Love's Revenge: The Italian's Revenge / A Passionate Marriage / The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride. Michelle Reid

hear it. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

      ‘Santo and I are going to spend the day out tomorrow,’ Vito coolly cut in. ‘To give you chance to close up your life here. We fly back to Naples the day after …’

      ‘Damn …’ Catherine muttered as she lost the end to the roll of sticky tape—again. ‘Damn, damn, blasted damn …’

      With an elbow trying to keep the cardboard box lid shut, she used a fingernail to pick carefully at the tape while her teeth literally tingled with frustration.

      She’d had a lousy day and this stupid sticky tape was just about finishing it. First of all she’d had a row with Santo just before he’d gone off with his father and she’d walked into his bedroom to find it in complete upheaval.

      ‘Santino—get up here and clean this mess up!’ she’d yelled at him down the stairwell.

      He’d come, but reluctantly. ‘Can’t you do it, this once?’ he’d asked her sulkily. ‘Papà is ready to go now!’

      ‘No, I cannot,’ she refused. ‘And Papà can wait.’

      ‘I never have to do this in Naples,’ her son muttered complainingly as he slouched passed her.

      In the mood she was in, mentioning Naples was the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull.

      ‘Well, in this house we clean up after ourselves, and before we get treats out!’ Catherine fired back. ‘And guess what, sweetie?’ she added for good measure. ‘From now on Mummy is going to be in Naples to make sure you don’t get away with such disgraceful behaviour!’

      ‘Maybe you should stay here, then,’ the little terror responded.

      ‘Santino!’

      Catherine hadn’t realised that Vito called his son Santino, as she did, when the boy was in trouble. And it had a funny little effect on her to hear him doing it this morning.

      ‘Apologise to your mother and do as she tells you!’

      The apology was instant. And Catherine sighed, and seethed, and resented the hell out of Vito for getting from her son what she had been about to get from him herself.

      But then that was just another little thing about herself she’d learned that she didn’t like. She was jealous of Santo’s close relationship with his father. It had shown its ugly green head when Santo had insisted Vito take him to bed last night, leaving her feeling pathetically rejected.

      And the pendulum had swung back the other way, just like that, putting her right on the attack again. So when Vito had come down half an hour later and coolly informed her that their son was expecting him to stay the night—she exploded.

      ‘You’ve got your own house only two miles up the road. Use it!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘I don’t want you staying here.’

      ‘I didn’t say that I wanted to stay,’ he’d drawled. ‘Only that our son expects it.’

      ‘Well, I expect you to leave,’ she’d countered. ‘Now, if possible. I’ve got things to do and you—’

      ‘Or people to see?’ he’d silkily suggested. ‘Like your lover, for instance?’

      So, they were back to that already, she’d noted angrily, realising that neither seemed to have learned much from their row that morning. ‘I do not bring my lovers into this house,’ she’d informed him haughtily. ‘Behaviour like that might be acceptable in Italy but it certainly isn’t here!’

      As a poke at Marietta without actually saying her name, it had certainly hit its mark. His hard face had shut down completely. ‘Then where do you meet him? In a motel under assumed names?’

      ‘Better that than allocating him the room next to my room,’ she’d said.

      The remark had sent his eyes black. ‘Marietta never occupied a room within ten of ours, Catherine,’ he’d censured harshly.

      But at least he had voiced whom it was they were talking about. ‘Well, rest assured she won’t be occupying any room when I move back in,’ she’d informed him. ‘And if I see her with so much as a toothbrush in her hand, I’ll chuck her through the nearest window.’

      To her annoyance he’d laughed. ‘Now that I would like to see,’ he’d murmured. ‘After all, Marietta stands a good two inches taller than you and there is a little bit more of her—in every way.’

      ‘Well, you should know,’ she’d drawled, in a tone that had wiped that grin right off his face!

      He’d left soon after that, stiffly promising to return before Santo woke up the next morning. He’d left soon after her argument with Santo this morning too, she recalled now, with a grimace. One glance at her face as she’d walked down the stairs must have told him she was gunning for yet another round with him.

      Next she’d had to beg an immediate release from her contract, which Robert Lang had not taken kindly. Then she’d had to say her goodbyes to people she had been working with for over two years, and that had been pretty wretched. Then—surprise, surprise—something nice had happened! One of the new recruits at the company had come to search her out because he’d heard she was leaving London and wanted to know if he could lease her house from her.

      Why not? she’d thought. It was better than leaving it unlived in, and she liked the idea of him and his small family looking after the place for her.

      But she hadn’t bargained on the extra work it would entail to leave the house fit for strangers. Instead of just doing the usual preparations, then shutting the front door on everything as she left it, she’d had to go hunting round for anything and everything of a personal nature and box it up ready to go into storage, arrange for that darned storage, and also arrange for a company of professional cleaners to come in and get the place ready for her new tenants.

      Now she was tired and fed-up and harassed, and all she wanted to do was sit down and have a good weep because everything she’d grown to rely on for security in her life had been effectively dismantled today!

      But she couldn’t weep because Vito and her son were due back at any minute, and she would rather die than let Vito catch her weeping!

      But none of that—or even all of that put together—compared with the awful lunch she had endured with Marcus Templeton.

      Okay, she reasoned, so their relationship was not quite on the footing that she had led Vito to believe. But it had been getting there—slowly. And she liked Marcus—she really did! He was the first man she had allowed to get close to her after the disastrous time she’d had with Vito.

      He was good and kind and treated her as an intellectual equal rather than a potential lover. And she liked what they’d had together. It was so much calmer and more mature than the relationship she’d had with Vito.

      No fire. No passion to fog up reality.

      Marcus was tall, he was dark—though not the romantically uncompromising dark that was Vito’s main weapon of destruction. And he was very good-looking—in a purely British kind of way.

      She’d wanted to want him. She’d wanted to stop comparing every other man she met with Vito and actually take a chance on Marcus being the one to help her remove Vito’s brand of hot possession from her soul for ever. But had she been in love with Marcus? She asked herself. And the answer came back in the form of a dark shadow. For, no, she had not fallen in love with him nor even been close to falling, she realised now.

      But what really hurt, what really shocked and shamed and appalled her, was that she hadn’t realised just how seriously Marcus had fallen in love with her—until she’d broken her news to him today.

      With a heavy sigh she sat back against the wall behind her, her packing forgotten for the moment while she let herself dwell on the biggest crime of blindness she had ever been guilty of.

      She had stunned Marcus with her