Her voice cut across his, urgent and denying. ‘Of course I’m saying can’t! How could it possibly be anything else! How could you think it could be anything else?’
He saw her shut her eyes for a moment, draw a ragged breath. Then her eyes flew open again, and her words were vehement and stabbing.
‘How,’ she said, her voice ragged, ‘can it possibly be anything other than can’t when you are paying me to be here with you?’
If he’d frozen before, he did so again now—totally.
‘Paying you?’ There was Arctic ice in Salvatore’s voice.
He saw her face work in the dim starlight. Her hands raised again to ward him off. Heard the consternation in her face, her voice.
‘What else do you call it? Salvatore, I’m onlyhere—only with you at all—because you are paying me four hundred thousand pounds to be here!’
A hand slashed down through the air. He realised it was his own.
‘Como? You say that to me? You say such a thing?’ A furious breath was exhaled from him. His eyes flashed with outrage at the words she had thrown at him. ‘That money,’ he bit out, ‘is the sum agreed in the prenup you signed. It is a divorce settlement. It is not,’ he ground out, black fury in him, ‘a payment to you for your presence here!’
He could see her face working again, her hands dropping heavily to her sides, as heavy as her voice.
‘Of course it is! What else can it be? It’s the reason I married you—so you would pay off my mortgage for me! It’s money that brought me here, Salvatore! I’m your employee, or as good as! Nothing more than that. You know our marriage is a lie as much as I do! It’s a fiction, however legal it may be! And it doesn’t matter whether you call that four hundred thousand pounds I’m going to get when you dispose of that fiction a divorce settlement or a pay-out—it’s payment for my being here, for going through that marriage ceremony with you! So if I...if you...if...’
She lifted her hands again, stepping another pace backwards.
‘If there is anything else between us other than what we’ve established so far...a...a working relationship, if you want to call it that, then what that amounts to...what that makes me...is—’
She broke off. Looked straight at him, let her hands drop again. Her voice changed. Became painful. Halting. It hurt him to hear it. Appalled him.
‘I’m spending a year of my life with you, Salvatore, in the role of your wife. The public role of your wife. Not personal—never personal. It can’t be. Nothing can be personal between us! Not beyond the remit of a working relationship! At the end of the year I walk away with four hundred thousand pounds. That’s it, Salvatore—nothing more. So it can’t...can’t be anything more. It just can’t.’
She shook her head, backing further away from him.
‘I’m... I’m sorry—’
Her voice broke and he saw her swallow painfully, chokingly.
‘Sorry that I let you kiss me. I apologise if it...gave you ideas. Ideas that can’t exist for the reasons I’ve given. I won’t go down that path. I can’t. I can’t separate the money I’m being paid for marrying you from what you...what you want of me. Even...’ she swallowed again, more painfully yet ‘...even if it’s what I gave you the impression of wanting. The two don’t go together. They can’t. I’m sorry if you don’t see it that way—but I do.’
She turned away, walking indoors. He watched her go.
Ice in his veins.
But something quite different in his guts.