‘Lunch,’ he announced. ‘Five minutes, in the kitchen, cara.’
Lunch, Joanna repeated silently as she watched the door draw shut behind his retreating figure. The emotional holocaust was over, so it was back to normal.
The man must have emotions cased in steel, she decided bitterly.
Then she remembered the rose still clutched in her hand, and bitterness changed to a melting softness that threatened to bring the tears rushing back again.
She made herself join him for lunch, simply because she had had previous experience of what happened if she went against him; she knew what came next when Sandro used that coolly detached tone of voice.
But she refused to look at him, refused to so much as acknowledge his presence in the kitchen as she sat down at the table already laid out with steaming hot pasta topped with a delicious-smelling sauce.
‘Help yourself,’ he invited, sitting down opposite her.
Silently she did so, spooning a small amount from the dish onto her plate, then breaking off a chunk of warm bread while he watched her, saying nothing. Yet even his silence was critical.
He waited until she had forced the first forkful to her reluctant mouth and swallowed it before deciding to help himself, and every move he made, every perfectly normal gesture, played across her nerve-ends like static along live wire.
They sat through the whole meal like that: silent, tense—she forcing herself to eat because she did not want the sarcastic comments if she gave up on the first food she’d allowed into her stomach in more than twenty-four hours. And he, she suspected, was aware that her self-control was being held together by the merest thread which he did not want to snap.
And, to be fair, the food improved with each mouthful; Sandro was a surprisingly good cook. He enjoyed it, he’d told her once during one of those rare moments of harmony when they had been moving about his Belgravia kitchen preparing dinner together on his housekeeper’s day off.
But those moments had been very few and far between. Most of the time there’d been this same tension between them. Tension, tension, tension...
‘What now?’ she asked huskily when the silent meal was finally over.
He glanced up, looking startled by her voice, as though he had forgotten she was even there. Their eyes clashed, then his became hooded again. She wasn’t surprised; Sandro had not looked her directly in the face once since she’d made her grand confession.
‘I have to go to my office here for an hour or two,’ he said, with a quick glance at his watch. ‘I suggest you try to rest,’ he advised. ‘You look—wrung out.’
Washed out, wrung out and hung out to dry was probably more truthful. ‘I mean...about this—situation...’ She made it clearer. ‘I need to know what you intend to do now.’
He leaned back in his chair, the action so graceful it drew her eyes towards him, to his shirt-front, then to the long, lean length of his upper torso.
The man with everything, she thought to herself, and grimaced. Good looks, great body, loads of class and style and sophistication. And, of course, there was that other extra ingredient he possessed in abundance called sex appeal.
The kind of sex appeal that few women were able to resist. She’d seen it happen so many times—all he needed to do was walk into a room full of people to automatically become the centre of attention for every female present
Old and young alike; it didn’t make any difference. He possessed what Molly had used to call charisma—that special quality which turned just a chosen few into stars.
‘Do?’ he repeated, bringing her blue gaze fluttering up towards his face, then instantly down and away from it again. ‘But I have just told you what I intend to do,’ he coolly informed her. ‘I will spend the rest of today attempting to clear my desk so I can keep tomorrow free for us to drive to Orvieto.’
Tomorrow—the beautiful villa in the brochure he had shown her, she had forgotten all about that! ‘But I th-thought...’ Her voice trailed off, her bewilderment so clear that Sandro sighed.
‘Nothing has changed, cara,’ he said. ‘You are still my wife and I am still the man to whom you are married. This is still only the second day of this new life we are building, and, whatever transpires, you will remain my wife and I will remain your husband. You understand me?’
She understood only too well. She understood why relief was flooding through her right now—followed by the expected burst of alarm. But she also understood that he was reminding her of one very small but important point she seemed to have forgotten throughout all of this.
