But really she knew she was shaking like this because she had come full circle and back to making choices.
To making the choice that was no choice.
So she got up, put Molly’s photograph back on the bedside table, walked over to the sideboard to replace the ring box in the drawer, then went grimly about the business of getting herself ready to meet with Sandro...
CHAPTER TWO
PRESENTING herself at Sandro’s office premises at the appointed hour took every last ounce of courage Joanna had left in her—though at least she knew she looked OK. She had, in fact, taken great pains to make sure she looked her best—for his sake more than her own.
For Sandro was Italian; a sense of good taste, flair and style came as naturally to him as breathing. Joanna had witnessed him stroll around his home in nothing more than a pair of unironed white boxer shorts and a shrunken white tee shirt that showed more taut brown midriff than was actually decent—and still he’d managed to look breathtakingly stylish.
Then she grimaced, acknowledging that she had only seen him dressed like that once in their short but disastrous attempt at living together. Where most women would have found it a pleasurable experience to watch their men parade in front of them like that, she, on the other hand, had metamorphosed into a stone-cold pillar of paralysed horror.
Sexy? Oh, yes, he had looked sexy, with all of that dark, hair-sprinkled dusky brown skin on show, from long bare feet to strong muscular thighs, and his short, straight black hair looking slightly mussed, eyes sleepy because he had been dozing on the sofa, trying to combat the effects of jet lag because he had just flown back from a whistle-stop visit to his American interests. Even the signs that he needed a shave had not deflected from the fact that the man was, and always would be, sexy—to any woman.
Even this woman, whose only response had been to completely close down or go totally crazy.
Not that he had ever understood why she’d responded like that.
Not that she’d ever wanted him to understand why she’d reacted to his sexuality like that.
Yet, when she’d first met him, she had fallen in love with him on sight and had desired him so badly that sometimes she hadn’t known how she was going to cope without them making love. But in those early days of their relationship he had been busy and she had been busy, and she’d also had Molly to think about.
They would wait, they’d decided. Until they were married, until she had moved in with him properly, when, at last, they would have time and space to immerse themselves in what was bubbling so hotly between them.
Then the unmentionable had happened. And it had all gone sour for them.
Her fault. Her fault.
How Sandro had put up with her like that for as long as he did would always amaze her.
Pain. That was all she had ever brought to Sandro. Pain and frustration and a terrible—terrible confusion that had finally begun to make his work suffer.
He was a banker by trade, a speculator who invested heavily in the belief in others. He was young, successful, a man with boundless self-confidence who’d had to believe in his own good judgement to have become the success he was.
Marrying her had affected that judgement, had corroded his belief in himself. Two bad investments in as many months had eventually finished him off. ‘This cannot go on much longer,’ he’d told her. ‘You are stripping me of everything I need to survive.’
‘I know,’ she’d whispered tragically. ‘And I’m sorry. So very sorry....’
Walking out of his life had actually been easy by the time they’d reached that stage in their so-called marriage. She’d done it for him, she’d done it for herself, and had found a kind of peace in the loss of all that terrible tension that had been their constant companion. A peace she hoped—knew—Sandro had found too. He must have done, because she’d seen his name in print over the past couple of years, in articles praising his unwavering ability to latch on to a good business investment when he saw one.
So, walking back like this was going to be hard in a lot of ways, not least because she sensed that a simple phone call from her had already set the old corrosion flowing through his blood. To Sandro she was like a virus, corrupting everything he needed to function as a normal and self-confident human being.
She would make this short and sweet, she told herself firmly as she set her feet moving through those plate glass doors behind which were housed the head offices of the Bonetti empire. She would explain what she wanted, get his answer, then get right back out of his life again before the corruption could really take hold.
And she would not show him up by presenting herself in faded old jeans and a battered leather jacket! So she was wearing her one and only decent outfit, which had escaped the clear-out she’d done just a year back, when anger, and grief, and a whole tumult of wild, bitter feelings, had made her throw out everything that had once had an association with Sandro.
Except this fine black wool suit cut to Dior’s famously ageless design. The suit hung on her body a bit now, because she had lost so much weight during the last year or two, but most of that was hidden beneath the smart raincoat she’d had to hurriedly pull on because the threatened rain had decided to start falling by the time she’d left her flat again.
But, despite the raincoat, she felt elegant enough to go through those doors without feeling too out of place, and she found herself standing in a surprisingly busy foyer, where she paused to glance around her, wondering anxiously what she was supposed to do next. Sandro hadn’t answered her when she’d asked him that question; instead he’d got angry and slammed down the phone.
A sigh broke from her, tension etched into every slender bone, and her mind was too busy worrying about her next move to notice the way she caught more than one very appreciative male eye as she hovered there uncertainly, a tall, very slender creature with alabaster-smooth skin, sapphire-blue eyes and long, straight red-gold hair that shimmered like living fire in the overhead lights.
Beautiful? Of course she was beautiful. A man like Alessandro Bonetti would not have given her a second glance if she had not been so exquisitely beautiful that she turned heads wherever she went.
