Damiano's Return Read online

  Apparently shaken by the realisation that she could not magically solve her every problem by begging Damiano to forgive her, Annabel departed with a lot less drama than she had arrived.

  ‘We’re out,’ Damiano then instructed their housekeeper. ‘I don’t care who comes to the door. We’re not here.’

  Eden was feeling incredibly sleepy. Damiano took one look at her wan face and drooping head and he scooped her off her seat and carried her back upstairs. ‘This has all been too much for you, cara—’

  ‘Actually I’m so grateful I didn’t miss out on hearing what an unwelcome shock you gave Annabel with your return from the dead!’ Eden laughed helplessly at that recollection. ‘I didn’t dare look at you in case I went off into whoops. Are you finally going to tell me why you broke off your engagement to her?’

  Damiano winced. ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘You owe me,’ Eden told him playfully.

  ‘I overheard a conversation she had with her sister. Her sister had just got engaged and she asked Annabel what she liked most about me,’ Damiano related with a pained smile. ‘And there was this huge silence and then Annabel finally said, “he’s loaded and he’s great in bed.” That is the moment when the rot first set in.’

  ‘She was probably joking—’

  ‘Having had the pleasure of hearing that opinion, I naturally began paying closer attention to our relationship. I then found out that she wasn’t at all averse to slipping into other men’s beds when I was abroad,’ Damiano shared wryly as he laid her down on the bed.

  ‘Oh…’ Eden rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, understanding why he had had no desire to tell her that particular tale before.

  ‘I didn’t tell my family why I’d ditched her. That was a mistake,’ Damiano acknowledged. ‘But I’d learned by then that my own feelings for Annabel were pretty shallow and I didn’t care enough to disabuse them of their illusions.’

  ‘Then you met me…’ Eden was tiring of the subject of Annabel which had now been for ever shorn of further interest.

  ‘That was love at first sight. Absolutely terrifying!’ Damiano confided.

  ‘Eden sat up with a start. ‘Say that again—’

  ‘Do I have to?’ A charismatic smile curved Damiano’s sensual mouth. ‘Post-Annabel I was convinced that I was the coldest fish alive as far as women were concerned. I was very cynical and then I saw you and I swear that both my brain and my body went haywire the same second.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Eden framed in a daze.

  Glittering dark eyes rested on her bemused face and he muttered ruefully, ‘You’re not going to like hearing the rest of it. In those days, I hated feeling like that and that added a certain hostility to our every encounter. I wanted to be in control…’

  ‘And you thought you weren’t in control because I wouldn’t sleep with you,’ Eden filled in for him with a sigh.

  ‘No, there you’re wrong, amore. As far as I was concerned, if you didn’t want to make love with me, you couldn’t possibly care about me or want me anything like as much as I cared about and wanted you.’

  Even five years on, Eden was stricken by that revealing confession. She looked at him with reproachful eyes. ‘Oh, no…’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Damiano told her levelly. ‘When I fell for you, love and sex were quite indivisible in my estimation. I’d never been in love in my life before but I couldn’t believe you could love me and keep on freezing me out—’

  Eden traced a regretful fingertip along his hard jawline. ‘I had no idea that I could make you feel insecure back then. You always seemed so incredibly confident—’

  Damiano caught her into his arms and held her fast, shimmering dark golden eyes scanning her with tender amusement. ‘Call it like it was, tesoro mio,’ he urged. ‘I was arrogant and I just could not credit that a virgin could run rings round me—’

  ‘I was very nervous of that kind of intimacy…but I think that if I’d known you loved me after we married, I would have felt very different,’ Eden said slowly. ‘Unfortunately, your sister told me about Annabel and then, when I came back from our honeymoon and finally saw Annabel, I thought that you most likely had married me on the rebound—’

  ‘You and I were engaged for all of one week. I was engaged to her for two years and never got myself to the point of fixing a wedding date,’ Damiano pointed out. ‘I love you very, very much. Even when I was acting like a jerk, I never doubted that. I couldn’t have handled it if I’d come home and you hadn’t been here for me.’

  Eden glowed with happiness. She rested her head down on his chest, listening to the slow, solid thump of his heart beating, drinking in the familiar scent of him. Then she smiled. ‘How do you feel about having a baby?’

  ‘On a scale of one to ten—ten being the height of keen,’ Damiano informed her teasingly. ‘Ten.’

  ‘Sounds promising—’

  Damiano vented a laugh. ‘I have now finally reached the pinnacle of male maturity where I can consider a baby without being gripped by the devastating fear that you might feel more for the baby than you feel for me!’

  ‘Even better. Are you aware that I haven’t been on the contraceptive pill for years?” Eden enquired, slowly raising her head to study him.

  A slight frown-line drew his ebony brows together. ‘I have to confess that I hadn’t got around to thinking about technical stuff like that yet—’

  ‘Technical stuff?’ Eden queried chokily.

  ‘When I’m in bed with you, I’m not exactly grounded…’ Lustrous dark golden eyes suddenly settled on her with raw intensity. ‘Accidenti! If you’re not…and I haven’t been using—’

  ‘You’re going to be a father,’ Eden told him softly.

