The Marriage Surrender

So—what now? she wondered. Where did all of this wretched soul-baring leave them now that he knew it all?

Was he regretting his decision to begin their marriage again, now he knew exactly what he would be getting? Something was certainly troubling him because of the way he was sitting there, frowning at his own feet like that

Panic flared—a new kind of panic, a panic that almost knocked her sideways, because it revolved around Sandro not wanting her now, rather than the other way round.

And this time, she told herself painfully, I really can’t take any more.

‘I’m sorry,’ she choked, then turned and ran—out of the room, down the hallway and to the room she had been using before.

Once inside she closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it with a death grip on the door handle while she tried to snatch at a few short breaths of air in an effort to calm what was threatening to completely overwhelm her.

The fear of losing him—again.

Last time she had lost him because she couldn’t tell him the truth; this time she was going to lose him because of the truth.

Her heart gave a painful lurch, her eyes deep, dark pools of utter despair. Then she glanced absently at the bed, saw the rumpled covers she had scrambled out of that morning, saw the breakfast tray lying on top of them, where she had left it untouched.

Quite suddenly it all closed right in on her, the hurt, the grief, the ugliness and misery, tunnelling down to that silly tray with its rack of cold toast and its pot of cold coffee.

Her hand snapped away from the door handle and she walked unsteadily forward. She came to a stop by the bed then bent, her eyes blurring out of focus, as trembling fingers picked up what she hadn’t noticed lying on the tray that morning when Sandro had brought it to her.

It was a rose, a single red rose, with its stem cut short, its thorns removed and its bud just about ready to burst open.

He’d used to do this all the time, she recalled. An incurable romantic, who would bring her short-stemmed roses with their thorns removed so she would not prick herself. He’d used to lay them on the table at Vito’s restaurant and wait until she decided to acknowledge that the rose had been placed there for her, his eyes mocking, hers wickedly teasing, because it was a game they played.

The lover waiting to be acknowledged as the lover. The loved making him wait, because it had heightened the wonderful electric tension between them until it fairly sizzled in the atmosphere as she went about her business, serving at other tables, and Sandro watched her do it with a lazy understanding of what was really going on.

Loving without touching. Knowing without words. A single short-stemmed rose that lay on a table making its own special statement, the link between the red-haired saucy waitress and the excruciatingly sophisticated, tall, dark Italian diner.

This latest rose floated across her trembling lips, its delicate scent filling her nostrils and closing her eyes

, making her heart ache in bleak sad memory.

He had done the same kind of thing after they were married, too. Even in the midst of all the tension that surrounded them then, red roses would appear—by her plate at breakfast, on her pillow at night when she would crawl into her lonely bed in the room next to his.

Sandro’s silent statement. Sandro’s reminder that she was loved—still loved—no matter what she was doing to him.

Now here was another rose, making a statement when statements were no longer valid, because he hadn’t known it all when he’d left the bloom for her this morning.

He hadn’t known.

The floodgates opened quite without warning. Only this time it wasn’t bitter, ugly words that came flooding out—but tears—tears she hadn’t cried for years: tears of misery, tears of anguish, tears of pain, grief, anger and bitterness that had her sinking down onto the rumpled bed and keeling sideways, where she curled herself into a tight ball beside the tray with the rose clutched to her breasts and just completely let go of it all.

Outside, down the hallway, through the half-open door to the drawing room, Sandro stood by the window, his fists rammed into his trouser pockets as he listened to the dreadful storm without moving a muscle. His eyes were fixed on some obscure point on the distant skyline, his jaw locked solid, his teeth clenched behind grimly pressed lips.

When it finally went quiet, he pulled his fists out of his pockets and continued to stand there a few moments longer, staring at the plaster still covering his grazed knuckle, shifting his gaze to the other uninjured knuckle. Then he grimaced, as if he were considering throwing that fist at some solid object but knew it would be insanity to do it.

He moved then, gave himself a mental shake and walked into the hallway. Fifteen minutes after that he was knocking on Joanna’s bedroom door and pushing it open, bringing the tempting aroma of a tomato-based Italian sauce in with him.

‘Lunch,’ he announced. ‘Five minutes, in the kitchen, cara.’

Lunch, Joanna repeated silently as she watched the door draw shut behind his retreating figure. The emotional holocaust was over, so it was back to normal.

The man must have emotions cased in steel, she decided bitterly.

Then she remembered the rose still clutched in her hand, and bitterness changed to a melting softness that threatened to bring the tears rushing back again.

She made herself join him for lunch, simply because she had had previous experience of what happened if she went against him; she knew what came next when Sandro used that coolly detached tone of voice.