Sins of the Past (18 page)

He would use her son’s affection for him to get her to do exactly what he wanted, she realised, trying to deal with her rampant and raging response to his masculinity. Because even if she denied herself the pleasure she craved by not marrying him, how could she deny Ben the right to a permanent hands-on father?

As Ben tugged away from her, she made to jump up, to stop him scrambling onto Eloise, who was crowing over him in French, but her leg had gone to sleep and she collapsed back onto her knees again. Consequently, Damiano reached him first.

‘Go and wash your hands,’ he advised, smiling indulgently at the little boy as he plucked him from his grandmother’s lap, unaware—or perhaps he wasn’t, Riva thought—of the chaos going on inside her, first from that charged exchange of glances a moment ago and now from his exhilarating nearness.

‘How are you, Grandmère?’ As Ben disappeared, doing as he was asked, that Latin voice lapsed into fluent French, deep and resonant and sexy.

‘Je suis fatiguée,
Damiano.’ She was tired. ‘But I’m not the one whose well-being you should be enquiring after, surely.’

His penetrating assessment of Riva, who was getting uncomfortably to her feet, made her whole body go as weak as her tingling leg. Since she was braless beneath her clinging white strapless top, he couldn’t fail to see the tell-tale signs of her response to him, and she was conscious now of showing far too much creamy thigh beneath her flatteringly cut lemon shorts. Which was crazy, she thought, when he knew every inch of her naked body as well as—if not better than—he knew his own!

‘I can see how Riva is, Grandmère,’ he remarked, his mouth curling indolently as he diverted his interest from Riva’s shamelessly betraying breasts to Eloise. ‘I don’t need to ask her.’

No, he didn’t! she thought, despairing with herself. Any
fool could see how she was. Unfulfilled. Frustrated. Throbbing for him!

He left them then and, watching the play of muscles in his broad back as he made his retreat, Riva felt absurdly rebuffed.

‘Love him,
ma chère’
Eloise advised in a curiously moving way, her sun-spotted hand with its well-worn gold ring resting lightly on Riva’s arm. ‘Grab the passion,’ she breathed, rolling the
r
as distinctly as the dramatic French voice that still sobbed away in the background. ‘It is so beautiful while it lasts.’

While it lasts …

Through her dejection from his virtually ignoring her, Riva was startled into realising that Eloise might be referring to herself—that perhaps it wasn’t only age and the passage of time that had caused that note of regret—of sadness, even—that Riva had picked up in the woman’s voice, in the wistful look in those world-weary eyes. Had her marriage to Damiano’s grandfather not been all she had wanted? Had there been someone else in her life? Another lover, perhaps? Because there was no doubt in Riva’s mind that Eloise Duval would have been very beautiful.

‘I think I’ll go and see what my son’s up to,’ she murmured, unable to take any more emotion for one day and, clutching her hoop with the rest of the loosely folded material, she hobbled after Ben as swiftly as her tingling leg would allow.

Two weeks slid into three, and three was rapidly turning into four, and sometimes, relaxed too much by the warm sunshine and the incredible beauty all around her, by the sheer luxury in which Damiano D’Amico lived, Riva couldn’t help worrying that she might be in danger of being pampered into submission, wondering if that was, in part, his intention in bringing her here.

After all, just like her mother, she had had to fight and struggle all her life, and it was hard not to feel tempted to just
give up the fight. How easy it would be, she thought, when she strolled into the garden alone on one particular evening, to just give in and allow herself to be “kept” by a man—as a lot of women probably might in her position. Not to have to worry about whether she would still have a job this time next month, or whether she’d be able to pay the rent and still put food on the table.

But she wasn’t a lot of women. She was her own woman, she reminded herself fiercely, turning her back on the flower-draped verandas of the magnificent white house with its charm and its opulent staff, and most of all its dark, dynamic resident, determined not to weaken.

The following morning Damiano had to fly to one of the neighbouring islands for a short business appointment, and Riva was surprised when he invited her to go with him.

‘What about Ben?’ she asked, her heart leaping at his unexpected invitation, although she was anxious about leaving the little boy for an entire day.