  Damiano rolled her gently flat against the pillows and stared fixedly down at her. ‘Are you teasing me?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ Eden declared.

  At that confirmation, Damiano hastily released her from a good half of his weight. ‘That’s fantastic!’ he breathed, visibly stunned.

  ‘But not breakable,’ Eden added, hauling him back to her with possessive hands.

  One year and one month later, Eden walked into the nursery at the Villa Pavone. Diamonds glittering at her wrist and in her ears, she was wearing a fabulous pale green ball gown in readiness for the big party they were throwing that evening.

  Damiano was tucking in the twins. Their son, Niccolo, lay still like a little prince, big sleepy green eyes pinned to his father, but his twin sister, Chiara, was still wriggling. Damiano was endeavouring to mesmerise his infant daughter into more restful mode with the use of the musical mobile above the cot.

  Eden smiled. She could still barely believe that she was the mother of two children. She had been a couple of months along before a scan had picked up the fact that she’d been carrying two babies, rather than just one. She had been delighted at the news but Damiano had been concerned that a twin pregnancy would be more risky. However, although Niccolo and Chiara had come into the world a little early as did most twins, both Eden and their children had come through fine.

  The past year had been very eventful from start to finish. They had spent a lot of time in Italy, enjoying the rather more relaxed pace of their lifestyle there. Damiano had been re-elected Chairman of the Braganzi Bank but he delegated much more, worked from home when he could and took her with him when he went abroad. Indeed, Eden had once or twice felt ever so slightly guilty that what had been a truly stupendous, wonderfully happy and successful year for her and Damiano had been something less for others.

  Although there had been one light moment. Annabel Stavely had rushed off and married an elderly peer of the realm after Nuncio had informed her that he expected all the money he had given her repaid. Six months later, she had become a reasonably wealthy and, it had to be admitted, a fairly merry widow according to the gossip columns.

  Then, just three months ago, Damiano had passed Eden a newspaper and had indicated a small article abou
t Mark Anstey. Mark had been sent to prison for embezzling a huge amount of money from the unfortunate owners of the organic farm company. The biggest shock for Eden had been the discovery that that had not been Mark’s first offence.

  In the past year also, Nuncio and Tina had failed to mend their differences and had ended up going through a bitter divorce. During a heated quarrel, Tina had really lost her temper and had told Nuncio that their daughter, Allegra, was not his child. Nuncio had been devastated. Tina had then thought better of her honesty and had tried to persuade him that she had only been lying to hurt him. However, Nuncio had had DNA testing done and that had proved that Allegra could not be his. Even so, Nuncio had still insisted that he wanted to maintain contact with the little girl because he was very fond of her.

  Damiano and Nuncio were now behaving like brothers again simply because Nuncio had become so depressed after that bombshell about Allegra that Damiano had had no choice but to offer sympathy and support. Eden had then persuaded Damiano to invite Cosetta to the twins’ christening. Ignored by Damiano for months, his sister had been on her best behaviour and anxious not to cause offence. Eden was content to settle for politeness at their occasional meetings.

  ‘Dio mio.’ Damiano rhymed, turning from his now sleeping daughter to appraise Eden in her ball gown with deeply impressed eyes of gold. ‘You look fantastic.’

  Eden did a little twirl to ensure that he got the full effect of her bare shoulders and the low-cut back. He wolf-whistled. She grinned, her own attention roving with equally keen appreciation over his beautifully cut dinner jacket, silk shirt and narrow black trousers, all of which accentuated his commanding height, his athletic physique and his sheer sexiness. She tried really hard to wolf-whistle back but Damiano started laughing and she couldn’t manage it.

  ‘Happy, cara mia?’

  ‘Absolutely fizzing with it!’ Eden assured him cheerfully as he settled his hands to her slim waist and drew her into the circle of his arms. ‘It’s not every woman who gets to celebrate two wedding anniversaries a year!’

  Exactly a year ago, they had renewed their wedding vows in a church ceremony which had meant a great deal to both of them. Damiano, however, also liked to celebrate their original wedding anniversary as well. Over fifty people were joining them for dinner that evening and a couple hundred more for a massive ball which would last until dawn.

  Taking a last proud and loving look at their sleeping children, they walked downstairs and strolled into the main salon, now furnished with far from authentic comfy sofas and armchairs. Damiano uncorked a bottle of champagne and sent it foaming into glasses.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for our first guests?’ Eden enquired in surprise.

  Damiano passed her a heart-shaped leather jewel case.

  She flipped up the lid. Damiano could not apparently stand the suspense of waiting for her reaction and he reached out and lifted out the gorgeous sapphire and diamond pendant to turn it over to display the inscription.

  “‘To the only woman I have ever loved, Damiano”,’ Eden read out loud, her eyes misting over.

  ‘I adore you, tersoro mio,’ Damiano murmured huskily, fastening the beautiful necklace at the nape of her neck.

  ‘I just adore the way you keep on telling me,’ Eden whispered dreamily, spinning back to him, meeting his burnished eyes and just melting back into his arms. ‘I love you too.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0308-2

  DAMIANO’S RETURN

  First North American Publication 2001.

  Copyright © 2000 by Lynne Graham.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

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