Damiano's Return

‘I do not want to discuss this!’ Eden interrupted in growing mortification. ‘Just drop the subject—’

‘I’m an upfront guy, cara. And, at my age, I cannot imagine having a relationship without sex—’

‘Well, I’m not planning on having a physical relationship with anybody until I get married!’ Eden shot back at him between gritted teeth.

Damiano was so shattered by that accidental admission which he had provoked her into making that he shot the car to a mud-churning halt outside her home and turned to scrutinise her with openly incredulous eyes. ‘You’re kidding me?’

Releasing her seat belt, as desperate now to escape him as she had been to be with him earlier in the evening, Eden scrambled out of the car. ‘Goodnight!’

Damiano sprang out of the driver’s seat and intercepted her before she could reach the door. ‘You’re still a virgin?’

Nobody had ever spoken that word to Eden’s hot face before and she could think of nobody she could have wanted to hear it from less. He said it in the same tone of disbelief which some people reserved for UFOs.

‘Urgent re-think…possibly the concept of enjoying out mutual passion tonight was slightly premature,’ Damiano groaned with unashamed regret.

Eden was hauling her keys out of her bag with a shaking and desperate hand. If she had had wings, she would have spread them and flown away. Sex had never been mentioned in her home, nothing so intimate ever discussed. Apart from frequent references to the social and moral consequences of casual intimacy, sex had been no more prevalent a subject in the city vicarage where she had boarded with her uncle’s family while at college. ‘Please shut up,’ she gasped.

‘I’m trying to understand what’s going on here—’

‘I made it quite clear—’

‘But you’re surely not expecting me to propose marriage to get you into bed?’ Damiano persisted with sardonic cool.

And reacting to that wounding sarcasm, she slapped him. Without thinking about it, without meaning to do it, she just lifted her hand and slapped him across one high, hard cheekbone.

‘You—’

‘I’m sorry but—’

Damiano surveyed her with outraged eyes that turned gold in anger and pulled her to him with powerful hands to crush her startled mouth under his with an explosive passion that just blew her away.

Releasing her again, Damiano studied her shocked face and the hectic flush he had fired in her cheeks and suddenly, without the slightest warning, he laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Some day soon, I swear you’re going to be begging me for that, cara mia. I can wait for the day.’

CHAPTER THREE

EMERGING from that emotive trip back more than five years into the past, Eden listened to the distinct tones of Damiano’s cultured drawl as he talked on the phone in her bedroom and slowly breathed in deeply.

Hadn’t his own sardonic question come true in the end? He had married her to get her into his bed and, understandably, having gone to such lengths and practised such patience, Damiano had expected a wildly sensual wedding night and an orgy of a honeymoon. Only that hadn’t come off either, Eden recalled, wretched tears gathering again as she stuck her face in a cushion.

‘I’m going to try and catch a couple of hours of sleep before I fold. I’m so tired, I feel like I’m only half conscious,’ Damiano admitted heavily from the bedroom doorway. ‘Do you want me to use the sofa?’

It was the last straw. He’d come back after five years and was offering to sleep on a sofa that was only four-foot long, even though there was a double bed in her bedroom and he had to have noticed it!

‘Please use the bed,’ Eden squeezed out, will-power keeping a tremulous wail of self-pity from escaping.

‘The limo will be here at seven to ferry me back out to the airfield. Wake me up in time,’ he urged.

It’s over, she tried to tell herself with accepting fatalism. It never worked. Just be grateful he’s alive. But it wasn’t enough—by no stretch of the imagination was it enough to compensate her for the devastating effect of Damiano walking back into her life like the ultimate fantasy and then walking back out again. Here she was curled up like a hedgehog hiding from him. More or less business as usual, then? Here she was demonstrating all over again the kind of lie-down-and-die passivity that drove Damiano clean up the walls!

Was this all she was capable of doing? Acting like a helpless victim who had no influence over her own misfortunes? How come she had just fallen straight back into that old bad pattern of behaviour when she had changed so much during his absence?

For she had changed, had had no choice but to become stronger and braver after what she had experienced. When Damiano had mentioned leaving again, shock had settled over her like a blinding, suffocating blanket. She had just shrunk in stature down to the level of a carpet fibre, all fight, all confidence, all strength leeched back out of her again as her worst fears came true.

So are you just planning to let go without an argument?

Eden unfurled herself and stood up. The bedroom door was slightly ajar. For how long had she been lost in her own thoughts? She pushed open the door an inch at a time, her heart thundering at the base of her dry throat. Damiano was fast asleep in her bed, his glossy black hair and his bronzed skin in stark contrast to the pale bed linen. He was lying on his stomach, the duvet tangled round his narrow hips, his powerful shoulders, muscular arms and the long, spectacular golden sweep of his back exposed. He was a riveting sight. Totally male, totally breathtaking.

How often had she sneaked a look at Damiano half naked? Her cheeks burned. Strange, wasn’t it, that she should have personally taken advantage of what she had consistently denied him? But hadn’t she always secretly enjoyed looking at him? Hadn’t a single glimpse of Damiano just with his shirt off thrilled her to death? But she hadn’t ever admitted that even to he

rself until now. The way she had been brought up such a sexual thought would have been considered shameless and not how a good and decent woman would think.

So she had been raised in a repressed and puritanical home with parents who had been heading for their sixties by the time she’d entered her teens. Why had she taken all that baggage with her into her marriage? Why hadn’t she tried to shake free of her inhibitions just a little? Well, the truth was, she was very stubborn and very proud. And so was Damiano. Neither one of them had been prepared to compromise.

That time she had offered herself and he had rejected her, what had she said?

‘I want a baby…’

Damiano had studied her with chilling dark eyes. ‘You just put a double lock on your own chastity belt. That has to be the least tempting proposition any woman ever offered me. When you want me and when you can prove that on my terms, I might consider coming back to your bed.’

Was it too late now? For Damiano had had to go missing before she’d been able to understand why he had been so angry with her that day. Eden’s hands curled into fists over her own past stupidity. The face-saving excuse of wanting a baby had been a huge mistake. Then he hadn’t appreciated just how desperate she had been or how she had naively believed that getting pregnant might have kept him with her.

She walked back out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. There was a bottle of vodka in the cupboard. Pam had given it to her for Christmas four years back, not then aware that Eden never touched alcohol. Yet another thing that had irritated Damiano: a bride who wouldn’t even touch champagne at her own wedding! But she needed Dutch courage before she could do what she had to do, didn’t she?

She poured herself a glass of vodka liberally combined with orange juice. Suppose he said no and fought her off? She would have to sort of creep up on him while he slept, not give him the chance to object. He had grabbed her and kissed her in the limo, hadn’t he? For a split second, it had been as if he’d been unable to keep his hands of her! There surely hadn’t been any women in that South American quarry and she had married a very highly sexed male. Turned him off it to the extent that she had actually started fearing that he might be obtaining what he no longer appeared to want at home elsewhere…