The Marriage Surrender

She was going to run, Sandro realised with a sudden tensing of his tingling spine. The urge to flee was literally pulsing in every tautly held muscle she possessed, and abruptly he jerked himself into movement, making her hesitate, bringing her flustered gaze fluttering up to clash with his own.

Where he locked it—with a sheer superiority of will; he used his eyes to lock her to the spot while he strode across the foyer towards her, as graceful as any supremely proficient cat mesmerising its prey before it pounced.

His movement brought the whole reception area to a complete and utter standstill, and the silence was stunning as all those present watched their revered employer make a bee-line for the beautiful stranger who had just stepped through their doors.

He reached her, pausing a careful foot away. ‘Joanna,’ he greeted quietly.

‘Hello, Sandro,’ she huskily replied, having to tilt her head back to keep looking into that very mesmeric face.

Then neither of them moved. For a long, timeless moment they simply stood there gazing at each other, enveloped by memories that were not all bad; some of them were, in fact, quite heart-wrenchingly wonderful.

So wonderful that her breasts heaved on a small, tight intake of air as a muscle deep down inside her abdomen writhed in recollection. Predictably she stiffened that disturbed muscle in rejection of her response.

Sandro saw and accurately read every single expression that flickered across her vulnerable face. The love still burning, the pain still hurting, the desire still clutching—then the inevitable rejection. His own eyes began to darken, sending back messages of an answering pain, of a desire that still burned inside him too and, perhaps most heart-wrenching of all, of a love well remembered, though long gone now.

After all—how could he still be in love with her after everything she had done to him?

He blinked then, slowly lowering and unfurling those impossibly long lashes as if he was using them to wipe away those answering messages and put in their place a cool implacability. Slowly his hand came towards her with the intention of taking her by the arm.

But Joanna saw the tendon running along his jawline tighten perceptibly as he did so, and was dismayed to realise that he was looking so tense because he expected her to flinch away from his touch in front of all these watching people.

She didn’t flinch. Sandro couldn’t know it, but she would rather die than show him up here of all places, on his own territory where he ruled supreme.

So his fingers closed around her elbow, and she felt the usual jolt of heat run along her arm in a direct warning to her brain that someone had invaded her personal space. But her blue eyes held his, calm and steady, and after a few more taut, telling moments, the tension eased out of his jawline and was replaced with a twist to his beautiful mouth that grimly mocked her small show of restraint—as if it offended him that she felt she had to protect his pride in front of all of these people.

‘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.