Sins of the Past (20 page)

He would be hers if she did. If she put herself out of her misery and agreed to share his life and the pleasures that being his wife would undoubtedly bring her—the most important one being a stable family life for Ben—but for how long?

He had said he had never lied to her, and he obviously wouldn’t. Which was why he had never said he loved her, she thought achingly—because he didn’t. If he did he wouldn’t have pulled away from her just now in the way he had. But he clearly didn’t really want to commit himself to her, or risk her getting pregnant again, despite his proposal of marriage. Why would he? She was just a nobody with a background anyone would have been dubious of, while he was rich and respected and influential and could have the pick of any woman he chose.

Whether or not he was sorry for what he had done in the past … and with that amazing and unexpected admission he’d made about Marcello and Chelsea earlier he’d come very close to it … nothing could alter that. She was still the daughter of a convicted fraudster whom he’d inadvertently made pregnant, and who was foolish enough to believe in marrying for love, while he came from a family where emotions were stifled and men and women did their duty, no matter what the cost. So how could she marry him, knowing that he’d only asked her because he felt he owed it to her, and that when this driving sexual desire he had for her wore off he would probably resent her? How could she possibly bear it? And how could that create a happy and stable upbringing for Ben?

‘Please, Damiano …’ Her face was ravaged by the conflict going on inside her as she tugged purposefully out of his arms.

She made short shrift of reaching the beach and, scrambling out of the water, started gathering up her clothes.

‘"Please, Damiano", what?’ He had been hot on her heels, and now an imperative hand was pulling her round to face him. His body ran with gleaming rivulets beneath the subtle lighting of the beach. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Riva? I thought when you came to my room tonight that you had at last.’

‘Had at last what?’ She looked up at him, trying to make sense of his shadowy features. ‘Come to my senses?’ Tugging away from him, she started shrugging awkwardly into her robe.

‘That isn’t what I was going to say …’ He came after her, impatiently snatching up his own robe as he did so. ‘But you must admit that it is the most logical way forward.’

The most logical way forward?
The coldness of that statement sent a shiver coursing through her.

‘Why?’ she demanded, hurting. ‘So you can have your son with you all the time?’

‘Santo cielo!
Of course that isn’t the only reason. I want him to have my name,
sì.
But I’m offering you my name also. And I do want him with me all the time. Is that so unreasonable?’

And what about me?
The words choked her, because how could she have imagined that what they had just done could possibly mean anything other than just a pleasurable experience for him? OK, he wanted to give her his name, but only because—as she’d already come to realise, and as he’d made so plain from the way he had just said it—his sense of duty demanded it. That and the main fact that it was the only sure way of guaranteeing custody of his son.

‘No,’ she said, flatly, refusing to enter into a one-sided marriage even if he or Eloise Duval or even the Man in the Moon tried to persuade her she should.

‘And that’s your final answer?’

‘That’s my final answer,’ she asserted, and, clutching her nightdress and sandals to her breast, broke into a run to get away from him before he could try and change her mind.

Which he could so easily have done, she realised with her heart breaking, because she knew from the finality of his tone as he’d asked that question that he wouldn’t ask her again.

‘So … apart from looking stupendously tanned,’ Olivia Redwood commented when Riva walked into her office in grey leggings and a white sleeveless belted tunic that unintentionally showed off her sun-kissed skin, ‘how did it go?’

Riva shrugged, tried to sound nonchalant. ‘OK.’

From beneath heavily shadowed eyes the woman viewed her sceptically. ‘Only OK?’

Those eyes were too probing, but, reminding herself that her boss didn’t need to know about Damiano, with another dismissive little shrug, Riva said, ‘We sorted out what needed to be sorted out.’

Only they hadn’t. They hadn’t been able to agree a suitable arrangement for Ben. Damiano wanted joint custody and she still hadn’t yet agreed to it. How could she, when she couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t try to take him away from her if she did? She couldn’t forget how grim-faced he had looked as he’d driven them home from the airport two days ago, his stunning features shuttered to everything but Ben’s sobbed little appeal, as his father was leaving the flat, as to
why
his dad had to go. When Damiano had gently disentangled the little arms from around his neck and promised, in a remarkably choked voice, that he’d come back soon, it had all but ripped the heart out of Riva.

