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‘That’s sick!’ Eden gasped and then, realising that she had attracted the attention of the elderly woman seated at the far end of the room, she reddened fiercely.
‘Think very hard before you tell me to go ahead and do my worst,’ Mark advised thinly.
‘But to try to blackmail me…’ Eden condemned shakily.
Only now was she recalling Mark’s bitter resentment when Damiano had refused to invest in him until he had more business experience. She had chosen to forget that unpleasant episode but Mark had just made it brutally clear that he had only continued their friendship beyond that point because he had expected to profit from it. Damiano’s survival must have come as a very unwelcome surprise to Mark, she conceded painfully.
‘So now I’ll tell you what I want…’ With complete calm, Mark went on to mention a sum of money that made Eden pale.
‘Not all up front at once of course; he conceded grudgingly. ‘But I expect a down payment as a guarantee of your good faith. Since you’ve always been so frank with me, I know exactly what you’ve got in your bank account. You won’t be needing that money for your own use any more so I’ll take a cheque now—’
‘Mark, please—’
‘Make your choice. Tina will not hesitate for a second if I approach her with a similar offer,’ Mark warned her smugly. ‘Then it’ll be goodbye to Damiano, Eden.’
Picturing both Tina and Mark conspiring together to destroy her marriage made Eden feel trapped and physically ill. What would her word be worth to Damiano if everybody else swore that she was guilty as hell? With a trembling hand that seemed to have developed a will of its own, Eden dug into her handbag for her cheque-book. Without looking back at Mark again, she scrawled out the cheque and left it sitting on the table. Then she stood up and walked out of the hotel lounge.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE shattered emotional state she was in, Eden wandered round the shops for a while until she got a grip on herself again. She asked herself what sort of a fool she was that she had not seen through Mark to the greed and resentment beneath the surface. She had trusted him absolutely and now he was blackmailing her!
How on earth was she to get out of the dreadful nightmare she had brought down on herself? She was bitterly ashamed of having simply surrendered to Mark’s threats. But most of all she now loathed her own blind, trusting stupidity. When the press had exposed that affair and wrongly identified the woman involved, she should not have kept silent to protect Tina. How could she have been that foolish? But she knew how and why. Distraught over losing Damiano, she had been an easy mark for Tina’s guile.
As she walked by the electrical section of a big store, Eden’s attention was caught by the shock value of seeing Damiano on several television screens at once. The press conference was being televised and a bunch of shoppers was glued to the screens. Having come to a dead halt, Eden moved slowly closer to watch.
The cameras loved Damiano. As he fielded questions with assurance and humour, his natural charisma made him a class act. Every so often a different camera angle would take in the people standing near him. Nuncio, proudly intent on his big brother. A couple of directors of the Braganzi Bank, glowing at Damiano’s every witty response, no doubt highly relieved that the male once dubbed a genius in the money markets should have returned with all his faculties intact.
A powerful surge of guilt engulfed Eden then and she turned away. In retrospect, she was ashamed that she had snatched at the excuse Damiano had given her and avoided the press conference. From the moment that tabloid story had been printed nearly five years earlier, she had been terrified of the media. Instead of giving way to that cowardice, she should have fought it and, even though Damiano had not appeared to be in much need of wifely support, she would have been prouder of herself had she at least offered it.
Eden was really running quite late by the time she got back to the town house. As she crossed the hall, Tina emerged from the drawing room, looking extremely smug. ‘You have about ten minutes to freshen up before you leave for your second honeymoon in Italy.’
Ignoring the blond’s honeyed scorn, Eden asked, ‘Is Damiano back yet?’
‘No, but he did try to call you. He wasn’t very pleased when I told him that I hadn’t a clue where you were.’ A malicious smile curved the older woman’s voluptuous mouth. ‘Then I took the trouble to call him back and mention that just before you went out, dear old Mark had phoned, given his name and asked to speak to you. Mark was never discreet, was he?’
Paling at Tina’s venom but determined not to respond in kind, Eden raced upstairs to change. Over an hour later, she entered the airport, accompanied by a single bodyguard. She was totally unprepared for what happened next. A man with a camera appeared about ten feet away and blinded her by taking a flash photo. Within the space of sixty seconds, she was the centre of a heaving crowd of reporters shouting questions.
