Damiano's Return

In the aftermath, she held him close, awash with wonder and a little shock and loving tenderness. Damiano smoothed her hair, dropped a kiss on her brow, rolled back, but he kept her securely pinned to him with a possessiveness more than equal to her own.

‘It’s so special with you…’ Damiano murmured with slumbrous satisfaction.

Her lips curved. ‘And yet you said that what happened in the bedroom wasn’t important enough to make a major issue,’ she reminded him.

Damiano lifted her up to look at her. His brilliant eyes were full of devilment. ‘Step one in my seduction plan was to defuse the tension—’

‘Seduction plan?’

‘I thought it would take weeks and weeks for us to make it this far,’ Damiano confided with rueful amusement.

They lay in a relaxed sprawl. Damiano hugged her close and drawled. ‘I’ve dealt with Anstey, by the way—’

‘Mark?’

Damiano smiled like a sleepy tiger, eyes gleaming below dark lashes. ‘He won’t be bothering you again—’

‘What happened?’ she pressed anxiously.

Damiano shifted a noncommittal shoulder. ‘He’s repaid the money and he’ll think twice before he tries blackmail a second time.’

Eden sat up. ‘Damiano…’

‘I hit him. OK?’ Damiano gave her a level look of challenge. ‘He frightened you. He caused you a lot of distress. He’s lucky I didn’t damage him permanently!’

Eden never approved of violence. Her principles fought with her lack of sympathy for Mark, whose callous behaviour had hurt her a great deal. While she was struggling with those opposing feelings, the phone by the bed rang.

Damiano reached for the receiver. His lean, strong face tensed, expressive mouth tightening. ‘We’ll be down in ten minutes.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Nuncio and Cosetta are here,’ Damiano breathed, springing off the bed and a grim look in his eyes. ‘I should never have given Nuncio the name of this place and I should have made time for him this morning when he phoned asking to see me, but I’m afraid I wasn’t in the mood for my little brother.’

‘You can’t tell Nuncio about Tina’s affair,’ Eden warned him flatly.

‘That’s not your decision to make,’ Damiano retorted with crisp clarity. ‘You might have been prepared to let yourself be hung out to dry on Tina’s behalf, but I’m not. In any case, my family was abusing you long before that tabloid story appeared!’

‘But you don’t repay spite with spite—’

‘No, you repay wrong with right,’ Damiano countered, unmoved by that line or argument. ‘I won’t listen to a single word spoken against you, so, for his own sake, I hope Nuncio has not come here with the intent of causing trouble.’

They went downstairs together. Eden was dismayed when she walked into the sitting room and registered that Damiano’s entire family had chosen to descend on them. Nuncio, Cosetta and Tina were seated round the fireplace. But she almost laughed when she heard Damiano stifle a groan of exasperation at the same sight.

CHAPTER TEN

NUNCIO looked deeply uncomfortable, like a man who had been dragged somewhere he didn’t want to be by the women in his life. His sister, Cosetta, gave him a charged look of expectancy and, when he failed to react, she rose to her feet with a pronounced air of self-importance.

‘We need to talk to you in private, Damiano.’

Damiano dealt the sharp-faced brunette a withering appraisal. ‘Eden’s my wife and she stays, Cosetta.’

‘I think Eden and I should go for a walk.’ Tina stood up with one of her little deprecating smiles. ‘What do you say, Eden? Shall we leave the Braganzis to it?’

‘Not just right now, thanks,’ Eden said quietly.

China-blue eyes hardening, Tina sat down again.

Nuncio began to say something in Italian to his brother.

‘Let’s stick to English,’ Damiano cut in.

‘I’ll find this matter very difficult to broach with Eden present,’ Nuncio protested.

‘Then you have a problem because I’m not going anywhere,’ Eden advised her brother-in-law, disconcerting him with a sharp retort such as he had never received from her before. But then Eden had already decided that the days when she had allowed Damiano’s siblings to snub and embarrass her were long behind her.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Cosetta exclaimed, throwing Nuncio a look of stark impatience. ‘This secrecy has gone on long enough. Annabel’s being very silly keeping herself in the background but we’re supposed to be here to put things right for her!’