After he had gone she’d felt dejected and alone and, like Ben, who was wandering around the flat like a lost little soul,
she was missing Damiano so much that she’d started questioning herself as to whether or not she hadn’t made a mistake in not agreeing to marry him. Not for her own sake, but at least for Ben’s, she argued with herself, trying nevertheless to blot out the warmth of the man’s charismatic smile, the rich, deep timbre of his voice, and the feel of those slightly callused hands on her body.

‘And does that “sorting out” in any way include the sound of wedding bells?’ It was an invitation from Olivia to share some domestic dialogue—rare for the woman who had built Redwood Interiors single-handed, Riva thought, wondering what had sparked this sudden interest in her private life.

‘Definitely not,’ she responded, and was glad when her boss took the hint and didn’t pursue the subject any further.

Over the next two or three weeks she was free from the turmoil of seeing Damiano again, since he’d been called away on some business in Europe. His regular calls to Ben, however, had her heart leaping every time he came on the phone, even though the warmth with which she heard him greet his son was sadly lacking from his voice whenever Ben handed her back the handset.

‘So, how have you been, Riva?’ Tonight he lingered to talk—and not just about Ben. ‘No unusual fatigue?’ he enquired smoothly when she told him rather abruptly that she was fine. ‘No sickness? No missed period?’

She knew he must have heard the way she sucked in her breath. ‘You took care of that, remember?’ Swiftly she turned her back on Ben who had run over to switch on the television. If Damiano hadn’t taken care of it, how easy it would have been to have found herself in the same position again, swept away by her love for him and the ecstasy of one crazily abandoned moment!

‘Sì, I did. But it’s not the safest method in the world. Apart from which, you kept Benito’s existence from me. How do I know you wouldn’t try to do it with a second child?’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ She moved out into the hall, aware of

Ben’s little ears pricking up at the sharpness of her tone. ‘I said I’m fine. Why won’t you believe me?’ It was almost as though he wanted her to be pregnant! she thought hysterically.

Suddenly it hit her that, in spite of the way he’d withdrawn from her so swiftly when they had been making love in the sea that night, he might now probably be thinking that if he
had
made her pregnant she would in all probability have considered marrying him. After all, he knew the difficulties she had faced in raising one child single-handedly, without the added responsibility of coping with another tiny baby as well. Of course he would imagine that she would automatically turn to him in that case, which in turn would mean that he wouldn’t have to suffer this role of absentee father that he clearly hated. Then he could have his son—and however many more babies he cared to implant in her willing womb—under his roof, where he wanted them. Permanently. As well as a warm and willing bed-partner until such time as his need of her wore off and he reached his boredom threshold with his very unsuitable wife.

‘Tough luck, Damiano,’ she exhaled bitterly, and cut him off before the tremor in her voice gave her away.

She was glad he was away, and yet over the days that followed she missed him like crazy. It didn’t help at all witnessing how much Ben missed him too.

‘When’s Daddy coming?’ he kept asking, with heartrending poignancy.

‘As soon as he’s back in the UK, poppet,’ she assured him, picking him up. He was getting to be quite a weight for her slight frame. Like his father, she thought, he promised to be a fine strong man when he grew up, and despite his reddish-brown hair and his impish little smile he was getting to look more like Damiano every day. ‘He’ll always be there for you, Benito.’ Of that, at least, she could be certain. ‘It’s just that he’s got a very important job to do at the moment, but he’s coming to see you the moment he gets back.’

During the day she tried losing herself in her work—which
might have helped, she thought, if she hadn’t kept seeing Damiano’s face in every stranger she passed on the street, or hearing his voice as it was when he was making love to her: husky, unbelievably arousing, raw-edged with the depth of his desire.

