Love's Revenge: The Italian's Revenge / A Passionate Marriage / The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride

‘So when I remembered that this was also the day that your son goes to Italy,’ Marcus was saying, ‘I thought, Why not drag Catherine out for a leisurely lunch by the river, since she will be free of her usual commitments?’

But ‘free’ was the very last word that Catherine would use to describe her situation right now. In truth she felt trapped, held prisoner by a pair of gold-shot eyes that were threatening retribution.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE fine hairs all over her body began to prickle as they stood on end in sheer response. ‘I’m so sorry, Marcus,’ she murmured apologetically, but the way her lungs had ceased to function made every syllable sound soft and breathless and disturbingly sensual. ‘But Santo’s trip has been—delayed,’ she said, for want of a less complicated way of putting it.

‘Oh.’ He sounded so disappointed.

‘Can I call you back?’ she requested. ‘When I have a clearer idea of when I will be free? Only it isn’t—convenient to talk right now…’

‘There is someone there,’ Marcus realised, the sharp-minded lawyer in him quick to read the subtle intonations in her voice.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Catherine confirmed with a swift smile.

‘Man, woman or child?’ he enquired with sardonic humour.

More like frozen beast about to defrost, Catherine thought nervously, but kept that observation to herself. ‘Thanks for being so understanding,’ she murmured instead. ‘I’ll—I’ll call you,’ she promised. ‘Just as soon as I can.’ And said a hurried farewell before ringing off.

The phone went back on its cradle with the neat precision required of fingers that were trembling badly. ‘That was Marcus,’ she said, turning a flat-edged smile on Vito meant to hide the flurry of nervous excitement that had taken up residence inside her stomach.

‘And?’ he prompted, arching an imperious brow at her when she didn’t bother to extend on that. ‘I presume this—Marcus has a role to play here?’

A role? A strange way of putting it, Catherine mused. Especially when they both knew exactly the role Marcus was supposed to be playing. Still …

‘That is none of your business,’ she told him, provoking him even though she knew it was a dangerous thing to do. But she was too busy enjoying herself, giving him back what he usually gave to her, to care about the consequences.

And body language is such a rotten tale-teller she thought ruefully when she noticed the way she had folded her arms beneath her breasts in a way that could only be described as defiant.

The back door slammed shut, making her jump. A different kind of body language, she noted warily.

‘He’s your lover,’ Vito bit out condemningly.

‘But why look so shocked?’ she asked, refusing to deny the charge. ‘What’s the matter, Vito?’ she then taunted goadingly. ‘Hadn’t it occurred to you before that I might well have a personal life beyond Santo?’

A telling little nerve flicked in his jaw. Catherine enjoyed watching it happen. Did he honestly believe that she’d spent the last three years in social seclusion while he hadn’t been around to give her life meaning? The man was too arrogant and conceited for his own good sometimes, she decided. It wouldn’t hurt him one bit to discover that he wasn’t the be-all and end-all of her existence!

‘Or is it your colossal ego that’s troubling you?’ she said, continuing her thought patterns out loud and with derision. ‘Because it prefers to think me incapable of being with another man after having known you? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint your precious ego, but I have a healthy sex drive—as you very well know,’ she added before he decided to say it. ‘And I can be as discreet as you—if not more so, since it’s clear by your face that you knew nothing about Marcus, whereas I’ve had Marietta flung into my face for what feels like for ever!’

‘Leave Marietta out of this,’ he warned tightly.

‘Not while she remains a threat to my son,’ she refused.

‘The most immediate threat here, Catherine, is to yourself.’ He didn’t move a single muscle but she was suddenly aware of danger. ‘I want this man out of your life as of now!’

‘When Marietta is out of your life,’ she threw back promptly. ‘And not before.’

‘When are you going to accept that I cannot dismiss Marietta from my life!’ he said angrily. ‘Her husband was my best friend! She holds shares in my company! She works alongside me almost as my equal! She is my mother’s only godchild!’ Grimly, precisely, he counted off all the old excuses that gave Marietta power over them.

So Catherine added to it. ‘She sleeps in your bed,’ she mimicked him tauntingly. ‘She slips poison into your son’s food.’

‘You are the poisonous one,’ he sighed.

‘And you, Vito, are the fool.’

