The Italian's Demand

by Sara Wood

  ‘You and your sausages!’ teased Verity. ‘All right, squiggly worm. Sit in the chair and—’

  Lio began to grizzle and indicate that he wanted to sit on Verity’s lap.

  ‘No, caro,’ Vittore said very softly. ‘This is where you eat. Maria brought it especially, from her daughter’s house.’

  With firm but gentle hands, he managed to fold the surprised Lio’s legs beneath the tray of the high chair and had snapped on the harness before his son could protest. In fact, when Lio opened his mouth to yell, Vittore boldly popped a sausage in there.

  Verity watched the battle going on in Lio’s mind as his small teeth clamped around the sausage. Should he register his protest, or enjoy his favourite food? Another sausage appeared enticingly on a teddy bear plate in front of Lio and then Vittore walked off whistling casually, disappearing through the salon door.

  It was too much for a hungry child to bear. With the object of his anger gone, Lio settled down to his breakfast. And, after adding bacon and egg to his plate, Verity indulged herself too, pointing out birds and butterflies to the contentedly munching Lio and fearfully afraid that perhaps—just perhaps—she’d been handling him badly all along.

  Vittore had made it look so easy. Though, she argued, she’d never been able to walk away from Lio like that. There would have been tears. She speared a herby sausage reflectively. Let Vittore try to cope with Lio on his own—then he’d find out what problems there were.

  After breakfast, she and Lio remained in the garden, staying on the upper level which had been child-proofed by a gate which cut it off from the other terraces. They played in the sandpit and she kept glancing up to dream over the incomparable view of the glittering blue sea.

  Perhaps an hour later, a small inflated paddling pool was cautiously pushed around the corner of a hedge. Verity giggled when the end of a hose snaked into the pool and began to fill it.

  Lio was so engrossed in filling a sieve with sand that he only noticed what was going on when a duck, a bucket and a boat collided together in mid-air as they arced towards the water.

  Squawking with delight, he ran towards the pool eagerly. A laughing Verity just managed to reach him in time to stop him from flinging himself in fully clothed. There was a chuckle from behind the hedge which she recognised as Vittore’s. And a large towel landed close by her feet.

  ‘Thanks,’ she whispered, amused by the subterfuge, but there was no reply.

  By noon, Lio was exhausted from splashing everything in sight. Although he rubbed his eyes furiously he stubbornly refused to curl up with her for his morning nap.

  Frustrated with the yelling child, Verity saw that her friendly hedge had sprouted a hand. And in that hand waved two of Lio’s favourite books.

  Once recovered, the books were read and their buttons pushed to produce the music Lio loved. And slowly his eyes closed and his head rolled. He was asleep.

  Verity peered at the hedge hopefully. She smiled when Vittore appeared with a rug, which he placed in the shade of a huge olive tree.

  ‘You saved me,’ she said gratefully.

  ‘He needs two people to look after him,’ Vittore observed.

  ‘So I realise,’ she replied, sobered.

  ‘Let me have him. I want to hold him for a moment. Then I’ll put him down to sleep on the rug.’

  It would be churlish to refuse. ‘OK.’ She held out her nephew who grumbled in his light sleep and flailed his arms around.

  ‘Vittore!’ purred someone on the terrace behind them.

  She turned. Saw someone young and slender with long, straight brown legs and equally long brown hair that gleamed healthily in the sunlight. Someone who looked desperately elegant in an understated, simple shift—

  ‘Bianca!’ cried Vittore softly, his whole tone and body and expression bathed in love and delight.

  Verity felt the muscles of her chest jack-knife. This was one of the women who’d been photographed with baby Lio. This was Bianca, then.

  And to her astonishment, Vittore abandoned his supposedly adored son and strode jauntily towards the terrace.

  Her head snapped back again, sitting tensely on her stiff neck. So, she thought waspishly, deliberately not looking around. The mistress that Linda had mentioned. She’d been around when Lio was tiny. And still had a hold on Vittore, it seemed.

  She imagined their kisses, the way he was holding Bianca in his arms and gazing down at his mistress, murmuring satin compliments. So much for Vittore’s priorities. Women first, Lio second. It was as she’d thought.

