‘You should know; you bought it,’ she tossed deflatingly back.
‘From now on you will dress as I want you to dress,’ he smoothly declared. ‘It is part of your therapy that you will dress up to your beauty and not down to your low opinion of yourself.’
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that so she didn’t try to look for one, because he was only telling it how it was. She did dress down, but she always had done; it wasn’t something that had developed because of what had happened to her. She’d always had an aversion to pandering to vanity—perhaps because that was what her mother had done. Until she became ill, her mother’s life had revolved around how to get the best from herself. It had never seemed to occur to her that she was naturally pretty; she’d felt she had to work at it constantly, to the point where more often than not she’d gone right over the top.
Not that Sandro was likely to dress her in over-the-top garments, because his own sense of good taste just would not let him.
‘What’s happened to your housekeeper?’ she asked in a clear change of subject. ‘She hasn’t been near the place today, as far as I can tell.’
‘I’ve given her the next couple of weeks off,’ he explained, pouring a bone-dry Chianti into lead crystal wine glasses. ‘I thought we could do with the privacy while we get used to each other again.’
Privacy so he could keep the pressure on her, Joanna corrected silently. She might be neurotic but she wasn’t a fool; she knew he was still a man on a mission.
Which effectively ruined any hopes of them sharing this meal with any more harmony than they had shared during lunch. By the time it was over she felt so damned uptight that when Sandro climbed to his feet she almost jumped out of her wits.
‘I will go and get my shower and change now, if you don’t mind,’ he said coolly, ignoring her reaction.
‘Fine,’ she said, coming to her feet herself. ‘I’ll just clear up here, then I think I’ll go to bed,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I’m very tired...’
Hint—big hint. She expected another argument; she expected him to order her to stay right where she was until he got back.
But, ‘Suit yourself,’ was all he said as he walked away. ‘I’ll use another room so I won’t disturb you.’
Another room. Joanna wilted in sinking relief, only to come upright again almost immediately when it suddenly occurred to her that he was behaving out of character by saying that!
What was he up to? she wondered as she cleared away the dinner things. Why ease the pressure now, after piling it on so steadily throughout the long day?
Well, there was one thing for sure, she decided: she wasn’t hanging around to find out!
So she was shut safely in her room and curled up in bed by the time she heard him come out of that other bedroom further down the hallway.
He didn’t even pause to listen at her closed door as he passed by it.
She frowned, not understanding him—not understanding him one little bit! She didn’t understand herself either, because there was something niggling at her insides that felt very much like disappointment.
She fell asleep like that, still niggled, still tense, clutching a spare pillow to her front as if it were a magic charm that could ward off any unwanted callers.
Yet, if that was its function, it didn’t work. The unwanted callers came in her dreams. She supposed she should have expected it after what she’d been through over the last couple of days. As it was, she woke up sweating, gasping for breath in the darkened bedroom, frightened and disorientated for the few fevered seconds it took her to remember where she was. Then she just lay there, waiting for it all to fade away again.
But it didn’t fade away, and she knew she was going to have to get up and out of here while she gave herself time to get over the whole horror.
She was just about to slide out of the bed when her hand touched something very warm and alive lying next to her, and all of a sudden everything inside her went haywire, shooting her into a sitting position as her mouth opened wide and she let loose an ear-piercing scream.
It brought Sandro awake with a start that had him sitting up too, before he had even opened his eyes. ‘What the hell—?’ he gasped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘OH,’ JOANNA whispered in quivering relief. ‘It’s you.’
‘Who the hell else would be sleeping next to you?’ Sandro rasped, so angry that she realised he was responding to her shock, not her comments.
‘Bad dream,’ she breathed in an attempted explanation.
‘Ah,’ he said, for once sounding the disconcerted one. Then, more gently, ‘Are you OK?’
She shook her head, fighting not to suffocate in air that, to her, reeked of the stench of stale beer and male body odour. It was amazing how the subconscious mind could be so brutally authentic when it wanted to torture you.
‘I can’t stay here,’ she said, and scrambled out of bed to drag on her robe. She hurried from the room without even bothering to ask what he was doing in her bed! It didn’t seem that important when other far more dreadful horrors were having a field day in her mind.
The rest of the apartment was in darkness, the quietness in itself almost as suffocating as the room she had just left. Still trembling in the aftermath, she made for the drawing room, her bare feet moving silently on cool mosaic flooring as she walked down the hall and pushed open the drawing room door.
It was dark in there, too; her hand lifted, fumbling along the wall beside the door in search of a light switch. The room came alive with a clever burst of subdued lighting from several strategically placed table lamps,
Still shaking, she moved across to a lemon sofa and curled herself into one corner while she waited for her skin to stop crawling and her heart to stop hammering.
Yet the dream had not been as bad as it could have been. In the beginning—after she’d finally left Sandro and was living with Molly, which was when the dreams had first begun—she’d used to wake up screaming so hysterically that it used to frighten poor Molly out of her wits!
Much as she had just done to Sandro, she realised, frowning because it was just beginning to sink in that he had been in bed with her.
