And there it had been—like all the old songs said—something about her smile.
Matteo had never really believed in love—considering it something which existed for the rest of the world, but which excluded him. He had seen glimpses of it, but never before had he felt the great rush of passion and protectiveness he experienced with Jennifer that day, which had been the beginning of their tempestuous and ultimately doomed union.
And now?
Now he believed that what had happened had been a cocktail of hormones which had combusted at a time in his life when he’d craved some kind of excitement. He had been right all along. Love was not real. It was a story they fed you which sold movies and books. That was all.
Jennifer rubbed distractedly at her forehead. ‘This lift is taking for ever.’
He had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed.
‘Is it?’ he questioned, as there was a sudden lurching kind of movement, followed by complete and deafening silence. Matteo looked from the disbelieving accusation in Jenny’s eyes to the stationary arrow on the illuminated panel. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he mused. ‘Seems like we’ve run into a little trouble.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘You think I’d joke about something like that? You think perhaps I’ve set this up?’ he demanded. ‘Lured you into this lift so that I can be alone with you?’
Jennifer turned glacial blue eyes on him. ‘And have you?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Have I? Believe me when I tell you, cara, that I can think of a lot more agreeable companions to be stuck with than a woman who does not seem to know the reason of the word “trust”!’
‘And I’d rather be with the devil himself than some arrogant and egotistical sex maniac who can’t resist chasing anything in a skirt!’
His black eyes narrowed as he felt the bubble of rage begin to simmer up. ‘You dishonour me with such a description!’ he declared furiously.
‘It’s the truth!’
‘Ah, but it is not the truth, and deep down you know that, Jenny! You saw the amount of women who threw themselves at me! It was never the other way round.’
Yes. Those women who would pass him their telephone numbers openly in restaurants, right in front of her face, as if she were just part of the furniture. Or those others, who would use more devious methods to get the attention of the devastatingly handsome actor.
The shop assistants and the flight attendants who would slyly slide him their details. The doctors and lawyers who would invent the need for a meeting with him. It seemed that none of them had any shame—any woman with a pulse wanted her husband.
‘Did you ever stop to think what it was like for me, as your wife?’ she demanded.
‘Of course I did! You made it damned impossible for me to do otherwise!’
‘Did you? I think you used to treat it as an amusing little game—batting those gorgeous eyes as if to say, I’m not even doing anything, and still they bother me!’
‘Oh, Jenny—that was your insecurity talking, not mine. I’d gone beyond the stage where I needed fans to bolster my ego.’ His eyes darkened. ‘But, beyond refusing to leave the house, the only way to stop women coming on to me was to increase our security—and that brought its own claustrophobia.’ There was a pause. ‘And anyway, you know damned well that I pushed those women away.’
‘But you stopped pushing eventually, didn’t you, Matteo?’ she questioned, and she felt that familiar pain stabbing at her heart. And although part of her wondered why she was putting herself through yet more pain, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. ‘When you looked at Sophia. And you wanted her. Are you denying that?’
There was another kind of silence now—fraught and terrible in the already silent lift. Yes, he had been guilty of the sin of desiring another woman, but it should have remained just one of those unacted-upon desires which made up a human life. People were not immune to desiring other people even if they were married. Only the truly naïve believed otherwise. And it was the naïve who fell victim to mistaking that forbidden desire for love. Matteo had seen it, and known it for exactly what it was. Unfortunately, Jenny had not.
He had been filming with Sophia, and their on-screen chemistry had been so hot it had sparked off the set. Everyone in the industry had been talking about it. And eventually Jennifer had got to hear about it.
But even if she hadn’t developed such an obsession with it their marriage had already been at crisis point. Their work schedules had kept them apart so much that all she’d been getting were reports from the newspapers and photos of him with Sophia. She had picked away at the rumours—like a teenager worrying at a blemish on her face—until eventually her jealousy and suspicions had blown up. Trust between them had already been destroyed by the time he had kissed Sophia.
‘You can’t deny it, can you, Matteo?’ she persisted. ‘That you wanted Sophia?’
‘What do you want me to say?’ he demanded. ‘Because by then what I did or didn’t do was irrelevant! We were no longer a real couple. We were so far apart from each other that we might as well have been existing on different planets.’ He looked at her across the confined space and his dark eyes were sombre. ‘You know we were.’
Jennifer bit her lip so that he wouldn’t see it trembling, because now there was pain in his eyes, too, and somehow that made it worse. It was far easier to think that Matteo was immune to the hurt of their break-up. Because if he shared even a fraction of her heartbreak, then somehow that only emphasised the precious thing they had shared and now lost.
‘Oh, what’s the point in discussing it? There’s nothing left to be said.’
Matteo stilled. ‘Well, for the first time in a long time we are of one accord, cara,’ he said softly.
Another barb. Yet more pain. But Jennifer silently thanked her ability to act as she kept her face from reacting and flicked him an impatient look instead. ‘Look, just concentrate on getting us out of this mess, will you, Matt—since you’re the one who got us into it.’
‘Are you implying that I’ve trapped you?’ he laughed softly.
