Damiano's Return

Had Nuncio kept quiet about her supposed affair, after all? Yet if he had, what excuse had he given Damiano for his failure to bring Eden out to Brazil with him? And what was Damiano likely to say when he came back? How was she to explain why she had left the Braganzi family home? Shed his name to hide behind another name? Built a new life far from what had so briefly been hers?

Struggling to suppress her mounting fears, Eden focused on the framed photo by her bed. Damiano smiling. All sleek, dark good looks and cool Italian charisma. It had been taken on their honeymoon in Sicily. But they had only been together seven months in total. Long enough though for her to see him withdraw from her, for her to stop expecting the connecting door between their bedrooms to open again, for him to start spending more and more time abroad on endless banking business. Long enough to break her heart. Love like that didn’t go away. Love like that just hurt.

A light knock sounded on the ajar bedroom door. ‘Are you all right?’

Mastering concerns which were pushing her close to panic at what should have been a most ecstatically happy moment, Eden turned a pale, tear-wet face to the young female officer. ‘What now?’

‘We’ll leave for the airfield in half an hour. If I were you I’d shut up shop for the day and just think about what I wanted to wear.’

Wear? Eden swallowed a shaken laugh. Damiano… Damiano. What had he suffered? Kidnapped, his life threatened, seriously injured, locked up in some primitive foreign prison. Damiano, whose life had not prepared him in any way for such an ordeal. Damiano, born to wealth, command and supreme privilege. Once he had liked to see her in green. That thought just popped up out of nowhere and spawned a second, no less trivial recollection. Green had been his favourite colour.

She ransacked her wardrobe with suddenly frantic hands. Maybe he only wanted to see her to say, ‘Hi, I’m back but…’ without his precious family hanging around in the background. And Annabel, his first love, his true love. How could she have forgotten Annabel? Annabel Stavely, Damiano’s ex-fiancée, who in the years since had had a child by a father she had refused to name but who remained single. Eden raised her hands to her face. Her hands were shaking, her palms cold and damp. She was a basket case with an out-of-control mind and the most desperate crazy desire to shout and scream with excitement and fear at one and the same time…

The phone rang barely a minute before Eden and her escort left the apartment.

‘Eden?’ It was Damiano’s younger brother, Nuncio.

Shaken that her brother-in-law should finally call her after so many years of silence, Eden literally stopped breathing. She was instantly afraid that he was ringing as his brother’s messenger to say that Damiano would not, after all, be flying on to see her and she whispered strickenly, ‘Yes?’

‘I have told Damiano nothing. How do I welcome him home with such news?’ Nuncio demanded in a tone of bitter condemnation. ‘I was forced to lie and say that we had lost contact with you after you moved out. But you had better tell him the truth for I will not stand by and see my brother made to look a fool by my silence!’

The truth? As Eden replaced the phone again with a trembling hand her own bitterness almost prompted her to pick it up again and call Nuncio back. But it was the temptation of a moment and swiftly set aside. In any case, he would never believe her, would he? Neither he nor anybody else would believe or indeed even want to believe the real truth, which was that her two best friends had betrayed her and ultimately left her to carry the can.

‘You must understand that the man you remember won’t be the man who will be coming home to you,’ Rodney Russell informed her with daunting conviction as they sat in the back of the unmarked police car on the way to the airfield. ‘It will be a great strain for both of you to rebuild your relationship—’

‘Yes…of course.’ Wishing he would stop winding her up with such warnings, Eden listened with veiled and ever more anxious eyes. The lecture about post-traumatic stress syndrome had been scary enough.

‘Damiano is returning to a world he lost five years ago. It will be a challenge for him to adjust. He will suffer from mood swings, frustration and a sense of bitter injustice at the years that have been stolen from him. At times, he will crave solitude, but at other times he may relentlessly seek out company. He may be withdrawn, moody, silent or he may put on the macho-man act of the century but it won’t last—’

‘No?’ she queried tautly.

