Damiano's Return

Damiano did not like Mark. That was still fresh news to Eden and she marvelled that she had not previously managed to work that out for herself. But then Damiano might well have liked Mark better had she not confided that, as a teenager, she had been infatuated with the younger man. Recalling that trusting confession of her own youthful immaturity now made her cringe. After all, more than five years earlier, Damiano had been anything but confiding on the infinitely more important subject of why he had broken off his engagement to Annabel Stavely!

‘I asked you a question,’ Damiano reminded her with icy cool. ‘Why did you look as guilty as hell while you were speaking to Mark?’

‘Probably embarrassment!’ Eden threw her head back, golden hair rippling back over her shoulders, green eyes sparkling with sudden annoyance. ‘So you can stop acting like some Victorian domestic tyrant questioning his flighty child-wife!’

Taken aback by that angry assurance, Damiano’s lean dark features froze. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mark is my friend and I don’t feel that I should have to justify that.’ Eden tilted her chin in defiance. ‘After all, he was never an intimate friend…not like you and Annabel, who as an ex-fiancée was put under my nose practically every day of our marriage!’

‘What an exaggeration!’ Damiano’s wide sensual mouth twisted. ‘Annabel was my sister’s closest friend. Did you expect me to tell Cosetta that Annabel was no longer welcome in our home?’

‘No, indeed. Such a sensitive request would never have occurred to you on my account!’ Eden slammed back at him helplessly as the humiliation of a hundred whispered giggling conversations and scornful glances surfaced in her memory like rocks on which she might still run aground. Annabel and Cosetta had worked together to undermine Eden’s every attempt to feel secure in her position as Damiano’s wife.

‘Accidenti—’

‘You made me put up with Annabel,’ Eden recalled bitterly. ‘I wasn’t allowed to be possessive…in fact, you called me silly and petty and spiteful when I suggested that your sister could socialise with Annabel some place other than our home, so you can just put up with my fondness for Mark’s company!’

‘Is that a fact?’ Damiano drawled smoothly.

‘Yes, that is a fact.’ Clashing unwarily with eyes as broodingly dark as a stormy night, Eden then found herself subsiding like a pricked balloon. Indeed, a sense of panic once again gripped her for she was frightened by the undeniable urge she seemed to have to hurl recriminations about the past. Right now their relationship was too fragile to bear the strain.

‘I knew you felt threatened by Annabel back then,’ Damiano asserted, taking her very much aback with that admission. ‘I liked the idea that you were jealous. In those days, I liked punishments of that variety. It was my version of the whip and the chair.’

Focusing on him with truly shocked intensity, Eden parted her lips and then slowly closed them again.

‘Manipulative wheels within wheels, a war of attrition which you were in no way equipped to fight, cara,’ Damiano conceded with wry regret, reaching out to close his hand over her tensely curled fingers where they rested on the seat. ‘You really didn’t have a clue what was going on beneath the surface of our marriage, did you?’

‘No,’ she conceded unevenly, colliding with his stunning dark eyes, rational thought suspended, for in the back of her mind she knew that if she actually thought through what he had just smoothly admitted, it would scare the life out of her to accept that he had once played such dangerous and hurtful games with her.

‘Never again,’ Damiano swore softly, unfurling her taut fingers within his and drawing her closer.

Her heartbeat speeded up. Suddenly she was very short of breath. Gazing into those spectacular eyes smouldering with golden highlights, she felt a little burst of heat ignite deep within her and her colour heightened. He was taking his time but she was just desperate for him to touch her, so desperate that she trembled with anticipation.

‘Nothing has to be rushed,’ Damiano murmured with slumbrous cool.

Her free hand clenched into his shoulder to steady herself. She could not have agreed with him. Even that dark, deep, sexy drawl of his did something extraordinary to her senses and, brought that close to his lithe, powerful frame, it was as if her body were being whirled into the eye of the storm and out of her control. The straining peaks of her breasts tingled and tightened within her clothing. Lacing his fingers into her silky hair, Damiano let the tip of his tongue delve in a provocative flicker between her soft lips. She jerked as if he had burnt her, a flood of such hunger released, she closed her eyes in quivering aftershock.

‘I’m not about to fall on you like a sex-starved animal,’ Damiano asserted a shade raggedly, his husky sexy vowel sounds running together. ‘Try to relax.’

Not while she was the victim of her own most secret memories. Her mind filled with erotic recollections of Damiano pinning her to the bed with dominant male sexual power and driving her out of her mind with pleasure, she felt utterly wanton.

