Kitabı oku: «Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

SOMEHOW THE LONG SCARLET flight of steps seemed safer this time around—and so did the legion of press waiting at the foot of them. As if Matteo had managed to throw the mantle of his steely strength over Jennifer’s shoulders and was protecting her and propelling her along by the sheer force of his formidable will.

Even the questions which were hurled at them about their relationship had somehow lost their impact to wound her. As if Matteo was deflecting them and bouncing them back with one hard, glittering look and a contemptuous curl of his lip which made women go ga-ga and photographers quake.

The party was in one of the glitziest hotels along the Croisette itself, but Jennifer found herself wishing that it was being held in one of the restaurants which lined the narrow, winding backstreets where Matteo had once taken her. The real Cannes—where such luminaries as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had eaten. But it didn’t really matter where the party was—she was going to stay only for as long as necessary and then she was leaving. That way she would save her face and save her pride.

They were in a room which was decorated entirely in gold—to echo the colour of the Festival’s most prestigious award, the Palme d’ Or. The walls were lined with heavy golden silk, like the inside of a Bedouin tent, and there were vases of gold-sprayed twigs laced with thousands of tiny glimmering lights. Beautiful young women dressed in belly-dancer outfits swayed around the room, carrying trayfuls of champagne.

But once she had accepted a drink Jennifer deliberately walked away from Matteo. She didn’t need him, and she was here to show him and the rest of the world just that. She was an independent woman—why would she need anyone? That was what her mother had always told her, and it seemed that her words had been scarily prophetic.

The party might have had a budget to rival that of a small republic, but it was a crush—and less hospitable than some of the student get-togethers Jennifer had gone to in her youth.

An aging but legendary agent was holding court. A nubile starlet was not only falling out of her dress but also falling over from too much wine, by the look of her. A raddled-looking rock star was looking around the room with a stupid grin on his well-known face and suspiciously bright eyes. And from out of the corner of her eye she saw Matteo being surrounded by a gaggle of glamorous women.

Welcome to the world of showbiz, thought Jennifer wryly. But inside she was hurting more than she could have imagined it was possible to hurt.

She dodged passes, questions, and having her glass refilled—managing instead to find a very famous and very gay British actor who was standing in the corner surveying the goings-on with the bemused expression of a spectator at the zoo. Jennifer had played Regan to his King Lear, and she walked up to him with a sigh of relief.

‘Thank heavens,’ she breathed. ‘A friendly face with no agenda!’

‘Hiding from the vultures?’ he questioned wryly. ‘Sort of. Congratulations on your knighthood by the way. What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you, I imagine. I may be an old queen—and a knight now, to boot—but I have to please my publicist like a good boy.’

‘Don’t we all?’

He surveyed her thoughtfully. ‘I see you arrived with that adorable man you married—does that mean you’re back together?’

In spite of the room’s heat, Jennifer trembled—but she was a good enough actress to inject just the right amount of lightness into her voice. ‘No. We’re just playing games with the press. The marriage is over.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said carelessly. ‘Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. You’ll get over it, duckie—you’re young and you’re beautiful.’ He sighed, his eyes drifting to Matteo once more. ‘Mind you—so is he!’

Jennifer grimaced a smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Go home and forget him,’ he said gently. ‘And stay away from actors—they’re feckless and unfaithful and I should know! Marry a businessman next time.’

‘I’m not even divorced yet,’ she said solidly. ‘And even if I were, this thing has scarred me for life—I’m through with marriage. Anyway—better run. Lovely to see you, Charles.’

They exchanged two butterfly air-kisses and then Jennifer resolutely made her way towards the door and slipped away—not noticing that she was being followed by a Hollywood icon who had just gone through divorce number four.

Not until she was in a quiet corridor and he moved right up close behind her.

Jennifer jumped and turned round. ‘Oh, it’s you, Jack!’ she exclaimed nervously. ‘You startled me!’

He flashed his trademark smile. ‘Well, well, well,’ he drawled softly. ‘Maybe my luck has changed for the better. You look damned gorgeous.’ He crinkled his blue eyes and directed his gaze at her chest. ‘So, how’s life, Jennifer?’

Jennifer knew that his fame meant he got away with stuff that other men would be prosecuted for, and she should have been used to the predatory way that such men feasted their eyes on her breasts, but the truth was that she didn’t think she’d ever get used to it. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she said blandly.

‘Well, since we’re in the same boat, maritally speaking…’ His voice dipped suggestively and his swimming pool eyes gleamed. ‘It can get a little lonely in bed at night—what say we keep each other company?’ And then his eyes narrowed as a shadow fell over him and he looked up into a pair of black, glittering eyes. ‘Well, well, well,’ he blustered. ‘If it isn’t the Italian Stallion!’

