‘Not if it was likely to bring her into conflict with Nuncio or Cosetta. Tina would never cross Cosetta. That’s how she keeps the peace.’
Deprived of even the comfort of believing that his sister-in-law had been supportive, Damiano expelled his breath in a stark kiss. ‘I understand that Nuncio implied within Luca’s hearing that it was somehow your fault that I had gone to Montavia.’
Eden gave a second reluctant nod of affirmation.
‘Porca miseria!’ Damiano exclaimed in outrage. ‘How the hell could my own brother make such a ridiculous charge against you?’
Eden paled. ‘Your brother and your sister were aware that our marriage was under strain before you left. They believed that if you had been more happily married you would have let one of the bank executives make that trip.’
Damiano was now white with rage below his bronzed complexion. ‘Accidenti! To say such a thing to my wife when she was grieving for me was unforgivable!’
‘Damiano…when you went missing, everybody went haywire,’ Eden tried to explain gently. ‘But, let’s face it, I should have stood up for myself long before that happened. Instead I let your family walk all over me and sat feeling sorry for myself, rather than doing something about the situation.’
‘Do not attempt to excuse them for their appalling behaviour!’ Damiano grated. ‘You were my wife—’
‘Yes, but—’
‘My wife, who stood to inherit everything I possessed once I was officially declared dead. No doubt that in itself made you a target for their resentment,’ Damiano interposed, settling on mercenary motives for his family’s attitude with a cynical speed that shook Eden. ‘Forgive me for ever questioning your refusal to accept my brother’s financial support!’
‘Don’t go over the top about this.’ Dismayed by his attitude, Eden got up from her chair. ‘Your brother and sister were devastated by your disappearance and their distress was genuine—’
‘Santo Cielo…how could I have been so blind?’ Damiano demanded abruptly, his brilliant dark eyes bleak. ‘How much did my own thoughtless behaviour contribute to what you suffered at their hands?’
‘Don’t make such a big deal of it now,’ Eden urged, seeing no benefit to anyone in his fury so long after the event. ‘As long as you never ask me to live with them again, I can let bygones be bygones.’
‘You are much too forgiving and generous, tersoro mio. There will, nevertheless, be a calling to account,’ Damiano delivered with grim assurance. ‘I will not let this matter die. Indeed, I cannot. I trusted my family to look after you when I could not be there for you.’
‘But I didn’t need looking after,’ Eden protested.
Damiano pulled her into his arms, crushing her into the heat and solidity of his big powerful frame with strong hands. ‘I’d have gone mad in Montavia if I had known that you were being victimised and hurt by those closest to me!’ he bit out in a still wrathful undertone above her head.
‘I still would prefer you to let all this stay buried. Everybody’s been upset enough and I do wish Luca Raffacani had minded his own business!’
‘Since it’s obvious you weren’t going to tell me, I’m glad he had the sense to do so,’ Damiano countered without hesitation. ‘Dio mio…one needs to know who one can trust.’
That phrase sent a stabbing little chill down Eden’s spine. Would Damiano still trust her if he knew what she was keeping to herself? And then her eyes flashed angrily as she registered the astonishing level of her own guilt. What had she done? Nothing! It was time she reminded herself of that fact. Why shouldn’t she protect their wonderful togetherness from all malign influences? Why should she have to make an awkward explanation about the sordid scandal which Tina and Mark had selfishly created? Well, she would tell Damiano when she was good and ready and in the meantime? In the meantime, she was determined not to allow that business to hang over her like an executioner’s axe, filling her with fear and unease as it had this afternoon when Darcy had spoken rather too frankly.
Damiano anchored his hands round her and lifted her high. A wry smile chased the remnants of anger from his lean, strong face. ‘You look really cross with me—’
‘Not with you.’ Her heart in her eyes, Eden gazed down at him with helpless tenderness. ‘With Luca for laying all that on you now.’
Damiano strode indoors with his arms still firmly wrapped round her. ‘I was surprised but evidently what he witnessed left a deep impression on him. I dare say he was shocked. However, I’m tough, cara mia. Why do we have to trek a mile to get to our bedroom in this house?’ he lamented, lowering her slowly down the length of his taut, muscular physique, catching her up again halfway through that manoeuvre to take her lips with passionate hunger.
She clung to him with feverish force, stretching up on tiptoe to let her fingers plunge into his springy black hair and hold him close. Her body was coming alive all on its own. He was kissing her with the same deep, driving sensuality with which he made love. He fired a tide of hot, quivering longing that made her breasts ache and her thighs tremble. He sank down on a gilded chair that creaked in alarming complaint beneath their combined weight.
Dragging his mouth from hers, he got up again in haste and vented a rueful laugh. ‘Right, you can put the twee dainty chairs into storage for starters. I’ll choose comfort over authenticity any day!’
‘One, power shower,’ she whispered, utterly dazzled by his glorious smile, heart racing to such an extent she could hardly catch her breath. ‘Two, chairs to do more than sit in—’
‘Did I say that?’ Damiano asked mockingly as he headed for the stairs.
‘For once, I’m ahead of you.’
‘And without the vodka too—’
Eden reddened and mock-punched a broad shoulder. ‘That was low—’
‘No, low would be discussing the episode in depth and telling you that I really do wish that I had kept my mouth shut five minutes longer…’ Damiano regarded her with smouldering eyes and a thoroughly
wicked grin ‘…just to see what you had planned for me—’
‘Damiano—’
‘Instead of which I blew a gasket but you can blame Ramon Alcoverro for that development,’ Damiano informed her without warning. ‘Do you know what Ramon said very quietly to me one minute before I left Brazil?’
Eden frowned in bewilderment as Damiano lowered her down onto their bed. ‘No…what?’
“‘Your wife’s been playing away…thought I should mention it since your little brother didn’t have the guts!” Bastard!’ Damiano ground out feelingly, adding something in Italian that sounded extremely derogatory, mercifully not looking at her as he slipped off her shoes. ‘So I had the entire flight back to London to wonder about what I was coming home to and work out this trite little speech about how I understood if there had been other guys…like hell would I have understood!’
Eden closed her shattered eyes and now remembered how incredibly tense Damiano had been with her those first few minutes at the airfield. ‘I—’
‘Sì…I agree. That is a totally unreasonable attitude considering that you spent a good four and a half years of your life thinking you were a widow,’ Damiano conceded, into full, unstoppable flow now on a subject which had patently disturbed him a great deal. ‘But a guy who’s been caged like an animal for the same length of time is not reasonable, I assure you. I put you on a pedestal like a little saint. I couldn’t bear even to consider the idea that you might have slept with another man—’
Eden sidled back into the shadows cast by the bed curtains. She was pale as death.
Damiano breathed in deep, shimmering dark eyes full of raw emotion as he came down on the edge of the bed. ‘If I had lost you, I would have felt as if I had lost everything,’ he confessed with roughened urgency. ‘I had so much faith in you…but I was very scared that Ramon might be telling me the truth!’
It was the moment when she should have spoken up, explained why Ramon had said such a thing. Evidently that nasty little tabloid story had travelled as far as Brazil in terms of gossip at the least. But she lay there like a stone on a riverbed resisting the force of the current and said unevenly, ‘Would you have divorced me?’