In her sixties now, Luisa was still a truly beautiful woman. Only slightly smaller than Catherine, and naturally slender, she was a walking advert for eternal youth. Her skin was as smooth as any twenty-year-old’s, and her hair kept its blackness with only the occasional help from her talented hairdresser.
But it was the inner Luisa that drew people to her like bees to the sweetest honeypot ever found. There wasn’t a selfish bone in her body. She was good, she was kind, she was instinctively loving. And if she had one teeny-teeny fault, then it was an almost painful refusal to see bad in anyone.
And that included her daughter-in-law, most definitely her son, and of course her goddaughter—Marietta.
‘Darling, I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to see you standing here!’ Luisa murmured sincerely as she walked down the steps and right into Catherine’s open embrace. ‘And you look so lovely!’ she declared as she drew away again. ‘Vittorio, the Giordani eye for true beauty did not escape you,’ his mother informed him. ‘This woman will still be a source of pride to you when you are both old and grey.’
Off with the old, on with the new, Catherine wryly chanted to herself. In true Luisa form she was discarding the last three intensely hostile years as if they’d never happened.
‘Come,’ Luisa said, linking her arm through Catherine’s and turning them both towards the house. ‘Santo is already raiding the kitchen for snacks, and I have a light tea prepared in the summer room. The special carrier bringing your luggage will not be here for another couple of hours, so we have time to sit and have a long chat before you need worry about overseeing your unpacking …’
Behind her, Catherine was aware of Vito’s shaded gaze following them as arm in arm they mounted the steps. And there was an unexpected urge in her to turn round and invite him to come and join them. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it. That kind of gesture had no place in what they had with each other.
Yet …
With her fingers curling around the bunch of keys she still held in her palm, she paused on the top step that formed the beginning of the wide terrace.
‘Wait,’ she murmured to Luisa. And on impulse turned and strode back down the steps to where Vito was still standing where they had left him.
An excuse? she asked herself as she drew to a stop in front of him. Had she needed an excuse to justify coming back to him? Yes, it was an excuse, she answered her own question. And, yes, she needed one to approach Vito in any way shape or form.
‘Thank you for the car,’ she murmured politely.
He was gazing down at her through those dratted glasses, though in a way she was glad they were there so she didn’t have to read his expression.
She saw his mouth twitch. ‘My pleasure,’ he drawled with super-silken sardonicism.
It put her set teeth on edge. ‘I really do appreciate the thought,’ she added through them.
‘My heart is gladdened by your sincerity,’ he replied with taunting whimsy.
Her eyes began to flash behind the glasses. Maybe he caught a glimpse of it, because his hand suddenly shot up and in the next moment both pairs of sunglasses had been whipped away and tossed casually onto the back seat of the car.
Stripped bare of her hiding place, Catherine didn’t know what to do other than release a stifled gasp. Then, on another move that left her utterly floundering, he dipped his head and caught her parted mouth with his own.
His kiss was deep and very intimate, and his body heat was stifling. The way his fingertips were sliding featherlight caresses up and down her arms was just another distraction she would have preferred to do without.
But her lips softened beneath his, and she swayed even closer to the source of heat, and the shaky sigh that escaped from her was really a shiver of pleasure at what his fingers were doing to her.
‘Now I feel thanked,’ he murmured as he drew away again. ‘And my mother is enchanted. That is two birds killed with one small stone, Catherine. You may commend yourself.’
‘You sarcastic rat,’ she hissed at him, stepping away from him with a sudden flush to her cheeks that had nothing whatsoever to do with pleasure.
‘I know,’ he agreed, still smiling that sardonic smile as he leant back against the car and folded his arms across his pale-blue-covered chest. ‘But it was either sarcasm or ravish you,’ he said, and when she blinked, he grimaced. ‘You turn me on, hard and fast, Catherine. I thought you were aware of that. Watching you walk up the steps to my house was, in fact, the biggest turn-on I’ve experienced in a long—long time.’
‘You’re over-sexed,’ she snapped, turning away from him.
‘And under-used,’ he tagged on dryly.
Catherine walked off back to his waiting mother with her chin up and her expression a comical mix of angst and sweetness. The angst was for Vito, the sweetness a sad attempt to show Luisa that everything was fine! But she dropped the Mercedes car keys on the nearest flat surface she passed as she entered the elegant Giordani hallway—and gained a whole lot of satisfaction from knowing that Vito had arrived at the front door in time to see her doing it.
He knew why she had done it. He knew she was discarding both him and his sex appeal—and the darn gift—with that one small gesture. But, in usual arrogant Vito form, he ignored it all, politely declined to join them for refreshment and went off instead to find his son—which was all that really mattered to him anyway.
Afternoon tea was surprisingly pleasant, mainly because both Luisa and Catherine were careful not to broach any tricky subjects. Afterwards Santo came looking for his mother, so he could take her up to show her his bedroom. They spent a while in there together, looking at and discussing all the surprisingly well-used things he had in there. There was a nice informality about the place that touched her a little, because it was really only a bigger version of Santos’s bedroom at home.
Home. Once again the word brought her up short. Home is here now, she told herself sternly. Home is here …
After that Santo was taken by his grandmother to visit friends he had in the area, and after watching them stroll away hand in hand down one of the pathways towards the lowest part of their huge garden, where Catherine remembered there was a small gate which led out onto the road, she decided to fill in her time by making a tour of the house, to reacquaint herself with all of its hidden treasures.
Nothing had changed much, she noted as she strolled from elegantly appointed room to room. But then, why mess with perfection once you’d achieved it? Most of the rooms were furnished with the kind of things which had been collected through several centuries, by Giordanis adding to rather than discarding anything, so the finished result was a tasteful blending of periods that gave an impressive picture of the family’s successful history.
Vito was proud of his heritage. And it meant a lot to him to have a son to follow after him. Coming here for the first time, Catherine had admitted to feeling rather in awe of the kind of rarefied world she was being drawn in to. But by then it had already been too late to have second thoughts about whether she wanted to marry a man who in name alone was a legend in his own country. Already heart and soul in love with Vito, and pregnant with the next Giordani heir, she’d had her freedom of choice taken away from her.
And there had been so many people very eager to remind her of just how lucky she was to be marrying Vito. He was special, and being treated as special had also made him arrogant, she thought dryly, as she stood gazing around the huge ballroom which still looked exactly as it had done in the early eighteenth century when it had been constructed. To her knowledge it was still used for formal occasions.
Her own wedding ball had taken place here, she recalled. It had been a wonderful extravagant night, when the house had been filled with light and music and laughter, and the gardens hung with romantic lanterns