  Grim-faced, she gently laid Lio down and stalked off a few yards to stare at the view, arranging herself as elegantly as she could out of sheer pride.

  But she couldn’t see much for the red mist in front of her eyes. And she was scared, too, scared to meet the woman who had ruined Linda’s marriage and had made Lio a bewildered little boy instead of a happy and contented child.

  Tensely she waited, her body as rigid as a steel girder. Her ears strained to catch the sounds she expected: Vittore and Bianca talking, walking arm in arm across the lawn, pausing to admire his son and then—because Bianca was a woman, wasn’t she, and would be curious about Lio’s aunt—they would come over to chat.

  Well, it would be one-sided. She could hardly speak for angry tears. Vittore’s protestations of devotion to Lio had been flung to the four winds by a woman’s siren call.

  Loathsome man! Impulsively she whirled, intending to confront him with this, fire blazing in her hot eyes.

  He and Bianca had disappeared.

  Rage swelled her chest. They’d probably gone to bed. That’s what mistresses were for, after all!

  Thinking of him, naked, arms and legs tangling with Bianca’s, his mouth roaming everywhere in passionate and arousing kisses, she wanted to stamp her feet with the frustration that rampaged through her.

  Yet she could do nothing, go nowhere, couldn’t even run to the hall and yell something rude, witty or pithy in the direction of the bedrooms above. Not that she’d stoop so low—however much she wanted to.

  Lio held her here. She had to stay with him.

  ‘That settles it. It’s you and me, sweetheart,’ she muttered crossly, sinking to the rug beside him. ‘Your father was just a sperm bank as far as you’re concerned. He won’t put you first, above everything and everyone else. Poor Linda,’ she mused. ‘I know how she felt, now and why she couldn’t trust Vittore to care for you properly. And as for Bianca turning up and whisking Vittore off to bed…! Talk about blatant!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You know, I haven’t even slept with your father, but I feel humiliated seeing him disappear with another woman, after he tried to seduce me. I suppose I was just a stop-gap. No wonder your mother escaped. Vittore is an insensitive louse!’

  Her mouth compressed. She lay down and stared at the sky, trying not to imagine what Bianca was doing and how well she was doing it. She cared, she thought miserably. She really minded that Vittore was a rat and a selfish, twenty-timing rotter.

  Some hours later, in the dimly lit nursery, she knew Vittore and Bianca were by the door but she stayed rigidly beside Lio’s cot which had miraculously appeared, checking that he was fully asleep. Her skin prickled with tension and every muscle in her body quivered with strain.

  Was Bianca looking triumphantly sultry in the aftermath of sex? Did Vittore have his arm around the woman protectively and was he smug? She wanted to clench her fists and grind her teeth and stamp her feet. But she stood there, ostensibly stroking Lio’s small body and trying to master the green-eyed monster who’d taken up residence in her brain.

  ‘Che bello!’ sighed a soft voice.

  Definitely Bianca. Verity made a point of checking her watch. Eight o’clock. She wondered what time supper was served and if she’d be forced to sit at the same table as Vittore’s mistress. If so, she wouldn’t be able to eat a thing. Her stomach already felt as if builders were digging foundations in there. It was a novel way to diet.

  ‘Verity, thi
s is Bianca,’ Vittore said lovingly.

  She experienced a sour and bitter sensation in her gut. ‘I know.’

  Unable to face the woman, she kept her back to Vittore’s paramour and did busy things, straightening the sheet, tugging at the pillow, adjusting the bumper cushions.

  ‘Hello, Verity,’ the unnaturally sweet Bianca cooed.

  ‘Shh!’ Verity scolded with a frown. And felt ashamed of acting like a petulant child, even though she couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘Is he asleep now?’ Vittore touched her arm, unexpectedly just behind her shoulder.

  She shrugged his hand away. ‘Just about,’ she muttered grudgingly.

  He bent low, and to Verity’s jaundiced eyes it seemed that he assumed a look of utter devotion with suspiciously slick ease.

  ‘Come and see, Bianca,’ he murmured. ‘He’s so beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Bianca whispered ecstatically.

