The Marriage Surrender

‘He said I could pay him off quicker if I worked for him,’ she explained. ‘B-because the wages were higher than restaurant work, and he could even find me a flat within walking distance of the club. S-save me travelling expenses...’

‘But it turned out to be not as simple as that?’ Sandro grimly suggested.

She gave a shake of her bright head. ‘H-he kept on putting up the weekly repayments, and I suppose I st-started to panic in case I fell behind, which therefore m-meant borrowing more money from him. I’d seen some of the other girls get caught out like that,’ she explained huskily. ‘It was f-frightening...’

‘So,

you did what?’ Sandro demanded. ‘To keep up your payments?’

Joanna took another gulp at her gin as if her very life depended on it. ‘I played the tables,’ she confessed on a soul-crushing rush of shame. ‘I took a chance on trying to win back what I owed him. It didn’t work.’ Well, who in this room is surprised at that? she wondered grimly. ‘One—one thing led to another,’ she went on. ‘And now I’m in debt so deep to him that if you won’t help me, then...’

She trailed to a stop, aware that she had said too much already.

But Sandro wasn’t going to let her stop there. ‘Then...?’ he prompted.

She shrugged, refusing to answer, and lifted unfocused eyes to him. ‘Will you help me?’ she asked.

But even through a gin-induced haze, she could see the anger in Sandro’s expression. ‘I want to know what happens if you do not pay this man off!’ he grimly insisted.

And her own temper flared, putting a bright, condemning spark into her blue eyes as she tossed at him bitterly, ‘Oh, you should know the answer to that one, Sandro, since you once used very similar tactics on me yourself, in an effort to get me to do what you wanted me to do!’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he demanded.

‘Blackmail!’ she flashed at him, and uttered a scornful little laugh. ‘Which is probably the most polite way of describing the pressure you exerted to get me over the colossal hurdle of—now, what did you call it?’ She pretended to ponder, angrily ignoring the slow, warning way his body was stiffening in the chair opposite. ‘Ah, I remember. My “freakish aversion to sex!” That was it! Only where you used your wonderful self as a lever, this man is using my debt to get what he wants from me!’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I NEVER used force on you!’ Sandro denied that.

But, ‘Let me make love to you or get out of my life’, had been force enough, Joanna argued silently. In the end, when she still could not let him touch her, she had saved him the bother of throwing her out and walked out on him instead!

‘So let me get this straight,’ he continued angrily. ‘What you are trying to say here is that some man is forcing you to have sex with him in return for the five thousand pounds you owe to him?’

‘Yes!’ That was exactly what she was saying!

Then, quite without any prior warning, she was getting rid of her glass and lurching to her feet, turning away from Sandro and hugging herself, a hand pressed against her quivering mouth.

He was slower in rising, his anger replaced by a grim kind of recognition of what it was she was struggling with. He had been here before after all—had seen it all before.

After a few moments of watching her, he released a heavy sigh. ‘OK, Joanna,’ he murmured quietly. ‘Take it easy. No one is going to touch you like that here.’

Her bright head nodded in acknowledgement of his grim reassurance. ‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed behind her straining hand, and for once Sandro did not chide her for the apology.

All he did do was move right away from her, going to stand by the window, staring out, giving her some privacy while she pulled herself together again.

Yet for some reason that small show of sensitivity hurt her so badly it sent the wretched tears sweeping across her eyes. She didn’t understand it, couldn’t explain it, but it had something to do with the man himself and the way he was standing there, tall, sleek, unbearably special, hands resting in the pockets of his grey silk trousers, shoulders straight, that noble dark head held high.

And he was alone.

That was what hurt. It was the space between them, the huge gulf, physical and emotional. A gulf she had caused and one he maintained because he had learned the hard way not to attempt to bridge it.

And what had she just done? Thrown into his face one of those very few times he had attempted to cross that wretched bridge.

Dropping her hand to her side, she clenched it into a tight fist of bitter aching despair. It wasn’t fair—none of it. They’d had so much going for them once, and now look at them.

Miserable, both of them. Each better off without the other.

He turned half towards her, giving her hungry senses a view of his long, lean shape in profile. ‘If I give you the money, what then?’ he asked.