was all too much for her to just stand there passive while he did this to her. With a sigh that was about as tactile as a sigh could be, she wound her arms around his shoulders, caught his head in her palms and began kissing him hungrily.
It was all the encouragement he needed to pick her up in his arms and carry her to the bed. The pillows went the way they usually did, to the floor, sent there by his urgent hands while Catherine dragged back the covers.
They came together in a tangle of limbs on the smooth, cool linen. It was all very deep, very unconstrained—very erotic, very definitely them at their most sensuously intense. Nothing was taboo, no means to give pleasure ignored—no words uttered. And their silence in itself was deeply seductive. Only the sounds of their breathing and their bodies moving in unison towards the kind of finale that stripped the soul.
Afterwards they lay just touching and kissing, communicating by all other means than talking, because words were dangerous, and neither of them wanted to spoil the special magic they had managed to create, that enclosed them in this wonderful bubble of tactile contentment. Of course they made love again several times during that long, quiet, lazy afternoon, then eventually slept in a possessive love-knot while the sun died slowly out of the room. This was fulfilment at its most sweetest.
Catherine came awake to find herself lying on the bed with a sheet draped strategically across her. Vito had gone from his sleeping place beside her, but her initial sense of loss was quickly replaced with a gasp of shock when she glanced at the bedside clock and actually saw what time it was!
Seven o’clock—Luisa and Santo would have been home for ages! What must they be thinking of her? What had Vito given as an excuse for her being so lazy? How could he just leave her to sleep like this?
‘You rat, Vito,’ she muttered to herself as she scrambled off the bed, then hurried to find some clothes to drag on.
The thin blue summer dress she had been intending to put on after her shower earlier still lay draped over a chair where she had left it. Scrambling into her underwear, then the dress, she was acutely aware of a series of deep inner aches that offered a good reason why she had slept so heavily. She had never been so thoroughly ravished!
She even felt herself begin to blush as she slid her bare feet into a pair of casual sandals, remembering just what they had done to each other. Or for each other, she then corrected, and on an agitated mix of pleasure and embarrassment she began finger-combing her tumbled hair as she made for the door.
The moment that she stepped out onto the landing she knew something was wrong, when the first thing that she heard was Santo’s voice raised in anger.
What could be the matter? she wondered frowningly as she followed the sound of her son’s angry voice down the stairs and into the main drawing room.
The sight that hit her eyes as she arrived in the doorway sent her still in dismay. Both Luisa and Vito were staring at a surly-faced Santo, who was standing there belligerently facing up to—none other than Marietta.
Of course it had to be Marietta causing all of this mayhem, Catherine grimly acknowledged as she watched the other woman bend at her slender waist to smile sweetly at Santo and say gently. ‘But, darling, you told me that you would like your papà to marry me.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Santo angrily denied it. ‘Why would I say that when I don’t even like you?’
‘Santino!’ his father cautioned sternly. ‘Apologise—now!’
If Catherine thought Santo had been difficult enough during the week before Vito arrived, when she’d endured some spectacular tantrums from him, she was now seeing he had not even got started.
For his face was hot, his eyes aflame, and his stance was more than ready for combat. Turning his glare on his father, he spat, ‘No!’ with enough force to make Vito stiffen. ‘She’s lying, and I won’t let her!’
‘Oh, please …’ It was Luisa who tried to play peacemaker, by hurrying forward in an attempt to put herself between Santo and Vito. ‘This is just a silly misunderstanding that has got out of hand,’ she said anxiously. ‘Please don’t be alarmed by it, Vito.’
‘Alarmed?’ Vito bit out. ‘Will you explain to me, then, why I walk in this room to the alarming sounds of my son being rude to a guest in this house?’
‘A language thing, obviously,’ his mother suggested. ‘Marietta said something to Santo the last time he was here that he clearly misunderstood, and he said something to Marietta that she misunderstood. Such a silly thing to get fired up about.’
‘I didn’t misunderstand,’ Santo insisted.
‘Santino!’ Vito turned his attention back to his son. Everyone had been talking in Italian until that point, but Vito’s next sentence was delivered in clear, crisp English. ‘You will apologise to Marietta now! Do you understand that?’
The little boy was close to tears; Catherine could see that, even though he was determined to face the whole thing out with an intransigence that was promising to be his downfall.
‘Oh, don’t make him do that, Vito.’ It was Marietta who came to Santo’s rescue. Marietta sounding beautifully placating.
‘He meant no offence. He’s just a little angry because I corrected his Italian.’
‘No, you didn’t!’ the little boy protested. ‘You said I was a nuisance and that when papà married you he wouldn’t want me any more! And I hate you, Papà!’ he turned to shout at his father. ‘And I won’t say sorry! I won’t—I won’t—I won’t!’
Shocked surprise at his son’s vehemence hardened Vito’s face. ‘Then you—’
‘Santo,’ Catherine said quietly, over whatever Vito had been about to say to him, and brought all four pairs of eyes swinging around in her direction.
And if Catherine had never been made to feel like the poor relation in this house before, she was certainly feeling that way now, as she stood there in her scrap of cheap cotton and took in with one brief, cold glance Marietta, looking smooth and sleek and faultlessly exquisite in her shiny black dress and shiny black shoes and with her shiny black hair stroking over one shoulder.
‘Oh, Catherine!’ It was poor, anxious Luisa that burst into speech. ‘What must you be thinking?’
‘I am thinking that this—altercation seems to be very lopsided,’ she answered, without taking her eyes from her belligerent son. Silently she held out a hand to him, and with that simple gesture brought him running to her.
Vito was glaring at her for overriding his authority. Luisa was wringing her hands because her peaceful little haven had been shattered and she never could cope with that. And Marietta watched sympathetically as Catherine knelt down so her face was at her son’s level.
‘Santo, were you rude to Marietta?’ She quietly requested his opinion.
He dropped his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled truculently.
‘And do you think that deserves an apology?’
The dark head shook, then came back up, and Catherine could see that the tears were real now in big brown eyes. ‘I never said what she said I did, Mummy,’ he whispered