Mainly, that there was no way out for either of them. They had been married in accordance with the Roman Catholic faith, had made their vows to each other in front of God. Under Church law, that meant no going back, no matter how sour the marriage became. Therefore she was, in his eyes, his responsibility for life—for richer or poorer, for better or for worse.
Just another point of conflict for them to bite on, she concluded. Because when she’d let him marry her, knowing what she did, she had been playing him false.
‘Y-you could get an annullment,’ she suggested. ‘I would support your claim if you wanted to go to the Church and ask for a release from your vows to me.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Sandro drawled, coming to his feet with a suddenness that spoke of anger. ‘That is so very kind of you, cara, to allow me the pleasure of offering myself up for public ridicule by announcing to all and sundry that I have not been man enough to make love to my own wife!’
Joanna flushed at his sarcasm. ‘I was only trying to be objective about the situation!’ she snapped.
‘Well, don’t bother, if that is the only idea you can come up with,’ he advised, then was suddenly leaning over her, one hand placed on the table, the other on the back of her chair, effectively trapping her, while his eyes made glinting contact with hers at last. ‘Because you owe me, Joanna,’ he informed her grimly. ‘You owe me my pride, my self-respect, and my belief in myself as an acceptable member of the human race. None of that has changed simply because I now know why you treated me the way you did.’
‘You want revenge,’ she whispered in appalled understanding.
‘I want—reparation,’ he corrected.
‘Oh, very Italian,’ she mocked, turning her face away from him because looking at him hurt—hurt every which way she thought about it.
‘No,’ he muttered. And she wasn’t sure what angered him the most, her turning away or her mockery, but suddenly he was taking hold of her chin and tugging it back round to face him. ‘This is very Italian!’ he rasped.
Then his mouth was crushing her mouth with a kiss aimed to make a statement, a very angry sexual statement. It was ruthless and it was savage, he was parting her lips to deepen the kiss without any compunction.
She mumbled a protest and closed her eyes tightly shut, her body stiffening instinctively within the grip of his hands while she waited for the expected burst of panic to go rolling through her.
But it didn’t come; instead she felt pleasure, a too long subdued, aching kind of pleasure that flared up from the very depths of her dark memories to rage in a pulse-singing rampage that had her lips parting and moving in hungry rhythm with his.
What’s happening to me? she wondered deliriously. I should be fighting him like a lunatic. I need to fight him!
But she didn’t fight him. Instead her hands flew up, clutching at his wide shoulders, then shifting in a hectic jerk to clasp him around the back of his neck. Her fingers tingled as they ran urgently into his hair, revelled in the muscles cording his nape as she drew him closer. She gave herself up to the intense pleasure she discovered in the warm, moist hollow of his hungry mouth.
Someone groaned, she wasn’t certain who, but in another moment she was standing, her chair pushed out of the way and her body pressed against the full length of his. Sandro’s hands were stroking her, moving in sensually urgent caresses from underarms to waist, then back up again, his thumbs brushing against the s
ides of her breasts. They responded by pulsing into tight, tingling life, ecstatic to join in with the whole wild conflagration.
She was on fire—that quickly and that violently—she was on fire for him, could hear his fractured breathing, could feel the fire burning through him, too, as he pressed himself even closer, letting her feel the strength of his desire, letting her know by the way he deepened the kiss even further that he was very aware of what was happening to her.
Then he was putting distance between them, prising his mouth from hers to hold her at arm’s length while his eyes spat a bloody kind of anger at her and his kiss-swollen mouth pulsed with an undisguised passion.
‘Well, that was a revelation,’ he mocked with silken cruelty.
But she was much too shocked to appreciate the mockery. She just stared at him, dazed and shaken, still lost within her own stunningly passionate response to what had begun as a punishment and ended up as the most intensely erotic kiss she had ever—ever experienced.
‘Keep this up, mi amore,’ he continued in that same taunting vein, ‘and reparation is going to be well worth the years I have waited to get it!’
She flinched, his cruelty finally managing to get through the haze. ‘I can’t bear this,’ she breathed in stark confusion.
