Sins of the Past (17 page)

Desire was a cruel betrayer, sending piercing need right down through the core of her being.

Groaning from her own defeat, she complained helplessly, ‘You can’t have everything your own way.’

Against the pale skin of her breast he laughed softly, sucking harder. ‘You like me having my own way.’

Bucking from the pleasure, and then from a determined effort to push him away, she gave a little cry of rapturous defeat when he slid down the bed and parted her thighs to do exactly what he had been doing to her outside.

Now, feeling his thick raven hair against her thighs, driven only by the probing insistence of his tongue, her stomach muscles contracted and the delicious excitement started to build again, leaving her helpless to do anything but give in to the wild ecstasy that was overtaking her as he brought it to its full conclusion, confirming what he had just said about her liking him having his way.

‘Admit it,
cara mia,
you’re as much a slave to your desire for me as I am for you. Fate planted my seed in you and decreed that we should be together.’ He started to get up. ‘We’ll announce it tonight.’

‘No!’ Panicking, she shot up in bed, her breasts still unashamedly swollen, their tight peaks rosy from his mind-blowing attentions, and other parts of her tender from the uninhibited passion they had just shared.

From the look on his face as he turned round she guessed that his professional skills would never allow him to be thwarted in closing a business deal—which was what this was for him, Riva thought. Or as good as.

Because when he had sated himself and grown tired of sharing his bed with his son’s mother—as he surely would, if his track record with women was anything to go by—what then? she wondered achingly, slipping out of bed and moving over to the window. How could any relationship between them
work when he wasn’t even in love with her, a girl he’d once considered socially beneath him? Probably still did, she accepted painfully. One to whom he would certainly never have considered giving the illustrious D’Amico name if he hadn’t got her pregnant in the first place. And he probably still thought he’d been right in doing what he had in destroying her mother’s chance of happiness with his uncle.

Reproaching herself for not only allowing herself to resurrect the feelings she had had for the man who had caused her mother so much grief, but for being unable to stop herself leaping into bed with him at the snap of his fingers, she couldn’t now compound those feelings of guilt and self-reproach by sealing that ultimate bond with him—no matter how much it hurt her to refuse him; no matter how much she craved the pleasure of his lips and hands on her body.

How could she, she thought, pulling up the blind, without betraying Chelsea Singleman’s memory? She couldn’t—not even for Ben’s sake.

‘I can’t marry you,’ she said to the dripping garden and the rolling surf tumbling onto the beach beyond.

She heard his harshly drawn breath through the last ravages of the storm that was gradually abating now.

‘I think,
cara
—’ from the sounds coming from behind her, he was shrugging into a robe ‘—it would be unwise to make that decision too soon. We have a son. His interests must come first. Think about it,’ he advised, and from that harder edge to his voice she knew that it was Ben’s and only Ben’s interests that concerned him. ‘I think you’ll eventually see that it is for the best.’

Y
OU
couldn’t help but like Eloise Duval, Riva decided over the days that followed. She instilled an air of calm in people, which Riva was usually far from feeling with Damiano around.

He was out now, doing whatever fathers did with their sons in their special time together, but ever since the day he had proposed—the day of their uninhibited lovemaking in his bed—her earth-shattering awareness of him had only increased a hundred fold. Yet something between them had fundamentally changed.

If she’d felt that the hostilities that had existed between them before were lessening because of Ben, now—possibly because of her refusal to marry Damiano—they had been replaced by something far more complex and unsettling. A new and different kind of tension, induced by the way he was acting with her—so aloof and distant—which, instead of making her equally indifferent to him, only had the opposite effect.

Clever Damiano! she thought, feeling that tight, tense feeling in her loins that happened whenever she thought about him, even when he wasn’t around. He knew how hard it was for her to resist this hot and primal thing between them—even if he couldn’t possibly know why—and she suspected that he was determined to keep her simmering nicely, on fire for him, even though it must be equally hard for him, without granting
her the release she craved, she realised, until she accepted his proposal.