‘Try to appreciate that however your husband reacts now will not be a fair indication of how he’ll be when he has come to terms with what has happened to him. This will be a transition period for Damiano.’

‘Yes.’ That last assurance had sent her heart sinking like a stone. She wasn’t stupid. Was he warning her that Damiano might be seeking her right now but that in a few weeks he might walk away again? Did he think she fondly imagined that paradise might now be miraculously reclaimed from the debris of a marriage foundering five years ago? She was not so simple, nor so foolishly optimistic. She expected nothing, would ask for nothing from Damiano. She just wanted and desperately needed to be there for him. But she was challenged to believe that Damiano might need her. Damiano Braganzi had never been known to admit a need for anybody or anything.

It had been she who’d said, ‘I love you,’ but he had never said those words. Yet once he had said them to Annabel, hadn’t he? Or at least he had had them etched on a beautiful gold necklace: ‘All my love, Damiano.’

‘I think some fresh air would do you good, Eden,’ the superintendent cut into her increasingly frantic thoughts and she realized only then that the car had arrived at the airfield.

‘Yes…yes, it would.’ She slid out of the car and breathed in deep in an effort to steady herself. ‘How much longer?’

‘Maybe ten minutes…’ The older man had no need to ask what she meant.

Ten minutes to wait after five years? She was such a bag of nerves. She paced the Tarmac, ignoring the door open in welcome at the small passenger terminal. She smoothed trembling hands down over the fine green wool dress which was absurdly warm for a summer day but all that she still possessed in that colour.

‘Russell is only doing his job as he sees it,’ the senior policeman remarked quietly, ‘but, accordingly to my sources, your husband is in remarkably good condition both physically and mentally.’

Eden nodded, a little of her tension ebbing, and then she heard a distant whirr. She jerked, throwing her head back to search the sky with fraught eyes. She saw a dark speck, watching it growing larger, her whole being centering on the helicopter as it came in to land. She still could not quite credit that Damiano was on that craft, that Damiano was about to emerge and walk across the Tarmac towards her.

In spite of everything she had been told, she was still terrified that somehow all these people and even his family had got it wrong and that the man who had turned up in Brazil wasn’t really who they thought he was. An impostor—well, why not? Wasn’t that at least possible? Mightn’t somebody have boned up on Damiano’s life and even had plastic surgery? Wouldn’t it be worth a try to step into the shoes of so very rich a man? And wouldn’t Nuncio, who had worshipped the ground his elder brother had walked on and who had been inconsolable when he’d gone missing, have been an easy and credulous target?

Rigid, she watched the helicopter settle down about a hundred feet away. A door thrust open. She trembled, cold and clammy with fear. And then she saw a very tall, very well-built male springing out, with long, powerful black-jean-clad legs, and also wearing a white T-shirt and leather flying jacket. Black hair, far longer than she would have expected, blew back from his lean, hard-boned features. His skin was deeply bronzed. Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. There was just this massive explosion of crazy joy inside her and she didn’t notice herself moving forward at first hesitantly and then breaking into a run.

Damiano let her run to him. He just came to a halt about thirty feet from the helicopter. Later she would remem

ber that, wonder about it. But at that instant she was all reaction and no thought. Every prayer answered, every fear for that moment forgotten, Eden just hurled herself at his big powerful frame, heart racing so fast she reeled dizzily against him as he closed his arms around her.

‘You missed me, cara?’ His rich, dark drawl wrapped round her, shutting out everything else as he bent his head down to her level.

Her face was squashed into his chest. He smelt so good, he smelt so familiar and she drank him in as if he were life-giving oxygen. ‘Don’t joke…please don’t joke!’ Eden sobbed into his shirt, clinging to him with both hands to stay upright.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR a couple of minutes, Damiano simply stood there holding Eden and she got the chance to get a partial grip on herself again and recall that they were in a public place.

