truth? As Eden replaced the phone again with a trembling hand her own bitterness almost prompted her to pick it up again and call Nuncio back. But it was the temptation of a moment and swiftly set aside. In any case, he would never believe her, would he? Neither he nor anybody else would believe or indeed even want to believe the real truth, which was that her two best friends had betrayed her and ultimately left her to carry the can.
‘You must understand that the man you remember won’t be the man who will be coming home to you,’ Rodney Russell informed her with daunting conviction as they sat in the back of the unmarked police car on the way to the airfield. ‘It will be a great strain for both of you to rebuild your relationship—’
‘Yes…of course.’ Wishing he would stop winding her up with such warnings, Eden listened with veiled and ever more anxious eyes. The lecture about post-traumatic stress syndrome had been scary enough.
‘Damiano is returning to a world he lost five years ago. It will be a challenge for him to adjust. He will suffer from mood swings, frustration and a sense of bitter injustice at the years that have been stolen from him. At times, he will crave solitude, but at other times he may relentlessly seek out company. He may be withdrawn, moody, silent or he may put on the macho-man act of the century but it won’t last—’
‘No?’ she queried tautly.
‘Try to appreciate that however your husband reacts now will not be a fair indication of how he’ll be when he has come to terms with what has happened to him. This will be a transition period for Damiano.’
‘Yes.’ That last assurance had sent her heart sinking like a stone. She wasn’t stupid. Was he warning her that Damiano might be seeking her right now but that in a few weeks he might walk away again? Did he think she fondly imagined that paradise might now be miraculously reclaimed from the debris of a marriage foundering five years ago? She was not so simple, nor so foolishly optimistic. She expected nothing, would ask for nothing from Damiano. She just wanted and desperately needed to be there for him. But she was challenged to believe that Damiano might need her. Damiano Braganzi had never been known to admit a need for anybody or anything.
It had been she who’d said, ‘I love you,’ but he had never said those words. Yet once he had said them to Annabel, hadn’t he? Or at least he had had them etched on a beautiful gold necklace: ‘All my love, Damiano.’
‘I think some fresh air would do you good, Eden,’ the superintendent cut into her increasingly frantic thoughts and she realized only then that the car had arrived at the airfield.
‘Yes…yes, it would.’ She slid out of the car and breathed in deep in an effort to steady herself. ‘How much longer?’
‘Maybe ten minutes…’ The older man had no need to ask what she meant.
Ten minutes to wait after five years? She was such a bag of nerves. She paced the Tarmac, ignoring the door open in welcome at the small passenger terminal. She smoothed trembling hands down over the fine green wool dress which was absurdly warm for a summer day but all that she still possessed in that colour.
‘Russell is only doing his job as he sees it,’ the senior policeman remarked quietly, ‘but, accordingly to my sources, your husband is in remarkably good condition both physically and mentally.’
Eden nodded, a little of her tension ebbing, and then she heard a distant whirr. She jerked, throwing her head back to search the sky with fraught eyes. She saw a dark speck, watching it growing larger, her whole being centering on the helicopter as it came in to land. She still could not quite credit that Damiano was on that craft, that Damiano was about to emerge and walk across the Tarmac towards her.
In spite of everything she had been told, she was still terrified that somehow all these people and even his family had got it wrong and that the man who had turned up in Brazil wasn’t really who they thought he was. An impostor—well, why not? Wasn’t that at least possible? Mightn’t somebody have boned up on Damiano’s life and even had plastic surgery? Wouldn’t it be worth a try to step into the shoes of so very rich a man? And wouldn’t Nuncio, who had worshipped the ground his elder brother had walked on and who had been inconsolable when he’d gone missing, have been an easy and credulous target?
Rigid, she watched the helicopter settle down about a hundred feet away. A door thrust open. She trembled, cold and clammy with fear. And then she saw a very tall, very well-built male springing out, with long, powerful black-jean-clad legs, and also wearing a white T-shirt and leather flying jacket. Black hair, far longer than she would have expected, blew back from his lean, hard-boned features. His skin was deeply bronzed. Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. There was just this massive explosion of crazy joy inside her and she didn’t notice herself moving forward at first hesitantly and then breaking into a run.
Damiano let her run to him. He just came to a halt about thirty feet from the helicopter. Later she would remember that, wonder about it. But at that instant she was all reaction and no thought. Every prayer answered, every fear for that moment forgotten, Eden just hurled herself at his big powerful frame, heart racing so fast she reeled dizzily against him as he closed his arms around her.
‘You missed me, cara?’ His rich, dark drawl wrapped round her, shutting out everything else as he bent his head down to her level.
Her face was squashed into his chest. He smelt so good, he smelt so familiar and she drank him in as if he were life-giving oxygen. ‘Don’t joke…please don’t joke!’ Eden sobbed into his shirt, clinging to him with both hands to stay upright.
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