by Daphne Clair
He gave her an oddly penetrating, half-teasing look. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, shifting her gaze from his, and after a moment he left her.
The day seemed to be passing quickly despite her limited mobility. Tomorrow, presumably, Zito would be gone. She had no obvious ill effects from her bruised head, and her ankle was not nearly as swollen as before. A welling of something like panic rose in her throat.
She swung both her feet to the ground and when Zito appeared again in the doorway with a tray of fresh ice she was experimenting with one crutch, hobbling across the room.
He frowned at her. ‘Do you think that’s sensible?’
‘I have to try sometime.’
Leaning on the door jamb, he observed her critically as she made her way to the window, stopped for a second or two, admiring the graceful droop of the kowhai, its narrow yellow blossoms almost spent, and the old roses and frilly pink carnations she’d rescued from a choking overgrowth of weeds after moving in. She’d unearthed a number of treasures and planted new bulbs and perennials that would come up year after year.
Zito came to stand beside her. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in gardening.’
‘I’m trying.’ They had ‘inherited’ a gardener with the house in Melbourne, a man who had kept the grounds immaculate for years, and intimidated her with his expertise. Knowing very little herself, she had made few suggestions and never dared interfere, restraining her activities to cutting flowers for the house.
A couple of children rode skateboards dangerously fast down the sloping pavement, whooping, and she held her breath, but they negotiated the bumps and hollows with amazing skill.
Zito must have noticed her apprehension. ‘They’re okay,’ he assured her.
‘It looks awfully risky. I wonder if their parents know what they’re doing.’
‘Taking risks is part of growing up.’
‘Yes,’ she said, turning with a little difficulty. ‘I know.’
He steadied her. ‘That’s enough. Time you put your foot up again.’
She got herself back to the couch and Zito took the crutches and propped them at the end of it. ‘Your ankle could be weakened for quite a while. Liable to a repeat injury. The medical book said not to be in too much of a hurry.’ He paused, looking at her, and said softly, ‘Good advice, don’t you think?’
‘I have to work tomorrow.’
His mouth tightened, but when he spoke again his voice remained mild. ‘Your boss won’t expect you to turn up with a sprained ankle.’
‘By tomorrow it could be perfectly normal. It’s already much better.’
To her surprise he didn’t argue. Instead he walked to the corner cabinet, asking, ‘Do you mind if I pour myself a drink? I won’t offer you one—it’s too soon after your concussion.’
‘Feel free.’ He would anyway, and it would be petty to say otherwise, even if she wanted to refuse.
Zito poured himself vodka and helped himself to water and ice from her jug. Then he sat at the end of the couch, using his free hand to hook both her ankles up onto his knee before leaning his broad shoulders against the back of the couch.
He took a sip of his drink, then slowly turned his head and looked sombrely at her face. ‘I don’t feel free,’ he said, ‘because I’m not. And although you might wish otherwise, Roxane, neither are you.’
Roxane moistened her lips. She wished he had poured her a drink, but she supposed he was right—the doctor had said something about avoiding alcohol.
He tossed down the remainder of his vodka before placing the glass onto the coffee table.
When he looked at Roxane again his expression was wry and speculative. ‘Maybe…’ he said ‘…we should have had some counselling. Did you think of that before you decided to leave me?’
Surprise stopped her breath for a moment. ‘If I’d suggested it,’ she said, ‘you’d have laughed me to scorn.’ Zito had never turned to outsiders to help solve his problems. He’d have seen it as a sign of weakness, failure.
‘Possibly,’ he admitted after a moment. Then, with angry contempt, ‘You didn’t even try.’
That brought her head up and stiffened her spine. ‘You just admitted you’d have thought it was a dumb idea.’
‘Perhaps I wouldn’t think it so dumb now,’ he said slowly. ‘Is that what you’d like?’
Roxane gulped. It was such a huge, unexpected concession she couldn’t help being suspicious. Did he see it as a sop to her? ‘I think it’s probably too late for that,’ she said, common sense and experience weighing in against the involuntary flutter of hope.
He tensed, his calf muscles rock hard under her legs, and she knew he was about to leap up when he remembered her feet resting across his knees. ‘Is it ever too late to save a marriage? If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.’
Cautiously she said, ‘You’d really go along with it?’
‘Yes.’ The curt monosyllable and the line between his brows told her how much he hated the prospect. ‘Do I need to swear on a Bible?’
‘Of course not.’ Zito was a man of his word. It was how he did business, and part of the reason that, his grandfather had told her proudly, the family had doubled its fortune since he took over the financial side of its enterprise. ‘But I…don’t know,’ she said doubtfully.
How did he think they would go about it? He couldn’t stay for too long in New Zealand—he would be needed on the other side of the Tasman. This could be another attempt to bring her back to Australia.
His frown intensified. Her hesitation annoyed him, and he wasn’t hiding that very well. But he clamped his lips together for a second, then said evenly, ‘Think about it.’ He took her ankles again in an exaggeratedly gentle hold, and stood up as he laid them back on the couch. ‘Will you be all right if I go for a walk?’