‘OK?’ Damiano checked softly.

Eden breathed in shakily and lifted her head. ‘I love you so much.’

She hadn’t planned to say it, had not even thought of saying such a thing but the words came out in what felt like the most natural declaration in the world. She encountered eyes so dark and intent they were black. Unfathomable. A tiny spasm of fear tensed her muscles. Suddenly she became conscious of how rigid he was, how tight was the control he had over himself.

‘And even after all this time, not a single doubt. I have to be the luckiest guy in the universe, cara,’ Damiano responded with a roughened edge to his dark deep drawl, black eyes flashing gold as he scanned her anxious face, and then bent to sweep back up the travel bag he had set down. ‘Come on, let’s get rid of the welcome committee.’

He kept his arm round her narrow shoulders and walked her over to where the others hovered. Eden was still trembling, her mind in a tail-spin. She couldn’t focus on what she had just said or his reaction. It was an effort to think far enough ahead to put one foot in front of the other and move. Yet on some subconscious level she sensed the difference in him but could not put a label on what it was. Damiano had always been very controlled and very hard to read. He kept the volatile and expressive Italian side of his powerful personality under wraps. Except in bed.

That recollection made her cheeks burn and then slowly pale again. The luckiest guy in the universe? No, not in the bedroom with a wife he had once called the biggest prude in the western world! No, she had been a really dismal failure in that department, hampered by both her upbringing and her inhibitions, but most of all in the end by his dissatisfaction. For the more exasperated Damiano had become, the worse the problem had got. By then aware that everything she did and didn’t do behind the bedroom door was under censorious appraisal, Eden had felt a shrinking reluctance she hadn’t been able to hide from him. The pleasure he had given her had had a price tag attached and the cost had been too high for her pride to bear.

But when Damiano had gone missing, when she had had to face up to the appalling reality that he might be dead and might never come home to her again—oh, how she had beaten herself up for her failings then! In retrospect, her own hang-ups had begun to seem pathetic and selfish. Chewing at her lower lip, utterly dislocated from the dialogue which Damiano was coolly maintaining with what he had called the welcome committee, she focused on the long silver limousine pulling up with a surprised frown.

‘The car’s here. I don’t want to hang around,’ Damiano stated with a blunt lack of social pretence she had never heard him use before.

‘Am I allowed to ask where you’re heading, Mr Braganzi?’ Rodney Russell enquired with the edged delivery of a male who, with the arrival of that chauffeur-driven car, had just been made to feel even more superfluous to requirements.

‘Home…where else?’ Damiano responded.

Home? Dear heaven, was he planning on having them driven straight back to London and yet another family welcome? A joyous celebration at which she would simply be the spectre at the feast?

‘Where is home?’ Damiano prompted with a rueful laugh as he strode towards the limousine. ‘You had better give the driver directions.’

Her level of panic momentarily subsided at that clarification and she scolded herself for forgetting that, of course, he was already aware that she was no longer living in the vast Braganzi town house in London. However, he seemed to have taken that development in his stride. Having done as he requested, she climbed into the luxurious rear passenger seat. But the sense of panic swiftly returned to reclaim her. She had not thought beyond the moment of seeing Damiano again, indeed had barely attempted to even visualise what she could not imagine after so long. But now she felt like someone in a canoe without a paddle heading for the rapids.

‘This feels weird to me too. Don’t worry about it, cara,’ Damiano breathed, reaching out without warning and closing his big hand over her tautly clenched fingers. ‘No long-winded explanations of anything today. I’m back. You’re here. That’s all that matters at this moment in time.’

Eden stared at him. It seemed to be entirely the wrong time to be registering just how gorgeous he still was. The classic features, the superb bone-structure, the sensual curve to his perfectly modelled mouth. Damiano was stunningly good-looking but, unlike many such men, intensely masculine. Senses starved of him were already reacting to that unfortunate reality. The old familiar shame flooded her as she recognised the coil of heat in her belly, the swelling heaviness of her breasts beneath her clothing. Inwardly she cringed at how inappropriate and humiliating those responses were in the presence of a male who had rejected her outright on the one occasion she had plucked up the courage to invite him back to the marital bed. No, he definitely wasn’t going to need her that way, she reminded herself, mortified by her own foolish susceptibility.

