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

turned when he heard her, then went still, his sombre eyes hooding over as they slid down her.

      ‘Shoes,’ was all he said, though, pointing to a pair of teal-blue strappy sandals standing neatly by the sofa. Everything else had gone—where to Catherine didn’t know, nor care.

      She found out when they arrived back at the car and saw the back seat was full of packages. The car’s roof had been raised, and as they climbed inside she felt the difference as a humid heat quickly enveloped her. Vito started the car and switched on the air-conditioning system, then they drove off, back home to their twisted version of normality.

      It was growing quite dark by the time they arrived at the house. Lights were burning on the driveway, offering a warm welcome that didn’t touch Catherine.

      As they walked into the house Santo appeared, already dressed for bed in his pyjamas. With a delighted whoop he came running towards them. Whether it was deliberate, Catherine wasn’t certain, but Vito took a small step backwards then slid stealthily behind her, as if he was trying to reduce Santo’s options so he would run into his mother’s arms and not his father’s.

      If it was deliberate then it was a very selfless gesture, one that showed a deep sensitivity to her needs right now. And an understanding that her emotions had taken a big enough battering today without having her son giving it a further knock by choosing to hug his father before hugging her.

      So she received her warm bundle of love and hugged him to her as if her life depended on holding this precious child of theirs. And with his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist Santo chatted away about what he had been doing, with absolutely no idea that his mother was frantically fighting a battle with tears again.

      It was only when she eventually set her son down again, so he could go to his father, and she saw the way Vito held Santo to him in much the same way that she had done, that she allowed herself to acknowledge that he too was suffering.

      It was too much—much too much for her to cope with right now, when she could barely cope with her own inner agony. So she walked away, wishing she could just go and crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head and stay there for ever.

      But she couldn’t do that, because Luisa was waiting for them and expected bright smiles and conversation. Catherine played the game to the best of her ability, and even managed to smile at Luisa teasing Vito about the new wardrobe of clothes he had just bought Catherine because her own luggage hadn’t arrived.

      ‘But it came while you were out!’ her mother-in-law laughingly informed them. ‘How terribly impatient and extravagant of you, darling!’ Her eyes twinkled teasingly at her son, and why were they twinkling? Because Luisa was seeing the gesture as a demonstration of how wonderfully romantic things must be between her son and his wife—when really things couldn’t be more wretched. ‘And what a lovely treat for you, Catherine …!’

      Dinner that night was just another ordeal she had to force herself to get through. She had to eat when she didn’t want to, smile when she didn’t want to, had to make pleasant innocuous conversation when she didn’t want to. And through it all she had to watch Vito watch her from beneath heavily veiled eyes, as if he was expecting her at any moment to jump up and start screaming the place down.

      She didn’t really blame him, for she knew that beneath her relaxed exterior she was so uptight it was actually beginning to hurt. She had been avoiding him like the plague since they got back. If he walked into a room then she walked out of it; if he went to speak to her she pretended she didn’t hear. Now, across the dinner table, if she found herself being forced into making eye contact with him she did it from behind a frosted veil, which thankfully kept him out of focus.

      But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware of his tension, or of the greyish pallor sitting just beneath the surface of his golden skin that had been there ever since he had handed her that packet in his office.

      ‘… Marietta …’

      Suddenly feeling as though a thousand sharp needles were embedding themselves into her flesh, Catherine blinked her mind back into focus on the conversation at the table.

      ‘She was sorry she couldn’t be here to welcome you home today,’ Luisa was saying innocently. ‘But Vito saw fit to send her off to New York on some wild-goose chase she insists did not really warrant her attention.’ A censorious glance at her son gained no response whatsoever. ‘Still, since Vito’s priority had to be here with you and Santo, one of them had to go, I suppose,’ Luisa allowed, with a little shrug meant, Catherine presumed, to dismiss her son’s silence. ‘She will be back by the weekend, though, so maybe we could all get together then for a celebratory dinner—which would be nice, don’t you think, Catherine? The two of you were such good friends once upon a time. I’m sure you must be looking forward to reviving the friendship.’

      ‘Excuse me.’ She stood up with an abruptness that surprised everyone. ‘Forgive me, Luisa, but I’m afraid I can’t sit here any longer—’

      ‘Aren’t you well, Catherine?’ It was a logical conclusion to make, bearing in mind that her dinner plate was sitting untouched, right in front of her. And at last Luisa seemed to notice Catherine’s strained pallor, while, with the kind of good manners that had been bred into him, Vito rose gracefully to his feet also. But he was still watching her like a hawk, and Catherine wanted to scratch his blasted eyes out because he knew his mother had just advantageously stopped her from saying something she would have regretted later about Luisa’s precious Marietta!

      ‘Just tired, that’s all.’ She smiled a weak smile that was really an acknowledgement of her own sense of relief at Luisa’s interruption. For hadn’t it always been easier to leave Luisa with her rose-tinted glasses in place than be the one to rip them from her? ‘It has been a long day in one way or another.’

      ‘Of course, dear,’ Luisa murmured understandingly. ‘And you are not used to our late dining habits—which probably accounts for your lack of appetite tonight …’

      ‘Yes.’ Catherine kept on smiling the wretched smile and bent to brush a kiss across Luisa’s cheek before mumbling some incoherent remark about seeing Vito later as she stumbled wearily from the table.

      By the time she had prepared for bed and carried out her most dearest wish by crawling beneath the sheets and pulling them right over her, she had hardly any energy left to do much more than switch her brain off.

      So she was completely lost to a blessed oblivion when a pair of arms firmly gathering her in brought her swimming back to consciousness.

      ‘No.’ Her response was instant rejection.

      ‘Be still,’ Vito’s deep voice flatly countered, and, drawing her into the warm curve of his body, he firmly clamped her there. ‘You may wish to pretend that I do not exist right now, but I do, and I am here—’

      ‘While your lover is several thousand miles away,’ she tagged on waspishly.

      ‘Marietta is your obsession, not mine,’ he replied. ‘But since you have decided to bring her into this bed with us, may I remind you that you are here to replace her? So stop fighting me, Catherine.’ Once again his arms tightened to subdue her wriggling struggles. ‘You may like to believe that you are the only miserable one in this bed, but you are not. And I need to hold you as much as you need to be held like this.’

      He wasn’t talking about Marietta now, she realised. He was talking about something far more emotive. Impulsively she opened her mouth to say something about that—then changed her mind, for her emotions were in such a dreadful mess that remaining silent seemed wiser at this moment than saying anything that could well start another quarrel.

      So she subsided, reluctantly, into the warmth of his embrace, felt his muscles relax when he recognised her surrender. And as she began taking on board other things, like his nakedness against her thin cotton pyjamas, she bitterly wished that the man wasn’t so physically alluring.

      Wished to God that she wasn’t so useless as a woman. She wished her heart didn’t hurt so much and her