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‘Come,’ was all he said as he tightened his grip on her elbow then turned to begin drawing her across the silenced foyer, arrogantly ignoring every set of curious eyes that followed them.
‘This is awful,’ Joanna whispered self-consciously. ‘Couldn’t you have come up with a more discreet way of meeting me?’
‘Discreet as in covert?’ Sandro questioned drily. ‘You are my wife, not my mistress,’ he pointed out. ‘My wife I meet out in the open. With my mistress I am always very discreet.’
Stung to the core by the very idea of him being intimate with any woman, her heart began to fill with enough acid venom to curdle her system and blind her eyes to exactly where Sandro was leading her—until it was too late.
Then jealousy was suddenly being replaced by a crawling sense of horror that had her stopping dead in her tracks. ‘No,’ she protested huskily. ‘Sandro, I can’t—’
‘Privacy, cara.’ He cut right across whatever she had been going to say, ‘is required before we begin.’
Privacy, Joanna repeated to herself, as the power of his grip forced her into movement again, propelling her into the waiting lift where at last he let go of her so he could turn his attention to the console.
The doors slid shut. They were suddenly alone. Alone inside a tiny eight-foot-square box with grey panelled walls and nowhere to run to if she required an escape.
No.
Her heart was in her mouth. As the lift began shooting them upwards her stomach shot the other way. It was awful. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and clenched her hands into two tight fists at her sides as an old clamouring reaction trapped her within a world of mindless dismay.
Sandro noticed—who wouldn’t have noticed when she was standing there quivering with her teeth biting hard into her tense bottom lip? ‘Stop it!’ he snapped. ‘I am not even touching you any longer!’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, trying desperately hard to get a hold on herself. ‘But it’s not you. It’s the lift.’
‘The lift?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Since when have your phobias added lifts to their great number?’
Sarcasm, she recognised, and supposed she deserved it. ‘Don’t ask,’ she half laughed, trying to make a joke of it.
But Sandro was clearly in no mood for humour. ‘Another no-go subject I am banned from mentioning, I see.’
‘Go to hell,’ she breathed, her eyes squeezed tightly shut while she tried to fight off the soaring panic.
‘And be virtually guaranteed to meet you there?’ he derided. ‘No chance.’
And once again they were sniping at each other. Like their telephone conversation earlier, they were proving yet again that they couldn’t be in each other’s company without all of this—emotion—spilling out
The wrong kind of emotion.
‘You may relax now,’ he drawled with yet more sarcasm. ‘We have come to a stop.’
Her eyes fluttered open to discover that they had indeed come to a stop without her even noticing it The doors were open and Sandro was already strolling out onto a plush grey-carpeted corridor. He walked off, obviously expecting her to follow him. After having to peel herself away from the lift wall, she stepped out on decidedly shaky legs, feeling as if she were pulling a whole load of heavy old baggage along behind her.
He was waiting for her by a closed door, stiff-backed and angry. Smothering a heavy sigh, because this was all becoming so damned fraught—and she hadn’t even got to the reason she had come here!—Joanna forced herself to walk towards him.
One of his long brown hands was resting on the door handle. He didn’t so much as glance at her, yet still timed the moment he threw that door open so he instantly followed her into a big airy office where a very attractive blonde-haired woman of about Joanna’s own age sat behind a desk.
She glanced up as they came in and smiled expectantly at them. But to Joanna’s further discomfort Sandro ignored the look, not intending, it seemed, to introduce the two women.
And why should he? Joanna asked herself as she followed him across the room to another door. I won’t be here long enough for it to mean much, even if he did!
When he opened the door he stepped aside again, obviously expecting Joanna to precede him. On an inner frisson of awareness to his electric closeness, she hurriedly brushed past him.
His office was a surprise—nothing like what she would have expected of the Sandro she used to know, she observed as she came to a halt in the middle of the room. This ultra-modern example of smoked grey executive decor bore no resemblance to the rich, dark wood antiquity of his private homes.
The door closed behind her. Joanna quelled the urge to stiffen up warily.
‘Take off your coat,’ Sandro coolly commanded.
