‘Us, Joanna,’ he insisted grimly. ‘What those animals did to you, they did to me also. And, like you, I have been paying the price for their actions ever since!’
‘Well, you don’t have to pay the price any more,’ she said, ‘because I am leaving here—even if that means I walk the streets of Rome for ever!’
‘You think I will let you go?’ he mocked. ‘Simply because you are angry at what you see as my betrayal of a confidence?’
At last her cold eyes revealed life, flashing with anger. ‘I trusted Molly to keep my confidence, but she told you,’ she tightly pointed out. ‘Molly trusted you to keep her confidence, but you told your mother. Who has your mother told, Sandro?’ she demanded. ‘How many of the great Bonetti family are by now whispering behind closed doors about the dreadful fate of your sad marriage to a ruined woman?’
‘Oh—no, Joanna!’ his mother put in anxiously. ‘I have told no one! I would not!’
But Joanna wasn’t listening; she had gone way beyond the point of listening to anything anyone had to say to her any more. ‘I feel violated all over again, do you know that?’
Sandro let out a heavy sigh and tried to draw her closer to him, but she wasn’t going to let him. Quite suddenly, she began to shake—shake violently. To shake with anger, horror and a soul-crushing self-revulsion that had always made up a large part of her emotional reaction to what had happened to her.
‘Joanna, don’t do this!’ Sandro muttered, trying to once more draw her closer, but still she wasn’t letting him. ‘Damn it!’ he cursed. Mamma—why could you not just leave well alone!’
‘Sh-she’s right, though, isn’t she?’ Joanna said, pushing her head up to gaze into those grim brown eyes that always seemed so angry now. ‘I should not be doing this to you again. I keep trying to tell you that!’
‘The only thing you are doing to me is hurting me because you hurt.’
‘I am no good to you any more!’
‘You will stop saying things like that!’ he snapped. ‘Because some animals took you against your will, that does not make you untouchable, Joanna!’
‘But it does—don’t you see?’ she cried, her eyes bright, hot and painfully haunted. ‘I had only one thing I could give to you, Sandro! One small thing that made everything perfect. Because you could give me the world where I had so little to offer you, except for that one s-small thing that you thought was so s-special. And they took it!’ she sobbed, her voice lifting to a heart-wrenching shrillness. ‘They stole the only thing I had that I could give to you! N-now I can’t give myself at all!’ she finished achingly. ‘I can’t do it, Sandro. I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it!’
‘Santa Maria?’ Sandro’s mother breathed in pained understanding from somewhere beyond the heavy mists of Joanna’s own helpless anguish.
Sandro said nothing. He just stood there in front of her with his lean dark features turned white. His mouth was clamped shut, his lips drawn inwards so there was barely an outline left on show. His jaw had locked and his eyes had gone so black they were like twin tunnels leading directly to his darkened soul. He tried to swallow but didn’t quite manage it.
Above all, he was trembling—whether he was trembling with appalled comprehension at last, or trembling with sheer bloody anger was difficult to tell.
But Joanna knew she could not stay around to find out. She had to get out of there, away from the apartment, away from the hell it had all become. But, most of all, she had to get away from him.
Breaking free from his grip, she was suddenly off and running. Running before Sandro had a chance to react. Running into the hall and out of the apartment, Running into the waiting lift, where she stabbed an urgent finger at the console, then turned on shaking legs in time to glimpse Sandro angrily striding towards her as the doors closed firmly between them.
She heard his fist hit the solid door, heard him swearing and cursing until she was out of earshot. Then the doors were sliding open again and she was running again, out into the street as dusk was just beginning to turn everywhere a rich silken red, and still she kept going, on feet that seemed to have been given wings.
CHAPTER TEN
HOW far she got away from the building before Sandro eventually managed to catch up with her, Joanna didn’t know. She had no idea where she was even running to! But she pulled to a panting halt when a familiar black car sped by and skidded to a screeching halt several yards in front of her.
