The Marriage Surrender

So what had happened to the dream? she asked herself as she sat there staring into space.

Life had happened, she answered her own grim question. Life had jumped out when she was least expecting it to steal the dream right away from her.

And overnight she had gone from being the lively, loving creature who had so thoroughly captivated the man she loved, into this—this—hollow wreck of a person who was sitting here right now.

A hollow wreck who was seriously about to place herself in Sandro’s dynamic vicinity again?

Could she do it to herself?

Could she do it to him? That was the far more appropriate question.

Cash or kind.

Suddenly and without warning she began to shake—shake all over, shake badly. It had happened like this quite often since she’d had the ’flu.

But really she knew she was shaking like this because she had come full circle and back to making choices.

To making the choice that was no choice.

So she got up, put Molly’s photograph back on the bedside table, walked over to the sideboard to replace the ring box in the drawer, then went grimly about the business of getting herself ready to meet with Sandro...

CHAPTER TWO

PRESENTING herself at Sandro’s office premises at the appointed hour took every last ounce of courage Joanna had left in her—though at least she knew she looked OK. She had, in fact, taken great pains to make sure she looked her best—for his sake more than her own.

For Sandro was Italian; a sense of good taste, flair and style came as naturally to him as breathing. Joanna had witnessed him stroll around his home in nothing more than a pair of unironed white boxer shorts and a shrunken white tee shirt that showed more taut brown midriff than was actually decent—and still he’d managed to look breathtakingly stylish.

Then she grimaced, acknowledging that she had only seen him dressed like that once in their short but disastrous attempt at living together. Where most women would have found it a pleasurable experience to watch their men parade in front of them like that, she, on the other hand, had metamorphosed into a stone-cold pillar of paralysed horror.

Sexy? Oh, yes, he had looked sexy, with all of that dark, hair-sprinkled dusky brown skin on show, from long bare feet to strong muscular thighs, and his short, straight black hair looking slightly mussed, eyes sleepy because he had been dozing on the sofa, trying to combat the effects of jet lag because he had just flown back from a whistle-stop visit to his American interests. Even the signs that he needed a shave had not deflected from the fact that the man was, and always would be, sexy—to any woman.

Even this woman, whose only response had been to completely close down or go totally crazy.

Not that he had ever understood why she’d responded like that.

Not that she’d ever wanted him to understand why she’d reacted to his sexuality like that.

Yet, when she’d first met him, she had fallen in love with him on sight and had desired him so badly that sometimes she hadn’t known how she was going to cope without them making love. But in those early days of their relationship he had been busy and she had been busy, and she’d also had Molly to think about.

They would wait, they’d decided. Until they were married, until she had moved in with him properly, when, at last, they would have time and space to immerse themselves in what was bubbling so hotly between them.

Then the unmentionable had happened. And it had all gone sour for them.

Her fault. Her fault.

How Sandro had put up with her like that for as long as he did would always amaze her.

Pain. That was all she had ever brought to Sandro. Pain and frustration and a terrible—terrible confusion that had finally begun to make his work suffer.

He was a banker by trade, a speculator who invested heavily in the belief in others. He was young, successful, a man with boundless self-confidence who’d had to believe in his own good judgement to have become the success he was.

Marrying her had affected that judgement, had corroded his belief in himself. Two bad investments in as many months had eventually finished him off. ‘This cannot go on much longer,’ he’d told her. ‘You are stripping me of everything I need to survive.’

‘I know,’ she’d whispered tragically. ‘And I’m sorry. So very sorry....’

Walking out of his life had actually been easy by the time they’d reached that stage in their so-called marriage. She’d done it for him, she’d done it for herself, and had found a kind of peace in the loss of all that terrible tension that had been their constant companion. A peace she hoped—knew—Sandro had found too. He must have done, because she’d seen his name in print over the past couple of years, in articles praising his unwavering ability to latch on to a good business investment when he saw one.

So, walking back like this was going to be hard in a lot of ways, not least because she sensed that a simple phone call from her had already set the old corrosion flowing through his blood. To Sandro she was like a virus, corrupting everything he needed to function as a normal and self-confident human being.

