Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

The lights went up and Jennifer stared down at her hands to see that they were trembling violently.

‘Ah! Did the emotion of the film get to you?’ mocked the silken tones of Matteo, and she looked up to see that his eyes were on her fingers. ‘You’ve taken your wedding band off, I see?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I threw it away, actually.’

His black eyes narrowed. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘Of course I’m not.’ Jennifer wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t experienced a thrill of triumph at the look of shock on his handsome face. But any triumph was swiftly followed by anger. Did he think it a comparable shock to seeing those snatched long-range photos of him kissing Sophia in a New York park?

She turned her blue eyes on him. ‘What on earth does a woman do with a redundant wedding ring?’ she questioned in a low voice. ‘I don’t have a daughter to leave it to, and I’m too rich to need to pawn it. So what would you suggest, Matteo? That I melt it down and have it made into earrings—or else keep it in a box to remind me of what a sham your vows were?’

He bent his head towards her ear, presumably so that the movement of his lips could not be seen, but Jennifer felt dizzy as his particular scent washed over her senses.

‘How poisonous you can be, Jenny,’ he commented softly.

‘I learnt it at the hands of a grand master!’ she returned, as he straightened up and she met his cold smile with one of her own. ‘Oh, God,’ she breathed, their slanging match momentarily forgotten. ‘Here they come.’

Matteo shook himself back to reality, irritated to realise that he had been caught up with watching the movement of her lips and the way that the great sweep of her eyelashes cast feathery shadows over the pure porcelain of her skin. Insanely, he felt himself grow hard.

But he wouldn’t beat himself up about it. You didn’t have to be in love with a woman to want to…to…

Dignitaries were bearing down on them. He could see a cluster of executives and all the other acolytes that the film world spawned. His eyes narrowed and he turned to Jennifer.

‘You’re not going to the after-show party, I presume?’ he demanded.

‘Why not?’

‘Perhaps it bothers you that I will be there?’

‘Don’t be silly, Matteo,’ she chided. ‘You aren’t part of my life any more—why on earth should it bother me?’

His eyes hardened. ‘Then we might as well go there together. Si?’

That hadn’t been what she’d meant at all. Jennifer opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again. Maybe this way was better. She would have Matteo by her side as they walked down the endless red carpet and into the waiting car. And while he might not have been faithful at least he had always protected her, and she missed that. Badly.

‘People will talk.’

‘Oh, Jenny.’ His laugh was tinged with bitterness. ‘People will talk anyway. Whatever we do.’

She met his eyes in a moment of shared understanding which was more painful than anything else he had said to her, for it hinted at a former intimacy so powerful that it had blown her away.

And suddenly Jennifer wanted to break down and weep for what they had lost. Or maybe for what they had never had.

‘Come on,’ said Matteo impatiently. ‘Let’s just go and get it over with.’

CHAPTER TWO

SOMEHOW THE LONG SCARLET flight of steps seemed safer this time around—and so did the legion of press waiting at the foot of them. As if Matteo had managed to throw the mantle of his steely strength over Jennifer’s shoulders and was protecting her and propelling her along by the sheer force of his formidable will.

Even the questions which were hurled at them about their relationship had somehow lost their impact to wound her. As if Matteo was deflecting them and bouncing them back with one hard, glittering look and a contemptuous curl of his lip which made women go ga-ga and photographers quake.

The party was in one of the glitziest hotels along the Croisette itself, but Jennifer found herself wishing that it was being held in one of the restaurants which lined the narrow, winding backstreets where Matteo had once taken her. The real Cannes—where such luminaries as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had eaten. But it didn’t really matter where the party was—she was going to stay only for as long as necessary and then she was leaving. That way she would save her face and save her pride.

They were in a room which was decorated entirely in gold—to echo the colour of the Festival’s most prestigious award, the Palme d’ Or. The walls were lined with heavy golden silk, like the inside of a Bedouin tent, and there were vases of gold-sprayed twigs laced with thousands of tiny glimmering lights. Beautiful young women dressed in belly-dancer outfits swayed around the room, carrying trayfuls of champagne.