Its door flew open even before the car engine had shuddered its last jolting breath, then Sandro was climbing angrily out.
Tall, lean, heart-rendingly handsome and excruciatingly special, he began striding towards her with that same look of whitened anger etched into his face.
He said not a word, his mouth nothing more than a thin, tight line, as he reached out and took a firm grip on her wrist, turned on his heel and began pulling her behind him back to the car.
His free hand tugged the passenger door open. He urged her inside, shut the door with a muted slam that made her wince, then was striding around the car’s shining bonnet to climb in beside her.
His door slammed them in. Reaching out with a long finger, he touched a switch that sent all the locks shooting into their housing, then he just sat there, one hand clenched into a fist on his thigh, the other pressed into the line of his tightly held mouth, while Joanna sat beside him, gasping for breath after her wild bid for escape and sweating so badly that her skin glistened with it.
‘I...’
‘Don’t!’ he gritted. ‘Don’t say a bloody word.’
She blinked and was thoroughly silenced by the power of emotion he’d infused into that command. In the midst of that emotion, he started the car engine, threw it into gear, then jettisoned them off down the road.
The journey back to his apartment was achieved so quickly that Joanna wondered deliriously why she had bothered to run at all! They jerked to a stop and he got out, came round and opened her door to pull her out. He didn’t look at her, hadn’t looked at her since the car skewed to a halt in the road. He hauled her into the building, then into the waiting lift.
They shot upwards. She didn’t even notice, she was so busy worrying what was coming next. He opened the apartment door, hauled her inside there also, slammed the door shut, then made a grim point of firmly locking them in. Then and only then did he seem to pause to take stock of the whole crazed, wretched experience.
But Joanna didn’t feel like hanging around to wait for whatever conclusions he eventually came to. She made a second bolt for it, flying down the hall and into the bedroom, hurriedly shutting the door behind her before going to sink down weakly on the side of the bed, wishing the door had a lock on it so she could make sure she kept him out.
But there was no lock, and she was trembling with reaction now, shaken to the very core by her own wild, naked confession and the tearing run that had followed it.
‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed, and dropped her face into her hands—only to fly jerkily to her feet again because she could hear him just outside her door and she couldn’t face him yet; she just couldn’t!
The bathroom door had a lock on it! she remembered, and moved off on shaky legs towards it—
‘Try it,’ a super-grim voice behind her invited, ‘and watch me break it down if I have to.’
‘I n-need a shower,’ she improvised, tossing the supposedly casual words over her shoulder so she did not have to turn and face him. ‘I’m sweating and the air-conditioning is on. It’s ch-chilly in here.’
‘What it is, cara,’ Sandro drawled, ‘is you on the run again. But, as you see, I am not going to let you. So you may as well turn and face me yourself, rather than have me make you do it.’
And he meant every silkily threatening word of it, Joanna acknowledged sinkingly. Sandro was that man on a mission again, and her innermost soul laid out for his inspection was that mission’s goal.
‘Y-your mother—’
‘Is very relieved to know that I have you safely
back here with me,’ he inserted. ‘And has gone home to recover from the whole wretched scene you threw!’
I threw! Joanna repeated in silent scorn. And who had instigated the wretched scene? His mother, that was who!
‘Turn, Joanna.’
Her hand was at her aching eyes again, but almost instantly dropped to her side. Making a small fist, she grimly straightened her shoulders before she spun abruptly on her heel. ‘Happy now?’ she tossed at him defiantly.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘You look dreadful.’
He didn’t look too good himself, she noticed with a terrible ache inside her. His face was still pale, still drawn, his eyes too black, his lips still held in a thin, tight, angry line.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, unable to stop herself.
As usual he wasn’t impressed by the apology. ‘Has it never occurred to you, cara, that there is a hell of a lot more to loving someone than the size of their bank balance? ’
‘I’ve never wanted your money!’ She denied that implication hotly.