Once she’d got a hold on her embarrassing thoughts and tamped them firmly down again, her anxious eyes roved over his strong dark features and now marked the changes. His hard cheekbones might have been chiselled out of bronze and carried not an ounce of superfluous flesh. He was pale beneath that bronzed tan, his brilliant deep-set dark eyes shadowed with exhaustion. He would have had so much news to catch up on with his family that he probably hadn’t slept on the flight back to England. In fact, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

But there was an edge there now in that lean strong face that hadn’t been there before. A tough, hard edge stamped like an overlay of steel on him. The smooth, sophisticated coolness she recalled had been replaced by a colder, deadlier quality. She had seen it in action with the welcome committee. There had been no apologetic pretence about his impatience to be gone. His accent had altered too. Five years of speaking Spanish and nothing else, no doubt carefully modelling his speech pattern on those around him. He was a very clever guy. He had not become the chairman of the Braganzi Bank by birth and precedent as his late father had. He had been voted in at the age of twenty-eight because he was quite simply brilliant at what he did.

The silence had become charged with an intensity she didn’t understand. A slight frown-line indented her brow as she connected with his eyes. Eyes that now burned like golden flames. In a sudden movement, he meshed his other hand into her hair and brought her startled mouth up under his.

It was a shockingly intimate and shockingly unexpected sensual assault. Indeed, Eden, accustomed to the belief that her husband found her about as physically appealing as an ice bath, could not have been more stunned. The plunging eroticism of his tongue searching out the tender interior of her mouth shook her to her very depths and then sent such a current of scorching excitement through her that a strangled gasp was wrenched from her.

Instantly, Damiano released her, feverish colour scoring his cheekbones as he took a swift look at her shaken face, lowered his thick black lashes and breathed in a hoarse undertone, ‘Mi dispiace…I’m sorry, I can’t think what came over me.’

Neither could Eden but most ironically she hadn’t been about to complain. Her heart was banging as if she had run a three-minute mile. Her wretched body was tense and expectant; it had been

so long since she had been touched in an intimate way. And she was hugely embarrassed because it was so obvious that Damiano regretted having kissed her. Lowering her head in self-protection, she chose to study their still-linked hands instead. Just grabbing was a sort of guy thing, she decided, trying to work out what had motivated Damiano, which was a challenge. After all, he had always confounded her understanding.

His hand tightened its grip on hers. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No…’ So great was her self-consciousness, her response was a mere thread. Just grab me any time you like, she would have said to him had she had the nerve to credit that such an invitation would be welcome. But she didn’t have the nerve and laboured under no such confidence-boosting belief in her own powers of attraction. Five years earlier, in a desperate attempt to save their marriage, she had tried to bridge the estrangement between them and failed miserably. Shortly before that disastrous trip to Montavia, Damiano had rejected her. He had said no to the offer of her body. What was more, he had said no with the kind of sarcasm which had cut her to the bone.

In the taut silence she brought her other hand round his and then, finally noticing the unfamiliar roughness there, turned his hand over and looked at it, for want of anything better to do. In complete bewilderment, she ran a fingertip over his scarred knuckles, his broken nails, and checked his palms. It was the hand of a man accustomed to hard and unrelenting manual labour.

‘Challenge for the manicurist,’ Damiano commented lazily.

‘But…but how—?’

‘I spent over three years working in a quarry six days a week. There wasn’t much in the way of machinery—’

‘A q-quarry?’ Eden stammered, cradling his hand between both of hers with the most giant surge of shocked protectiveness surging up through her. A quarry? Damiano labouring in a quarry?