She would make this short and sweet, she told herself firmly as she set her feet moving through those plate glass doors behind which were housed the head offices of the Bonetti empire. She would explain what she wanted, get his answer, then get right back out of his life again before the corruption could really take hold.

And she would not show him up by presenting herself in faded old jeans and a battered leather jacket! So she was wearing her one and only decent outfit, which had escaped the clear-out she’d done just a year back, when anger, and grief, and a whole tumult of wild, bitter feelings, had made her throw out everything that had once had an association with Sandro.

Except this fine black wool suit cut to Dior’s famously ageless design. The suit hung on her body a bit now, because she had lost so much weight during the last year or two, but most of that was hidden beneath the smart raincoat she’d had to hurriedly pull on because the threatened rain had decided to start falling by the time she’d left her flat again.

But, despite the raincoat, she felt elegant enough to go through those doors without feeling too out of place, and she found herself standing in a surprisingly busy foyer, where she paused to glance around her, wondering anxiously what she was supposed to do next. Sandro hadn’t answered her when she’d asked him that question; instead he’d got angry and slammed down the phone.

A sigh broke from her, tension etched into every slender bone, and her mind was too busy worrying about her next move to notice the way she caught more than one very appreciative male eye as she hovered there uncertainly, a tall, very slender creature with alabaster-smooth skin, sapphire-blue eyes and long, straight red-gold hair that shimmered like living fire in the overhead lights.

Beautiful? Of course she was beautiful. A man like Alessandro Bonetti would not have given her a second glance if she had not been so exquisitely beautiful that she turned heads wherever she went.

Not that Joanna was aware of her own beauty—she had never been aware of it. Even now, as Alessandro Bonetti stood by the bank of lifts across the foyer and witnessed the way half his male staff came to a complete standstill to admire her, he could see she was completely oblivious to the effect she was having on those men as her blue, blue gaze darted nervously about.

Nervous.

His mouth thinned, anger simmering beneath the surface of his own coolly composed stance. She’d never used to be nervous of anything. She might have lacked self-awareness, but she’d always glowed with vibrant self-confidence, had been strong, spirited enough to take on any situation. Now he watched her hover there like some wary exotic bird ready to take flight at the slightest sign of danger.

Her biggest danger, of course, being him.

She saw him then, and the fine hairs at the back of his neck began to stand on end in response to those eyes fixing on his own for the first time in two long years...

It was electrifying, an exact repeat of the first time their eyes had clashed across a room like this. Joanna felt the same charge shoot through her system like a lightning bolt. She stopped breathing, her heart seeming to swell so suddenly in her breast—like a flower bursting open to the first ray of sunlight it had encountered in so long—it was actually painful.

Why? Because she loved him—had always loved him. And knowing it quite literally tore her apart inside.

He was so tall, she observed helplessly. So lean and dark and sleek and special, with that added touch of arrogance he always carried with him, which only managed to increase the flower-burst taking place within her hungry breast.

He was wearing an Italian-cut dove-grey suit with a pale blue shirt and dark silk tie knotted neatly at his brown throat. His black-as-night hair was cut short at the back and styled to sweep elegantly away from his high, intelligent brow.

Her skin began to tingle, her eyes drifting downwards over sleepy brown eyes fringed by impossibly long eyelashes, and a thin, slightly hooked nose that was unapologetically Roman, like his noble bone structure, like his wonderful rich brown skin that sheened like satin over cheeks absolutely spare of any extra flesh.

And then there was his mouth, she noted with a dizzying swirl of senses that kept her completely held in their thrall. His mouth was the mouth of a born sensualist; it oozed sensuality, promised it, wanted and demanded it.

The mouth of a lover. The mouth of a Roman conqueror. The mouth she had once known so intimately that something inside her flared in burning recognition. It soared up from the very roots of her sexuality to arrive in a fire-burst of craving in her breast, making her gasp, making her own mouth quiver, making her want to taste that mouth again so badly that—

I can’t do this! she decided on a sudden wave of wild panic. I can’t be this close to him—face him like this and pretend to be cool and collected and indifferent to all of this—this excruciating attraction!

I’ve got to go. I’ve got to...