The Marriage Surrender

He’d meant she’d have to borrow more from him to keep up the extortionate repayments on his high interest loan and thereby sink further in his debt. It was a clever little ploy. One which kept him, the loan shark, firmly in control.

But for her it was different, and she’d always known it. Arthur Bates didn’t want her money, he wanted her body, and by getting behind with her repayments she had played right into his hands. What made it worse was that she worked for him, which meant he knew exactly how much she earned; he knew he was in control of that part of her life. She waited on tables or worked behind the bar of his seedy little nightclub—the same club where she had got herself into debt by stupidly playing at its gaming tables.

Which actually meant that Arthur Bates believed he was in control of Joanna’s life every which way he wanted to look at it.

But then, Arthur Bates didn’t know about her marriage. He didn’t know about her connection to the powerful Bonetti family. He didn’t know she had a way out of the whole wretched mess—if she could find the will to use it.

Even with that will, she’d realized she was going to need time—time Arthur Bates was not predisposed to give her. So, there she had been, standing in front of him, feeling her skin crawl as his eyes roamed expressively over her, and she had done the only thing she could think of doing to gain herself time. She had lowered her lashes over the revulsion gleaming in her eyes, and offered him the sweet, sweet scent of her defeat.

‘OK,’ she’d muttered huskily. ‘When?’

‘You’ve finished for the night,’ he’d said. ‘We could be at my apartment in fifteen minutes...’

‘I can’t,’ she’d replied. ‘Not tonight, anyway...’ And she had given an awkward little shrug of one slender white shoulder. ‘Hormones,’ she’d explained, and had hoped he was quick enough to get her meaning because she was loath to go into a deeper explanation.

He’d understood. The way his expression flashed with irritation told her as much. ‘Women,’ he’d muttered. Then, suspiciously, ‘You could be lying,’ he’d suggested. ‘Using that excuse as a delaying tactic.’

Her chin had come up at that, blue, blue eyes fixing clearly on his. ‘I don’t lie,’ she’d lied. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘How long?’ he’d asked.

‘Three days,’ she’d replied, deciding she could just about get away with that without causing more suspicion.

‘Friday it is, then,’ he’d agreed.

And she’d felt too sick to do more than nod her head in agreement before she’d turned and walked stiffly out of his office, only to slump weakly against the wall beside his closed door, in much the same way she was now slumping in reaction to Sandro.

Only there was a difference, a marked difference between having reacted as she had through sickened revulsion at what Arthur Bates wanted to do to her, and reacting like this through helpless despair at what Sandro could do to her.

Sighing heavily, she forced herself to move at last, pushing out of the telephone kiosk and hunching deeply into her thick leather bomber jacket as she walked the few hundred yards back down the street to her tenement flat in icy March winds—weather that grimly threatened rain later.

Letting herself into the tiny flat, she stood for a moment, heart and hands clenched, while she absorbed the empty silence that always greeted her now when she stepped inside. Then, after a small flexing of her narrow shoulders, she relaxed her hands, and her heart, and began removing her heavy jacket.

Time was getting on, making deep inroads into Sandro’s one-hour deadline, yet, instead of hurrying to get herself ready for the dreaded interview, she found herself walking across the room to the old-fashioned sideboard where she stood, looking down at it as if it had the power to actually inflict pain on her.

Which it did, she acknowledged. Or one particular drawer did.

Taking a deep breath, she reached out and opened the drawer—that particular drawer.

And instantly all the memories came flying out; like Pandora’s box, they escaped and began circling around her, cruel and taunting.

So cruel, it took every ounce of self-control she possessed to reach inside, search for and come out with what she had opened the drawer to find. Then she was sliding it shut again with a gasped whoosh of air from aching lungs, while clasped in her trembling hand was a tiny high-domed box that instantly spoke for itself.

Stamped on its base in fine gold lettering was the name of a world-famous jeweller—its provenance in a way, or a big hint, at least, that what nestled inside the box was likely to be very valuable.

But the contents meant far more than just money to Joanna. So much more, in fact, that she had never dared let herself lift the lid of the box in two long years.

Not since she’d glanced down one bleak miserable day and noticed her wedding and engagement rings still circling her finger and been horrified—appalled that she had walked out on her marriage still wearing them! So she’d scrambled around in her things until she’d found the box and had put the rings away, vowing to herself to send them back to Sandro one day.

But she had never quite been able to bring herself to do it. In fact, each time she’d let herself so much as think about Sandro, the old panic had erupted, a wild, helpless, anguished kind of panic that would threaten to tear her apart inside.