‘No implication,’ she answered. ‘You have.’
He narrowed his eyes and listened. ‘Can you hear anything?’
‘Unfortunately, no.’
‘Got a phone?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. The truly successful never carry phones to events like this, do they?’ he mused. ‘That would make us far too accessible to the big wide world—and there’s always someone to take our messages for us.’
For a moment Jennifer was surprised by the unfamiliar note of cynicism which had crept into his voice. ‘Surely Matteo d’Arezzo hasn’t become disenchanted with the jet-set world which brought him riches and fame?’
‘Isn’t that inevitable?’ he questioned drily. ‘Doesn’t it happen to everyone?’
‘Not to you.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought that success was your very lifeblood.’
‘Success on its own isn’t enough,’ he said tightly. ‘I don’t want to stay on this merry-go-round of a life until it chews me up and spits me out.’
Jennifer blinked. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
He looked at her and his eyes were like chips of jet. ‘Was I really so ruthless, Jenny?’
She thought about the way they’d pored over their working schedules like two prospectors who’d just struck gold and now she recognised her own ruthlessness, too. Oh, how stupidly short-sighted you could be when fame came tapping at your door. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe we both were.’
She felt the hot pricking of sweat on her forehead and ran her tongue over parched lips, noticing that his black gaze was trying not to be drawn to them. She hoped to God that he didn’t think she was giving him the come-on. Fractionally, she moved away from him.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We don’t have a lot of choice. We wait.’
‘For how long?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ Did she think this was easy for him? Her standing so close and off-limits—her luscious body barely covered in some flimsy gown which made her look like…
‘Do you want to sit down?’ he suggested carefully. Because surely that way he wouldn’t have to be confronted by the tantalising thrust of her breasts?
Jennifer didn’t know if she dared move. She was aware that her panties were growing damp and that if she wasn’t careful Matteo would guess. He had always been so perfectly attuned to her body and its needs that his senses would be instantly alerted to the physical manifestations of desire. Briefly, she shut her eyes, summoning thoughts which would kill that desire stone-dead. But it wasn’t easy.
‘You’re okay?’ he asked softly.
She opened them. Think of his betrayal. Of his doing with another woman what he had stood up in church and declared was for her and her alone. ‘Oh, yes—I’m absolutely fine! Just wonderful! I’m trapped in a service lift in a foreign country with my cheating ex-husband. Exactly the way I would choose to spend my Saturday night!’ She rubbed her fingertips against the necklace which was digging into her throat.
‘Why don’t you take that off?’ he suggested, as he saw the red mark she’d left there. Her skin was moist and a damp tendril of hair was clinging to her neck.
She met his eyes. ‘I beg your pardon?’
He gave a snort of savage laughter. ‘Madre de Dio—don’t look at me like that!’
‘I wasn’t looking like anything!’
‘Oh, yes, you were,’ he contradicted softly. ‘With shock and horror written all over your face. As if I were suggesting some kind of striptease when all I meant was that your necklace doesn’t look very comfortable.’ He ran a disparaging glance over the heavy, wide choker which gleamed around her slender neck. ‘Studio told you to wear it, did they?’
‘Yes.’ But he was right. She was aware of the costly gems digging into her flesh, making her feel as if she was wearing some upmarket dog-collar. Blindly, her hand reached up behind her, tried to reach the clasp, but failed—and there was no mirror…
‘You want me to do it for you?’ he questioned.
Jennifer hesitated, because it seemed almost too intimate a thing to do. The putting on and the taking off of a necklace was the kind of thing a husband did for his wife in the seclusion of their bedroom when they were properly married—not about to enter one of the biggest divorce battles of the year. Yet what choice did she have?
‘I guess so. Never has the word “choker” seemed so appropriate,’ she added sardonically.
He gave a wry smile. ‘Turn around, then.’
But, confronted with the sight of her bare back, Matteo found his mind slipping into forbidden places. He silently cursed as he felt his erection grow even harder, thankful that she couldn’t see his face—for he was certain that it had contorted into a pained expression of exquisite sexual frustration.
‘You see…ex-husbands do have some uses,’ he observed evenly, and lifted his fingers to unclasp the necklace, letting it slide into the palm of his hand like a heavy and glittering snake. ‘There. Better?’
‘Much…thank you.’ Jennifer composed her face and turned—noting the dull flush of colour which was accentuating his high cheekbones. She knew what it meant when he looked like that—or at least she thought she did. Was he just getting overheated, or…?
Did he still want her? Was he imagining what they would have been doing in here if they were still married? Him rucking up her dress and pushing at her panties, unzipping himself and thrusting deep inside her, with her back pushed against the steel wall?
Oh, Lord—what was the matter with her? How could the thought of sex with him be so unbearably exciting despite everything that had happened between them? Everything they’d said and thought and done and accused each other of.
‘Do you want me to put it in my pocket?’ he asked.
‘What?’ asked Jennifer blankly.
He held the gems up. ‘This.’