Unless someone far more celebrated and socially acceptable than she was keeping him satisfied, she mused painfully, aware from a local news report that the Boweringham family yacht had been spotted moored off one of the neighbouring islands. But that earlier tabloid report, with that rather sour grapes attitude the woman had displayed over being dumped by Damiano, wouldn’t have done anything to endear her to him, Riva attempted to convince herself, and guessed that she was probably only thinking this way to try and ease her own frustration at the truth of how easily he could leave her alone.

Now, with the nasally French voice of Eloise’s favourite singer filling the sun-drenched sitting room, Riva was drawn from her disturbing reverie by Damiano’s grandmother remarking, ‘You seem very sad,
chérie.
Is it that all is not well between you and my grandson? ‘

They were sewing together this morning, as they had taken to doing of late, and Riva sucked in a sharp breath as the needle she was using suddenly pierced her finger.

‘Why do you ask that?’ she enquired, shaken by the woman’s powers of observation, rummaging in the pocket of her shorts for a tissue to stem the small bright blob of blood that welled up on her skin.

‘Here,
chérie
.’ An embroidered white handkerchief was being handed to her. ‘You should be more careful.’

‘Thanks.’ Riva took it gratefully. It smelled of freshly laundered linen and lavender. ‘You’re always in control, Eloise,’ she uttered, admiring that particular quality about her. Just like Damiano, she couldn’t help thinking—and felt that insidious tension creeping through her veins all over again.

‘Someone has to be,’ the woman assured her in her mellifluous French accent. ‘I don’t like waste—of any kind—and that is what I see: wasted happiness.’

A query darkened Riva’s guarded eyes.

‘Am I not right?
Oui?
You are keeping him at a distance these days. And yet you are not happy with this decision. non?’

Riva’s shoulders sagged on a small sigh. ‘Is it that obvious, Eloise?’

‘To an old lady?’ Eloise Duval’s lips were pursed as she kept her gaze fixed on the ivory tablecloth she was embroidering. ‘There are not many thoughts or feelings one hasn’t experienced by the time one reaches eighty. And I understand the look of love in a young girl’s eyes when I see it.’

Riva sat back against the cushions of her chair, dropping the small hoop over which a small section of her needlework was stretched onto her lap. ‘So it is that obvious?’

‘And he wants to marry you,
oui?’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Not in so many words. Only the lucky few can tell and understand what Damiano is thinking, feeling. I, fortunately, have known him long enough to understand when something isn’t going to plan for him?’

Riva pulled a wry face. ‘When he isn’t getting his own way, you mean.’ She tried to dismiss the sensual picture of what had happened when she had said something similar to Damiano that afternoon in his bed, but it refused to go away, tormenting, tantalising, intensifying this screaming sexual tension that she was never free from these days.

‘And why is that?’

‘He doesn’t love me.’ It was out before she had time to think.

‘Is that so important?’ That elegantly mature head was still bent towards the embroidery. ‘When he can give you so much more? Security. Loyalty. And more significantly a united and stable home for his son?’

‘He’s my son, too.’ She sounded like a petulant schoolgirl, deprived of the privileges of a favoured sibling. It was just that Eloise’s comments seemed to bear out Damiano’s lack of feeling for her. But Eloise only meant to be kind, Riva assured
herself, with a rather wan, apologetic little smile. ‘And it’s more than that.’

Resignedly, she picked up the hoop again and resumed weaving a length of golden thread through what would in time become a very large wall-hanging which she had brought with her from England, determined to finish it. It was a labour of love which she had designed herself and been toiling over every spare moment she had—which hadn’t been very many, what with her studies and looking after Ben—over the past four years. When it was finished, she had long ago decided, and when she got a lovely new flat, it was going to be the first thing she would hang—framed—on her sitting room wall.

‘Is it because of what happened with Marcello and your mother?’

Riva brought her head up sharply, her needlework halted mid-stitch. ‘Did Damiano tell you about that?’

A silk-clad shoulder moved with customary grace. ‘Only very little. He was reluctant to talk about what had happened between his father’s brother and Marcello’s bride-to-be. But I recognised your name as soon as he introduced you to me. I found it strange that he hadn’t told me he had a son with you, but I’ve since guessed from the way you behave with him—so … prudently at times—that he didn’t know.’