‘Perfectly.’ He must feel cramped in this tiny house, and presumably he felt the need for exercise to work off his frustration.
When the front door closed behind him Roxane felt the sudden relaxation of muscles that she hadn’t realised were so strained. She closed her eyes, trying to sort her muddled thoughts. Did he mean it? Would he really co-operate with a counsellor if they found one, or simply go through the motions to mollify her?
And was there any chance that the ingrained habits and beliefs of a lifetime, reinforced by the example of his family, perhaps bred into his genes, could be changed by a few sessions with a complete stranger?
She longed to grab at the frailest straw, against all previous experience. Her brain went round in circles, and finally stalled.
She didn’t realise she’d dozed off until she woke to see Zito standing beside her.
‘Oh!’ She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
He smiled, and her heart skipped a beat, because it was the kind of smile she remembered from what now seemed long ago, when they’d been together in their home, in their bed, and she’d turn to him as soon as she woke in the mornings, to see him propped on an elbow and watching her, waiting for her to open her eyes. Waiting to kiss her fully awake, to touch her sleep-warmed skin and bring her to singing, erotic awareness, until she parted her thighs for him in welcome and he plunged into the hot, satiny depths of her body.
Her lashes swept down, and she struggled into a sitting position. ‘H-how was your walk?’
‘Bracing. Are you ready for another icepack?’
‘I hardly need them any more.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
He unwrapped the ankle and gently probed it. Roxane winced and he said, ‘It’s still tender, obviously. You shouldn’t have tried walking on it. I’ll fetch the ice.’
Afterwards he left her again and didn’t come back until he carried in a dinner tray for her.
Grilled chicken, fragrant with garlic and herbs and wine. Superb, naturally. And accompanied by a chilled sparkling wine. Zito poured some into a flute for her. ‘It shoul
d be safe enough by now,’ he said, ‘so long as you don’t have too much.’
He brought in his own plate and sat across from her while they ate.
He’d even made a light, lemon-flavoured sweet that melted on her tongue and left a pleasant tang.
After he’d cleared up Zito came back into the room. Roxane tensed, expecting a demand to know if she’d thought about his astonishing suggestion of counselling.
Instead he sent her a searching look and asked if she wanted to watch TV. When she shook her head he got up and put on some more music.
Zito had switched on a side light earlier but the central light was still off. His face seemed shadowed and he wasn’t looking at her, his eyelids drooping. His firm mouth had a faint downward curve, and it struck her that he looked like a man who was suffering behind a stony mask.
Had she done that to him? She’d been almost sure that he would cut her from his life and turn to someone else—perhaps a woman from a background like his own, who could be the kind of wife he wanted without feeling she was submerging her personality. The possibility had twisted her insides like a cruel knife but she had forced herself to accept it.
‘I wanted you to be happy,’ she murmured, the words spilling unbidden from some sad, aching place inside her.
‘What?’ He glanced at her.
‘Nothing.’ She hadn’t meant him to hear.
He got up and stopped the CD player in the middle of a track. ‘What did you mean?’
So he had heard, after all. ‘I was thinking aloud. I didn’t mean anything.’
‘I didn’t make you happy,’ he said after a moment, ‘did I?’ He sounded as though it was difficult to get the words out. Any sort of failure was anathema to him.
‘You tried,’ she said, and thought that he flinched. ‘Maybe too hard.’
His shoulders moved impatiently. ‘How could that be?’
‘I know you meant well, but I—I needed space to grow. And you wouldn’t allow me any.’
It was a clumsy metaphor, and a cliché, she supposed. She fully expected him to say something cutting and shrug off her feeble attempt at analysis.
He didn’t. He stood looking at her for fully half a minute, saying nothing, and then he swung into movement, prowling about the room as though he was unable to stay in one place. ‘I knew I should have waited until you were older before marrying you, but I was too impatient and too…’
He stopped prowling, looking away from her, his head tilted up. ‘I was afraid someone would snatch you from me.’
No chance. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him there had been no other man in the world. He was the centre of her universe. ‘You did wait,’ she reminded him, ‘until I’d turned twenty.’
‘It seemed better that you were no longer a teenager,’ he acceded. ‘But what difference does one day make?’
‘You said I was mature.’
‘You were the same age as my baby sister.’
‘Serena’s no baby. You told me she’s a married woman now.’
A complicated look crossed his face. ‘She’s nearly four years older than you were when you married me.’
He turned his back abruptly, his renewed pacing taking him to the window. Outside, the street lamps cast a green glow on the parked cars and the trembling dark leaves of the trees. ‘We should close the curtains,’ he said.
She usually did, sensibly shutting out from prying and possibly predatory eyes the sight of a woman alone at night.
He pulled them himself, then turned to face her. ‘You feel I bullied you,’ he said.
‘Not bullied!’
‘No?’
‘You simply made me feel inadequate, useless, nothing more than a decorative touch to lighten your life and your home…’
She thought she heard the hiss of his breath being drawn in, but she couldn’t clearly see his face.
