A stunning silence followed. One that locked the air inside her throat and closed down her brain in complete rejection of what he was actually suggesting here!
‘How dare you?’ she breathed in harsh denunciation. ‘How dare you make such a filthy suggestion?’
‘I need a woman in my bed.’ He shrugged with no apology. ‘And, since my son must be protected from the seedier side of that need, then that woman must therefore be my wife. My proper wife,’ he then succinctly extended. ‘One who will proudly grace my table, eagerly grace my bed, and love my son as deeply as I do.’
‘And you think Marietta fills all of those requirements?’ she scoffed in outright contempt for him.
His golden eyes darkened. ‘We are not talking about Marietta now,’ he clipped. ‘We are talking about you, Catherine. You,’ he repeated, putting down his cup so he could free his other hand to slide it around her waist. Her flesh tightened in rejection. He countered its response by pulling her that bit closer to the firmness of his body. ‘Who, even dressed as you are, would still manage to grace any man’s table with your beauty and your inherent sense of style. And as for the sex,’ he murmured in that sinfully sensual tone that helped make him such a dynamic lover. ‘Since I know your rich and varied appetite as well as I know my own, I see no problem in our resurrecting what used to be very satisfying interludes for both of us.’
Interludes? He called what she would have described as giving herself body and soul to him satisfying interludes? She almost choked on her own outrage, feeling belittled and defiled.
But—maybe that had been his intention! ‘You’re disgusting!’ she snapped.
‘I am a realist,’ he said.
‘A realist who is hungry for revenge,’ Catherine extended deridingly, well aware of his real motive.
‘The Italian in me demands it,’ he freely admitted. ‘Just think, though,’ he added softly, ‘how your very British yen for martyrdom could be given free rein. How you could reside in my home with your head held high and pretend that you are only there because of Santo. How you could even share my bed and enjoy every minute of what we do there while pretending to yourself that keeping me happy is the price you have to pay to keep your son happy.’
‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you aim to get out of such a wicked scenario?’
‘This …’ he murmured, and with a tug she was against him, his mouth capturing hers with the kind of kiss that flung her back too far and too swiftly into the realms of darkness, where she kept everything to do with this man so carefully hidden.
Well, they were not hiding now, she noted painfully as the heat from his kiss ignited flaming torches that lit their escape. And suddenly she was incandescent with feeling. Hot feelings, crazed feelings, feelings that went dancing wildly through her on a rampage of sheer sensual greed.
Only Vito could do it. Only he had ever managed to fire her up this way. Her body knew his body, exalted in its hardness pressing against her. His tongue licked the flames; his hands staked their claim on her by skimming skilfully beneath the hem of her top, then more audaciously beneath the elasticated band of her shorts.
She must have whimpered at the shock sensation of his flesh sliding against her flesh, because his mouth left hers and his eyes burned black triumph down at her.
‘And I get my pride back,’ he gritted. ‘A pride you took from me and wiped the floor with the day you forced me into court to beg for the right to love my own son!’
And without warning she was free.
Standing there swaying dizzily, it took several moments for her to realise just what he had done to her. Then the shock descended, the appalled horror of how easy she had made it for him, followed closely by an all-consuming shame.
And all in the name of pride, revenge and of course passion, she listed grimly.
Her chin came up, her green eyes turning as grey as an arctic ocean now as she opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with his rotten proposition, his lousy sex appeal—and himself! when a sound beyond the closed kitchen door suddenly caught their attention.
It had them both turning towards the door, and freezing as they listened to Santo coming down the stairs, bumping something which sounded rather heavy down behind him. And in perfect unison they both then glanced up at the kitchen clock to note that it was only six-thirty, before they looked back at the door again.
The time was significant. It meant that their son was so disturbed by his worries that they’d woken him early.
From the corner of her eye Catherine saw Vito swallow tensely and his hands clench into fists at his sides. His face was suddenly very pale, his eyes dark, and the way his lips parted slightly in an effort to help his frail breathing brought home to her just how worried he was about what his son’s reaction was going to be towards him.
She then suggested to herself an alternative. Afraid? Was Vito’s expression the one Luisa had described as his frightened look?
Her heart began to ache for him, despite her not wanting it to. Vito loved his son; she had never doubted that. In a thousand other doubts she had never once doubted his love for his son.
Yet still he didn’t deserve the way her hand reached instinctively out to touch his arm in a soothing gesture. And beyond the residue of her anger with him over that kiss she felt tungsten steel flex with tension as the kitchen door flew open, swinging back on its hinges against the wall to reveal their son standing there in the opening.
Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, a baseball cap placed firmly on his dark head and his travel hold-all, packed to bursting by the look of it, sitting on the floor beside him, while one little fist had a death grip on the bag’s thick strap.
If he’d already been aware that his father was here, then the complete lack of expression on his solemn little face would have been understandable. But he hadn’t known; Catherine was sure of it. Their home was old and the walls were thick. And no matter how heated their verbal exchanges had grown on occasion, neither of them had raised their voices enough for the sound to filter out of this room.
So her heart stopped aching for the father to begin aching for the son as Santo completely ignored Vito’s presence in the room to level his defiant dark brown eyes on his mother.
‘I’m running away,’ he announced. ‘And you’re not to follow.’
It could have been comical. Santo certainly looked and sounded comical standing there like that and making such a fantastic announcement.
But Catherine had never felt less like laughing in her life. For he meant it. He truly meant to run away because he believed that nobody loved him.
And if Marietta had done Catherine the favour of walking in here right now she would have scratched her wicked eyes out.
She went to go to him, needed to go to him and simply hug him to her, wrap him in as much love as she could possibly muster.
Only Vito was there before her—and he was wiser. He didn’t so much as attempt to touch the little boy as he hunkered down on his haunches in front of him. Instead, he began talking in a deep and soft husky Italian.
Santo responded by allowing himself brief—very brief—eye to eye contact with his papà. ‘English,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t speak Italian any more.’
To Vito’s deserving credit, he switched languages without hesitation, though the significance of his son’s rejection must have pierced him like a knife.
‘But where will you go?’ he was asking gently. ‘Have you money for your trip? Would you like me to lend you some?’ he offered when the little boy’s eyes flickered in sudden confusion because something as unimportant as money hadn’t entered