Coat? She spun on her heel to stare at him, a fresh frisson of alarm stinging along her spine. She didn’t want to remove her coat. She wasn’t intending staying here long enough for it to be necessary!
‘I—’
‘The coat, Joanna,’ he interrupted, and when she still didn’t make a move to do it herself he began walking towards her, with his intent so clear that her fingers snapped up to begin undoing the buttons. He grimaced, mocking the fact that it took only the suggestion that he might try to touch her again for her to do exactly what he had told her to do.
Angry with herself for being so damned obvious, and annoyed with him for knowing her as well as he did, she drew off the coat and draped it across a nearby chair while he, thank goodness, diverted towards the big pale polished cedar desk standing in front of a huge plate glass window.
Then he turned and did the worst thing he could do as far as she was concerned. He leaned his spare hips against the front of the desk, crossed his ankles, folded his arms across his wide chest, then proceeded to study her slowly, from her tensely curling toes, hidden inside plain black court shoes, to the top of her shining head.
She flushed, lowering her face and gripping tightly at the strap of her shoulder bag. He always did have this knack for completely discomposing her with a look, just as he was doing now—deliberately, she guessed. And she hated it. Hated what it made her feel inside.
But she had a suspicion that he knew that, too.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he remarked finally. ‘That suit hangs on you like an old sack. If you lose any more weight you will simply fade away. Why have you lost so much weight?’ he demanded.
‘I’m sorry,’ she snapped. But surely he could work out why she had got so thin! It didn’t take much knowledge of the last devastating year she had just lived through to understand it.
‘Sorry—again, Joanna?’ he mocked. ‘I remember that being your favourite word before. It used to infuriate me then. It still does now,’ he added grimly.
Her chin lifted, blue eyes flashing him a glinting warning that the very short fuse to her temper was alight. ‘You said you were busy,’ she reminded him curtly.
He dipped his dark head in wry acknowledgment of both the short fuse and the reminder that his time was precious. This was something else Sandro could never resist—riling her too-ready temper. He had once told her that it was the only really healthy emotion she had in her. He was probably right. It was the only one she had ever shown him during their short, disastrous marriage, anyway.
There was a knock at the office door. Joanna jumped nervously. Sandro grimaced at her nervousness, then his secretary was entering the room, carrying a tray set with coffee things.
The tension in the room must have been stingingly obvious, because she glanced warily at her employer, then skittered her gaze over Joanna, before murmuring some incoherent apology as she hurried across the room to place the tray down on a glass-topped coffee table set between wo low leather sofas.
No one else moved. Sandro wouldn’t, Joanna couldn’t, and the silence gnawed in the air surrounding them all as the poor woman did what she had to do then turned to leave again with a brief, wary smile aimed somewhere between the two of them.
Joanna watched Sandro watch the intruder leave, watched him run his eyes over the woman from the top of her sleek blonde head to the slender heels of her black patent shoes. It was born in him to study women like that, Joanna was sure he wasn’t even aware that he did it, but God she hated it!
Beautiful, she seethed in jealous silence. Of course the woman had to be beautiful! Sandro would not accept anything less in a woman who worked within such close confines!
‘Grazi, Sonia,’ he murmured rather belatedly, just as ‘Sonia’ was about to walk through the door.
She sent him a glance and it spoke volumes. Sonia was offended that he had not introduced her to his wife. But Joanna was only relieved. She had no wish to be nice to his secretary when she was too busy trying to subdue a second bout of jealousy that was so strong it literally fizzed beneath the surface of her skin.
Did Sonia do more than his typing for him? Could she be the very discreet mistress?
The door closed them in once again, and Sandro’s attention was back on her. He studied her stiff-boned, firmly blank stance for a few moments, then sighed as though her very presence here irritated the hell out of him. He waved a long-suffering hand towards the seating area.
‘Sit down for goodness’ sake,’ he muttered. ‘Before your shaking legs give out on you.’
‘They’re not shaking,’ she denied, but went to sit down anyway, choosing one of the sofas and perching herself on the very edge, hoping he wouldn’t play his old trick of sitting himself down beside her. It was just another tactic he’d used to employ to completely unsettle her. He’d used to gain some kind of morbid gratification from placing her on the defensive.
