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

thirty long wretched seconds but stare blankly into space.

      The threatened tears arrived. Catherine felt them trickle down her dusty cheeks but didn’t bother to stop them.

      Because Marcus loved her—and she’d always wanted to be loved like that—for herself and not just the heat of her passion!

      Oh, he’d pulled himself together eventually, she recalled with bittersweet misery. Then he’d said all the nice, kind gentlemanly things aimed to make her feel better when really it should have been the other way around and her consoling him.

      But how do you console someone you know you’ve hurt more than you would ever want to be hurt yourself?

      ‘Mummy?’ The concerned sound of her son’s voice reached deep inside to where she’d sunk in, and brought her shuddering back to a sense of where she was. She opened her eyes to find him squatting beside her with a gentle hand resting on her shoulder and his brown eyes looking terribly anxious. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked worriedly.

      ‘Oh,’ she choked, hurriedly pulling herself together. ‘Nothing,’ she said huskily. ‘Just some dust in my eye. How …?’ She rubbed at the offending evidence. ‘How did you get in?’ she asked.

      ‘The front door was open,’ another deeper and very protracted voice grimly informed her.

      Vito. Her heart sank. And now she felt thoroughly stupid.

      ‘You left it on the latch.’ Her small son took up the censure. ‘And we couldn’t find you anywhere so we thought something might have happened to you.’

      Couldn’t find her? Why, where was she? she asked herself with a blank stare at her immediate surroundings.

      She was in her bedroom, she realised. Sitting on the floor between the chest of drawers and the wardrobe while the space around her was piled with hastily filled cardboard boxes.

      Boxes in which to pack her life away, she thought tragically. And without any warning the floodgates swung wide open. It was terrible—the lowest moment of her whole rotten day, in fact.

      So the tears flowed in abundance and she couldn’t stop them, and beside her Santo began crying too. He tried to hug her and she tried to comfort him by hugging him back and mumbling silly words about his mother being silly, and somewhere in the background she could hear things being shifted and someone cursing, but didn’t even remember who that someone was until her son was plucked away from her and put somewhere so a pair of strong arms could reach down and gather her up.

      She simply curled up against a big, firm male body and continued weeping into its shoulder. Oh, she knew it was Vito, but to admit that to herself meant fighting him again, and she didn’t want to fight right now. She wanted to cry and be weak and pathetic and vulnerable. She wanted to be held and clucked over and made to feel safe.

      He sat down on the bed with her cradled against him and beside them Santo came to put his arms back around her; he was still sobbing.

      ‘Santino, caro,’ Vito was murmuring with husky firmness. ‘Please stop that crying. Your mamma is merely sad at having to leave here, that is all. Females do this; you must learn to expect it.’

      The voice of experience, Catherine mocked within her own little nightmare. Yet she’d never cried on him like this—ever. So where had he acquired that experience?

      ‘I hate you,’ she whispered thickly.

      ‘No, you don’t. Your mamma did not mean that, Santo,’ Vito coolly informed his son. ‘She merely hates having to leave this house, that is all.’

      In other words, Remember who is listening.

      ‘We’ll have to stay here, then,’ his young son wailed, his arms tightening protectively around Catherine.

      ‘We will not.’ His father vetoed that suggestion. ‘Your mamma loves Naples too; she is just determined to forget that for now.’ The man had no heart, Catherine decided miserably. ‘Now be of use,’ he instructed his son sternly, ‘and go and get your mother a glass of water from the kitchen.’

      The sheer importance of the task diverted Santo enough to stop his tears and send him scrambling quickly from the bed.

      ‘Now, try to control yourself before he comes back.’ Vito turned his grimness onto Catherine next. ‘You are frightening him with all of this.’

      She didn’t need telling twice to realise that Vito was only being truthful and she had frightened Santo by breaking down. So she made a concerted effort to stem the tears, then pulled herself free of his arms and crawled off his lap and beneath the duvet without uttering a single word.

      What could she say, after all? she pondered bleakly. I’m crying because I hurt the man I wanted to replace you with? Vito would really love to know that!

      By the time Santo came back, carefully carrying the glass of water in front of him, her tears had been reduced to the occasional sniffle. Smiling him a watery smile, she accepted his offering and added a nasal-sounding thank you that didn’t alter his solemn stare.’

      I don’t like to see you upset, Mummy,’ he confessed.

      ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she apologised gently, and pressed a reassuring kiss to his cheek. ‘I promise I won’t do it again.’

      And to think, she slayed herself guiltily, only this morning she had been shouting at him, and here he was being so excruciatingly nice to her! It was enough to make her want to start crying all over again.

      Maybe Vito saw it coming, because as quick as a flash he was ushering Santo out of the room with murmured phrases about Catherine needing to rest now.

      Oddly enough she did rest. Lying there, huddled beneath the duvet, she started out by thinking about Marcus and Santo and herself and ended up falling asleep, to dream about Vito coming back into the bedroom, she didn’t how much later, and silently but gently undressing her before slipping the duvet back over her boneless figure. She could remember dreaming that she had a one-sided conversation with him, but before she could remember what that conversation was about sleep claimed her yet again.

      The next time she awoke she knew it was the middle of the night simply by the hushed silence beyond the closed curtains. She lay there for a while, feeling relaxed and comfortable—until something moved in the bed beside her that had her shimmying over on a gasp of alarm.

      She found Vito asleep in the bed beside her. Lying flat on his back, with an arm thrown in relaxed abandon on the pillow behind his head, he looked as if he had been there for hours!

      But that wasn’t all—not by a long shot. Because from what she could see of his bronze muscled torso, he had also climbed into her bed naked!

      CHAPTER FIVE

      ‘VITO!’ she cried in whispering protest, and issued an angry push to his warm satin shoulder.

      ‘Hmm?’ he mumbled, black-lashed eyelids flickering upwards to reveal slumberous eyes that were not quite in focus.

      ‘What do you think you are doing here?’ Catherine demanded.

      ‘Sleeping,’ he murmured, and lowered his eyelids again. ‘I suggest that you do the same thing.’

      ‘But I don’t want you in my bed!’

      ‘Tough,’ he replied. ‘Because I am staying. You could not be left alone here in the state you were in, and Santo needed the reassurance of my presence. So be wise, cara,’ he advised. ‘Accept a situation you brought upon yourself. Shut up and go to sleep before I awaken properly and begin thinking of other things we can do to use up what is left of the night.’

      ‘Well, of all the—’ She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. ‘What makes you think that all of that gives you the right to climb into bed with me?’

      ‘Arrogance,’ he replied, so blandly that Catherine