‘I want a print-out of all calls to this office on this date a year ago,’ he snapped at whoever was on the other end of the line. ‘And while you are about it you will bring in last year’s appointments diary.’ Slam. The telephone landed back on its rest.
Joanna blinked, still staring, still stunned by the incredible display of emotional fury from this man who was usually so controlled. It was awful, she felt awful for being the one to cause it And it only got worse because, quite suddenly, he dropped into the chair behind his desk then slumped forward, both hands going up to cover his face.
Once again the desire to say sorry was hovering precariously close to the edge of being spoken. She had truly believed that he was no longer interested in anything that happened to her. It had caused her so much hurt at the time—oh, not only because of her own wretched feelings of desertion, but also for Molly. Molly, who had thought the world of Sandro.
Joanna had hurt him with her bitter and twisted view of everything life had to throw at her. Now she wanted to go to that desk and put her arms around him, hold him—offer him some kind of consolation for the shock she had just dealt him.
But she couldn’t because her own maimed senses wouldn’t let her. So she turned and moved away a step or two, then just stood with her arms tightly folded across her body and her eyes grimly lowered from the temptation of Sandro, who looked still so in need of comfort.
The tentative knock which came on the office door before it hesitantly opened was actually a relief.
Sandro straightened in his seat, face still pale, features drawn, eyes so black they wrenched at Joanna’s useless heart strings.
He didn’t look at Joanna but honed his attention directly onto his secretary. ‘The print-out you asked for,’ she murmured, hurrying forward to place it down on the desk in front of him. ‘And last year’s appointments diary...’
Sandro began scanning the print-out while Sonia hovered warily, uncertain what was expected of her—she was curious, curious enough to keep sending Joanna furtive glances that scurried away before their eyes could clash.
‘I was away in Rome throughout the whole month of March,’ Sandro sighed out eventually.
Sonia nodded. ‘I remember,’ she said, and heat bloomed into her cheeks.
Guilty heat? Knowing heat? I-remember-because-we-were-there-as-lovers kind of heat? Jealousy licked a sandpaper-rough stroke along Joanna’s backbone, stiffening it, leaving it tight and tingling.
‘So, who took over here?’ Sandro demanded.
‘Luca brought his own secretary here with him,’ Sonia explained, then dared to ask the big question. ‘Why? Was there some kind of oversight?’
‘Oversight?’ Grimly Sandro repeated the word and let loose a short huff of a laugh. ‘You could say that,’ he clipped out, then, heavily, ‘OK, Sonia you can leave this with me now.’
A dismissal in anyone’s books. If they were lovers, Sandro obviously knew how to keep the two relationships separate.
‘Discretion’ was the word he had used himself.
Sonia walked stiffly out of the room, leaving another fraught silence in her wake. ‘Come here, Joanna,’ Sandro commanded grimly.
But that awful, blinding, bitter jealousy was now licking its way around her whole body and she couldn’t move a single muscle. Didn’t dare even glance at him, because if she did she would be spitting out filthy accusations, like, You’re sleeping with that woman while you’re still married to me, you bastard!
‘Joanna...’
Oh, God, why had she come here? Why had she set herself up for all this grief? Grabbing desperately at some hint of composure, she walked forward until once more the flat of her hips touched the desk.
‘Read,’ he commanded, stabbing a long finger at a single line of type on the paper print-out.
It was a list of some kind. Frowning, she leaned a little closer so she focused on what was written. ‘Female asking for Mr Bonetti,’ it said. ‘No name. No message.’
‘This is a computer print-out of all telephone calls that come into this suite of offices,’ he explained. ‘Look at the date. Look at the time. That was you calling me, wasn’t it?’ he suggested gently. ‘On the day of Molly’s accident you called here, and in your shock and confusion when you could not get through to me personally you forgot to leave your name or mark the urgency of why you were calling, didn’t you?’