‘I know you didn’t mean to…’
He made an impatient gesture, then jammed his hands into his pockets, with a dogged air. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
Apparently he was. ‘When we were first married,’ she said, ‘it was nice to be looked after, pampered. Even my parents hadn’t spoiled me like that. You made sure everything was done for me. The housework, the catering, the garden—I didn’t even have to cook on the staff’s days off. You were so much better at it than I was.’
‘We cooked together.’
‘But you were in charge. You were always in charge of it all. Of everything—including me.’
He looked irritated, but waited for her to continue.
‘I admit I accepted it all, enjoyed it. Even using your credit card to buy stunning clothes—’
‘But you disapproved of spending too much on a dress.’
‘I just couldn’t get used to it, especially for a dress I’d hardly wear. But it was nice not having to worry about money if I took a fancy to something. Like a fairy tale. And you…you were every girl’s storybook prince.’
He gave a harsh, scornful little laugh. ‘So when,’ he asked her, his eyes glittering like dark jewels, ‘did the prince turn into the beast?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOU know it wasn’t like that! You were never a beast, Zito! You didn’t change,’ Roxane said, ‘but I couldn’t live in a girlish fantasy world forever.’
He looked at her across the room, animosity shimmering in the air between them. ‘Our marriage was no fantasy! What are you trying to say? You came to see me as a real, flesh-and-blood male who sweated and bled, and lusted for you with my body, and you didn’t like what you discovered?’
‘Must you always see things in terms of the physical?’ she said. ‘It had nothing to do with that. It was how you viewed our relationship—how you treated me as your wife!’
‘You were not mistreated!’
‘I haven’t accused you of that!’
‘Then what—exactly—are you accusing me of?’ His hands left his pockets and he threw them apart in exasperation.
Roxane took a moment to clear her thoughts, determined this time to get through to him. ‘Your image of yourself was the ideal husband, the provider, the protector, giving me everything you thought I could ever need or want. I understand that, better now than I did.’ Time and distance had nurtured a clearer view. ‘But…’ She floundered, searching for the right words.
‘But you,’ he said, after a second or two of intently staring at her, ‘regarded me as an oppressor.’
‘No!’ It was difficult to articulate what she meant. ‘Just a man with certain ingrained values and beliefs about women and marriage.’
‘A chauvinist?’ His brows rose.
‘It was more subtle than that, more…complicated. You don’t believe women are inferior creatures, I know that, but you had fixed ideas about how they fit into your life. Your family still operates on the old values and traditions that your grandparents brought with them from Italy.’
Zito folded his arms, his shoulder against the window frame behind him. ‘I don’t see much wrong with old values like loyalty and commitment.’
She didn’t know if he meant it as a gibe, but it stung her. She resisted an equally stinging retort. ‘I suppose “attitudes” is a better word. Especially to sex roles. You were almost as horrified as your grandfather was when I suggested getting a job.’
‘I simply didn’t see the need.’
He’d made that plain. And she’d seen very quickly that not only his grandfather but his parents would have regarded it as a slight on their son, a signal to outsiders that he was unable to keep his wife content.
His mother had never had a paying job in her life. She’d emigrated to Australia with her family as a girl, lived with her parents and helped in their grocery business until she married Zito’s father, then devoted herself to their growing family and to entertaining her husband’s friends, relatives and business contacts. Literally throwing up her hands, she had expounded volubly to Roxane on why it was unthinkable for the wife of Maurizio Riccioni t
o have a job outside their home.
‘Wait until you have babies,’ she had advised. ‘They will give you plenty to do, and meantime enjoy your time with your husband. Once you have a family, believe me, you won’t have too many moments to yourselves.’
But there had been no family, no babies. And she’d had all too many moments, not with Zito but on her own, when he was at the big, marble-floored offices that were the headquarters of the Deloras chain, or on a business trip somewhere meeting with wine-growers and food suppliers.
‘There was no financial need,’ she agreed wearily.
‘I didn’t forbid you to work.’
‘You didn’t encourage me.’ And his family’s opposition on his behalf had effectively deterred her. They had been so sure it would demean him, perhaps even they would respect him less for it.
‘I assumed that if it was important to you, you’d do it anyway,’ Zito said carelessly. He moved away from the window. ‘Didn’t your charity work fulfil your desire to be useful?’
She’d helped organise fundraising events for good causes. ‘I suspect the charities might have benefited more if the money that went into staging concerts and balls and dressing the people attending them were to be given directly to the organisation we were trying to help,’ she told him.
Glittering occasions with far too much food and drink seemed an odd way of giving to the needy. ‘A few people did the actual work, the others tossed in ideas for someone else to carry out and made sure their husbands’ names were on the list of benefactors.’
Zito looked slightly amused at that. ‘You’re not being a little unfair?’
Roxane simply shrugged without answering.
‘So,’ Zito said slowly, as though articulating it went against the grain, ‘you felt coddled, overprotected and useless.’
It sounded feeble and petty, no reason to leave a marriage.
She tried to infuse into her words some of the remembered helplessness and frustration, a growing fear of being totally smothered, of never having the opportunity to develop into a fully adult human being. ‘I felt…I felt empty and suffocated. As if I had no existence of my own.’