Not that Joanna was aware of her own beauty—she had never been aware of it. Even now, as Alessandro Bonetti stood by the bank of lifts across the foyer and witnessed the way half his male staff came to a complete standstill to admire her, he could see she was completely oblivious to the effect she was having on those men as her blue, blue gaze darted nervously about.
Nervous.
His mouth thinned, anger simmering beneath the surface of his own coolly composed stance. She’d never used to be nervous of anything. She might have lacked self-awareness, but she’d always glowed with vibrant self-confidence, had been strong, spirited enough to take on any situation. Now he watched her hover there like some wary exotic bird ready to take flight at the slightest sign of danger.
Her biggest danger, of course, being him.
She saw him then, and the fine hairs at the back of his neck began to stand on end in response to those eyes fixing on his own for the first time in two long years...
It was electrifying, an exact repeat of the first time their eyes had clashed across a room like this. Joanna felt the same charge shoot through her system like a lightning bolt. She stopped breathing, her heart seeming to swell so suddenly in her breast—like a flower bursting open to the first ray of sunlight it had encountered in so long—it was actually painful.
Why? Because she loved him—had always loved him. And knowing it quite literally tore her apart inside.
He was so tall, she observed helplessly. So lean and dark and sleek and special, with that added touch of arrogance he always carried with him, which only managed to increase the flower-burst taking place within her hungry breast.
He was wearing an Italian-cut dove-grey suit with a pale blue shirt and dark silk tie knotted neatly at his brown throat. His black-as-night hair was cut short at the back and s
tyled to sweep elegantly away from his high, intelligent brow.
Her skin began to tingle, her eyes drifting downwards over sleepy brown eyes fringed by impossibly long eyelashes, and a thin, slightly hooked nose that was unapologetically Roman, like his noble bone structure, like his wonderful rich brown skin that sheened like satin over cheeks absolutely spare of any extra flesh.
And then there was his mouth, she noted with a dizzying swirl of senses that kept her completely held in their thrall. His mouth was the mouth of a born sensualist; it oozed sensuality, promised it, wanted and demanded it.
The mouth of a lover. The mouth of a Roman conqueror. The mouth she had once known so intimately that something inside her flared in burning recognition. It soared up from the very roots of her sexuality to arrive in a fire-burst of craving in her breast, making her gasp, making her own mouth quiver, making her want to taste that mouth again so badly that—
I can’t do this! she decided on a sudden wave of wild panic. I can’t be this close to him—face him like this and pretend to be cool and collected and indifferent to all of this—this excruciating attraction!
I’ve got to go. I’ve got to...
She was going to run, Sandro realised with a sudden tensing of his tingling spine. The urge to flee was literally pulsing in every tautly held muscle she possessed, and abruptly he jerked himself into movement, making her hesitate, bringing her flustered gaze fluttering up to clash with his own.
Where he locked it—with a sheer superiority of will; he used his eyes to lock her to the spot while he strode across the foyer towards her, as graceful as any supremely proficient cat mesmerising its prey before it pounced.
His movement brought the whole reception area to a complete and utter standstill, and the silence was stunning as all those present watched their revered employer make a bee-line for the beautiful stranger who had just stepped through their doors.
He reached her, pausing a careful foot away. ‘Joanna,’ he greeted quietly.
‘Hello, Sandro,’ she huskily replied, having to tilt her head back to keep looking into that very mesmeric face.
Then neither of them moved. For a long, timeless moment they simply stood there gazing at each other, enveloped by memories that were not all bad; some of them were, in fact, quite heart-wrenchingly wonderful.
So wonderful that her breasts heaved on a small, tight intake of air as a muscle deep down inside her abdomen writhed in recollection. Predictably she stiffened that disturbed muscle in rejection of her response.
Sandro saw and accurately read every single expression that flickered across her vulnerable face. The love still burning, the pain still hurting, the desire still clutching—then the inevitable rejection. His own eyes began to darken, sending back messages of an answering pain, of a desire that still burned inside him too and, perhaps most heart-wrenching of all, of a love well remembered, though long gone now.
After all—how could he still be in love with her after everything she had done to him?
He blinked then, slowly lowering and unfurling those impossibly long lashes as if he was using them to wipe away those answering messages and put in their place a cool implacability. Slowly his hand came towards her with the intention of taking her by the arm.
But Joanna saw the tendon running along his jawline tighten perceptibly as he did so, and was dismayed to realise that he was looking so tense because he expected her to flinch away from his touch in front of all these watching people.
She didn’t flinch. Sandro couldn’t know it, but she would rather die than show him up here of all places, on his own territory where he ruled supreme.
So his fingers closed around her elbow, and she felt the usual jolt of heat run along her arm in a direct warning to her brain that someone had invaded her personal space. But her blue eyes held his, calm and steady, and after a few more taut, telling moments, the tension eased out of his jawline and was replaced with a twist to his beautiful mouth that grimly mocked her small show of restraint—as if it offended him that she felt she had to protect his pride in front of all of these people.
‘Come,’ was all he said as he tightened his grip on her elbow then turned to begin drawing her across the silenced foyer, arrogantly ignoring every set of curious eyes that followed them.