But once she had accepted a drink Jennifer deliberately walked away from Matteo. She didn’t need him, and she was here to show him and the rest of the world just that. She was an independent woman—why would she need anyone? That was what her mother had always told her, and it seemed that her words had been scarily prophetic.

The party might have had a budget to rival that of a small republic, but it was a crush—and less hospitable than some of the student get-togethers Jennifer had gone to in her youth.

An aging but legendary agent was holding court. A nubile starlet was not only falling out of her dress but also falling over from too much wine, by the look of her. A raddled-looking rock star was looking around the room with a stupid grin on his well-known face and suspiciously bright eyes. And from out of the corner of her eye she saw Matteo being surrounded by a gaggle of glamorous women.

Welcome to the world of showbiz, thought Jennifer wryly. But inside she was hurting more than she could have imagined it was possible to hurt.

She dodged passes, questions, and having her glass refilled—managing instead to find a very famous and very gay British actor who was standing in the corner surveying the goings-on with the bemused expression of a spectator at the zoo. Jennifer had played Regan to his King Lear, and she walked up to him with a sigh of relief.

‘Thank heavens,’ she breathed. ‘A friendly face with no agenda!’

‘Hiding from the vultures?’ he questioned wryly. ‘Sort of. Congratulations on your knighthood by the way. What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you, I imagine. I may be an old queen—and a knight now, to boot—but I have to please my publicist like a good boy.’

‘Don’t we all?’

He surveyed her thoughtfully. ‘I see you arrived with that adorable man you married—does that mean you’re back together?’

In spite of the room’s heat, Jennifer trembled—but she was a good enough actress to inject just the right amount of lightness into her voice. ‘No. We’re just playing games with the press. The marriage is over.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said carelessly. ‘Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. You’ll get over it, duckie—you’re young and you’re beautiful.’ He sighed, his eyes drifting to Matteo once more. ‘Mind you—so is he!’

Jennifer grimaced a smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Go home and forget him,’ he said gently. ‘And stay away from actors—they’re feckless and unfaithful and I should know! Marry a businessman next time.’

‘I’m not even divorced yet,’ she said solidly. ‘And even if I were, this thing has scarred me for life—I’m through with marriage. Anyway—better run. Lovely to see you, Charles.’

They exchanged two butterfly air-kisses and then Jennifer resolutely made her way towards the door and slipped away—not noticing that she was being followed by a Hollywood icon who had just gone through divorce number four.

Not until she was in a quiet corridor and he moved right up close behind her.

Jennifer jumped and turned round. ‘Oh, it’s you, Jack!’ she exclaimed nervously. ‘You startled me!’

He flashed his trademark smile. ‘Well, well, well,’ he drawled softly. ‘Maybe my luck has changed for the better. You look damned gorgeous.’ He crinkled his blue eyes and directed his gaze at her chest. ‘So, how’s life, Jennifer?’

Jennifer knew that his fame meant he got away with stuff that other men would be prosecuted for, and she should have been used to the predatory way that such men feasted their eyes on her breasts, but the truth was that she didn’t think she’d ever get used to it. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she said blandly.

‘Well, since we’re in the same boat, maritally speaking…’ His voice dipped suggestively and his swimming pool eyes gleamed. ‘It can get a little lonely in bed at night—what say we keep each other company?’ And then his eyes narrowed as a shadow fell over him and he looked up into a pair of black, glittering eyes. ‘Well, well, well,’ he blustered. ‘If it isn’t the Italian Stallion!’

Matteo wasn’t bothered by the star’s slurred insult, but he felt a shimmering of intense irritation as he saw the fraught expression on his wife’s face. That and the blunt hit of jealousy.

‘Are you okay, Jenny?’ he demanded.

She wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, but instead she looked straight into his eyes. And, in one of those silent looks between two people who have lived together which speak volumes, her eyes told him that, no, she wasn’t okay. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘What a coincidence,’ Matteo murmured. ‘So was I.’

The sex symbol frowned in confusion, looking from Matteo to Jennifer like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘But I thought—’

‘Well, don’t,’ Matteo interjected silkily. ‘You’re not paid to think—you’re paid to act…pretty badly, as it happens, which is why your career is on the way down.’