But this time, she was relieved to see, he decided not to bother with that one. Instead he turned his attention to pouring out two cups of coffee.
Joanna watched his every move, every deft flick of those long brown fingers as he poured out two black coffees, added sugar to his own but none to hers, used the small silver spoon to stir the sugar, then silently handed a delicate white china cup and saucer to her, before going to sit down on the sofa opposite with his own.
And he did it all without bothering to ask her if that was how she liked her coffee. Sandro possessed almost instant total recall. He could remember names, places, facts and figures without having to try very hard. It was a major asset in his line of business, he had once told her, to possess fast recall of any information he might have acquired concerning the subject under consideration at the time. It saved him a lot of hassle because it meant he didn’t need to waste time going off to gather up the information.
On top of that, he was astute, very astute. Few people managed to con him. Though she was one of those few who had managed to do it. And in some ways she believed he’d found that harder to forgive than anything else she had done to him.
‘OK,’ he said flatly. ‘Let’s have it.’
She shook, rattling the delicate bone china cup in its saucer so badly she had to lean forward and put them down before she spilled the coffee all over herself.
Sandro crossed one elegant knee over the other. That was all, no other reaction whatsoever, but the action captured her restive attention. He was wearing charcoal-coloured socks, she noticed inconsequently. His shoes were hand-made lace-ups in a shining black leather.
‘I need some money,’ she mumbled, hating herself for having to ask him, of all people, for it.
‘How much?’
Just like that. No hint of surprise, no raised voice. She had never asked him for anything before, not even a tube of toothpaste. He knew that. The man with total recall would remember that telling little fact.
Which also meant he had already worked out that this was a dire situation for her.
‘F-five...’ The rest got stuck in her tension-locked throat and she had to swallow before she could say it. ‘Five thousand pounds.’
Still nothing. No reaction whatsoever. She even glanced up, wary, puzzled, searching his impassive face for a hint of what he was thinking.
She saw nothing.
‘That is a lot of money for you, Joanna,’ was the only comment he made.
‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘I’m s...’ Sorry, she had been going to say, but she stopped herself and instead got stiffly to her feet, unable to remain still beneath that dark level stare for a single moment longer.
With a tight restlessness she moved herself away from his close proximity, aware that his eyes were following her, aware that his brain was working faster than any other brain she had ever known.
Aware that he was waiting for her to tell him what she wanted the money for but was determined not to ask her himself.
Reaching his desk, she rested the flat of her hips against its edge and crossed her arms over her body so her icy fingers could curl tensely around her slender arms.
The silence between them began to stretch; she could feel it vibrating like a tautened wire between them. But, in a way, it made her want to do something to stop it, so she turned abruptly to face him, lifted her chin and forced herself to look directly into his carefully neutral eyes.
‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ she announced. ‘I need some m-money and, since you are the only person I know who has any, I thought you could give it me in the f-form of a settlement.’
‘A settlement to what?’
Her heart suddenly decided to stammer. ‘A divorce.’
No response, not even a flicker of those long, lush, lazy lashes, the super-controlled bastard!
‘I know you can’t possibly want to hang onto this so-called marriage of ours,’ she raced on quickly. ‘So I thought it might be best to make a clean break of it.’
‘For five thousand pounds?’
Her cheeks warmed with guilty colour. ‘Yes.’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ he recounted, ‘You want to divorce a multi-millionaire for the princely sum of five thousand pounds. Now that, Joanna, insults my ego,’ he informed her, moving at last to get rid of his own cup and saucer, then relaxing back again. ‘Why not go for the jackpot and demand half of everything I own?’ he suggested. ‘After all, you are entitled to it.’
No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t entitled to anything from Sandro, not even the five thousand she was asking him for. ‘I just want f-five thousand pounds,’ she reiterated, staring down at some unremarkable spot on the smooth grey carpet, because the next bit was going to be even harder to say, and she couldn’t look at him while she said it. ‘And I need it today, if you can lay your hands on that much.’
‘Cash?’
She swallowed, then nodded. ‘Please...’
No reply. Again she was forced to look up so she could search his face for a hint of what he was thinking—and she saw nothing but a sudden terrible gravity that almost cut her in two.