Had she? Was that what she had done? She frowned, trying to remember, but found that she couldn’t. That dreadful day was very hazy. She could barely remember anything about it except trying to contact Sandro.
‘And see this...’ he continued levelly, turning the old appointments diary to face her next. The whole of the month of March was scored through with a pen. ‘ROME’ it had printed in big letters. ‘I was not in the country. I was, in fact, away for the whole month.’
‘You don’t have to go to these extremes to convince me it was an oversight,’ she murmured uncomfortably. ‘I believe you without it.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re not a liar,’ she tagged on with a jerky shrug of one slender shoulder. ‘Your honesty and integrity have never been in question for me,’ she felt constrained to add.
‘Well, thank you for that, also,’ he very drily replied.
Then in one of those quick-fire changes of mood he could undergo which tended to make her flounder, he suddenly stood up and rounded the desk.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking a grip on one of her hands.
She stiffened up like a board, but he ignored the stiffening, being so used to it from years ago. Just as he had become used to having to ignore it if he wanted to go on touching her. He began pulling her towards the door.
‘But where are we going?’ she demanded warily.
‘My hand needs attention,’ he clipped out, that was all.
The door opened, he pulled her through it, then pulled her past his wide-eyed, beautiful secretary without so much as glancing her way, out of that office, down the corridor and into a waiting lift.
Another damn lift.
He let go of her at the one time in her life when she wished he’d hang on tightly, digging his unwrapped hand into his inside jacket pocket and coming out with what looked like a plastic credit card. Sliding the card into a narrow slot in the lift console, he pressed one of the floor buttons, then slid the card out again.
But Joanna didn’t see which floor number they were going to; she was too busy bracing herself for the moment when those wretched doors would close them in.
‘You are quite pathetic, do you know that?’ he observed deridingly.
Yes, she acknowledged, she knew it, but knowing it didn’t stop the war of abominable memories she was desperately trying to suppress.
The doors closed, the lift began moving, and she pressed herself back against its panelled wall, expecting to begin sinking downwards—but didn’t. The lift shot up, then came to an almost immediate stop again.
Startled, she opened her eyes to find Sandro watching her with a half-frowning, half-contemptuous expression. She stared back, vulnerable—without knowing it, she looked vulnerable.
The doors slid apart. Sandro wrenched his gaze away from her and walked out of the lift, like the last time, obviously expecting her to follow him.
She did so reluctantly, once again having to peel herself away from the wall and walk forward on shaking legs—only to stop dead two steps on to stare bewilderedly around her.
‘Where are we?’ she asked sharply.
‘Up one floor,’ Sandro replied. ‘In my private apartment, to be exact’
Predictably, all hell broke loose inside her, blue eyes flickering around her new surroundings like a trapped animal looking for a means of escape. ‘Y-your apartment? ’ she repeated unsteadily. ‘Here?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, his tone spiked. ‘Convenient, is it not?’
He knew what she was thinking. He knew what she was feeling. He knew that to her, a private apartment meant in
timacy, and intimacy translated into panic.
She flicked him a very wary glance. He answered it with a mocking one, challenging her to protest, to give in to what was beginning to bubble up inside her and run screaming for the dubious safety of the lift behind her.
A choice of two evils. Like the one she’d had to make between facing Sandro again, or facing what Arthur Bates had in store for her.
Then there was no choice to be made, because the lift doors gave a soft warning whoosh. She almost jumped out of her skin, spinning jerkily around to stare as her one means of escape smoothly closed on her.
‘Well, well,’ Sandro drawled so silkily she winced. ‘Caught like a frightened little mouse in a trap. Poor Joanna. But please,’ he continued before she could retaliate against his biting sarcasm, ‘make yourself at home, if you can,’ He was dry and he was cutting. ‘I need to attend to my injured hand.’
Then he had gone, disappearing through a door and leaving her hovering there, staring dazedly around her.
