‘I think I hate you,’ she whispered miserably.
‘Si,’ he sighed. ‘So you are continually telling me.’
Then suddenly he was back on his feet again, taking the glass of water from her and setting it aside so he could come and lean over her, much in the same way he had done yesterday, when he’d meant to make a very important point.
‘But don’t think—’ he warned, dipping his head to catch her eyes and, when she quickly lowered them, placing a hand on her chin to make her look at him—make her look and see the grim determination written in his own glinting dark eyes. ‘Don’t think that your lousy opinion of me or my own lousy guilty conscience for putting you into this damn bed the way I did is going to reverse what actually happened yesterday, because it is not! Now I have you out in the open, you are staying out,’ he vowed.
Then he straightened, turned and walked out of the room, leaving her sitting there wondering balefully what he had in store for her if he could still be this angry so many hours later.
‘Oh, damn it,’ she sighed as her head began to swim again.
What in heaven’s name had she let herself in for by setting herself up for this? She didn’t need it—didn’t want it! And she was as sure as anything that Sandro couldn’t want to put them both through this kind of hell a second time!
It had been bad enough the first time around, she recalled heavily. Her loving him, needing him, wanting him so badly but unable to let him touch her. His hurt, his frustration, his soul-crushing bewilderment at why she was reacting to him like that!
Why should he understand it? The week before they were due to be married she had barely been able to keep her hands off him. Then he’d flown here, to Rome, to put in place the finishing touches on the wholesale transfer of his head offices to London—because Joanna needed to stay in London until Molly was old enough, and financially independent enough, to survive there on her own.
Molly...
The pretty, pale blue-washed ceiling clouded out of focus. In Joanna’s view, Molly had been the absolute opposite of her more determined and fiercely independent big sister. But then, Joanna had needed to be, because, at the tender age of eighteen, she had taken over full responsibility for her fourteen-year-old sister, when their mother had died after a long, long illness which had left them with no one else to turn to; four years before that Grandpa had gone, taking with him the only period in her life when Joanna could have said with any certainty that she had felt truly cared for, instead of being the one who did the caring.
But that was another story, one not worth rehashing, because she still missed Grandpa and his tiny smallholding in Kent as much as she still missed Molly.
They had been half-sisters really, born by different fathers to a mother who, by her own admission, had loved many men—though none of them well enough to want to tie herself down. And, in the circular way life tends to turn, both Joanna and Molly had secretly yearned for the so-called old-fashioned and conventional close family unit, with a father as well as a mother to claim as their own.
It was not to be. A small sigh shook her. Consequently, growing up had been tougher for Molly and herself than most—though not so tough as some. They’d had a home of sorts: a rented flat in the East End district of London where their mother had taken them to live after Grandpa died. Their mother had worked all hours to keep them reasonably fed, clothed and healthy, and Joanna had taken care of Molly—then of her mother and Molly, when their mother eventually became ill.
So, continuing to take care of Molly after their mother had gone had not been any real hardship. She’d been used to doing it. They’d stayed on in the flat their mother had rented, and Joanna had started working all the hours - she could to keep that same roof over their heads while Molly finished her education.
Molly had been clever. She’d been quiet, shy and studious, and incredibly pretty: blonde-haired and blue eyed with sweet gentle features. Joanna had harboured a secret dream where Molly would go on to university, make something of herself, then meet a wonderful man who would treasure her baby sister for the rest of her life.
Only, it was Joanna who had met the wonderful man. It was as if Sandro had stepped right out of her dreams for Molly and had become her own dream.
It had been magical. Once again, she was transported back to that tiny back-street Italian restaurant where she’d worked at in the evenings. He’d been superbly dressed, beautifully groomed and so handsome he took her breath away. She had never in her life come face to face with a man like Alessandro.
He’d come to visit Vito and had ended up staying all evening to flirt with Joanna instead, seemingly fascinated by the pretty red-haired waitress who was so bright and cheerful, and contrarily shy when he tried turning on his charismatic Italian charm.
He’d waited for her until she’d finished work that night and walked her home. Within a month he was like a permanent fixture—at the restaurant, and at the small flat she’d shared with Molly. And Joanna had been so blindly in love with him, she hadn’t really thought much about who he was or what he was. It hadn’t seemed to matter that he drove a fast car and wore designer clothes. Or that he was always having to fly off somewhere on business. He wasn’t standoffish, though he had been critical of the fact that she’d held down two jobs—working during the day-time in a wine bar and nights at the restaurant—but only because it hadn’t left her much time to be with him.
The problems had started when he’d asked her to marry him and come to live with him, here in Rome. She couldn’t leave Molly, who had only been seventeen then, and had had another full year in education before Joanna could even begin thinking of her own future.
He’d accepted it—amazing, now, as she looked back and thought about how Sandro had accepted every obstacle she’d tossed in his way: ‘Molly needs me here; I won’t desert her after all we’ve been through together.’
‘Fine,’ he’d said. ‘Then I will have to find another way.’ And he had. He’d decided to move himself to London. ‘I will move heaven and earth if that is what it will take for you and I to be together,’ he’d explained.
Then there was the night when she’d shyly told him that she was still a virgin. Later she’d wished she’d kept her silly mouth shut, because he had been about to make love to her then, finally and fully. For the first time in weeks they had actually managed to grab a full evening at her flat without Molly, because she was staying at a friend’s house. So there they’d been, half undressed and wonderfully lost in each other, when it had suddenly occurred to her that she should warn him.
He’d been so stunned, then so damned pleased about i
t that she’d been almost offended. ‘I can’t believe it.’ He’d grinned at her. ‘I have a real live angel in my arms and she’s going to be all mine!’
‘I’m no angel!’ she’d protested. ‘Just a very busy girl who’s not had time to get into heavy relationships!’
She should have seen the writing on the wall then, when he’d suddenly changed towards her, stopped being so passionate, stopped trying to seduce her at every opportunity he could get, and begun treating her like some rare object he had to cosset and protect from the big bad wolf lurking inside him.
‘You are special,’ he’d explained. ‘I want our wedding night to be special. I want you to wear white when you marry me and I want to stand beside you and think, This woman is special and she is coming to me pure of body! What more could any man wish for in the woman he loves?’
And that was when she’d begun to worry that Sandro loved her virginity more than he loved her!