Riva caught her breath, once again amazed by how perceptive Damiano’s serene, yet keenly shrewd grandmother was.

‘Did he tell you he was responsible for breaking them up?’ Her words held more emotion than she would have liked to show.

Casting the tablecloth aside, Eloise took off her spectacles and massaged the bridge of her nose. ‘Ah, I see.’ In the background, the singer’s voice sobbed with melodic poignancy. ‘My grandson does not easily admit he is wrong. He seldom makes mistakes, and does not suffer them patiently in others. Therefore he finds it hard to forgive them in himself.’ Replacing her glasses, Eloise looked up now. ‘Are you still punishing him, child?’

Was she?

The woman’s direct question had Riva examining her reasons for not doing what Damiano wanted and agreeing to marry him. Of course she wasn’t, she decided after a long moment. But even if she were, wouldn’t it be no more than he deserved for his overbearing arrogance five years ago? For the way he had treated her—and particularly her mother? For his pride in never admitting that he’d been wrong in what he had done? And for …

She’d run out of reasons, and so she found it all too easy to throw in another.
For making her love him all over again!

‘Come here,
ma chère.’
A gnarled hand was extended towards her. ‘Come. Let me see what you are doing with that pretty yellow thread. I see you are still not wanting to reveal the final picture,
non?’

‘Not until it’s complete,’ Riva insisted, grateful for the change of topic. Chelsea had always maintained it was bad luck to show anyone a half-finished work—whether it was cross-stitch or a painting. But she did as requested and, gathering up the folded length of her fabric, went and knelt down beside the lady’s chair.

‘Ah! You are so creative!’ Eloise praised, studying the small, painstakingly crafted section that Riva was allowing her to see. ‘I am sure your interior design work pleases many if it is done with as much care,’ she complimented, having been informed of Riva’s occupation, if not of the tactics Damiano had employed to get her to the Old Coach House. ‘Perhaps one day you will create something for me?’

‘Perhaps.’ Riva smiled. The least said about that the better, she decided with a mental grimace.

‘And now … if you decide you want a change from this mammoth task you have undertaken … I will teach you the stitch you were admiring on my tablecloth earlier. If you do it as well as you do this—’ Eloise’s dark eyes were sparkling with appreciation of Riva’s painstaking handiwork ‘—I think you will be my prize pupil,
oui?’

They were both still laughing when the door opened and Damiano walked in.

Both women’s heads turned, their gazes held by the poise with which he moved for such a big man, and by the indisputable power of his presence.

Dressed in blue denim jeans and a short-sleeved pale blue denim shirt that hugged his body, emphasising his tan and the gleaming raven of his hair, he looked, Riva decided, pretty sensational.

His smile for Eloise was warm but fleeting, before his lowered gaze clashed with Riva’s.

On her knees before him, with his grandmother’s arm across her shoulders, she couldn’t stop the panicky feeling that she was being gradually worn down by the Duval/D’Amico will. Persuaded, primed and prepared for him, like some bartered bride-to-be, forced to accept the man who was demanding dominion over her for the sake of the family good.

The fact that it would take very little to accept Damiano D’Amico into her life—and consequently her bed—on a far more permanent basis wasn’t doing much for her powers of resistance either. Even now she could feel that part of her that responded so readily to him straining at the tight leash of her emotions, and so hard that it was threatening to snap.

Fortunately the highly charged atmosphere was eased by Ben scampering in and flinging himself at full pelt into Riva’s arms.

Laughing, she almost fell backwards. ‘Did you have a good day?’ she breathed, aching with love for him as she hugged his warm body to her, stroking his sun-lightened hair.

His breathless reply was all about Daddy taking him to the airfield—how Daddy had shown him a little plane he sometimes flew about in, how Daddy had let the roof down on the Porsche when they were stopped outside the ice cream shop. Daddy, it seemed, was a big hit with Benito Singleman.

Over the small head she looked up and met the intensity of Damiano’s eyes, and felt another hard yank on her emotions.