It didn’t help to make her feel any better either when, on picking Ben up from his childminder one evening, Kate Shepherd told her, ‘He’s getting on fine, but he does tend to get a bit distracted.’ Fondly she ruffled Ben’s hair, which was getting enviably thick—like Damiano’s. ‘All he wants to do these days is talk about his dad!’

I know how he feels, Riva thought achingly, wishing life wasn’t so complicated. If she could have met Damiano in other circumstances he might have fallen in love with her despite her background, wanted her to marry him because.

She stamped down on that runaway thought before it could even take shape. She hadn’t, and he hadn’t. In fact if it wasn’t for him trying to trip her up by seducing her out of his moral duty to protect his uncle’s interests five years ago he would never even have looked her way, let alone fallen in love with her!

That, though, still didn’t stop her thinking about him and regretting that she wasn’t as brave as Eloise—to ‘grab the passion', as that elegant lady had put it, and then live on her memories of that passion for the rest of her life. Because wasn’t that what she was doing anyway? she contemplated, wondering if she would ever find a man who could make her feel quite the same way as Damiano had—and not just physically, but in every other sense as well. Maybe she would, she thought, without too much conviction. One day.

And one day, when Ben was a little older she would start dating seriously, she decided, because that was the only way to meet a man that she wanted to settle down with, wasn’t it? For now, though, it was enough for her just to come home in the evenings and carry on with her design studies, indulge in some childlike games with Ben, and play a little game
with herself in seeing how long she could go without thinking about Damiano as she tried to concentrate on reading Ben his bedtime story. It was enough too—when she finally got him off to sleep and she’d finished her studies for the evening—to play the CD she’d bought since coming back from the Seychelles of that French singer Eloise liked so much. It was all too easy then to convince herself that it was because she liked the songs so much that she left it on Replay, rather than because of the memories it conjured up as she worked away at her cross-stitch, which she was pleased to see was nearly completed.

One morning, going into Olivia’s office to return a brochure, she overheard her boss mentioning Damiano and the Old Coach House to someone over the phone.

With her office door open, and her chair swivelled towards the window, Olivia had her back to Riva and hadn’t heard her walk in. And, though Riva didn’t make a habit of listening to other’s people’s telephone conversations, the information she picked up in those few moments made her want to turn and run.

Except that her feet wouldn’t seem to move before Olivia swivelled round on her chair and noticed her standing there.

‘Riva …’ The woman looked awkward—uncomfortable—as, her call over with, the phone clattered back on its rest. ‘I didn’t realise you’d come in.’

That much was obvious, Riva thought, hurting, but managed to say calmly, ‘So he’s gone with another designer? Is that it?’

Olivia’s power-dressed shoulders lifted almost indiscernibly. ‘That’s how it goes in this business, Riva. I thought you might already have known …’

Too numb to speak, Riva shook her head.

‘Oh, well …’ Olivia smiled, treating it lightly. ‘There’ll be plenty more projects in the future. In the meantime, there’s no reason at all to be upset.’

Upset!

The agonising cry that screamed through her brain was like that of a tortured animal. Nevertheless, she gave an apparently careless little shrug. ‘You win some—you lose some.’ She even tried for a smile, but she could feel her lips wobbling under the weight of her distress.

So he had just been indulging her even in that! Playing with her as he had always done, gaining her trust and then slamming it right back in her face the instant he was tired of whatever game he was playing. Well, she’d known that, hadn’t she? she thought, harrowed. She just hadn’t realised that he would do it in such a demoralising and humiliating way. And if Olivia had chosen not to tell her that her ideas had been sidestepped for someone else’s until she’d discovered it for herself—well, that was her prerogative. She was the boss, after all. She could run Redwoods in any way she chose.

Hurt more than she could express by Damiano’s under-hand actions, Riva decided not to give him the satisfaction of letting him know it. Consequently, when he rang that evening just after she had tucked Ben up for the night, she made up her mind not even to mention it for the time being.

‘Ben’s asleep,’ she told him casually, wondering why he had left it so late to call.

‘I guessed he might be.’ His deep tones washed over her, dark and oh, so treacherously caressing. ‘It’s you I wanted to speak to.’