‘Sure.’ She nodded her head and turned away, unwilling to watch him slide them into his trousers, some sixth sense telling her what her eyes did not want to see—that he was hard and aroused.
So why did that thought give her some kind of primitive satisfaction instead of shocking her to the core?
As the minutes ticked by she could feel beads of sweat trickling down her back and a faint dampness gathering beneath the heaviness of her breasts. Shifting her position in her high-heeled shoes, she could see the faint sheen on Matteo’s olive skin, and she swallowed as their eyes met in an uncomfortable moment of awareness.
‘It’s hot,’ he said huskily.
‘Yes.’ She looked into his face because there was nowhere else to look. Nowhere to run. The bare steel walls seemed to be shrinking in on them, and suddenly Jennifer was terrified of this false intimacy—frightened of the sensations which were beginning to creep over her skin and the thoughts which were flooding into her head.
She turned away from him and lifted up her fist, pounding it hard on the metal surface of the wall and wincing as she struck.
‘Help! Let us out!’ she called. But the silence was deafening. She raised her voice. ‘Let us out!’
‘Why do you shout when no one will hear us, Jenny?’
‘Somebody’s got to hear us! Because being in here with you is driving me mad!’
‘I thought you liked that aspect of our relationship.’
‘I wasn’t talking sexual!’
His eyes drifted over the hard points of her nipples. ‘Weren’t you?’
‘Oh, can’t you keep your mind on something other than your bloody libido?’
Matteo almost smiled. She was angry. And she was aroused, too. He knew that with a certainty which only increased his own desire to an almost unbearable pitch. Would he ever again know a woman as intimately as he did this one?
She wished he would stop looking at her. She wished he was anywhere other than here. Because just his presence was making her have the kind of thoughts which were forbidden. Longing thoughts. Wishful thoughts.
‘Help!’ she screamed again, and this time she began to drum both fists against the wall. ‘Please, somebody—help us!’
‘Jenny, don’t—’
But his words inflamed her even more—or maybe she was just in the mood to be inflamed. And seeing his insufferably enigmatic face as he calmly watched her losing it was like pouring paraffin on an already blazing fire. ‘I’ll do as I damn well please!’ she retorted furiously. ‘And you can’t stop me!’
He wanted to marvel, because this raging woman was utterly magnificent, but he could see from the rapid movement of her breathing that she was in danger of hyperventilating. ‘That’s enough! Now, stop it,’ he said flatly.
‘No!’ she yelled, and hot, angry tears began to spill from beneath her eyelids. ‘No, I won’t stop it!’
Swiftly he moved towards her, wrenching her away from the wall, and she whirled round, imprisoned in his arms, and began to beat against his chest instead.
‘Si,’ he urged her softly. ‘Hit me. Hit me if it makes you feel better, cara!’
‘Bastard!’ She slapped him. ‘You bloody, bloody cheating bastard!’
‘Si. That, too.’
‘That’s for that bitch you slept with!’
He took her furious punch without flinching.
‘And so is that!’
She made a little roar of rage as she drummed against his chest until her hands ached. And then suddenly her rage became frustration, and all the fight went out of her, to be replaced by a different kind of emotion. She shook her head, trying to deny it, her hands falling a
s she looked up and saw something change in his eyes, too.
The look of understanding, of empathy, and the fleeting look of sorrow had been replaced by something else. Something she knew all too well and had never thought to see again—even though she had longed for it in the sleepless nights which had followed his departure. And it was wrong. Wrong. Oh, so wrong. He had been to bed with another woman!
‘Was she better than me?’ she demanded.
‘Jenny, stop it.’
‘No, seriously—I want to know. Did you do it to her lots of times? Like you did to me when we first met?’
He winced as if she’d hit him, and then the need to destroy her foolish fantasy simply overwhelmed him. ‘You want to know the truth?’ he exploded. ‘I did it to her once—just once—and it was the biggest non-event of my life. Do you know why that was? Because all I could see was your face, Jenny. All I could feel was your body.’
‘Don’t,’ she croaked.
‘But it’s the truth,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s flawed, and it’s not pretty—but it’s the way it was.’ His black eyes glittered at her bleakly. ‘There—doesn’t that make you feel better now?’
‘Are you kidding?’ she demanded. ‘It still makes me wretched to think of you with another woman, no matter how much you hated it!’
But that was not the whole truth, for the stark admission had made her tremble with an unwelcome new emotion and her heart began to ache with sadness and regret. How the hell had it all come to this? How could love be so quickly transformed into all these other hateful negative emotions?
His eyes blazed black fire as they roved over her trembling lips. ‘You want me,’ he declared unsteadily.
‘No.’ Could he see the terrible need in her? ‘No, I don’t!’
‘Yes. Yes, you do.’ He reached out for her and pulled her into his arms in a movement which felt as natural as breathing.
‘Stop it, Matteo,’ she whispered.
‘You want me to do this.’ He began to massage the little hollow at the base of her spine, the way he’d always done when he wanted her to relax, and as if she was acting on auto-pilot she shut her eyes.
A Scandal, a Secret, a BabyMarriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! Page 17