‘Why weren’t you with your husband at the press conference?’
‘Is your marriage in trouble, Mrs Braganzi?’
‘Why did the Braganzi family fly out to Brazil without you?’
‘Why have you been in hiding all these years?’
If the airport security men hadn’t come to their rescue, they would never have managed to escape. White and trembling, Eden only began breathing evenly again when the small private plane took off for Italy. Somebody must have tipped the press off that she would be arriving at the airport. Who? Tina? Or was she so strung up now that she was imagining things?
Whatever, her every worst fear seemed to be coming true. Damiano was big news and, by the same definition, so was the state of his marriage. Her absence from the press conference had evidently created comment. How long did she have before that old scandal about her was dug up again?
Late that afternoon, the car which had whisked Eden out of Pisa turned off a twisting mountain road into an avenue hedged and shadowed by tall cypresses. Through a break in the trees, Eden saw a lake with a surface like a silver mirror and then she caught her first glimpse of the Villa Pavone.
The magnificent building was sited on the hilltop. Ornate stucco decorations and a grand run of Ionic columns embellished the villa’s impressive frontage. As she got out of the car, the glorious warmth of early summer enfolded her. Citrus trees in giant metal urns dispelled an aromatic scent which hung heavy in the still air. As she moved towards the entrance, an eerie plaintive shriek made her glance nervously over her shoulder. She was just in time to see a glimmer of ghostly white disappear behind a topiary tree. An instant later, a glorious white peacock strutted into view, his fantastic plumage spread like filigree lace. The bird regarded her with expectant beady eyes, seemingly awaiting a burst of appreciative applause.
Eden grinned, the last of her anxiety falling away. She strolled towards the huge front doors which stood wide. The paparazzi were behind her in London along with Damiano’s dreadful relatives and Mark, she reminded herself cheerfully. In a few hours surely at most, Damiano would be with her again.
She walked into a breathtaking foyer, so big it echoed loudly with her footsteps. The walls were adorned with fabulous classical frescos. Far above her hung a superb gilded and painted ceiling.
‘Where the hell were you this morning?’
Eden almost jumped right out of her skin. She spun round, green eyes very wide and startled. Damiano had magically appeared in a doorway which she had not previously noted in her awed scrutiny of her surroundings. ‘You’re here already?’ she gasped in delighted surprise.
&nbs
p; He looked incredibly attractive in well-cut beige chinos and a short-sleeved cream cotton shirt that accentuated his bronzed skin and black hair. But Damiano was surveying her with glittering dark eyes, his lean, strong face hard as granite, megawatt tension emanating from the stillness of his long, lithe, powerful frame.
‘You were with Mark—’
Eden blinked, tautening. ‘Yes,’ she conceded jerkily, determined to stick as close to the truth as was possible.
‘For hours?’ Damiano derided harshly. ‘You almost missed your flight!’
‘No, I didn’t cut it that fine,’ she countered tightly and curled her tense fingers into her damp palms, the happy sensation draining away, leaving only stress in its wake. ‘And I wasn’t with him all that time. I walked round the shops for a while—’
‘You’re not telling me the truth.’
The silence started feeling like a giant black hole spreading to within inches of her feet, ready to suck her in at any moment. The confidence with which Damiano made that charge was pure intimidation. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a sneaky carrot designed to draw her into speech and trip her up. No, what she was hearing was the challenge of a very shrewd male, who had not the slightest shred of doubt that she was concealing something from him.
‘Why…why do you think that?’ Eden prompted dry-mouthed.
His spectacular golden eyes struck sparks off hers. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he demanded with ice-cool clarity. ‘You’re squirming like a fish on a hook.’
Eden worried at her lower lip with her teeth and stared back at him, horribly impressed by his power of perception. ‘I…’
‘Yes?’ Damiano grated in the explosive silence.
‘I only trailed round the shops because I was upset and that’s why I was so late getting back to the house,’ Eden volunteered in a driven rush. ‘No big mystery.’ She shrugged awkwardly. ‘I just saw Mark as I hadn’t managed to see him before…and I didn’t like what I saw. So for that reason, I won’t be seeing him again.’