‘You do it all the time,’ Damiano reminded her, but before she could retaliate, wounded by his reference to the way circumstances forced her into leaving her son with a childminder, he said, ‘Don’t worry,’ with his mouth pulling at one corner. ‘I’ve had a little talk with Benito and he’s very happy to stay with Françoise and André and his great-grandmother. Also his little friend will be here—’ he meant the couple’s grandson ‘—as well as the boy’s parents and his two elder siblings, and with Eloise to keep an eye on them all I think our son won’t even notice that we’ve gone.’

‘You thought of everything, didn’t you?’ she chided softly, excited and a little scared by how effortlessly he always managed to control things.

And now they were coming in over the sparkling ocean, landing in the tiny plane flown by one of his trusted pilots, and she was glad that in this instance he had.

‘What a way to commute!’ she enthused, pure pleasure radiating from her face as he helped her down onto the hot
and dusty airfield.
‘Wow!
It certainly beats the seven forty-five from Charing Cross!’

‘Perhaps a little less crowded,’ he purred in that sexy, sultry accent, before exchanging a few amiable words with the middle-aged pilot, who was holding the door open for them and grinning at her obvious delight.

It was a change, Riva thought as Damiano handed her into the sleek, air-conditioned limousine that had been left, as obviously instructed, at the entrance to the airfield, to feel relaxed with him today, instead of being so emotionally keyed up, and to be free, for a while, of the festering question that was constantly on her mind. If she refused to marry him, what arrangements were they going to make for Ben?

It was still there, of course, at the back of her mind. But no one could stay worried for long amongst such spectacular scenery, which was every bit as awesome on their own island.

With Damiano at the wheel—she felt more comfortable being driven by him than by anyone else, she had decided since coming to the Seychelles—she was able to sit back and happily enjoy the beauty around her.

Talcum powder beaches reaching down to a sapphire sea streaked with huge swathes of aquamarine; thatched-roofed houses; hotels on stilts with balconies stretching out over the sibilant ocean. And then there were the flowers—flowers everywhere! The pinks and purples of bougainvillaea cascading like necklaces over rocks and boulders and balconies. Scented star white flowers, whose perfume drifted in through the car window like some exotic aphrodisiac, and other abundant blossoms she couldn’t even begin to name.

They visited a primary school—the venue for Damiano’s appointment—where children smiled warmly at them, and several of the older ones cajoled him into taking their photograph with Riva when they saw her snapping the bright blooms around the multi-windowed building with her camera.

‘Just another of your many merits!’ she teased, when they
were back in the car and she was looking at the images he had captured so superbly. She had just found out from the head teacher how he had poured money into the school’s recreational facilities, and how he always provided one of his aircraft for the children’s special educational trips to neighbouring islands.

She didn’t tell him that, though, because he didn’t know she knew. She just hugged the knowledge to her and felt her reluctant love for him strengthening as they travelled to wherever it was he was taking her, warming her like the sun bouncing off the gleaming white bonnet of the car.

Business over, he shed the light linen jacket he had worn on the plane, and in his short-sleeved white shirt and light trousers looked as casual as she did in her simple sundress as he introduced her to one of the island’s spectacular beaches.

‘I came here first with my grandfather,’ Damiano said as they walked barefoot, their shoes in their hands, over the virgin sand. ‘He taught me to windsurf and scuba-dive during my first summer holidays here.’

‘Eloise’s husband?’

‘Sì. He was fun to be around, but he could be strict too. Perhaps a little too strict sometimes. But, like the D’Amicos, the Duvals had a place in society—a reputation to uphold.’

Which was just as strong in Damiano, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to have her and her mother thrown out of the villa the way he had, Riva reflected painfully, too easily reminded of how insignificant her family were compared with his, and of the yawning chasm that could never really be bridged between them because of her background—the stain on her father’s character and consequently hers.

‘Were they happy?’

‘Scusi?’

‘Eloise and your grandfather?’

His thick winged brows came together. ‘Why do you ask?’

Riva shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know … just something she said.’