Face flushing, she dropped her gaze once more, agitated fingers picking at the fine woollen sleeves of her suit jacket.
‘Perhaps you had better tell me why you need it,’ Sandro suggested very quietly.
‘I’ve got myself into debt,’ she admitted, so softly that Sandro was lucky to hear it. ‘And the people I borrowed the m-money from are riding my back for payment.’
He heard. ‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Who exactly is riding you?’
She didn’t answer, her small chin lowering to her chest in an act of sinking shame, and another tense silence followed because she found that now she had come this far she just didn’t have it in her to tell him the full truth. He was bound to be so disappointed in her!
She had never done anything a man like Sandro would consider worthy. It had used to annoy him that she worked at two different jobs as a waitress, six days and nights out of seven each week. He could never understand why she had no ambition to do something better with her life. He’d disliked the tiny flat she used to share with Molly, and had even offered to put them both up in something more fitting.
But more fitting for whom? She’d always suspected he’d meant fitting for a man like him to visit; that, in his own way, Sandro was ashamed of his little waitress girlfriend, even if he was too besotted at the time to walk away from her.
And, on top of all of that, he hated gamblers. Said they were weak-willed losers in life who wanted everything the easy way. How did you tell a man who thought like that that you’d spent the last year working in a casino for miserable peanuts, only to gamble those peanuts away at the tables yourself!
She couldn’t. It was as simple as that. She could not do it. And she was just wondering if he would detect a lie if she came up with one that would cover a five-thousand-pound debt, when he pulled one of his other little tricks and confused her by suddenly changing the subject.
‘Where have you been living recently?’ he asked.
‘Here in London.’ She shrugged.
‘Still waiting hand and foot on other people?’
‘Yes.’
He sighed, his disappointment in her clear this time. ‘You did not have to go back to doing that kind of job, Joanna,’ he said grimly. ‘When we parted, I had no intention of leaving you so destitute that you had to return to that.’
‘You owed me nothing.’ And both of them knew there was more truth in that than really bore thinking about.
‘You are my wife!’ he bit out raspingly. ‘Of course I owed you something!’
Which led them neatly back to the money, Joanna wryly supposed.
‘What I find difficult to believe,’ he continued, ‘is that you, of all people, have got yourself into that kind of debt entirely on your own! In fact,’ he extended frowningly, ‘you always shied right away from the risk of getting yourself into debt for even the smallest amount.’
She grimaced, shamed and contrarily mollified by those few words of praise from this, her biggest critic. He was right, money had never been one of her gods—not in the shape of cold, hard cash in the pocket, that was.
‘So, who is it for, Joanna?’ Sandro demanded grimly. ‘Who really needs this five thousand pounds you are asking me for?’
Her chin came up, the frown puckering her smooth brow telling him that she did not follow his meaning. ‘It’s for me,’ she stated. ‘I got into this mess all by myself.’
But he was already shaking his head, expression grave again, saddened almost. ‘It’s for Molly,’ he decided. ‘It has to be. Has your sister managed to get herself into financial difficulties, Joanna?’ he demanded. ‘Is that what this is really about?’
Whatever Sandro had expected her to do or say at this very critical point, he certainly had not expected her to draw the air into her body in the short, sharp way she did—or for her face to drain of every last vestige of colour.
‘My God, that was cruel,’ she breathed out eventually, staring at him as if he had just thrust a ten-inch blade into her chest. ‘How could Molly be in trouble,’ she choked out thickly, ‘when you already know she is dead?’
CHAPTER THREE
SANDRO’S reaction was to shoot to his feet. ‘What did you say?’ he raked out hoarsely. Then, ‘Please say again,’ he commanded, sounding as though he had suddenly lost his grasp of the English language. ‘For I think I must have misheard you.’
‘But you knew!’ Joanna cried. ‘M-Molly was knocked down and killed in a traffic accident twelve months ago!’
‘No!’ The angry denial literally exploded from him. ‘I do not believe you!’
But Joanna wasn’t impressed. ‘I rang you—right here, at this office!’ she contended. ‘You wouldn’t speak to me, s-so I left a message with your secretary!’
