearly forty-eight hours without sleep,’ Damiano grated in a savage undertone. ‘Just get under the sheet, turn your back and pretend you’re on your own!’
Her teeth clenched. She hauled up the sheet and flipped over on to her side. Why was he so set on misunderstanding her? She tautened. He was interpreting her behaviour against a five-year-old yardstick and what else could he do?
‘I’m not as prudish as I used to be!” Eden whispered in a defensive hiss. ‘I’ve grown up a lot!’
The mattress gave, the lights snapped off and Damiano reached for her with both hands, hauling her up against him and shocking her into silence. ‘Grown women don’t need to fill up on vodka first, cara,’ he muttered thickly into her hair, dark, deep drawl steadily lowering in pitch and clarity as his big powerful frame relaxed. ‘If I had an ego problem, you’d have made me impotent. I spent seven months of marriage listening to every excuse not to have sex that has ever been invented. I spent most of the next five years between a prison cell and a quarry. I’m sure I was the only guy there who fantasised about a wife in a nightdress because he had never ever seen her naked!’
Trembling with mortification, tears stinging her eyes, Eden gulped and swallowed hard.
Damiano released a sleepy sigh. ‘But you love me. On your terms, the shoes you wore to bed this afternoon were a massive statement of devotion. Right now, I’ll settle for that.’
Right now? She opened her eyes, wildly conscious of his proximity, the sexy masculine scent of him, the heat he emanated. But he was now holding her at a slight distance from him. She swallowed again, wanting him so much she was burning all over. Finally, she moistened her lips and parted them. ‘I don’t need the vodka…’
Only silence greeted that announcement. She listened to the deep, even tenor of his breathing and rubbed her cheek helplessly against his hand where it rested loosely on the pillow. She had him back. It was enough. Whatever he wanted, he could have…she just wouldn’t make her efforts to please so obvious the next time. She loved him so much. Even the family from hell wasn’t going to part them!
At what felt like the crack of dawn the next morning, Damiano woke her up. Exuding cool self-command, Damiano was already fully dressed in a dark business suit, burgundy silk tie and a pearl-grey silk shirt. His stunning dark eyes rested on her with a slumbrous quality that drove her mind blank and sent her heartbeat racing.
‘I have a press conference set up for ten,’ Damiano drawled.
‘Oh…’ Her tummy flipping at the mere thought of attending a press conference, Eden paled.
‘It’ll be a circus and not your style. There’s no need for you to come, cara.’ Damiano sank fluidly down on the edge of the bed, brilliant eyes shimmering over her. ‘I’m spending the afternoon with a whole collection of bankers and lawyers. I think it would be wisest if we fly out to Italy separately—’
‘Separately?’
‘I’m determined to keep our destination a secret from the paparazzi. One of my bodyguards will accompany you on a private flight this afternoon. I’ll meet you at the villa…it could well be tomorrow before I make it.’
A sharp rap sounded on the door.
Exasperation flashing across his darkly handsome features, Damiano vaulted upright and strode over to answer it. Eden recognised Nuncio’s anxious voice.
Before he departed, Damiano glanced back at her with a wry smile. ‘The villa is, I believe, larger than a rabbit hutch and it is not communal,’ he assured her with admirable cool.
Just a few more hours and she would be on her way to Italy. A sunny smile curved Eden’s lips. A maid arrived with a breakfast tray laden with all Eden’s favourite dishes. She had just finished eating when the phone by the bed buzzed.
The caller was Mark.
‘How on earth did you work out where I was?’ Eden asked in confusion.
‘It hardly took genius. I was once a regular visitor to the town house,’ Mark reminded her impatiently. ‘Look, I’ve come up to London specially and I’d like to see you as soon as possible.’
And why shouldn’t she see Mark before she left for Italy? Eden suddenly asked herself. He was a good friend and, although he had his flaws, she had never forgotten his sympathetic support in the aftermath of Damiano’s disappearance. No doubt, Mark would also enjoy hearing the inside story on Damiano’s return home. And shouldn’t she tell Mark that, exactly as he had forecast, Tina was determined to lie about their affair?
Mark suggested that she meet him at his hotel. Eden called a cab to pick her up and she slipped out of the house by the rear entrance. A slimly built young man with dark blond hair and pale blue eyes, Mark, as elegantly dressed as always, was waiting for her in the lobby.
Eden accompanied him into the almost empty residents’ lounge. ‘It’s so good to see you again,’ she said warmly.
‘Tell me what’s been happening on the home front,’ Mark invited, having ordered tea for Eden and a drink for himself.
‘I was going to ask you how you’ve been doing first,’ Eden told him ruefully. ‘I haven’t heard much from you lately.’
‘I think your situation is rather more important right now.’
Eden grimaced. ‘Well, what you said over four years ago has been borne out. You said I was a real fool to take the heat for Tina and you were right. It has come back to haunt me. Tina is still treating me like her worst enemy and Nuncio is eagerly waiting for me to make a full confession to Damiano. The sooner the whole wretched business is cleared up, the better.’
‘So you will be wanting me to support your story?’
Eden flushed. ‘I hope it won’t come to that. That would be embarrassing for you—’
‘I’ll tell Damiano anything you like.’ Mark shrugged. ‘But…I’m afraid there’ll be a price.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘A price?’
‘Let me tell you a story.’ Mark’s mouth took on a sullen twist as he studied her. ‘My longest-standing friend marries a fabulously wealthy bloke and what does she do to help me?’
Eden went rigid. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘You got me a lousy first job working for peanuts on the Braganzi country estate!’ Mark derided. ‘And when I asked for the cash to set up my own business, you said you were sorry but Damiano thought I was too young to be trusted with that size of an investment.’
Mark was delving way back to events which had occurred in the first months of Eden’s marriage. At the time, those events had made Eden feel very uncomfortable with both her husband and Mark. ‘I didn’t realize you still felt like that about—’
‘No, of course you didn’t. Damiano went missing soon afterwards and I decided the rich Mrs Braganzi was a long-term investment to be nursed along.’ Beneath her stricken gaze, Mark vented a sour laugh. ‘Just two more years and Damiano would have been legally presumed dead. No matter how hard his relatives fought, you would still have copped most of the loot as Damiano’s wife! Would
you have been generous then, Eden? That was what I was waiting for—’
‘I can’t believe you really mean what you’re saying…’ A queasy sensation of mounting fear was engulfing Eden. ‘You were so kind to me after Damiano disappeared.’
‘But you’ll have to pay me to get service like that again. I won’t admit that I had that affair with Tina unless you make it well worth my while…if you don’t, I’ll take Tina’s side and drop you in it with Damiano—’