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 igno
red 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.
Molly had been killed a year ago to the very day.