He came into the drawing room then, dressed in a hastily knotted short black cotton robe that did nothing to dampen his masculinity. ‘What happened back there?’ he demanded, the coils of sleep still showing around the lazy fringes of his eyes.
‘I told you. Bad dream. What were you doing in my bed?’ she countered.
Yawning, he threw himself into a chair opposite her. ‘Where you sleep, I sleep,’ he answered simply. ‘It is what husbands and wives do.’
Well, not this husband and wife, Joanna thought. ‘You said you would use another room,’ she reminded him.
‘To shower,’ he clarified, yawned again, then had the gall to begin to fall back to sleep as he lounged in the chair!
‘Go away, Sandro,’ she snapped, more to wake him up than to give him his marching orders. ‘I’ll be OK here on my own.’
Then she frowned again, because she’d suddenly remembered that she used to say the very same thing to Molly. Go away, I’ll be OK. But she never was OK, was she? She used to shiver and shake, much as she was doing now, and poor Molly would hover anxiously, not knowing how to react.
Oh, Molly, she thought, and tipped back her head to sigh heavily as she closed her weary eyes. Why did all of this have to happen? Why did you have to die, and why did I have to end up being like this?’
‘Joanna...’
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘I’m busy missing Molly.’
Strange thing to say, yet he seemed to understand because he got up, ran a tired hand through his tumbled hair, then said quietly, ‘What about a warm drink?’
‘Mmm,’ she accepted, ‘that sounds nice.’ Mainly because it was easier than saying no.
He left the room and she went back to thinking about her sister. Poor Molly had worried so much about her, she remembered. The way she’d lived, like a
lifeless zombie, the way she’d snapped if Molly tried to ask questions. And the way the dreams had used to come and scare the living daylights out of both of them. So much so that in the end, she’d felt compelled to give Molly some explanation, because her sister had been ready to put all of the blame onto Sandro.
By then Molly had her own little flat, not far from the London college she’d been studying at. It had been a kind of compromise in the end, that Molly would continue her studies so long as Joanna—with Sandro’s financial help—would let her live near the campus.
Her marriage had fallen into such dire straits by then that she had actually been glad to get her sister out of Sandro’s home, because then they could at least be open about all the stress between them, instead of having to pretend nothing was the matter for Molly’s sake.
Or maybe Molly had felt the tension anyway and had been relieved to get away from it, Joanna grimly suggested to herself. She wouldn’t have blamed Molly if that was the truth of it; those first few months of her marriage had been absolutely dreadful, with Sandro insisting that they share a bed even though she spent the whole night clinging to the edge of the mattress so she wouldn’t turn over and cling to him instead.
But once Molly moved out, so Joanna moved out—of his bedroom.
Now it seemed that that situation had gone into a complete reversal. She was back living with Sandro, and he was back sharing her bed.
He returned with two steaming cappuccinos liberally sprinkled with cocoa. He put them down on the coffee table but instead of going back to his own chair sat himself down right in next to her, so the firmness of his hips pressed against the curve of her stomach. Smiling down at her, he lifted a hand to gently remove a red-gold skein of hair from her cheek, then kissed her.
She didn’t flinch, wasn’t even close to flinching because the kiss was so openly passive.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Sorry if I frightened you,’ she added.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he murmured. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’
‘If I say no will you start bullying me?’ she countered wryly.
‘No.’ His reply was deep and sincere, and it did things to her insides she found very confusingly nice. ‘I find that even I am not quite that ruthless,’ he admitted with a small wry grimace.
‘You are ruthless enough to sleep in my bed uninvited,’ Joanna pointed out.
‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘And anyway, you never even noticed me getting in it, so what are you complaining about?’
‘I wasn’t complaining,’ she argued. ‘I was merely making a protest.’
‘No, you were not,’ he smiled, still gently stroking that now very tidy coil of hair round her earlobe. ‘You were searching for an excuse so you could let me stay there without you having to kick up a fuss.’
‘What a lie!’ she objected.
‘Is it?’ he quizzed. ‘Then, what if I promise to keep the bad dreams away if you let me stay in your bed? Will that do?’
It was stupid, she knew, but his gentle teasing caused tears to suddenly bulged in her eyes.
‘Ah, don’t do that, cara,’ Sandro pleaded unsteadily. ‘It cut me up enough hearing you weep this morning.’
‘You never even noticed,’ she choked out accusingly.
‘See this fist?’ he demanded, showing her the one with the plaster that still covered the bruising. ‘It almost had a matching one.’
It was pure impulse that made Joanna reach out with both hands to draw his uninjured fist to her cheek for safe-keeping. It moved him; that one simple gesture seemed to move him so deeply that her tears came back all over again.
Why? Because even she realised it was the first time she had voluntarily reached out and touched him like that in so long. It was wretched.
‘Come on.’ He sounded suddenly unlike himself. ‘I’m taking you back to bed,’ he said, gathering her into his arms and standing up with her, ‘where I am going to hold you close for the rest of the night. And if you argue I am going to kiss you senseless. That’s the deal, cara,’ he stated firmly, not seeming to have noticed that she wasn’t arguing. ‘Sleeping, or kissing.’
