far as she was concerned Santo had stated it as honestly as he knew how and the conflict was now over, because she was not going to make her son apologise to a woman she knew from personal experience could twist any situation round to suit her own purposes.
‘Then you go off to your room,’ she told Santo. ‘And I’ll come and see you there in a few minutes.’
‘Catherine—’ Vito wanted to protest, seeing his influence being thoroughly undermined here, but Catherine continued to ignore him as she came upright and sent her son off without offering anyone the chance to do anything about it.
When she turned to face all of those that were left, she found three completely different expressions being aimed right back at her. Vito—angry. Luisa—upset. And Marietta—smiling like a cat who’d pinched the last of the cream.
And why not? Catherine allowed. Within minutes of arriving here she had managed to stir up trouble between every single one of them.
‘Good grief, Catherine, what a temper your son has!’ Marietta broke the silence with a mocking little laugh. ‘Sadly, I seem to have a knack of inadvertently sparking it off! I shall attempt to stay out of his way while I am staying here,’ she determined ruefully.
Staying here? Catherine turned to look at Vito, who was looking as puzzled as she was by the comment.
‘Marietta arrived home from the States this morning to find her apartment under water,’ Luisa jumped in hurriedly. ‘A burst water pipe while she was away has ruined everything, so of course I invited her to stay here while the repair work is being done.’
Of course, Catherine parodied, feeling an old-remembered weariness begin to settle over her like a thick black cloud.
‘I have just placed my things in the rooms next to Vito’s rooms,’ Marietta inserted sweetly. ‘If you want to know where to find me.’
‘No.’
The harsh negative did not come from Catherine’s lips, though it very well could have done, since she was thinking the exact same thing as Vito obviously was by the way he had stiffened his stance. Was he remembering a conversation they’d had recently, where the question of which rooms Marietta used when she stayed here had been the one of too many points of conflict between the two of them?
The woman had a special knack of making other people out to be liars.
‘Whoever put you there has made a mistake,’ he said tersely. ‘If you need to stay here, Marietta, then stay in my mother’s wing of the house. Catherine and I desire our privacy.’
‘Of course,’ Marietta instantly conceded. ‘I will move rooms immediately. And I apologise that Luisa and I did not take into consideration the—newness of your reconciliation when we chose my rooms.’
And the poison barbs fly thick and fast, Catherine observed as Luisa began to look anxious again, which made her wonder if her mother-in-law had had any say at all in which room Marietta had chosen to use.
On top of that, Vito was getting really touchy now, she noted, as his frown deepened into a real scowl. First his son had annoyed him, then his wife by interfering, and now his mother, by placing Marietta where he didn’t want her to be.
In fact the only person he did not seem cross with was dear Marietta. Clever girl, Catherine silently commended her as Marietta deftly flipped the conversation over to business things and proceeded to dominate his attention to the exclusion of everyone else.
Catherine left them to it to go in search of her son, whom she found sitting slouched over a large box of building blocks from where he was picking one up at random then throwing it sullenly back into the pile.
Chivvying him up with a determined brightness aimed to overlay the ugliness of the scene downstairs, she helped him with his bath then curled up on the bed beside him to read a couple of his favourite stories to him. Then, when she saw his eyes begin to droop, she kissed him gently goodnight and got up to leave.
‘I don’t like Marietta,’ he mumbled suddenly. ‘She’s always spoiling things.’
Out of the mouths of babes, Catherine thought dryly.
‘Do you like her?’ he shot at her.
Well, do I lie or tell the truth? she wondered ruefully. And on a deep breath admitted, ‘No. But Nonna does. So for Nonna’s sake we have to be nice to her, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he agreed, but very reluctantly. ‘But will you tell Papà for me that I’m sorry I shouted at him? I don’t think he likes me now.’
‘You can tell me yourself,’ a voice said from the doorway.
They both glanced around to find Vito leaning there, looking as if he had been standing like that for ever—which probably meant he had overheard everything.
A quick glance at his face as she walked towards him told Catherine he didn’t look pleased. But then, who did around here? she wondered grimly.
‘We need to talk,’ he murmured as she reached him.
‘You just bet we do,’ she replied. And once again the mutual antagonism was rife between them. Whatever they had managed to achieve in bed today had now been almost wiped away by one very clever lady.
They met in their bedroom when it was time to change for dinner. Catherine was already there, waiting for him when he came through the door with all guns blazing.
‘Right,’ he fired at her. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing undermining my authority over Santo like that?’
‘And what the hell did you think you were doing forcing him to take no other stand in front of everyone?’ she shot right back.
‘The boy was rude,’ Vito gritted unapologetically.
‘Our son was upset!’ Catherine snapped. ‘Have you any idea how it must have felt to him to have his own words twisted around like that?’
‘Maybe he was the one who did the twisting, Catherine,’ Vito grimly pointed out. ‘Marietta was only trying to make pleasant conversation with him and …’
Catherine stopped listening. She’d heard more than enough as it was. On an angry twist of her heel she turned and walked out onto the balcony, leaving Vito talking to fresh air.
Out here the air was warm, after the air-conditioned coolness of the bedroom, and tiptoe quiet—soothing in its own way. Leaning her forearms on the stone balustrade, she tried breathing in some deep gulps of that warm air in an effort to dispel the angry frustration that was simmering inside her.
Because the hurt she felt, the disappointment and frustration at Vito’s dogged championship of Marietta, only made her wonder why Vito had gone chasing all the way to London when it was so very clear to her that Santo came in a poor second-best to dear Marietta.
Pulling the glass French door shut behind him, Vito came to lean beside her. He knew as well as she did that the earlier row was not over.
‘You can be so aggravating sometimes,’ he censured. ‘Did no one ever tell you that it is rude to walk out when someone is speaking to you?’
‘Which