And he took Jennifer’s hand in a proprietary way which made her momentarily long for the past and loathe herself for doing so as he led her down a corridor.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, shaking him off once they were out of sight.

‘You wanted to get away from that strisciamento?’

‘Well, yes. But not with you!’

‘Are you certain?’ His eyes glittered. ‘I’ve discovered a service lift which bypasses all the press—if you’re interested?’ He arched his dark eyebrows as they came to a discreet-looking steel door at the end of the corridor which was light-years away from the luxury of the guest lift they’d ridden up in.

‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ she questioned sarcastically.

‘But of course I am—we both know that. Coming?’

Jennifer hesitated.

‘Unless you’re secretly hot for the bastardo?’ he suggested silkily. ‘And want to stick around?’

Jennifer glanced back along the corridor and then stepped into the lift beside Matteo, pointedly moving as far away from him as possible as the doors slid shut on them.

‘You’re going to have to watch your step, Jenny,’ Matteo said softly as the lift began to whirr into action. ‘Men like that eat women for breakfast.’

Jennifer stared at him in disbelief. ‘How dare you?’ she questioned. ‘In view of what’s happened how dare you take a holier-than-thou opinion on another man’s behaviour? Have you tried looking at your own lately?’ She clenched her hands into two tight fists, her breath coming hot and fast as the words came spilling out of her mouth. ‘How’s your girlfriend, Matteo?’

Matteo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Jenny, don’t—’

‘Don’t you dare tell me “Jenny, don’t”! Remind me of her name again.’ Jennifer faked a frown. ‘Oh, yes—Sophia! Not exactly a household name at the moment, but I guess that’ll soon change with the magic of the d’ Arezzo influence.’

‘You didn’t knock it when you used it yourself,’ he challenged softly.

‘You bastard! At least I was known for being a good actress before I met you—and not for pouting and lounging around half-naked in some over-hyped perfume advertisement! So, was she worth it?’

Matteo’s black eyes flared. Had he meant so little to her that she could enquire after another woman as if she were asking the time? For, while he accepted that their marriage was over, Matteo knew that if he bumped into any lover of hers he would want to tear him limb from limb.

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’ he drawled. ‘You wanted a divorce—and you’re damned well getting one! Technically, that makes me a free man, Jenny—and at liberty to date whom I please.’

‘But you weren’t technically free in New York, when you started your affair with her, were you, Matteo? When the cameras caught you kissing her?’ The words were out before she could stop them and he stared at her, an odd expression in his eyes which Jennifer had never seen before.

‘I hadn’t slept with her then,’ he said slowly.

The use of the word then cut through her like a knife. ‘But now you have?’ She swallowed. ‘Slept with her?’

It was both a statement and a question, and there was a long and uneasy pause. For, no matter what the circumstances leading up to the act had been, Matteo knew he had broken his marital vows. ‘Yes.’

Jennifer clamped her clenched fist against her mouth as the cold rip of jealous rage tore through her heart. But what had she expected? For him to carry on denying a physical relationship? To pretend that his undeniable attraction towards the stunning Italian starlet had remained unconsummated?

Matteo was a devastatingly attractive and virile man. He needed sex like most men needed water. Well, she had asked the question, and she had only herself to blame if he had given her the answer she had dreaded.

She had thought that the pain of their break-up couldn’t possibly get any worse, but in that she had been completely wrong. He had said it now. He had slept with Sophia. His body had lain naked against hers, warm skin against warm skin. He had entered another woman, had pushed inside her and moved and then thrown his head back and groaned out his pleasure in the way she knew so well—the way he had done with her.

And spilled his seed inside her? Made this other woman pregnant, like the pressmen had suggested earlier?

Biting against her fingers, Jennifer fought hard to prevent herself from retching. The mind could be a wonderfully protective organ—allowing you to block things out because they were too painful to contemplate—but it could be capricious and cruel, too, and Matteo’s words triggered an inner torment as images of his infidelity came rushing in, like some unwanted and explicit porn film.