Eden blinked in surprise at that reference to Damiano’s former fiancée. Why on earth was Damiano’s sister rabbiting on about Annabel Stavely?

‘What are you trying to put right for Annabel?’ Eden enquired but even Cosetta, who was normally a far from sensitive being, coloured and looked away from her, sooner than answer her directly.

‘We wanted Annabel to come out to Brazil with us…Annabel and her son, Peter,’ Nuncio began stiffly, his heavy face flushed as he concentrated his attention on his elder brother. ‘But she became quite hysterical when we suggested that—’

‘Of course, she did. She has her pride. Naturally she didn’t want to be the one to make the first move. Any woman would feel the same in her position!’ Cosetta proclaimed in heated defence of her best friend.

Eden slowly shook her head in silent wonderment. Damiano’s family never failed to astonish her. Not only had they left her behind when they had flown out to greet their long-lost brother in Brazil, but they had also evidently attempted to persuade Annabel to take what should have been Eden’s place! As for Cosetta’s fond contention that Annabel was too proud to make the first move with Damiano…well, Eden almost laughed out loud at that claim. In her efforts to win Damiano back even after his marriage, Annabel had been blatant.

Admittedly, it had never seemed to get the redhead anywhere, Eden conceded. She might have envied Annabel because she believed that Damiano had once sincerely loved the other woman. But even thinking that Damiano might well have married her on the rebound, Eden had recognised that he’d no longer been in love with his former fiancée. Indeed, had she had a better sense of humour five years earlier, she might well have reaped a lot of macabre enjoyment from Annabel’s attempts to attract Damiano when he’d been so patently detached from her.

‘What is this farrago of nonsense?’ Damiano enquired very drily of his brother and sister. ‘Why would you have invited Annabel to come out to Brazil with you? Why the hell would I have wanted to see her?’

‘So that you could be tempted afresh,’ Eden could not resist pointing out to her husband, a slight wobble in her voice. ‘Your family obviously thought it was too good an opportunity to miss. After all, you had spent all those years locked up and were sure to be at a low ebb of restraint!’

An appreciative smile curved Damiano’s mouth and he closed his arm round Eden. ‘Why do you think that I’m still complaining that you weren’t on the flight?’ he teased before turning his attention back to his brother. ‘Come on, Nuncio. Do try to come to the point.’

Nuncio cleared his throat like a bullfrog and stood up. ‘Annabel has had a child, Damiano…’

Eden’s spine tingled and stiffened. Only now did she recall Tina smugly telling her that she had a huge shock coming her way. Common sense told her what had to be coming next but she just couldn’t credit the explanation that her mind was serving up to her.

‘So?’ Damiano elevated a sardonic dark brow.

‘Annabel told us that you and she had got back together again shortly before you went out to Montavia,’ Cosetta delivered and the brunette slung a triumphant smile at Eden’s astonished face. ‘We weren’t at all surprised but poor Annabel didn’t feel she could tell us the truth until your wife had moved out of the town house. By then Annabel was five months pregnant and, with her father having been declared bankrupt, she was very much in need of our support—’

‘A

nnabel will be in even greater need of your support when she finds herself hauled up in court for slander,’ Damiano broke in with icy disbelief, his outrage etched in every angle of hard bone-structure. ‘How dare you bring this tissue of lies into my home? If Annabel has had a child, it was not fathered by me!’

Eden had gone way beyond amusement now. She felt sick with shock. And she thought strickenly for an instant, Could it be true? Might Damiano have turned to Annabel again before he’d gone missing and when their marriage had been under strain? She looked up at him and found him gazing down intently at her. She met his eyes head on, those stunning clear dark golden eyes. She recognised the honest anger there, the pure exasperation with which one met a fantastic story, and not the smallest shade of discomfiture. Her momentary stab of concern vanished to be replaced with outrage. It was his wretched family again, she decided furiously, still set on having another go at dividing them!

‘That’s quite some story, Cosetta,’ Eden commented tightly, her green eyes sparkling with scorn. ‘Very offensive in its content but just a little too like a soap opera to impress anyone with any wit!’

‘Annabel said that Peter was Damiano’s son!’ Cosetta argued shrilly.