‘Correction,’ he clipped. ‘You are bearing it very well, if my senses are telling me the real truth of it.’
And, to punctuate the humiliating point, he kissed her again, capturing her mouth but waiting only long enough for her lips to cling helplessly to his before he brutally separated them again.
‘See what I mean, cara?’ he drawled. ‘You want me so badly you cannot hide it any longer.’
Letting go of her altogether, he watched her sway dizzily, her long lashes fluttering dazedly over her darkened blue eyes.
Then, drily, he remarked, ‘Tonight should be interesting.’ On that strategically-placed barb he strode coolly for the door, tossing casually over his shoulder, ‘And just in case you consider trying it,’ he warned, ‘the lift will not be operational to this floor until I return. So don’t start any fires, cara—not while I am away at least.’
And with that he was gone, leaving her with that tasty little tit-bit to chew over.
Tonight, he had said—and said it calculatingly. Which, in turn, could only mean one thing.
Weakly she sank back into the chair. It was all getting worse by the minute.
It didn’t matter one bit to him that she had just bared her very soul to him. He wanted reparation and he was determined to get it. And reparation could only come in one form as far as he was concerned.
Sandro fully intended to make their marriage a real one tonight.
Consequently she was in a state of high anxiety by the time he returned that evening. Out of sheer desperation she had kept herself busy throughout the afternoon—clearing their lunch away, tidying her bed but refusing to so much as take a step towards the other bedroom Sandro had used the last time she had been here. Then she went to search out something to cook for dinner, something mind-consuming enough to stop her driving herself into hysterics at the terrible sense of helplessness that was just too familiar to her to deal sensibly with it.
It didn’t matter that she knew without a doubt Sandro would never, ever use force on her; that awful feeling of utter helplessness still ate away at her nerves as she stood rolling gnocchi—tiny bite-sized potato dumplings—and prepared her own fresh pasta—all learned during her time at Vito’s restaurant. She could cook French food too, and English, of course, and she wasn’t too bad with Chinese dishes—again picked up during various restaurant jobs.
But this was an Italian man’s kitchen, so the ingredients in it were mainly Italian. So gnocchi it would be for starters, dropped into a rich, hot butter sauce and followed by a pasta bake, packed with mushrooms, onions and peppers in a creamy sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese.
‘Mmm,’ a light voice said. ‘This all looks and smells very wifely.’
Joanna spun round from the sauce she was grimly stirring. ‘I am not sleeping with you tonight, Sandro!’ she told him shrilly.
She looked hot, she looked bothered, she looked just about ready to fall apart at the seams. She had tied her hair back in an unattractive tight knot on the top of her head, and she had changed out of the jeans and dragged on the most unflattering items of clothing she could find in the wardrobe: white wide-legged trousers and a long black jumper that was suffocating her in the heat permeating the kitchen.
He, by contrast, looked cool and at ease and as usual, very stylish, even though the jacket to his suit had gone, along with his tie, and the cuffs of his shirt sleeves had been unbuttoned and left to hang loose about his strong brown wrists.
‘What are you making?’ He walked forward, ignoring what she’d said to him. ‘Gnocchi?’ he quizzed, glancing over her shoulder to see the tiny dumplings gently simmering in a pan on the cooker. ‘I married an Englishwoman with an Italian heart!’
‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she repeated, turning back to the sauce she had been working on when he came in.
‘Shall I find some wine to go with this, or have you already done it?’
‘No wine,’ she snapped, ‘I don’t want wine—I want you to listen to me!’
‘That pan is non-stick, cara,’ he pointed out gently. ‘You will take its protective coating off if you stir it as violently as that. I’ll go and find a bottle of white, in case you change your mind later...’
He moved off; she spun again. ‘Sandro!’ she called after him, and it was a wretched cry from the heart.
