In her urgency to stop whoever it was from ringing the bell and waking up her son she was pulling the door open without really thinking clearly about what she was doing. So it was only after the door opened wide on the motion that she realised she had gone to bed last night without putting the safety chain on.
By then it didn’t matter. It was already too late to remember caution, and all the other safety rules that were a natural part of living these days, when she found herself staring at the very last person she’d expected to see standing on her doorstep.
Her heart took a quivering dive to her stomach, the shock of seeing Vito in the actual flesh for the first time in three long years so debilitating that for the next whole minute she couldn’t seem to function on any other level than sight.
A sight that absorbed in one dizzying glance every hard-edged, clean-cut detail, from the cold sting of his eyes to the grim slant of his mouth and even the way he had one side of his jacket shoved casually aside so he could thrust a hand into his trouser pocket—though she wasn’t aware of her eyes dipping down that low over him.
He was wearing a black dinner suit and a white shirt that conjured up the picture she had built of him the night before; only the bow tie was missing, and the top button of the shirt yanked impatiently open at his lean brown throat.
Had he come here directly from storming out of his house in Naples? she wondered. And decided he had to have done to get here to London this quickly. But if his haste in getting here was supposed to impress her by how seriously he was taking her concerns about Santo—then it didn’t.
She didn’t want him here. And, worse, she didn’t want to watch those honeyed eyes of his drift over her on a very slow and very comprehensive scan of her person, as if she was still one of his possessions.
And the fact that she became acutely aware of her own sleep-mussed state didn’t enamour her, either. He had no right to study the way her tangled mass of copper-gold hair was hanging limp about her shoulders, or the fact that she was standing here in thin white cotton that barely hid what it covered.
Then his gaze moved lower, jet-black lashes sinking over golden eyes that seemed to draw a caressing line across the surface of her skin as they moved over the pair of loose-fitting pyjama shorts which left much of her slender legs on show. And Catherine felt something very old and very basic spring to life inside her.
It was called sexual arousal. The man had always only had to look at her like this to make her make her so aware of herself that she could barely think straight.
‘What are you doing here?’ she lashed out in sheer retaliation.
Arrogance personified, she observed, as a black eyebrow arched and those incredible eyes somehow managed to disparage her down the length of his roman nose, despite the fact that she stood a deep step higher than him, which placed them almost at a level.
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Vito coolly replied. ‘I am here to see my son.’
‘It’s only five o’clock,’ she protested. ‘Santo is still asleep.’
‘I am well aware of the time, Catherine,’ he replied rather heavily, and something passed across his face—a weariness she hadn’t noticed was there until that moment.
Which was the point when she began to notice other things about him. He looked older than she would have expected, for instance. The signs of a carefully honed cynicism were scoring grooves into his handsome face where once none had been. And the corners of his firm mouth were turned down slightly, as if he never let himself smile much any more.
Seeing that for some reason made her insides hurt. And the sensation infuriated her because she didn’t want to feel anything but total indifference for this man’s state of mind.
‘How did you get here so quickly, anyway?’ she asked with surly shortness.
‘I flew myself in overnight,’ he replied. ‘Then came directly here from the airport.’
Which meant he must have been on the go all night, she concluded. Then another thought sent an icy chill slithering down her spine.
After flying half the night, had he then driven himself here in one of the supercharged death-traps he tended to favour? Glancing over his shoulder, she expected to see some long, low, sleek growling monster of a car crouching by the curbside, but there wasn’t one.
Then she remembered hearing a taxi cab pulling up a few minutes earlier and realised with a new kind of shock that Vito must have used it to travel here from the airport.
Now that must have been a novelty for him, she mused, eyeing him curiously. Vito always liked to be in the driver’s seat, whether that be behind the controls of his plane or the wheel of a car—or even in his sex-life!
‘Which airport did you fly in to?’ she asked, the thrifty housekeeper in her wanting to assess the cost of such a long cab journey.
‘Does it matter?’ He flashed her a look of irritation. ‘And do we have to have this conversation here on the doorstep?’ he then added tersely, his dark head turning to take in the neat residential street with its rows of neat windows—some of which had curtains twitching curiously because their voices must be carrying on the still morning air.
Vito wasn’t a doorstep man, Catherine mused wryly. He was the greatly admired and very respected head of the world-renowned Giordani Investment Bank, cum expert troubleshooter for any ailing business brought under his wing. People valued his opinion and his advice—and welcomed him with open arms when he came to call.
But she was not one of those people, she reminded herself sternly. She owed Vito nothing, and respected him not at all. ‘You’re not welcome here,’ she told him coldly.
‘My son may beg to differ,’ he returned, responding to her hostile tone with a slight tensing of his jaw.
Much as she would have liked to protest that claim, Catherine knew that she couldn’t. ‘Then why don’t you come back—in a couple of hours’, say, when he is sure to be awake?’ she suggested, and was about to shut the door in his face when those golden eyes began to flash.
‘Shut that door and you will regret it,’ he warned very grimly.
To her annoyance, she hesitated, hating herself for being influenced by his tone. And the atmosphere between them thrummed with a mutual antagonism. Neither liked the other; neither attempted to hide it.
‘I would have thought it was excruciatingly obvious that you and I need to talk before Santo is awake,’ he added with rasping derision. ‘Why the hell else do you think I have knocked myself out trying to get here this early?’
Once again, he had a point, and Catherine knew she was being petty, but it didn’t stop her from standing there like a stone wall protecting her own threshold. Old habits died hard, and refusing to give an inch to Vito in case he took the whole mile from her had become second nature during their long and battle-zoned association.
‘You called me, Catherine,’ he then reminded her grimly. ‘An unprecedented act in itself. You voiced your concerns to me and I have responded. Now show a little grace,’ he suggested, ‘and at least acknowledge that my coming here is worthy of some consideration.’
As set-downs went, Catherine supposed that that one was as good as any Vito had ever doled out to her, as she felt herself come withering down from proudly hostile to childishly petty in one fell swoop.
She stepped back without uttering another word and, stiff-faced, eyes lowered, invited her husband of six long years to enter her home for the first time. He did it slowly—stepping over her threshold in a measured way which suggested that he too was aware of the significance of the occasion.
Then suddenly he was there right beside her, sharing the narrow space in her small hallway and filling it with