The Marriage Surrender

‘You are ruthless enough to sleep in my bed uninvited,’ Joanna pointed out.

‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘And anyway, you never even noticed me getting in it, so what are you complaining about?’

‘I wasn’t complaining,’ she argued. ‘I was merely making a protest.’

‘No, you were not,’ he smiled, still gently stroking that now very tidy coil of hair round her earlobe. ‘You were searching for an excuse so you could let me stay there without you having to kick up a fuss.’

‘What a lie!’ she objected.

‘Is it?’ he quizzed. ‘Then, what if I promise to keep the bad dreams away if you let me stay in your bed? Will that do?’

It was stupid, she knew, but his gentle teasing caused tears to suddenly bulged in her eyes.

‘Ah, don’t do that, cara,’ Sandro pleaded unsteadily. ‘It cut me up enough hearing you weep this morning.’

‘You never even noticed,’ she choked out accusingly.

‘See this fist?’ he demanded, showing her the one with the plaster that still covered the bruising. ‘It almost had a matching one.’

It was pure impulse that made Joanna reach out with both hands to draw his uninjured fist to her cheek for safe-keeping. It moved him; that one simple gesture seemed to move him so deeply that her tears came back all over again.

Why? Because even she realised it was the first time she had voluntarily reached out and touched him like that in so long. It was wretched.

‘Come on.’ He sounded suddenly unlike himself. ‘I’m taking you back to bed,’ he said, gathering her into his arms and standing up with her, ‘where I am going to hold you close for the rest of the night. And if you argue I am going to kiss you senseless. That’s the deal, cara,’ he stated firmly, not seeming to have noticed that she wasn’t arguing. ‘Sleeping, or kissing.’

‘No bartering. No haggling?’ she said drily.

He grinned. ‘You want to haggle? I should warn you first that I am very good. It is the banker in me. I can haggle the pants off the best of them,’

Wrong choice of words, perhaps, but Joanna chose to ignore them. She was too tired, for one thing. But mainly she was simply too weary of running for cover all the time. Perhaps Sandro was right, she mused sleepily as he lowered her feet to the floor by the bed so he could deal with her robe before urging her back into the bed.

He joined her in seconds, removing his own robe to reveal a pair of loose white boxer shorts that did little to disguise his masculinity. Yet she didn’t feel threatened, felt no desire to pull away from him when he collected her unresisting body to his.

Maybe he was right: the more he touched her, the more she would grow to accept it. Maybe the baring of her darkest secrets this morning had exorcised the ghosts. Maybe they really did have a chance at making a go of this, after all...

She could not have been more wrong about anything she discovered the next morning.

Joanna awoke at dawn to the sound of a bird singing on the ledge outside the window and lay listening to it for ages before eventually rolling over with the intention of drifting back to sleep again.

It was then and only then, as she found herself staring into his face, that she remembered.

Almost instantly the alarm bells began to ring inside her, then died away again when she realised he was still fast asleep, with a strong brown arm thrown across the pillow just above her resting head.

She went still, relaxing into the mattress while she indulged herself in the rare luxury of looking at him without having to worry about doing it.

He was, she acknowledged, as beautiful in sleep as he was awake, and stimulatingly vital. So dark, so feature-perfect, so lean and tight—that impressive torso of his shamelessly naked so she could lie here and feast on firm chest muscles densely dusted by a layer of springy black hair. Feast on this man who, for some reason she had never been able to understand, had wanted this little waitress when he could have had anyone.

It had been his misfortune, she thought sadly. Because—look at him, she told herself: tall, dark and handsome as he was, strong, stubborn and determined as he was. And even though he had carried her back here to this bed, and virtually coiled himself around her, there was not a single point at which their bodies brushed now,

Why? she asked herself with an aching sadness that stemmed directly from guilt. Because she knew that he had become so well conditioned during their marriage not to let himself come close to her. Even while he slept he was still maintaining that maxim now, in his subconscious.

A sigh whispered from her, the kind that told her she should be thinking of sliding out of this bed before Sandro woke up and yet another round of mental torment would begin as he probed what she was thinking and feeling about this situation when she just didn’t know how she felt about it. She was confused—extremely confused.

I love you, Alessandro, she whispered with a melancholy softness inside her head. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to you.

She might as well have shouted the words at him because his dark lashes suddenly fluttered away from his eyes, catching her exposed and vulnerable, catching her with nowhere to run and hide.

He didn’t move, he didn’t speak, and neither did she. Their eyes caught in that one long knowing moment as everything that had ever gone before it flooded painfully through her then ebbed away.