  Verity froze, the hairs standing up on her neck. Not in a million years!

  ‘Stay there!’ she hissed.

  ‘I thought he was asl—’

  Verity flashed an irritated glance over her shoulder that cut off Bianca’s protest abruptly. She saw that the woman was in her twenties, with a flawless olive complexion and such dark eyes and white teeth that she didn’t need any make up at all. Verity loathed her on sight.

  ‘He can be restless at first and sometimes wakes. I don’t want him disturbed.’ She scowled. ‘If he opens his eyes and sees you, he’ll panic.’

  Vittore nodded at the disappointed Bianca. ‘You’ll see enough of him as time goes on,’ he said with great tenderness.

  Not if she could help it, Verity thought darkly. ‘I would like you both to leave,’ she said bossily.

  ‘Not yet. I’ve hardly had a moment—’ Vittore began.

  ‘You could have stayed with him when he fell asleep this morning,’ Verity snapped before she could stop herself.

  He slanted a glance at Bianca, a flush on his cheeks. Guilt, Verity thought, her stomach churning horribly like a cement mixer.

  Bianca produced an angelic smile. ‘My fault, I am afraid,’ she said in an attractively husky voice.

  Verity met her innocent gaze with hard eyes. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘You see—’ Bianca began.

  ‘Please don’t explain,’ Verity said hastily.

  ‘Cara,’ Vittore murmured, taking the woman’s arm and leading her to the door.

  He spoke in Italian to her and when she kissed him on both cheeks and left, he turned back to Verity who was intently folding Lio’s grubby clothes into maniacally neat shapes and then tossing them anyhow into the laundry basket by the bathroom door before realising that Vittore was finding this pointless activity very amusing.

  Suddenly seeing her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she discovered to her horror that the exertions of the day had taken their toll on her.

  There was nothing smooth or elegant about her tumbling, tangled curls, or the grass and dead flowers which adorned them—courtesy of Lio. Her dress was stained from the peaches that Lio had dropped down her bodice during lunch and there was something horribly like toothpaste glistening at the corner of her mouth. Thanks to showing one little boy how to brush his teeth properly.

  She let out a small groan and whisked the offending toothpaste away with her finger.

  ‘You’re upset,’ Vittore observed.

  She flung up her head in denial, sending her hair and half the countryside flying in all directions.

  ‘Am I?’ she grumbled.

  He smiled knowingly, annoying her still further. ‘You know you are. Because of Bianca.’

  ‘Who? Oh. Her. Why should she bother me?’

  He took Lio’s toy car from her and she blushed because she’d been grimly grinding it backwards and forwards over the palm of her hand.

  ‘That’s what I find so fascinating,’ he said quietly.

  Too close, her defences warned her. Already her skin burned, her hands were poised to capture his face and bring it to hers for a kiss that would drive the wretched Bianca from his mind once and for all.

  Verity groaned again and hastily turned away but Vittore was too quick for her. His hands pulled her around again, his eyes intense and dark, drawing her inexorably in to his force field, commanding her, making a hash of her brain.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said quietly.

  She stared at his chest, listening instead to the voices inside her which tempted her to abandon herself to him and be done with it.

  ‘And hear more lies?’ she creaked out.

  He sighed. ‘I want you to believe me but I don’t know how to convince you. All I can say is that Bianca is not my mistress. And never has been.’

  She managed to shrug even though his warm breath was whispering tantalisingly on her face and she longed to ease her starved mouth with his.

  For a moment, her lips were so dry that she struggled to answer. Surreptitiously she let her tongue slither out to moisten them. And she felt Vittore stiffen, his breathing more hectic than ever.

  She responded. Oh, how she responded. Every inch, every minute particle of her lived for him. The caress of his fingers on her arms maddened her. And why did he have to look at her like that? Ice would melt beneath that dark, sultry gaze, so redolent of sexual promise.

  But she wouldn’t succumb. Somehow she met his feral gaze with scorn which she’d dredged up from goodness knew where.

  ‘As I said. Why should I care either way what Bianca is to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me,’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s not personal, just a moral thing. She broke up your marriage. I don’t like the idea of Lio being exposed to someone like her.’