It stopped him, but he didn’t turn. ‘I am not listening to you, Joanna,’ he informed her flatly. ‘It is time to come to terms with what happened to you. Three years of your life is quite long enough to devote to the experience.’ Then, ‘Mamma mia!’ he added with tragic Latin drama as he continued walking. ‘It is more than long enough!’
‘You’re so damned insensitive!’ she sobbed furiously after him. ‘I hate you! If you so much as touch me my skin will shrivel!’
He didn’t even bother to answer that one, disappearing into a utility room off the kitchen, which led through to his impressively well-stocked wine cellar, leaving her standing there feeling bitten through to her very centre with a helpless, anguished frustration. It wasn’t fair! she thought tragically. She had taken enough—more than enough—over the last two days, yet still he wouldn’t listen to reason!
A tear tried to roll down her cheek but she angrily swiped it away, going back to her sauce as if her life depended on it He came back with a bottle of wine, found an ice bucket and emptied a tray of cubes into it before adding the bottle. From her station by the stove Joanna grimly ignored him, while every single sensor she possessed was on full alert to pick up exactly what he was doing and where he was doing it as he moved around the hot kitchen.
‘How long?’ he asked
‘Tw—twenty minutes.’
‘Then you have time to get a quick shower and change,’ he opined. ‘You can safely leave the rest to me.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Don’t argue, Joanna,’ he interrupted, coming to stand behind her and taking the spoon right out of her hand. ‘You are hot,’ he stated, turning her round to face him,
‘you are uptight, and you are not going to close that door on me again,’ he added determinedly. ‘So, be sensible and go and make yourself comfortable before we sit down to eat. You know I am not going to hurt you in any way, amore,’ he tagged on gently. ‘At least let your common sense tell you that.’
She sniffed, her unhappy face bowed, unable to let her common sense tell her anything while he was standing so close. His sleeve-cuffs were still dangling, she noticed inconsequently, which made them dangerous around a hot cooker. Automatically she reached out to fold one up his arm for him. He didn’t say a word but let her tidy him, even holding out the other arm when she’d finished with the first, so she could see to that too.
‘Y
ou can’t possibly begin to understand how I’m feeling right now,’ she said shakily.
‘Then explain it to me.’
But she shook her head, watching his gold Rolex watch appear as she folded back the white cuff of his shirt, seeing brown skin and dark hair, strong muscle and sinew.
She could also picture this man naked, walking towards her, his eyes so black she could see the twin fires of a powerful desire burning brightly behind them.
Sucking in a sharp, shaken gulp of air, she moved around him, away from him, out of the room at the speed of light, that vision one she had not seen in a long time—and it scared her as much now as it had done when it actually happened. Here, in this apartment, in his bedroom, on their wedding night.
He’d been right about the shower and the change of clothes; she did feel more comfortable, though no less uptight, when she went back to find that Sandro had set the table in the small dining room just off the kitchen. Like all of his homes, this apartment had two sides to it its homely side and its formal side. One set of rooms devoted entirely to personal creature comforts, the other for entertaining on a grand scale.
Not that she had ever been present when Sandro had entertained like that, she remembered heavily. She had been too shot through with insecurities for him to dare expose himself to the embarrassment of showing off his neurotic wife.
So they’d spent most of their year living together more or less isolated from other people—except for Molly, of course, who had lived with them for the first six months.
‘Here, take these,’ Sandro said as she walked into the kitchen. He was holding out two warm plates wrapped in a linen teatowel. ‘I want to open the wine before I bring it in...’
All very normal, she noted. Very let’s-pretend-everything-is-fine! Tight-lipped, she took the plates from him and carried them into the small dining room. She found he’d lit candles and wanted to smash the damn china over his head!
Which meant the tension between them had the same effect as nettle rash as they sat down together to eat.
‘Pretty dress,’ he remarked, long lashes sweeping down over his eyes as he took in the simple but classical lines of the royal-blue silk shift dress she had chosen to wear.
The Marriage Surrender Page 12