‘Now I want to make reparation for the last year, which must have been hell for you. And this,’ he explained with a slow wave of one beautifully sculptured hand, ‘is my way of making that reparation. I give you wide-open spaces, Joanna, and the freedom to enjoy it as you wish...’
The reparation was his reparation not her reparation? ‘Y-you mean...?’ she stammered out incredulously. ‘You mean you’ve bought this beautiful place for me because you feel you owe me something?’
‘Do I not?’ he countered.
‘No!’ she cried ‘You do not!’
‘I will have to move main control of the bank back to Rome, of course,’ he said, speaking right over her protest as if she hadn’t voiced it. ‘But I will install a full communications system here, for convenience, which will mean less commuting for me, so we can work at this place together...’
Joanna stared at him and couldn’t even breathe through the pressure building in her breast. He believed she would be happy living in the country, so he had bought them a country estate to live on! And he was going to move his head operation back to Rome—again!
In other words, he was prepared to move heaven and earth to make this work for them—again.
‘And what do you want, Sandro?’ she asked him huskily. ‘What is it you personally want from all of this for yourself?’
He shrugged, then smiled a wry kind of smile that thoroughly mocked whatever it was he had been going to say before he’d even bothered saying it. ‘A wife who will be a wife to me would be nice.’
And that was all? A minor want like that? A perfectly justifiable want for any man, never mind a man like Sandro!
But, oh, good grief, it was like a mountainous obstacle to her!
‘Oh, Sandro,’ she sighed in shaken response, knowing she could never give him what he wanted. She had proved beyond all doubt this morning that she was incapable of being a proper wife to him! Which meant, therefore, that she could not accept anything else from him. ‘Stop doing this!’ she cried out in pained compulsion. ‘Don’t you see I’m not worth it? I don’t even want it!’
‘Then what do you want?’ he demanded.
You, she thought hopelessly, and turned away from him so he wouldn’t see that answer written in her eyes.
‘No!’ he objected, angry now, very angry, because once again she was letting him down with her inability to give him back what he needed from her. Striding towards her, he grabbed her arm and spun her back to face him. ‘You will stop hiding from me whenever we begin to get close to the real truth!’ he grated at her.
‘I can’t keep taking from you and giving nothing back!’ she cried in pained distress.
‘Then give yourself to me,’ he answered simply.
‘I can’t!’ she choked. Good grief, did he never listen to a word she said to him? ‘I can’t, damn it. I can’t!’
He sighed, straightened his body as though he was containing something very intense deep down inside him, then unclipped his hands from her shoulders and moved off towards the sunny front doorway.
‘Come on,’ he said to her over his shoulder. ‘There is a lot more to see yet outside. I think you will like the stables...’
Joanna couldn’t believe it! She stood there, exactly where he had left her, and marvelled incredulously at the stubborn way he was still completely ignoring anything she said to him that he didn’t like!
In the end she followed him outside and let him show her the gardens and the stable block, for which, he informed her, she was to choose her own stable of horses once they’d made the house fit to move in to permanently. In a daze she let him guide her from one thing to another, said nothing—thought nothing! Her mind had shut down completely, as though someone—namely Sandro—had turned it off for her because her thoughts didn’t suit him.
An hour after that they were back at the car, and for one last time she tried to get through to him. ‘Sandro—please!’ she begged, ‘Will you listen to me?’
‘Not unless you are going to say something positive,’ he replied coolly.
‘I positively know I am never going to be able to let you make love to me,’ she answered bluntly.
‘Why not?’ he challenged.
She didn’t answer, her eyes lowering from his, her lips pressed grimly shut.
‘Still more ghosts to uncover, Joanna?’ he prodded.
You are my ghost, she answered silently. You haunt my every breathing moment. ‘I’ve faced the ghosts,’ was what she said out loud. ‘Without it changing anything.’
‘No, Joanna,’ Sandro responded. There are still some ghosts lingering here that I have not managed to uncover yet. But I will,’ he vowed. ‘I will find that person I once fell in love with. The person who once loved me in the same exquisite way, no matter what it takes to do it. And that,’ he concluded, ‘is what is called positive thinking, cara. Not that negative stuff you keep on throwing at me.’