‘Try to stop shaking,.’ Damiano urged, sounding more than a little pained. ‘I promise not to do anything you don’t want to do—’

Eden tore her other hand free of his hold and curved it to the back of his well-shaped head in near desperation. ‘Kiss me…please.’

Long fingers cupped her cheekbone. ‘Eden—?’

‘Shut up!’ she gasped and pushed her mouth in a blind seeking gesture against his.

For a split second, Damiano was absolutely motionless. Then he tugged her head back to make access easier and crushed her eager mouth to his with a raw, deep urgency that her body recognised with surging joyous response. White-hot excitement engulfed her in a scorching wave. A formless little sound broke low in her throat as sensual reaction slivered through her every skin cell, leaving her weak as water but as attached to Damiano’s hard, muscular physique as a vine.

However, he set her back from him. Eden opened passion-glazed eyes and attempted to breathe again. She was maddeningly conscious of the dampness between her thighs and of the extraordinary ache of craving he could awake in her so easily, but she was trying not to be ashamed of that reality in the way she had once been.

Damiano surveyed her from beneath semi-lowered long ebony lashes, feverish colour lying along his taut cheekbones in a scoring line. The thick silence smouldered. ‘We’re at the airfield,’ he stated not quite evenly, scanning her hot face and the sudden downward dip of her eyes.

Wasn’t a little enthusiasm what he had always wanted from her? Did he find it unfeminine? Or was he pleased? Unable to bring herself to look at him in case she discovered that once again she had done the wrong thing, Eden said nothing. Still all of a quiver, she climbed out of the limo on wobbly legs. What sort of a welcome would she receive from the rest of the Braganzi family? Her tummy lurched at the prospect. For Eden, it would be a very distasteful meeting.

When they landed at Heathrow, bodyguards met Eden and Damiano, ready to protect them from harassment should the paparazzi appear. Eden was relieved when they were able to leave the airport without incident. But tomorrow a press announcement would be made. Damiano’s return from the dead was a major news scoop. The paparazzi would be desperate to track Damiano down to gain that all-important first picture of him.

Inside the unremarkable saloon car, chosen in place of a more noticeable limousine, Eden’s hands trembled as she nervously smoothed down her dress. As the press turned the media spotlights back on to Damiano, would one of the newspapers choose to resurrect the allegations made against her three months after her husband had gone missing? Her blood ran cold inside her veins. That photograph which had been printed had looked so utterly damning. While the face of the woman in Mark’s arms had been concealed, the registration of the car beside which they had stood had been distinct and that car had, at that time, been Eden’s.

The sheer emotional surge of a most extraordinary day was now catching up on Eden fast and she felt incredibly t

ired. They entered the town house from the mews garages at the rear. Struggling just to keep her eyes open, Eden was past caring about the reception she was likely to receive.

In the grand hall, Damiano paused to rest dark, deep-set eyes levelly on her. ‘I’m not expecting you to mend fences with my family tonight. Everybody is under too much strain at present.’

But even that concessionary assurance filled Eden with dismay for, without realising that he was asking for a virtual miracle, Damiano was warning her that he did expect her to heal those divisions some time soon. Before she could comment, however, her attention was distracted by the sight of a large photograph of Annabel Stavely prominently displayed on a side table. The undeniably gorgeous redhead, who had once had the power to drive Eden mad with jealousy, had one arm curved round a cute little boy with dark hair, presumably her son.

As Damiano thrust open the drawing-room door and stood back for Eden to precede him, Eden was assuring herself that she couldn’t care less about the Braganzi clan’s partiality for an ex-fiancée who should have been ancient history. Her eyes cloaked, Eden then scanned the three occupants of the elegant room with its coldly impressive blue decor. Nuncio was already moving towards them. Although he was four years younger than Damiano, he actually looked older. Stocky and portly, he had a weak jawline and brown spaniel eyes.

‘Back home where you belong, Damiano!’ Nuncio exclaimed in an emotional burst, coming between them to grasp Damiano by the arms and hug him again.

Damiano had probably been hugged all the way back from Brazil. Eden reckoned that Nuncio’s slavish attachment to his elder brother was probably the only thing that she could now like about him. Cosetta, Damiano’s sister, eight years his junior, remained by the fireplace, her dark eyes challenging Eden with derisive distaste.

Tina, Nuncio’s wife, approached with an uncertain smile, like someone shyly testing the water but eager to please. But then Tina had always kept well in with Damiano, Eden recalled painfully, and, over five years back, getting friendly with Damiano’s naive wife had just been part of that same self-serving strategy.

The Italian woman was small and blonde just like Eden but there the resemblance ended. Tina had had an oval face with delft-blue eyes and a Cupid’s bow mouth. ‘How are you, Eden?’