He gave her one of those lazy smiles that always made her stomach muscles curl in on themselves. ‘What have you two women been doing?’ He still couldn’t get over how well the two of them had bonded. ‘Exchanging confidences the way only your sex do?’

His unusually easy camaraderie with her today helped her shrug off her unwelcome thoughts as she offered up one of her impish grins. ‘Possibly.’

‘I don’t think it was so much a case of them being happy,’ he told her, ‘as much as knowing that they were doing what was expected—even demanded of them.’

‘By their families?’

He nodded. ‘It was a merger of minds, money and companies. In spite of that, however, I believe Eloise loved him very much.’

‘And your grandfather?’

She sensed his hesitation before he replied.

‘He tried, I think. But he was planning to marry someone else before circumstances—and his family—forced him into marrying Eloise. I don’t think he ever really forgave his parents or forgot his real love. I think as a young man he probably made the best of his marriage. He was certainly a loyal and supportive husband—in practice, if not always in his heart—and he was a good father to his daughter, my mother. He was never a demonstrative man—certainly not in all the years I knew him. My mother used to joke that she had just “happened", but I was too young at the time to understand fully what she meant. Later I was to realise that my grandparents’ marriage lacked …’

‘Passion?’

‘Sì.
The grand passion.’

As ours would after a while, Damiano, Riva thought desolately. When you realise that this physical thing you feel for me now isn’t enough to sustain a marriage. When you regret
giving up the good life and all those society women for someone you’d be ashamed of anyone scrutinising too closely.

‘Poor Eloise.’

It was only when he threw out his hands in a typically Italian way and exclaimed, ‘She is happy! Which is more, I think, than can be said for you,
amore,’
that she realised she had spoken aloud. Tilting her chin with the aid of a finger, he said softly, ‘What is it, Riva? Why do you look so sad?’

She wanted to lean into him, to respond to the tenderness in his voice—in his touch—close the hair’s breadth that separated them and draw sustenance from his hard lean body. But she didn’t. To abandon herself to him now would make his withdrawal from her so much more painful when it came—as it surely would, she realised. As it had for Eloise, when her husband had discovered that mere duty wasn’t strong enough to keep him interested—no matter how much love there was on the part of his adoring young wife.

When he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead she closed her eyes, because being this close to him was almost too much to bear.

‘Come on,’ he whispered, taking her hand in the dark, warm strength of his. ‘The day isn’t over yet, and we have still so much more to do.’

T
HEY
had lunch in a thatched-roof open-air restaurant overlooking another of the amazing beaches—a meal of fresh lobster and tropical fruit and some exotic, non-alcoholic punch that still managed to make Riva feel as though she was floating on air.

Because she was, she thought, just from being with him today.

Afterwards, passing a trackside vendor, Damiano indulged her while she insisted on doing the touristy thing and drank milk from a freshly picked coconut, before whisking her off to a forested valley to find a tree that grew nowhere else in the world.

‘So that’s it.’ Riva gazed up in wonder up at the famous Coco de Mer that until then she had only ever read about.

‘That’s it,’ Damiano confirmed, watching her rapt face through a rare shaft of sunlight cutting through the thick canopy of foliage above them. ‘And that,
cara,’
he murmured from behind her, when she craned her neck to study the huge green husks suspended from the famous tree, ‘is its fruit.’ He slipped an arm around her slender waist, breathing in the light floral fragrance of her perfume as he whispered sexily against her ear, ‘Renowned for its mystical sexual powers.’

He caught her tense little laugh as she glanced over her shoulder and met the wicked gleam in his eyes.

Whether they fought it or not, he thought, his senses
sharpened by the shrill sounds and earthy scents of the heated darkness, this thing between them was as untameable and as primitive as this forest.

‘Is that because it’s shaped like it is?’ She giggled, her midriff rising and falling sharply against the warmth of his arm as she reminded him. They had chuckled over one of these “nuts” in the shop on the edge of the forest because, seeing it as they had with its husk removed—like two huge coconuts joined together—there had been no disputing that this rare and exotic seed was the exact shape and proportions of a woman’s pelvis.