‘Quite,’ he said, throwing her into a mind-numbing confusion as to what he was trying to get at here!
Then she found out. ‘As I never wanted your virginity,’ he declared, watching almost detachedly as she went white at the very mention of the word. ‘Although I do admit that once I believed I was getting it I felt honour-bound to treat such a gift with the respect it clearly deserved. No, don’t you dare turn away from what I am saying here!’ he rasped out, when she went to do just that. ‘You will keep facing me and listen!’ he commanded, levering himself away from the door to start towards her. ‘You will listen, Joanna,’ he gritted. ‘As I had to stand and listen to your heart-rending little speech just now!’
‘I knew you would never understand how I feel!’ she cried, backing away as he came nearer.
‘Oh, I understand that you truly believe I held your innocence in a higher regard than the love I felt for you!’ he snapped. ‘And you insult me with that opinion, do you know that? You insult what we had together and you insult the way I loved you!’
Fine words, three years after the event, Joanna thought bitterly. She could still remember the fuss he’d made about her virginity then—and the way he’d changed towards her! Goodnight pecks on the cheek, instead of long, passionate embraces! Holding her hand instead of letting his hands roam all over her!
In fact, she had begun to wonder if he would actually bring himself to take that precious virginity from her once it was his for the taking!
‘And you’re turning it all round to suit your own view of things again,’ she threw angrily back at him. ‘It is always how you feel, Sandro! How I let you down all the time—as if you think I don’t already know exactly how badly I failed you!’
‘Not with this virginity thing, you do not,’ he denied. ‘For what is a thin veil of skin in reality, cara? It is there for the practical purposes of protecting the female womb against infection and disease until the said female is ready to go forth and produce children. Nothing more—’ he shrugged ‘—nothing less. Unless you are some kind of purity-obsessed barbarian, of course, which I am not,’ he declared.
‘But it was mine to bestow where I wanted to bestow it,’ she reasoned shakily. ‘And I wanted to give it to you!’ It was a cry from the very heart of her. ‘When they stole that right from me, they stole my special gift to you!’
‘And once it was gone, it was gone for ever, Joanna,’ Sandro grimly pointed out. ‘Yet the importance you place upon it seems to suggest that once you had given this precious gift to me, you would have had nothing else left to give!’
‘Which doesn’t alter the truth, Sandro! That I find I cannot even think of letting you m-make love to me without it tearing me apart inside because of the loss of that gift!’
‘You think I will miss it?’ he demanded. ‘That I will mourn its loss and think less of you for that loss?’ He had the gall to laugh, albeit contemptuously. ‘I would have thought it was damned obvious that I would rather be allowed to make love to my wife than live the bloody frustrating life I have been living without being allowed to touch her!’
‘I told you you wouldn’t understand,’ she sighed out shakily.
‘Oh, I understand a whole lot more than you give me credit for,’ he came right back. ‘I understand very well that you are really nothing more than a very frightened virgin at heart.’
Joanna jumped, shocked and hurt by the interpretation.
‘What those two animals did to you does not count,’ he dismissed with a deriding flick of his hand. “That was a mere technicality beside the real issue that keeps you in this pathetic state of high anxiety. And what is the real issue?’ he proposed. ‘You,’ he answered for himself. ‘You have difficulty finding enough courage to give yourself to me. Yourself, Joanna,’ he repeated forcefully. ‘Your virgin self! The self you give freely to me—which is the real gift of love from one person to another. Not that fine veil of skin you set so much store by. And if you continue like this,’ he concluded as he turned towards the door again, so obviously sick to death of her that it showed in every distasteful line on his face, ‘then you are condemning us both to lot of misery,’ he warned. ‘Because you will be condemning me to a life of frustrating celibacy, and yourself to a life of guilt and anguish while you watch me suffer like that!’
‘W-what do you mean?’ she whispered, not liking at all what she suspected he was saying.