‘This is awful,’ Joanna whispered self-consciously. ‘Couldn’t you have come up with a more discreet way of meeting me?’
‘Discreet as in covert?’ Sandro questioned drily. ‘You are my wife, not my mistress,’ he pointed out. ‘My wife I meet out in the open. With my mistress I am always very discreet.’
Stung to the core by the very idea of him being intimate with any woman, her heart began to fill with enough acid venom to curdle her system and blind her eyes to exactly where Sandro was leading her—until it was too late.
Then jealousy was suddenly being replaced by a crawling sense of horror that had her stopping dead in her tracks. ‘No,’ she protested huskily. ‘Sandro, I can’t—’
‘Privacy, cara.’ He cut right across whatever she had been going to say, ‘is required before we begin.’
Privacy, Joanna repeated to herself, as the power of his grip forced her into movement again, propelling her into the waiting lift where at last he let go of her so he could turn his attention to the console.
The doors slid shut. They were suddenly alone. Alone inside a tiny eight-foot-square box with grey panelled walls and nowhere to run to if she required an escape.
No.
Her heart was in her mouth. As the lift began shooting them upwards her stomach shot the other way. It was awful. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and clenched her hands into two tight fists at her sides as an old clamouring reaction trapped her within a world of mindless dismay.
Sandro noticed—who wouldn’t have noticed when she was standing there quivering with her teeth biting hard into her tense bottom lip? ‘Stop it!’ he snapped. ‘I am not even touching you any longer!’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, trying desperately hard to get a hold on herself. ‘But it’s not you. It’s the lift.’
‘The lift?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Since when have your phobias added lifts to their great number?’
Sarcasm, she recognised, and supposed she deserved it. ‘Don’t ask,’ she half laughed, trying to make a joke of it.
But Sandro was clearly in no mood for humour. ‘Another no-go subject I am banned from mentioning, I see.’
‘Go to hell,’ she breathed, her eyes squeezed tightly shut while she tried to fight off the soaring panic.
‘And be virtually guaranteed to meet you there?’ he derided. ‘No chance.’
And once again they were sniping at each other. Like their telephone conversation earlier, they were proving yet again that they couldn’t be in each other’s company without all of this—emotion—spilling out
The wrong kind of emotion.
‘You may relax now,’ he drawled with yet more sarcasm. ‘We have come to a stop.’
Her eyes fluttered open to discover that they had indeed come to a stop without her even noticing it The doors were open and Sandro was already strolling out onto a plush grey-carpeted corridor. He walked off, obviously expecting her to follow him. After having to peel herself away from the lift wall, she stepped out on decidedly shaky legs, feeling as if she were pulling a whole load of heavy old baggage along behind her.
He was waiting for her by a closed door, stiff-backed and angry. Smothering a heavy sigh, because this was all becoming so damned fraught—and she hadn’t even got to the reason she had come here!—Joanna forced herself to walk towards him.
One of his long brown hands was resting on the door handle. He didn’t so much as glance at her, yet still timed the moment he threw that door open so he instantly followed her into a big airy office where a very attractive blonde-haired woman of about Joanna’s own age sat behind a desk.
She glanced up as they came in and smiled expectantly at them. But to Joanna’s further dis
comfort Sandro ignored the look, not intending, it seemed, to introduce the two women.
And why should he? Joanna asked herself as she followed him across the room to another door. I won’t be here long enough for it to mean much, even if he did!
When he opened the door he stepped aside again, obviously expecting Joanna to precede him. On an inner frisson of awareness to his electric closeness, she hurriedly brushed past him.
His office was a surprise—nothing like what she would have expected of the Sandro she used to know, she observed as she came to a halt in the middle of the room. This ultra-modern example of smoked grey executive decor bore no resemblance to the rich, dark wood antiquity of his private homes.
The door closed behind her. Joanna quelled the urge to stiffen up warily.
‘Take off your coat,’ Sandro coolly commanded.
Coat? She spun on her heel to stare at him, a fresh frisson of alarm stinging along her spine. She didn’t want to remove her coat. She wasn’t intending staying here long enough for it to be necessary!
‘I—’
‘The coat, Joanna,’ he interrupted, and when she still didn’t make a move to do it herself he began walking towards her, with his intent so clear that her fingers snapped up to begin undoing the buttons. He grimaced, mocking the fact that it took only the suggestion that he might try to touch her again for her to do exactly what he had told her to do.
Angry with herself for being so damned obvious, and annoyed with him for knowing her as well as he did, she drew off the coat and draped it across a nearby chair while he, thank goodness, diverted towards the big pale polished cedar desk standing in front of a huge plate glass window.
Then he turned and did the worst thing he could do as far as she was concerned. He leaned his spare hips against the front of the desk, crossed his ankles, folded his arms across his wide chest, then proceeded to study her slowly, from her tensely curling toes, hidden inside plain black court shoes, to the top of her shining head.
She flushed, lowering her face and gripping tightly at the strap of her shoulder bag. He always did have this knack for completely discomposing her with a look, just as he was doing now—deliberately, she guessed. And she hated it. Hated what it made her feel inside.
The Marriage Surrender Page 3