It had erupted in that telephone kiosk only a few minutes ago. And it was doing it again now as she stood here with the small ring box resting in her palm. Teeth clenched, mouth set, grimly ignoring all the warnings, she flicked open the box’s delicately sprung lid—and felt her heart drop like a stone to the clawing base of her stomach.

For there they lay, nestling on a bed of purple satin. One, a slender band of the finest gold, the other, so lovely, so exquisite in its tasteful simplicity, that even as she swallowed on the thickness of tears growing in her throat her eyes could still appreciate beauty when they gazed on the single white diamond set into platinum.

A token of love from Sandro.

‘I love you,’ he had declared as he’d given the engagement ring to her. It was that simple, that neat, that special; like the simple, neat, special ring which, for all of that, must have cost him a small fortune.

He’d given it to her with love and she’d accepted it with love, she recalled, as the tears blurred out her vision and a dark cloud of aching emptiness began to descend all around her. For now their love was gone, and really, so should the rings have gone with it.

She could sell them, she knew that, and easily pay off her debt to Arthur Bates with the proceeds: just another of the ways-out she had spent her sleepless night struggling with.

But she knew she couldn’t do it. For selling these rings would be tantamount to stealing from the one person in this world she had taken more than enough from already.

She’d stolen his pride, his self-respect. and, perhaps worst of all, his belief in himself as an acceptable member of the human race.

‘You are tearing me apart—can you not see that? We must resolve this, Joanna, for I cannot take much more!’

Those hard, tight words came lashing back at her after two long miserable years and she winced, feeling his pain whip at her as harshly now as it had done then.

And it had been because of that pain that she had eventually done the only thing she could think to do. She had left him, walked out on their marriage to move in with her sister Molly, and had refused contact with Sandro on any level, in the hope that he would manage to put behind him the failure of their marriage and learn to be happy again.

Maybe he had found happiness, because after those first few months, when he had tried very hard to get her to change her mind and come back to him, there had been no more contact—not even when she’d phoned him up to tell him about Molly.

Molly...

A sigh broke from her, and, lifting her gaze from the box of rings, she glanced across the room to where a small framed photograph stood beneath the lamp on her bedside table and her sister Molly’s pretty face smiled out at her.

Her heart gave a tug of aching grief as she went to drop down on the edge of her narrow bed. Gently laying the ring box aside, she picked up Molly’s photograph instead.

‘Oh, Molly,’ she whispered. ‘Am I doing the right thing by going to Sandro for help?’

There was no answer—how could there be? Molly was no longer here.

But Sandro was very much alive. Sandro, the man she had loved so spectacularly that she had been prepared to do anything to hang on to that love.

Anything.

But then, what woman wouldn’t? Alessandro Bonetti had to be the most beautiful man Joanna had ever set eyes upon. The evening he had walked into the small Italian restaurant where she had been working waiting on tables had quite literally changed her whole life.

‘Alessandro!’ her boss Vito had called out in elated surprise.

She had glanced up from what she had been doing. Joanna could still remember smiling at the sight of the short and rotund Vito being engulfed in a typically Latin back-slapping embrace by a man of almost twice his own height

Over the top of Vito’s balding head, Sandro had caught her smile and had returned it as if he knew exactly what she was finding so amusing—which in turn had taken her laughing blue eyes flicking upwards to clash with the liquid brown richness of his.

And that had been it. Just like that. Their eyes had locked and an instant and very mutual magic had begun to spark in the current of air between them. His beautiful eyes had darkened, his smile had died, the full length of his long, lean fabulously clothed body had tensed up and his expression had changed to one of complete shock, as if he’d just been hit full in the face by something totally spellbinding. As she’d stood there, caught—trapped by the same heart-stopping sensations herself—she’d watched his hand move in a oddly sensual gesture across the back of Vito’s shoulders, and, to her shock, had felt the flesh across her own shoulders tingle as if he had stroked her, not Vito.

‘Who is this?’ he’d demanded of the little restaurant owner.

Vito had turned towards Joanna and grinned, instantly aware of what was captivating his visitor. ‘Ah,’ he’d said, ‘I see you have already spotted the speciality of the house. This is Joanna,’ he’d announced, ‘the fire outside my kitchen!’ And both men’s eyes had wandered over her bright hair, sparkling blue eyes and softly blushing face in pure Latin communion. ‘Joanna—this is Alessandro Bonetti,’ Vito had completed the introductions. ‘My cousin’s nephew and a man to beware of,’ he’d warned. ‘For he will be a dangerous match to your flame!’

A match to her flame... All three of them had laughed at the joke. But in reality it had been the truth. The absolute truth. Sandro lit her up like no other man had ever done. Inside, outside, she caught fire like dry tinder for him. And what was wonderful was the way that Sandro had caught fire with her.

It had been like a dream come true.

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...

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.