‘Exactly what your horrified mind is telling you,’ he replied. ‘That this marriage is for life. I am not letting you push me out of it a second time. Unless, of course,’ he tagged on grimly, as he pulled open the door, ‘you cling so tenaciously to what is in effect a damned lost cause, I may decide it is more than time to let go of my own lost cause!’
Which so obviously meant her that Joanna just stood there staring as the door closed behind him, his words having had such a profound effect on her that she could barely draw in breath!
Lost cause? Was that what she was? Was that what this whole wretched state of affairs was really all about—a lost cause?
Her legs gave out, sinking her weakly onto the bed because she had suddenly realised that Sandro was oh, so right!
In her own case, what was gone was indisputably gone! Pining over its loss was never going to bring it back again!
She had been clinging to the principles of a long-lost cause! She truly was a frightened virgin at heart, afraid to give herself freely to the man she loved in case he took and found her wanting!
And what those two men had done to her didn’t count, not any more.
It couldn’t count, she realised suddenly, if she was going to salvage anything at all from this mess she had made of both her own and Sandro’s lives!
Because that was something else he had been right about, namely, why should he continue clinging to something that was so clearly becoming his own lost cause?
Abruptly she was on her feet again, shivering, cold—so cold it struck at the very heart of her. Cold with fear. But this fear was different from the one she was used to feeling, because it came from a fear of losing, not the old fear of giving.
Sandro was beginning to see her as a lost cause. He was going to give up on her!
That was when the panic flared—again, not the old panic but a new panic, which set her moving jerkily towards the bathroom with the certain knowledge of what she had to do if she wanted to make things right between them ringing like a warning bell inside her head. It had her quickly stripping off and showering her clammy body. Had her hurriedly tugging a long white bathrobe over still damp skin with shaking fingers
She didn’t know if she could carry it right through to its natural conclusion, but she was certainly going to try!
The rest of the apartment was quiet when she stepped out of her room, so quiet she began to fear that Sandro might well have left it altogether! That fear tagged itself on to the end of every other fear she was desperately trying to wage war with as, to the pulsing rh
ythm of her own tense heartbeat, she made herself walk down the hallway to the room she had not let herself enter in three long years.
Pressing anxious teeth into her trembling lower lip, she reached for the door handle and made herself turn it.
Her eyes honed directly in on him the moment she stepped inside. It was such a relief to find him there that she never even noticed the once-daunting quality of high ceilings and grey-painted walls washed over with eaude-nil and gold leafed features.
She didn’t see the majestic bed, or recall that the last time she had been in this room she had enacted the kind of horrified scene that had left Sandro utterly shaken.
None of that seemed to matter any more, because he was all that mattered. This man who was standing there, staring out of the window, lost in his own grim train of thought. He had showered too, she noticed, his long lean body wrapped in a short white towelling bathrobe similar to her own.
He had heard her enter, because he was turning abruptly, his dark eyes still those two pinpoints of anger lancing into her, until he grimly hooded them over with his lids, closing her out.
Was it too late? Had she already left it too late to salvage this precious marriage of theirs? Her heart flipped over, all those fears and uncertainties centering on that closed, grim face, the knowledge of what she had to do next making her fingers tremble as they reached up to the knot that was holding her bathrobe in place.
The action stiffened his body slightly. His eyes flicked upwards to clash with hers in a question that brought a flood of heat rushing to her cheeks.
But she determinedly continued with what she was intending to do. Heart hammering, lungs tight, she let her fingers loosen the robe belt and slowly parted the heavy fabric, sliding it from her slender shoulders until its weight sent it falling from her body to land in a snowy heap around her feet.
Naked.
Married for three years, wildly in love for even longer than that, yet this was the first time she had stood in front of Sandro naked.
It was such a dramatic gesture. So in keeping with the dramatic way Joanna dealt with all situations in her life, be it love, fear, pleasure or trauma.
The Marriage Surrender Page 16
