The Marriage Surrender

But she refused to look at him, refused to so much as acknowledge his presence in the kitchen as she sat down at the table already laid out with steaming hot pasta topped with a delicious-smelling sauce.

‘Help yourself,’ he invited, sitting down opposite her.

Silently she did so, spooning a small amount from the dish onto her plate, then breaking off a chunk of warm bread while he watched her, saying nothing. Yet even his silence was critical.

He waited until she had forced the first forkful to her reluctant mouth and swallowed it before deciding to help himself, and every move he made, every perfectly normal gesture, played across her nerve-ends like static along live wire.

They sat through the whole meal like that: silent, tense—she forcing herself to eat because she did not want the sarcastic comments if she gave up on the first food she’d allowed into her stomach in more than twenty-four hours. And he, she suspected, was aware that her self-control was being held together by the merest thread which he did not want to snap.

And, to be fair, the food improved with each mouthful; Sandro was a surprisingly good cook. He enjoyed it, he’d told her once during one of those rare moments of harmony when they had been moving about his Belgravia kitchen preparing dinner together on his housekeeper’s day off.

But those moments had been very few and far between. Most of the time there’d been this same tension between them. Tension, tension, tension...

‘What now?’ she asked huskily when the silent meal was finally over.

He glanced up, looking startled by her voice, as though he had forgotten she was even there. Their eyes clashed, then his became hooded again. She wasn’t surprised; Sandro had not looked her directly in the face once since she’d made her grand confession.

‘I have to go to my office here for an hour or two,’ he said, with a quick glance at his watch. ‘I suggest you try to rest,’ he advised. ‘You look—wrung out.’

Washed out, wrung out and hung out to dry was probably more truthful. ‘I mean...about this—situation...’ She made it clearer. ‘I need to know what you intend to do now.’

He leaned back in his chair, the action so graceful it drew her eyes towards him, to his shirt-front, then to the long, lean length of his upper torso.

The man with everything, she thought to herself, and grimaced. Good looks, great body, loads of class and style and sophistication. And, of course, there was that other extra ingredient he possessed in abundance called sex appeal.

The kind of sex appeal that few women were able to resist. She’d seen it happen so many times—all he needed to do was walk into a room full of people to automatically become the centre of attention for every female present

Old and young alike; it didn’t make any difference. He possessed what Molly had used to call charisma—that special quality which turned just a chosen few into stars.

‘Do?’ he repeated, bringing her blue gaze fluttering up towards his face, then instantly down and away from it again. ‘But I have just told you what I intend to do,’ he coolly informed her. ‘I will spend the rest of today attempting to clear my desk so I can keep tomorrow free for us to drive to Orvieto.’

Tomorrow—the beautiful villa in the brochure he had shown her, she had forgotten all about that! ‘But I th-thought...’ Her voice trailed off, her bewilderment so clear that Sandro sighed.

‘Nothing has changed, cara,’ he said. ‘You are still my wife and I am still the man to whom you are married. This is still only the second day of this new life we are building, and, whatever transpires, you will remain my wife and I will remain your husband. You understand me?’

She understood only too well. She understood why relief was flooding through her right now—followed by the expected burst of alarm. But she also understood that he was reminding her of one very small but important point she seemed to have forgotten throughout all of this.

Mainly, that there was no way out for either of them. They had been married in accordance with the Roman Catholic faith, had made their vows to each other in front of God. Under Church law, that meant no going back, no matter how sour the marriage became. Therefore she was, in his eyes, his responsibility for life—for richer or poorer, for better or for worse.

Just another point of conflict for them to bite on, she concluded. Because when she’d let him marry her, knowing what she did, she had been playing him false.

‘Y-you could get an annullment,’ she suggested. ‘I would support your claim if you wanted to go to the Church and ask for a release from your vows to me.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Sandro drawled, coming to his feet with a suddenness that spoke of anger. ‘That is so very kind of you, cara, to allow me the pleasure of offering myself up for public ridicule by announcing to all and sundry that I have not been man enough to make love to my own wife!’

Joanna flushed at his sarcasm. ‘I was only trying to be objective about the situation!’ she snapped.

‘Well, don’t bother, if that is the only idea you can come up with,’ he advised, then was suddenly leaning over her, one hand placed on the table, the other on the back of her chair, effectively trapping her, while his eyes made glinting contact with hers at last. ‘Because you owe me, Joanna,’ he informed her grimly. ‘You owe me my pride, my self-respect, and my belief in myself as an acceptable member of the human race. None of that has changed simply because I now know why you treated me the way you did.’

‘You want revenge,’ she whispered in appalled understanding.

‘I want—reparation,’ he corrected.

‘Oh, very Italian,’ she mocked, turning her face away from him because looking at him hurt—hurt every which way she thought about it.

‘No,’ he muttered. And she wasn’t sure what angered him the most, her turning away or her mockery, but suddenly he was taking hold of her chin and tugging it back round to face him. ‘This is very Italian!’ he rasped.

Then his mouth was crushing her mouth with a kiss aimed to make a statement, a very angry sexual statement. It was ruthless and it was savage, he was parting her lips to deepen the kiss without any compunction.