The chance of that happening was so remote that she even allowed herself to smile at it. Her marriage to Vito had never been anything but volatile. They were both hot-tempered, both stubborn, both passionately defensive of their own egos.
The first time they met it was at a party. Having gone there with separate partners, they’d ended up leaving together. It had been a case of sheer necessity, she recalled, remembering the way they had only needed to take one look at each other to virtually combust in the ensuing sexual fall-out.
They had become lovers that same night. Within the month she was pregnant. Within the next they were married. Within three years they were sworn enemies. It had all been very wild, very hot and very traumatic from passionate start to bloody finish. Even the final break had come only days after they’d fallen on each other in a fevered attempt to recapture what they had known they were losing.
The sex had been great—the rest a disaster. They had begun rowing within minutes of separating their bodies. He’d stormed off—as usual—and the next day she’d gone into premature labour with their second child and lost their second son while Vito was seeking solace with his mistress.
She would never, ever forgive him for that. She would never forgive the humiliation of having to beg his mistress to send him home because she needed him. But he’d still arrived too late to be of any use to her. By then she had been rushed into hospital and had already lost the baby. To have Vito come to lean over her and murmur all the right phrases—while smelling of that woman’s perfume—had been the final degradation.
She had left Italy with Santo just as soon as she was physically able, and Vito would never forgive her for taking his son away from him.
They both had axes to grind with each other. Both felt betrayed, ill-used and deserted. And if it hadn’t been for Vito’s mother Luisa stepping in to play arbiter, God alone knew where the bitterness would have taken them.
Thanks to Luisa they’d managed to survive three years of relative peace—so long as there was no personal contact between them. Now that peace had been well and truly shattered, and Catherine wished she knew how to stop full-scale war from breaking out.
But she didn’t. Not with the same main antagonist still very much on the scene.
When the telephone began to ring again she went perfectly still, her heart stopping beating altogether as she turned to stare at the darned contraption. Her first instinct was to ignore it. For she didn’t feel up to another round with Vito just yet. But a second later she was snatching up the receiver when she grew afraid the persistent ring would wake Santo.
‘Catherine?’ a very familiar voice questioned anxiously. ‘My son has insisted that I call you. What in heaven’s name is going on, please?’
Luisa. It was Luisa. Catherine wilted like a dying swan onto the sofa. ‘Luisa,’ she breathed in clear relief. ‘I thought you were going to be Vito.’
‘Vito has just stormed out of the house in a fury,’ his mother informed her. ‘After cursing and shouting and telling me that I had to ring you right away. Is something the matter with Santo, Catherine?’ she asked worriedly.
‘Yes and no,’ Catherine replied. Then, on a deep breath, she explained calmly to Luisa, in the kind of words she should have used to Vito, what Santo’s problem was—without complicating the issue this time by bringing Vito’s present love-life into it.
‘No wonder my son was looking so frightened,’ Luisa murmured when Catherine had finished. ‘I have not seen that dreadful expression on his face in a long time, and I hoped never to see it again.’
‘Frightened?’ Catherine prompted, frowning because she couldn’t imagine the arrogant Vito being afraid of anything.
‘Of losing his son again,’ his mother enlightened. ‘What is the matter Catherine? Did you think Vito would shrug off Santo’s concerns as if they did not matter to him?’
‘I—no,’ she denied, surprised by the sudden injection of bitterness Vito’s mamma was revealing.
‘My son works very hard at forging a strong relationship with Santo in the short blocks of time allocated to him,’ her mother-in-law went on. ‘And to hear that this is suddenly being undermined must be very frightening for him.’
In three long years Luisa had never sounded anything but gently neutral, and Catherine found it rather disconcerting to realise that Luisa was, in fact, far from being neutral.
‘Are you, like Vito, suggesting that it’s me who is doing that undermining, Luisa?’ she asked, seeing what she’d always thought of as her only ally moving right away from her.
‘No.’ The older woman instantly denied that. ‘Of course not. I may worry for my son, but that does not mean I am blind to the fact that you both love Santo and would rather cut out your tongues than hurt him through each other.’
‘Well, thanks for that,’ Catherine replied, but her tone was terse, her manner cooling in direct response to Luisa’s.
‘I am not your enemy, Catherine.’ Luisa knew what she was thinking.
‘But if push came to shove—’ Catherine smiled slightly ‘—you know which camp to stand in.’
Luisa didn’t answer and Catherine didn’t expect her to—which was an answer in itself.
‘So,’ Luisa said more briskly. ‘What do you want to do about Santo? Do you want me to delay my journey to London until you have managed to talk him round a little?’
‘Oh, no!’ Catherine instantly vetoed that, surprising herself by discovering that somewhere during the two fraught telephone conversations she had completely changed her mind. ‘You must come, Luisa! He will be so disappointed if you don’t come for him! I just didn’t want you to walk in on his new rebelliousness cold, so to speak,’ she explained. ‘And—and there is a big chance he may refuse to leave with you,’ she warned, adding anxiously, ‘You do understand that I won’t make him go with you if he doesn’t want to?’
‘I am a mother,’ Luisa said. ‘Of course I understand. So I will come, as arranged, and we will hope that Santo has had a change of heart after sleeping on his decision.’
Some hope of that, Catherine thought as she replaced the receiver. For Luisa was labouring under the misconception that Santo’s problems were caused by a sudden and unexplainable loss of confidence in his papà—when in actual fact the little boy’s reasoning was all too explainable.
And she went by the name of Marietta, Catherine mocked bitterly. Marietta, the long-standing friend of the family. Marietta the highly trusted member of Giordani Investments’ board of directors. Marietta the long-standing mistress—the bitch.
She was tall, she was dark, she was inherently Italian. She had grace, she had style, she had unwavering charm. She had beauty and brains and knew how to use both to her own advantage. And, to top it all off, she was shrewd and sly and careful to whom she revealed her true self.
That she had dared to reveal that true self to Santo had, in Catherine’s view, been Marietta’s first big mistake in her long campaign to get Vito. For she might have managed to make Catherine run away like a silly whimpering coward, but she would not send Santo the same way.
Not even over my dead body, Catherine vowed as she prepared for bed that night …
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER spending the night tossing and turning, at around five o’clock the next morning Catherine finally gave up trying to sleep, and was just dragging herself out of bed when the distinctive sound of a black cab rumbling to a halt outside in the street caught her attention. A couple of her neighbours often commuted by taxi early in the morning if they were having to catch an early train somewhere, so she didn’t think twice about it as she padded off to use the bathroom.
Anyway,