how deep the divisions between you had become—’
‘Yes…but—’
‘My disappointment at that reality was considerable but it is not something which I wish to discuss right now,’ Damiano interrupted with all the crushing dismissal he could bring to any subject which annoyed him and which she well recalled from the distant past.
Eden had gone from shrinking terror at what might be revealed if she dared to protest her own innocence to instinctive resentment of that innately superior assurance. Dear heaven, did he think they were all foolish children to be scolded and set to rights on how they ought to be behaving? And then just when she was on the very brink of parting her lips and disabusing him of that illusion, it occurred to her that it would be wiser to let him think as he did for the present. Let sleeping dogs lie…only for how long would they lie quiet? Stifling that ennervating thought, Eden swallowed hard.
However, she need not have worried about where the conversation was going for at that point the limo drew up outside the narrow building where she both lived and worked. Damiano gazed out at the very ordinary street of mixed housing and shops with raised ebony brows.
‘It may not be what you’re used to but it’s not as bad as it looks.’ Eden took advantage of his silence to hurriedly climb out and lead the way, only to find herself hovering when Damiano paused to instruct the chauffeur in Italian. The limo pulled away from the kerb again and drove off.
Well aware that Damiano would not associate her with the name James etched in small print below the sign, ‘Garment Alterations,’ on the barred door, Eden hastened on past and mounted the steep stairs. The shop was shut. On Wednesday, most of the local shops took a half-day.
With a taut hand, she unlocked the door of her flat. Damiano strode in. In one all-encompassing and astonished glance he took in the compact living area and the three doors leading off to bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. ‘I can’t believe you left our home to live like this!’
‘I wish you’d stop referring to the town house as our home. It may have been yours but it never felt like mine,’ Eden heard herself respond, surprising herself with her own vehemence as much as she could see she had surprised him, for he had come to an arrested halt.
Damiano frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Living in the town house was like living in a commune—’
‘A commune?’
‘The communal Italian way of living; no matter how big the house is, there is never one corner you can call your own,’ Eden extended jerkily.
‘I was not aware that you felt like that about living with my family.’ Damiano’s outrage purred along every syllable of his response.
Eden knotted her trembling hands together. She was shaken by the strength of her desire to shout back at him for his refusal to accept the obvious and understand. That lack of privacy had contributed to their problems.
‘Although I consider it beneath me to make the reminder, you came from a home no bigger than a rabbit hutch where I am quite sure it was an even bigger challenge to find a corner you could call your own,’ Damiano framed with sardonic bite.
It was so crazy to be arguing about such a thing now. Her brain acknowledged that reality but, hurt that he should refer to the vast difference between their backgrounds, she could not keep her tongue still. ‘So because you viewed our marriage as being along the lines of King Cophetua and the beggar maid—’
‘King…who?’
‘I was supposed to be grateful to find myself in a house that belonged to not just one but two other women!’
‘What other women?’ Having given up on establishing who the fabled King was, Damiano was studying her now as if she were slow-witted.
Eden’s hands parted and then knotted into fists. ‘Nuncio’s wife, Valentina, and your sister, Cosetta. It was their home long before I came along—’
‘I cannot believe we are having this absurd argument.’
‘I couldn’t even redecorate my own bedroom without offending someone…and you think I should have liked living like that? Always guests with us at meal times, always having to be polite and on my best behavior, never being able to relax, never being alone anywhere with you but in a bedroom—’
‘And there least of all if you could help it,’ Damiano slotted in reflectively. ‘You would fall asleep in company before you would go upstairs at night. I did get the message.’
At that unanswerable reminder and assurance, Eden turned pale. The pained resentment went out of her then as if he had punched a button. She was both taken aback and embarrassed that she should have dragged up something which was so outstandingly trivial and inappropriate in the light of what he had endured since. And so great was that sense of shamed self-exposure, she just turned round jerkily and hurried off into the kitchen, muttering feverishly, ‘You must want a coffee.’
She left behind her a silence, a huge silence.
With a trembling hand, she put on the kettle. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘No, thanks,’ Damiano countered. ‘With Nuncio fussing round me like a mother hen, I was practically force-fed all the way from Brazil!’
He had followed her as far as the doorway. Out of the corner of her eye, she snaked a nervous glance at his enervating stillness. So tall, so dark, so heartbreakingly handsome. He was here, he was home—well, in her home temporarily. She loved this guy, she really, really loved this guy. And here she was raving at him about stuff that was five years out of date and of about as much relevance to him now as an old weather report!
Was she out of her mind? It wasn’t fair to hold his shock at the way she was living against him. He had left her behind in a mansion with twenty-five bedrooms and a full quota of domestic staff. Evidently, he had assumed that she would be protected by his brother’s wealth from the usual financial problems of a wife with a husband who had vanished. So it was understandable that he should be astonished, even annoyed to find her ensconced in a tiny flat, existing on a budget that wouldn’t have covered what his sister spent on shoes in a week.
‘I didn’t realize that you disliked living with my family…I never thought about that possibility,’ Damiano admitted flatly.
‘It’s all right…I don’t know why I mentioned it,’ Eden gabbled in an apologetic surge, desperate to placate. ‘It’s so unimportant now—’
‘No, it’s not. I’ll stay here until this evening but…’
Oh, dear heaven, he was going to leave her again! In a short space of time, it seemed she had alienated him, driven him off. A chill so deep it pierced her like a knife spread through Eden.
‘I just need more space around me right now…OK?’
‘OK…’ Eden whispered so low she was almost drowned out by the boiling kettle. Space? Personal space and freedom, the sort of psychological stuff the Foreign Office advisor had tried to give her a crash course in understanding, she presumed, feeling sick. He wanted space away from her, he wanted to escape from her after less than a hour. She felt as if the roof were coming down on her, crushing the breath from her body.
‘I’ve got twenty-four hours of meetings mapped out ahead of me already,’ Damiano said levelly. ‘There are legal niceties to be dealt with, press announcements to be made, new arrangements to be set in motion at the bank. I can’t stay here. I have to be in London.’
He had never intended to stay. This had just been a flying visit. Literally! While he’d spoken, she had started to make the coffee on automatic pilot but as he continued to speak, and her heart sank, automatic pilot failed her. She didn’t even notice that the cup she was filling was overflowing.
‘Porca miseria!’ Suddenly Damiano was right there behind her, his hands closing urgently over her taut shoulders as he yanked her back out