It was nice, was the first sensible thought to reach through the scramble her mind had become. The lift had opened directly into a large airy sitting-room that reflected Sandro’s very classical Italian tastes much more than his ultra-modern office had done.
Pale pastel-shaded walls made a tasteful backcloth to timeless pieces of elegant antique furniture that blended easily with the more modern oatmeal sofas and easy chairs sitting comfortably on a thick-piled cappuccino-coloured carpet.
No smoked glass to pound his fist into here, she noted wryly—only to feel her breath catch in her throat when she relived the appalling sight of Sandro, of all people, losing control of himself like that. It just wasn’t like him. Sandro had always been the most patient and controlled person she knew.
He had to be, around you, a small voice inside her own head grimly taunted. She sighed, the dark, weighty truth of that sitting heavily on her narrow shoulders.
Then he was back without warning, striding through the door he had disappeared through a few minutes earlier, and instantly any feelings of guilt or remorse she might have been experiencing towards him left, because she was suddenly feeling that inner sun-burst of pleasure begin to erupt all over again, holding her captive; she was mesmerised by the sheer animal sexuality of the man.
His jacket had gone, and his tie; the top button to his pale blue shirt had been yanked impatiently open at his taut brown throat, the sleeves rolled up his hair-peppered arms.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Do this for me.’
She blinked, trying to clear the hypnotic effect he was having on her, her darkened eyes lowering to the snowy white towel he now held to his injured hand.
‘It needs covering until it stops bleeding,’ he explained, holding out a band of sticking plaster to her.
But he was much too close, much too vibrantly, aggressively, electrifyingly real. So real she could feel his body heat, could smell the subtle tangy scent of him. Her fingers fluttered, her nails scraping against the sides of her skirt, lungs beginning to fill her chest as memories swam up from the depths of nowhere, memories of how it had felt to be held against his warm, tight, very masculine body. And she wanted him. She closed her eyes, almost groaned out loud. How badly she wanted to feel this man against her, around her, deep, deep inside her!
‘Joanna!’ His voice was tight, it was angry, and it showed how completely he misunderstood the reason why she was standing here white-faced and quivering like this. ‘I am asking you to place a small plaster on my hand—not take all your damned clothes off!’ Offence shuddered through him on a wave of personal resentment that stiffened his muscles and hardened his face. ‘I will do it myself!’ he raked at her harshly.
‘No!’ she protested, her emotions hitting an all-time high of helpless confusion ‘No,’ she repeated huskily. ‘I’ll do it.’
Quickly she took the dressing from him, plucking it with a snap from his fingers and ripping away its protective paper casing.
In hot, acid silence, he let her remove the covering towel and inspect the damage, her trembling fingertips carefully checking for tiny shards of glass while her teeth clamped hard into her tense bottom lip because his eyes were boring into the top of her bent head with such bitter antipathy.
‘Can you feel anything in that?’ she asked, pressing gently either side of the open cut.
‘No.’
‘It isn’t as bad as it could have been,’ she remarked, as casually as she could. ‘It was a stupid thing to do, Sandro.’
‘Believing me capable of ignoring your sister’s death was stupid.’
Joanna grimaced. It was true, and she had been stupid. Stupid with shock, stupid with grief, stupid in so many ways that at this precise moment she didn’t dare let herself think about most of them.
‘So, tell me how it happened,’ he requested quietly.
Her fingers stilled in the act of smoothing the plaster across his grazed knuckle, then, almost unknowingly, they straightened, stretching out along the length of his. Only Sandro’s fingers were longer than her own, stronger, but beautifully sculptured, the short nails well kept and neatly rounded, his skin warm to the touch.
‘She was on her way to college,’ she murmured in a voice devoid of emotion. ‘Standing at the bus stop when a car ploughed into her. Its breaks had failed,’ she explained. ‘The driver lost control... Molly wasn’t the only one to be killed outright,’ she said flatly. ‘Three more people died and another three were seriously injured. It was in all the newspapers at the time,’ she added huskily. ‘Names printed. Addresses...’ Which was why she had been so sure that Sandro had to have heard what had happened. Even if he’d missed her phone call, he couldn’t have possibly missed the press coverage.
