‘So, let me get this straight,’ he recounted, ‘You want to divorce a multi-millionaire for the princely sum of five thousand pounds. Now that, Joanna, insults my ego,’ he informed her, moving at last to get rid of his own cup and saucer, then relaxing back again. ‘Why not go for the jackpot and demand half of everything I own?’ he suggested. ‘After all, you are entitled to it.’
No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t entitled to anything from Sandro, not even the five thousand she was asking him for. ‘I just want f-five thousand pounds,’ she reiterated, staring down at some unremarkable spot on the smooth grey carpet, because the next bit was going to be even harder to say, and she couldn’t look at him while she said it. ‘And I need it today, if you can lay your hands on that much.’
‘Cash?’
She swallowed, then nodded. ‘Please...’
No reply. Again she was forced to look up so she could search his face for a hint of what he was thinking—and she saw nothing but a sudden terrible gravity that almost cut her in two.
Face flushing, she dropped her gaze once more, agitated fingers picking at the fine woollen sleeves of her suit jacket.
‘Perhaps you had better tell me why you need it,’ Sandro suggested very quietly.
‘I’ve got myself into debt,’ she admitted, so softly that Sandro was lucky to hear it. ‘And the people I borrowed the m-money from are riding my back for payment.’
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