Jennifer leaned against the steel wall of the lift, beads of sweat gathering above her upper lip as she pictured her husband naked with another woman.

Matteo frowned and made an instinctive move towards her. ‘Cara, you are faint?’

‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ she spat, and shrank even farther against the metal, which felt cold against her bare back. She wiped the back of her hand over her clammy face. ‘And don’t you dare come near me!’

A wave of sadness washed over him and he wondered how something which had seemed so perfect could have deteriorated into a situation where Jennifer was staring at him as if he was her most dangerous and bitter enemy.

Maybe he was. Maybe that was what inevitably happened when a marriage broke down. Maybe the myth of an ‘amicable’ divorce was exactly that—a myth.

He stared at her as she moved a little restlessly, as if aware of how tiny the enclosed space was. Her proximity was distracting. Matteo’s senses felt raw—as if someone had been nicking at them with a razor. Yet when he looked at her he felt nostalgic for times past, and that was always painful—for it had never been real. Because memory played tricks with your emotions. It tampered with the past and rewrote it—so that everyone saw it differently. He knew that Jennifer’s version of it would be different from his own, and there was nothing he could do about that.

But maybe that was only part of it. For the eyes didn’t lie, did they? He studied her and thought how much time had changed her. Tonight she was all sleek Hollywood film star—her heavy blonde hair caught up in an elaborate topknot with a few artistic tendrils tumbling down around her face. Her gym-tight body was encased in clinging sapphire silk, and she was bedecked in priceless diamond and sapphire jewellery.

How little she resembled the rosy-cheeked girl with tousled hair and bohemian clothes he’d fallen in love with. Was it the same for her? Did she look at him and see a stranger in his face today?

And a floodgate was opened as the reflection triggered a reaction. Forbidden thoughts rushed into his head with disturbing clarity, and Matteo remembered the pure magic of meeting her. Of feeling something which had been completely alien to him.

CHAPTER THREE

MATTEO HAD BEEN FILMING in England. The ‘Italian Heart-Throb’—as the newspapers had insisted on calling him—had agreed to play Shakespeare. It had been a gamble, but one Matteo had been prepared to take. He had been bored with the stereotypical roles which had brought him fame and riches, and eager to show his mettle. To prove to the world—and himself—that an Italian-American could play Hamlet. And why not? All kinds of actors were switching accents in a bid to show versatility in the competitive international film market. Some had even won awards for doing just that.

Jennifer had been playing Ophelia—but not in his film. She’d been what they called a ‘serious’ actress—stage-trained, relatively poor, and rather aloof. He had gone along one evening to watch her perform and had been unable to tear his eyes away from her.

They’d been introduced backstage, and he’d been both intrigued and infuriated when she’d given a slightly smug smile which seemed to say I know your type.

‘I loved your performance,’ he said, with genuine warmth, before realising that it made him sound like some kind of stage-door Johnny—him!

‘Thank you. You’re playing Hamlet yourself, I believe?’ she questioned, in the tone of someone going through the motions of necessary conversation. Almost as if she was bored!

‘You do not approve?’ he challenged. ‘Of someone like me playing one of your greatest roles?’

Jennifer blinked. ‘What an extraordinary assumption to jump to! I hadn’t given it a thought.’

And he knew that she spoke the truth. For a man who held the very real expectation that every actress in Stratford would be anticipating his visit as if it were the King of Denmark himself, Jennifer’s uninterest inflamed him.

She was studying him, her head tilted slightly. ‘But your reviews have been spectacular,’ she conceded, in the interests of fairness. ‘So well done.’

He knew that. Every theatre in the world wanted him, and Broadway was putting irresistible offers on his agent’s table. But somehow Jenny’s quiet compliment meant more to him than all those things. ‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said suddenly.

Jennifer put her head to one side, her tousled hair falling over her shoulders. ‘Why should I do that?’

A stream of clever retorts could yield entirely the wrong result, Matteo realised. For the first time in his life he anticipated that she might do the unthinkable and turn him down!

‘Because my life will be incomplete if you do not,’ he said simply.

‘You can’t say things like that!’ she protested, biting her lip with a mischevious kind of fascination.