He took a step towards her. Catherine’s chin came up, green eyes clashing fearlessly with his. And the atmosphere couldn’t get any more fraught if someone had wired the room up with high-voltage cable. He looked as if he would like to shake her—and Catherine was angry enough to wish he would just try!

What he actually did try to do was put the brakes on what was bubbling dangerously between them. ‘Let’s get this discussion back where it should be,’ he gritted. ‘Which is on the question of your love-life, not mine!’

‘My love-life is flourishing very nicely, thank you,’ she answered flippantly.

It was the wrong thing to say. Catherine should have seen the signs—and maybe she had done. Afterwards she couldn’t quite say she hadn’t deliberately provoked him into action.

Whatever. She suddenly found herself being grabbed by hands that were hell-bent on punishment. ‘You hypocrite,’ he gritted. ‘You have the damned cheek to stand in judgement over my morals when your own are no better!’

‘Why should it bother you so much what I do in my private life?’ Catherine threw back furiously.

‘Because you belong to me!’ he barked.

She couldn’t believe she was hearing this! ‘Which makes you the hypocrite, Vito,’ she told him. ‘You want me—yet you don’t want me,’ she mocked him bitterly. ‘You like to play around—but can’t deal with the idea that I might play around!’

With a push, she put enough space between them to slide sideways and right away from him. But inside she was shaking. Shaking with anger or shaking with something far more basic. She wasn’t really sure.

‘Until last night—’ Was it only last night? She paused to consider. ‘We hadn’t even exchanged a single word with each other for the past three years! Then you suddenly walk in through my front door this morning and start behaving as if you’ve never been away from it!’ The way the air hissed from her lungs was self-explanatory. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you,’ she informed him grimly. ‘I have a life all right. A good one and a happy one. Which means I resent the hell out of you coming here and messing with it!’

‘Do you think that I am looking forward to having you running riot through my life a second time?’ he responded. ‘But you are my wife! Mine!’ he repeated. ‘And—’

‘What a joke!’ Catherine interrupted scornfully. ‘You only married me because you had to! Now you are taking me back because you have to! Well, hear this,’ she announced. ‘You may have walked me into a steel trap by saying what you did to Santo. But that doesn’t mean I am willing to stay meekly inside it! Anything you can do I can do,’ she warned him. ‘So if Marietta stays then Marcus stays!’

‘In your bed,’ he gritted, still fixed, it seemed, on getting her to admit the full truth about her relationship with Marcus.

‘In my bed,’ she confirmed, thinking, What the hell—why not let him believe that? ‘In my arms and in my body,’ she tagged on outrageously. ‘And so long as my son doesn’t know about it, who actually cares, Vito?’ she challenged. ‘You?’ she suggested as she watched his face darken with contempt for her. ‘Well, in case you haven’t realised it yet, I don’t care what you think. The same way that you didn’t care about me when you went from my arms to Marietta’s arms the day I lost our baby!’

Seven o’clock, and Vito still hadn’t come back.

Catherine stood by her bedroom window staring down at the street below and wondered anxiously whether she had finally managed to finish it for them.

She shouldn’t have said it, she acknowledged uncomfortably. True though it might have been, those kind of bitter words were best kept hidden within the dark recesses of one’s own mind. For it served no useful purpose to drag them all out, and if anything only added more pain where there was already enough pain to be felt.

She knew that he had felt the loss of their second child just as deeply as she had done. And had suffered guilt in knowing that she had known exactly where he had been and with whom he had been when she’d needed him. But in the thrumming silence which had followed her outburst, while she’d stood there sizzling in her own corrosive bitterness, she’d had to watch that tall, dark, proudly arrogant man diminish before her very eyes.

His skin had slowly leached of its colour, his mouth began to shake, and with a sharp jerk of his head he wrenched his eyes from her—but not before she’d seen the look of hell written in them.

‘Oh, God, Vito.’ On a wave of instant remorse she’d taken a step towards him. ‘I’m so …’

‘Sorry,’ she had been going to say. But he didn’t give her the chance to, because he’d just spun on his heel and walked out of the house.

And if the kitchen floor had opened up and swallowed her whole at that moment, she would have welcomed the punishment. For no man deserved to be demolished quite so thoroughly as she had demolished Vito.