Matteo wasn’t bothered by the star’s slurred insult, but he felt a shimmering of intense irritation as he saw the fraught expression on his wife’s face. That and the blunt hit of jealousy.

‘Are you okay, Jenny?’ he demanded.

She wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, but instead she looked straight into his eyes. And, in one of those silent looks between two people who have lived together which speak volumes, her eyes told him that, no, she wasn’t okay. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘What a coincidence,’ Matteo murmured. ‘So was I.’

The sex symbol frowned in confusion, looking from Matteo to Jennifer like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘But I thought—’

‘Well, don’t,’ Matteo interjected silkily. ‘You’re not paid to think—you’re paid to act…pretty badly, as it happens, which is why your career is on the way down.’

And he took Jennifer’s hand in a proprietary way which made her momentarily long for the past and loathe herself for doing so as he led her down a corridor.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, shaking him off once they were out of sight.

‘You wanted to get away from that strisciamento?’

‘Well, yes. But not with you!’

‘Are you certain?’ His eyes glittered. ‘I’ve discovered a service lift which bypasses all the press—if you’re interested?’ He arched his dark eyebrows as they came to a discreet-looking steel door at the end of the corridor which was light-years away from the luxury of the guest lift they’d ridden up in.

‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ she questioned sarcastically.

‘But of course I am—we both know that. Coming?’

Jennifer hesitated.

‘Unless you’re secretly hot for the bastardo?’ he suggested silkily. ‘And want to stick around?’

Jennifer glanced back along the corridor and then stepped into the lift beside Matteo, pointedly moving as far away from him as possible as the doors slid shut on them.

‘You’re going to have to watch your step, Jenny,’ Matteo said softly as the lift began to whirr into action. ‘Men like that eat women for breakfast.’

Jennifer stared at him in disbelief. ‘How dare you?’ she questioned. ‘In view of what’s happened how dare you take a holier-than-thou opinion on another man’s behaviour? Have you tried looking at your own lately?’ She clenched her hands into two tight fists, her breath coming hot and fast as the words came spilling out of her mouth. ‘How’s your girlfriend, Matteo?’

Matteo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Jenny, don’t—’

‘Don’t you dare tell me “Jenny, don’t”! Remind me of her name again.’ Jennifer faked a frown. ‘Oh, yes—Sophia! Not exactly a household name at the moment, but I guess that’ll soon change with the magic of the d’ Arezzo influence.’

‘You didn’t knock it when you used it yourself,’ he challenged softly.

‘You bastard! At least I was known for being a good actress before I met you—and not for pouting and lounging around half-naked in some over-hyped perfume advertisement! So, was she worth it?’

Matteo’s black eyes flared. Had he meant so little to her that she could enquire after another woman as if she were asking the time? For, while he accepted that their marriage was over, Matteo knew that if he bumped into any lover of hers he would want to tear him limb from limb.

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’ he drawled. ‘You wanted a divorce—and you’re damned well getting one! Technically, that makes me a free man, Jenny—and at liberty to date whom I please.’

‘But you weren’t technically free in New York, when you started your affair with her, were you, Matteo? When the cameras caught you kissing her?’ The words were out before she could stop them and he stared at her, an odd expression in his eyes which Jennifer had never seen before.

‘I hadn’t slept with her then,’ he said slowly.

The use of the word then cut through her like a knife. ‘But now you have?’ She swallowed. ‘Slept with her?’

It was both a statement and a question, and there was a long and uneasy pause. For, no matter what the circumstances leading up to the act had been, Matteo knew he had broken his marital vows. ‘Yes.’

Jennifer clamped her clenched fist against her mouth as the cold rip of jealous rage tore through her heart. But what had she expected? For him to carry on denying a physical relationship? To pretend that his undeniable attraction towards the stunning Italian starlet had remained unconsummated?

Matteo was a devastatingly attractive and virile man. He needed sex like most men needed water. Well, she had asked the question, and she had only herself to blame if he had given her the answer she had dreaded.

She had thought that the pain of their break-up couldn’t possibly get any worse, but in that she had been completely wrong. He had said it now. He had slept with Sophia. His body had lain naked against hers, warm skin against warm skin. He had entered another woman, had pushed inside her and moved and then thrown his head back and groaned out his pleasure in the way she knew so well—the way he had done with her.

And spilled his seed inside her? Made this other woman pregnant, like the pressmen had suggested earlier?