‘No bartering. No haggling?’ she said drily.
He grinned. ‘You want to haggle? I should warn you first that I am very good. It is the banker in me. I can haggle the pants off the best of them,’
Wrong choice of words, perhaps, but Joanna chose to ignore them. She was too tired, for one thing. But mainly she was simply too weary of running for cover all the time. Perhaps Sandro was right, she mused sleepily as he lowered her feet to the floor by the bed so he could deal with her robe before urging her back into the bed.
He joined her in seconds, removing his own robe to reveal a pair of loose white boxer shorts that did little to disguise his masculinity. Yet she didn’t feel threatened, felt no desire to pull away from him when he collected her unresisting body to his.
Maybe he was right: the more he touched her, the more she would grow to accept it. Maybe the baring of her darkest secrets this morning had exorcised the ghosts. Maybe they really did have a chance at making a go of this, after all...
She could not have been more wrong about anything she discovered the next morning.
Joanna awoke at dawn to the sound of a bird singing on the ledge outside the window and lay listening to it for ages before eventually rolling over with the intention of drifting back to sleep again.
It was then and only then, as she found herself staring into his face, that she remembered.
Almost instantly the alarm bells began to ring inside her, then died away again when she realised he was still fast asleep, with a strong brown arm thrown across the pillow just above her resting head.
She went still, relaxing into the mattress while she indulged herself in the rare luxury of looking at him without having to worry about doing it.
He was, she acknowledged, as beautiful in sleep as he was awake, and stimulatingly vital. So dark, so feature-perfect, so lean and tight—that impressive torso of his shamelessly naked so she could lie here and feast on firm chest muscles densely dusted by a layer of springy black hair. Feast on this man who, for some reason she had never been able to understand, had wanted this little waitress when he could have had anyone.
It had been his misfortune, she thought sadly. Because—look at him, she told herself: tall, dark and handsome as he was, strong, stubborn and determined as he was. And even though he had carried her back here to this bed, and virtually coiled himself around her, there was not a single point at which their bodies brushed now,
Why? she asked herself with an aching sadness that stemmed directly from guilt. Because she knew that he had become so well conditioned during their marriage not to let himself come close to her. Even while he slept he was still maintaining that maxim now, in his subconscious.
A sigh whispered from her, the kind that told her she should be thinking of sliding out of this bed before Sandro woke up and yet another round of mental torment would begin as he probed what she was thinking and feeling about this situation when she just didn’t know how she felt about it. She was confused—extremely confused.
I love you, Alessandro, she whispered with a melancholy softness inside her head. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to you.
She might as well have shouted the words at him because his dark lashes suddenly fluttered away from his eyes, catching her exposed and vulnerable, catching her with nowhere to run and hide.
He didn’t move, he didn’t speak, and neither did she. Their eyes caught in that one long knowing moment as everything that had ever gone before it flooded painfully through her then ebbed away.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, because she felt the need to say something and that was all she could come up with just then.
His long, lush lashes lifted higher, revealing yet more of those rich, dark, slumberous eyes as he glanced at the silk-draped window through which a golden dawn was see
ping softly into the room.
‘Around five at a guess,’ he judged, then the eyes were back on her again. ‘You had a bad dream last night,’ he seemed compelled to remind her.
She nodded. ‘I remember.’
Another silence fell between them. Not tense, for a change, but wary. Because that barrier of space still lay between them? she wondered. Neither of them had moved so much as a finger or toe since he’d opened his eyes. She was afraid to, too frightened of beginning what she sensed was only just staying hidden beneath the surface of all this uncanny stillness.
‘It’s still early,’ he murmured. ‘Go back to sleep. We have a couple more hours left before we need to think about moving from here...’
Sleep, she repeated to herself as she watched his eyes close, watched those lashes lower over rich brown irises then settle against his satin-smooth cheekbones.
Sleep, when her hands wanted to reach out and stroke him, when her lips wanted to taste that warm, dark skin.
Sleep, where she would only dream of him, instead . of lying here being able to look at the real thing.
No, she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to stay wide awake and hoard the moment, gather it up and hold it close as she always did with her special moments with this special man.
Then, that strong brown arm above her head moved—not much—but the corded muscles flexed a little and she was instantly aware of the defensive tensing of her own muscles in response.
His eyes flicked open as if he sensed the very moment when all the old anxieties came bubbling up inside her. Anger sparked in their dark brown depths, and she didn’t blame him for letting it because he hadn’t even touched her! Hadn’t so much as accidentally brushed a single hair on her head!
‘I’m sorry,’ she jerked out anxiously.
‘Too damned late,’ he bit back, and suddenly he was most definitely touching her, his naked upper torso rolling across her, hot and hard, pressing her into the mattress, big arms curving about her head so his hands could frame her anxious face. ‘One day soon,’ he muttered, ‘I am going to drag you out from behind your insecurities and lay you out naked in front of me! Then I am going to devour you, cara mia! I am going to eat every single last morsel of you and not even bother to spit out the bones!’
The Marriage Surrender Page 13