  ‘She didn’t break up my marriage,’ he said quietly. ‘And I don’t want to talk about that. I want you to be fair to Bianca—not to prejudge her.’

  ‘I made my wishes clear,’ she retorted. ‘I don’t want strangers hanging around Lio.’

  ‘But he was asleep.’

  ‘Only just. And therefore easily woken,’ she argued.

  ‘Yes. Which is why I hurried over to Bianca when she first arrived this afternoon, to stop her calling out again,’ he said, his eyes intent on her. When she looked at him in disbelief, he said gently, ‘I took the opportunity to explain about Lio and then we discussed urgent business. I have changes to make in my life. You know that. And the sooner the better.’

  Verity wondered why she was twisting Lio’s little socks into corkscrews. Perhaps, she thought morosely, it stopped her from running her hands over Vittore’s heaving chest to see if his heart beat as frenetically as hers.

  ‘Did you tell her about our arrangement?’ she enquired coldly.

  ‘The six-month deadline? I think that’s between us, don’t you?’ he murmured, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand.

  She shuddered and her eyes half-closed as his head angled, the arch of his mouth too sensual to resist. Exquisite tremors whirred along her nerves, peaking her breasts and feeding her contracting womb with moist excitement.

  ‘Vittore,’ someone whispered huskily.

  ‘I’ll show you your room,’ he said, suddenly quite cool and detached. ‘It’s next to the nursery and has a portable video link so you can check on Lio. You can change for dinner and come straight down. This way.’

  Dazed and battered and incredibly aroused, she felt him tugging her along like a sullen child denied sweets. She was in his power, she thought hopelessly. Snared, hook line and sinker.

  Tingling from an ice cold shower and wishing she’d packed a chastity belt, she stomped reluctantly down the stairs towards the sound of laughter. One male, one female. Vittore and, presumably, the luscious Bianca.

  Vanity prompted her to draw herself up to slim her waist as much as possible and she checked that her hair was still vaguely where she’d hurriedly pinned it up on top of her head. It had been brushed with a ferocity more suited to a concrete floor, and her s
calp positively glowed.

  The long tangerine skirt that floated about her legs was hardly a match for the lovely Bianca’s understated elegance, nor for that matter was the low-cut scarlet top. But she’d chosen the items deliberately, to be bright and bold. To make a statement.

  ‘Signorina Ferty! La sala da pranzo! To eat! Is here!’ An excited Maria was indicating a door to the left of the hall.

  Verity smiled. ‘Thank you, Maria. Grazie,’ she said as an afterthought, exhausting virtually all the Italian she knew.

  ‘Prego.’ Maria rubbed her hands happily on her apron and hurried off.

  This was it. Verity drew a deep breath then strode in, her eyes afire with challenge, legs fluid beneath the soft and vibrant skirt.

  She saw the room first. Vast, panelled, beautifully furnished and dominated by a long, gleaming mahogany table lit by silver candelabra. The facets of wine glasses sparkled, gold-rimmed plates and heavy silver cutlery gleamed in the flickering golden light.

  And then she saw Vittore, who’d noticed her hovering in the doorway and had risen, his eyes dark with a stupefying desire—though that was most probably for the blonde sitting opposite him with her back to the door.

  The blonde in the photo, she thought in agitation, recognising the style and colour of the woman’s hair at once. How many of these women did he keep going at a time? He was like a juggler in a travelling circus—

  ‘Wow!’ cried the woman, her head now turned in Verity’s direction.

  Verity blinked in confusion, seeing his companion clearly for the first time. The corners of her mouth twitched and she placed the baby alarm on a side table, her pansy eyes dancing.

  ‘Snap!’ she said with a laugh, eyeing the woman’s outfit.

  The stranger, of uncertain age, had arranged her blond hair into a very trendy top-knot that stuck out at all angles. She grinned, leapt from her chair and came forward, dazzling in her long cinnamon skirt and poppy-red top which was almost identical to Verity’s.

  ‘Verity,’ she said warmly, holding out her hands.

  And without knowing why, Verity found herself walking into the woman’s embrace and gasping from the bear hug which followed.