And quite suddenly she began to shake with those wretched violent spasms that had been catching her out when she least needed them. Sandro muttered something in Italian and the next thing Joanna knew she was being folded against him and held there fast by determined arms.
‘Weep on me if you want to,’ he invited thickly. ‘You never know, I may even join you!’
A joke? No, he wasn’t joking; the situation was just too wretched to turn into a joke. But she didn’t weep. She hadn’t wept in years, couldn’t weep—wouldn’t weep.
Why? Because she knew that if she so much as gave in to the smallest sob, then the floodgates would open wide and the whole lot would come pouring out.
Everything—everything.
So instead she just stood there, letting him hold her, gaining some small measure of comfort from his all-encompassing embrace. But she needed to cry—she knew that, in some deep, dark place in her; she knew she was teetering right on the very edge of a complete mental collapse if she didn’t release some of the monsters lurking inside her.
‘I am sorry I wasn’t here for you, cara,’ he murmured.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she mumbled into his warm brown throat.
It was the wrong thing to say, obviously, because he was suddenly angry again. ‘Of course it damned well matters!’ he rasped, pulling away from her to leave her standing alone, feeling cold and deserted, having to fight a desperate urge to throw herself against him again. ‘You make a cry to me for help for the first time ever—and I do not answer you!’ His sigh was harsh as he abruptly spun his back towards her. ‘Of course it bloody well matters,’ he repeated gruffly.
And here I am, thought Joanna, one year later, and making another cry for help. Only this time it’s money I want, not commiseration.
No comparison.
Which also brought her neatly back to the reason why she was here at all.
Money. The one commodity which Sandro had in abundance, and in which she had never shown the slightest interest before. In fact, how they’d ever got to the stage of wanting to marry each other was a real enigma to her. She’d lived in a cheap bedsit and waited on other people for a living. Sandro’s homes were all in the very best places. His London townhouse was in Belgravia, for instance, and h
is elegant Italian apartment a mere stone’s throw away from Rome’s Colosseum.
Even this penthouse, this small-by-comparison apartment that she hadn’t known existed until today, was something out of the ordinary to a girl like her. But a handy apartment situated above his place of business was a reflection of the man’s wealthy lifestyle.
In short, Sandro came from top-drawer Italian stock and had never waited on another person in his life. He lived surrounded by luxury, he travelled in luxury, he wore luxury like a mantle that demonstrated his exclusivity.
Yet what had happened to this very exclusive man? He’d taken one look at the little waitress in a tiny backstreet Italian restaurant, and had seemed to fall flat on his very exclusive face for her.
She’d never understood it. But had never thought to question it because she’d been so young then, so innocent and naïve and eager to fall in love and be loved by this man who, to her besotted eyes, had been a god among men.
And he’d treated her with such tender loving care—wooed her in the old-fashioned way, with flowers and small presents and gentle kisses that had not been allowed to get out of hand even though they’d both known it was frustrating the hell out of both of them.
‘I want to marry you with respect. I want you to come to me wearing the white of a virgin and to know I am paying the correct price for the gift of that virginity.’
Oh, dear God, she thought painfully now. Beautiful words, warm and caring—enchantingly romantic words. Words that had given him idol status in her impressionable mind.
But it had been those same beautiful words that had finally ruined it all for them.
Would always ruin any hope they had of being anything but poison to each other.
Suddenly he spun back to face her. Their eyes caught, and she wondered if his own thoughts had been taking him down similar painful pathways because he looked so damned sad.
‘Did she feel anything?’ he asked. ‘Was she in any pain before she—?’
He meant Molly. He had been thinking about her sweet-natured baby sister, not herself. She shook her head. ‘It was instant, so they tell me. She would not have known much about it.’
The Marriage Surrender Page 5