That secretary? she wondered suddenly. Had she spoken with the lovely Sonia that day her whole world fell apart?
‘You rang here?’ What she was saying was finally beginning to sink in. He sounded punch drunk, suddenly looked it too—utterly punch drunk. ‘Molly is dead?’
‘Do you honestly think I would lie about something like that?’
Of course she wouldn’t, and acknowledgement of that fact actually rocked him right back on his heels, shock ripping down the full length of his lean, tight body as he stood there and stared at her—stared while his richly tanned face went pale.
Then, quite without warning, the famous Bonetti self-control completely deserted him and, on an act of savage impulse, he spun jerkily on his heel and brought his clenched fist crashing down on the glass-topped table!
Joanna gasped, eyes widening in numb disbelief as delicate china rattled on impact, then began to bounce upwards, tumbling through the air to land with a splintering crash just about everywhere! The glass table-top broke, not splintering like the china, but folding in on itself and shattering into big lethal pieces.
The ensuing silence was appalling. Broken china and glass, spilled sugar, cream and coffee lay spread across everything—the two grey leather sofas and the carpet!
And there was Sandro. Sandro slowly straightening from the utter carnage he had just wreaked, teeth bared, lips tightly drawn back, face ashen, blood oozing from the knuckles of his still clenched fist.
‘Oh, no,’ she whispered, coming out of her horrified daze to push a trembling hand up to mouth. ‘You didn’t know...’
‘Astute,’ he clipped, driving his uninjured hand into his pocket to come out with a clean handkerchief.
He began wrapping the handkerchief around his bloody knuckles while, shaken to her very roots, all Joanna could do was stand there and watch him. She tried to breathe but found that she couldn’t. Her lungs seemed to have seized up while her heart was thundering against a steel casing of shock that had wrapped itself tightly around her chest.
The door suddenly flew open, Sonia almost falling into the room with it. ‘Oh, good grief!’ she gasped, her eyes going wide in horror as they took in the carnage.
‘Get out!’ Sandro barked at her, swinging a look of such unholy savagery on her that she whimpered with a muffled choke and quickly stepped out of the room again, shutting the door behind her.
‘Th-there was no need to take your anger out on your secretary,’ Joanna murmured in tremulous reproach.
Sandro disregarded the rebuke. ‘I never got your message,’ he bit out. ‘Did you think I would have ignored it if I had? You did,’ he realised, seeing the answer etched into her unguarded face.
She had insulted him. Simply allowing herself to believe that he didn’t care about Molly’s death was probably the biggest insult she had ever given him.
And she had given him a few, Joanna acknowledged. ‘I’m...’
‘Don’t dare say it,’ he warned her gratingly.
Her mouth snapped shut, then on a shaky little sigh it opened again. ‘At first I refused to believe you would just ignore her death like that,’ she allowed. ‘But when I heard nothing from you, f-for days and days, I decided you...’ An awkward shrug finished what really no longer needed to be said. ‘And I was in shock,’ she continued huskily. ‘I could barely think straight. It was only after the f-funeral, w-when I’d moved from the flat and found somewhere else to live because I couldn’t bear to stay there without—without...’ She couldn’t say Molly’s name either, ‘It was only then that it really began to sink in that you hadn’t—hadn’t...’
At last she stumbled into silence. Sandro didn’t say a word, not a single word, but just ran his uninjured hand across the top of his sleek dark head, dropped it stiffly to his side again, then turned away from her as if looking at her at all offended him.
‘I’m sorry’ hovered on the tip of her tongue again but managed to stay there while she simply stared at him, feeling helpless, feeling guilty, feeling hopelessly inadequate to deal with the fractured emotions clamouring around the two of them.
‘When?’ he asked suddenly. ‘When did this happen?’
She told him the date, her low-pitched voice unsteady.
‘Madre di dio,’ Sandro breathed.
Molly had been killed a year ago to the very day.
Then he was moving, making her eyes instantly wary as he strode towards her, right past her, to angrily round his desk. His hand snaked out, catching up the telephone, while his other hand remained tensely at his side, the handkerchief bandage slowly staining red.