‘I just did,’ he drawled unapologetically.

She stared at him for a long, considering moment. ‘Okay,’ she said, and smiled.

And there it had been—like all the old songs said—something about her smile.

Matteo had never really believed in love—considering it something which existed for the rest of the world, but which excluded him. He had seen glimpses of it, but never before had he felt the great rush of passion and protectiveness he experienced with Jennifer that day, which had been the beginning of their tempestuous and ultimately doomed union.

And now?

Now he believed that what had happened had been a cocktail of hormones which had combusted at a time in his life when he’d craved some kind of excitement. He had been right all along. Love was not real. It was a story they fed you which sold movies and books. That was all.

Jennifer rubbed distractedly at her forehead. ‘This lift is taking for ever.’

He had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed.

‘Is it?’ he questioned, as there was a sudden lurching kind of movement, followed by complete and deafening silence. Matteo looked from the disbelieving accusation in Jenny’s eyes to the stationary arrow on the illuminated panel. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he mused. ‘Seems like we’ve run into a little trouble.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘You think I’d joke about something like that? You think perhaps I’ve set this up?’ he demanded. ‘Lured you into this lift so that I can be alone with you?’

Jennifer turned glacial blue eyes on him. ‘And have you?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Have I? Believe me when I tell you, cara, that I can think of a lot more agreeable companions to be stuck with than a woman who does not seem to know the reason of the word “trust”!’

‘And I’d rather be with the devil himself than some arrogant and egotistical sex maniac who can’t resist chasing anything in a skirt!’

His black eyes narrowed as he felt the bubble of rage begin to simmer up. ‘You dishonour me with such a description!’ he declared furiously.

‘It’s the truth!’

‘Ah, but it is not the truth, and deep down you know that, Jenny! You saw the amount of women who threw themselves at me! It was never the other way round.’

Yes. Those women who would pass him their telephone numbers openly in restaurants, right in front of her face, as if she were just part of the furniture. Or those others, who would use more devious methods to get the attention of the devastatingly handsome actor.

The shop assistants and the flight attendants who would slyly slide him their details. The doctors and lawyers who would invent the need for a meeting with him. It seemed that none of them had any shame—any woman with a pulse wanted her husband.

‘Did you ever stop to think what it was like for me, as your wife?’ she demanded.

‘Of course I did! You made it damned impossible for me to do otherwise!’

‘Did you? I think you used to treat it as an amusing little game—batting those gorgeous eyes as if to say, I’m not even doing anything, and still they bother me!’

‘Oh, Jenny—that was your insecurity talking, not mine. I’d gone beyond the stage where I needed fans to bolster my ego.’ His eyes darkened. ‘But, beyond refusing to leave the house, the only way to stop women coming on to me was to increase our security—and that brought its own claustrophobia.’ There was a pause. ‘And anyway, you know damned well that I pushed those women away.’

‘But you stopped pushing eventually, didn’t you, Matteo?’ she questioned, and she felt that familiar pain stabbing at her heart. And although part of her wondered why she was putting herself through yet more pain, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. ‘When you looked at Sophia. And you wanted her. Are you denying that?’

There was another kind of silence now—fraught and terrible in the already silent lift. Yes, he had been guilty of the sin of desiring another woman, but it should have remained just one of those unacted-upon desires which made up a human life. People were not immune to desiring other people even if they were married. Only the truly naïve believed otherwise. And it was the naïve who fell victim to mistaking that forbidden desire for love. Matteo had seen it, and known it for exactly what it was. Unfortunately, Jenny had not.

He had been filming with Sophia, and their on-screen chemistry had been so hot it had sparked off the set. Everyone in the industry had been talking about it. And eventually Jennifer had got to hear about it.

But even if she hadn’t developed such an obsession with it their marriage had already been at crisis point. Their work schedules had kept them apart so much that all she’d been getting were reports from the newspapers and photos of him with Sophia. She had picked away at the rumours—like a teenager worrying at a blemish on her face—until eventually her jealousy and suspicions had blown up. Trust between them had already been destroyed by the time he had kissed Sophia.