The Marriage Surrender

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.