Biting against her fingers, Jennifer fought hard to prevent herself from retching. The mind could be a wonderfully protective organ—allowing you to block things out because they were too painful to contemplate—but it could be capricious and cruel, too, and Matteo’s words triggered an inner torment as images of his infidelity came rushing in, like some unwanted and explicit porn film.

Jennifer leaned against the steel wall of the lift, beads of sweat gathering above her upper lip as she pictured her husband naked with another woman.

Matteo frowned and made an instinctive move towards her. ‘Cara, you are faint?’

‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ she spat, and shrank even farther against the metal, which felt cold against her bare back. She wiped the back of her hand over her clammy face. ‘And don’t you dare come near me!’

A wave of sadness washed over him and he wondered how something which had seemed so perfect could have deteriorated into a situation where Jennifer was staring at him as if he was her most dangerous and bitter enemy.

Maybe he was. Maybe that was what inevitably happened when a marriage broke down. Maybe the myth of an ‘amicable’ divorce was exactly that—a myth.

He stared at her as she moved a little restlessly, as if aware of how tiny the enclosed space was. Her proximity was distracting. Matteo’s senses felt raw—as if someone had been nicking at them with a razor. Yet when he looked at her he felt nostalgic for times past, and that was always painful—for it had never been real. Because memory played tricks with your emotions. It tampered with the past and rewrote it—so that everyone saw it differently. He knew that Jennifer’s version of it would be different from his own, and there was nothing he could do about that.

But maybe that was only part of it. For the eyes didn’t lie, did they? He studied her and thought how much time had changed her. Tonight she was all sleek Hollywood film star—her heavy blonde hair caught up in an elaborate topknot with a few artistic tendrils tumbling down around her face. Her gym-tight body was encased in clinging sapphire silk, and she was bedecked in priceless diamond and sapphire jewellery.

How little she resembled the rosy-cheeked girl with tousled hair and bohemian clothes he’d fallen in love with. Was it the same for her? Did she look at him and see a stranger in his face today?

And a floodgate was opened as the reflection triggered a reaction. Forbidden thoughts rushed into his head with disturbing clarity, and Matteo remembered the pure magic of meeting her. Of feeling something which had been completely alien to him.

CHAPTER THREE

MATTEO HAD BEEN FILMING in England. The ‘Italian Heart-Throb’—as the newspapers had insisted on calling him—had agreed to play Shakespeare. It had been a gamble, but one Matteo had been prepared to take. He had been bored with the stereotypical roles which had brought him fame and riches, and eager to show his mettle. To prove to the world—and himself—that an Italian-American could play Hamlet. And why not? All kinds of actors were switching accents in a bid to show versatility in the competitive international film market. Some had even won awards for doing just that.

Jennifer had been playing Ophelia—but not in his film. She’d been what they called a ‘serious’ actress—stage-trained, relatively poor, and rather aloof. He had gone along one evening to watch her perform and had been unable to tear his eyes away from her.

They’d been introduced backstage, and he’d been both intrigued and infuriated when she’d given a slightly smug smile which seemed to say I know your type.

‘I loved your performance,’ he said, with genuine warmth, before realising that it made him sound like some kind of stage-door Johnny—him!

‘Thank you. You’re playing Hamlet yourself, I believe?’ she questioned, in the tone of someone going through the motions of necessary conversation. Almost as if she was bored!

‘You do not approve?’ he challenged. ‘Of someone like me playing one of your greatest roles?’

Jennifer blinked. ‘What an extraordinary assumption to jump to! I hadn’t given it a thought.’

And he knew that she spoke the truth. For a man who held the very real expectation that every actress in Stratford would be anticipating his visit as if it were the King of Denmark himself, Jennifer’s uninterest inflamed him.

She was studying him, her head tilted slightly. ‘But your reviews have been spectacular,’ she conceded, in the interests of fairness. ‘So well done.’

He knew that. Every theatre in the world wanted him, and Broadway was putting irresistible offers on his agent’s table. But somehow Jenny’s quiet compliment meant more to him than all those things. ‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said suddenly.

Jennifer put her head to one side, her tousled hair falling over her shoulders. ‘Why should I do that?’

A stream of clever retorts could yield entirely the wrong result, Matteo realised. For the first time in his life he anticipated that she might do the unthinkable and turn him down!

‘Because my life will be incomplete if you do not,’ he said simply.

‘You can’t say things like that!’ she protested, biting her lip with a mischevious kind of fascination.

‘I just did,’ he drawled unapologetically.

She stared at him for a long, considering moment. ‘Okay,’ she said, and smiled.

And there it had been—like all the old songs said—something about her smile.

Matteo had never really believed in love—considering it something which existed for the rest of the world, but which excluded him. He had seen glimpses of it, but never before had he felt the great rush of passion and protectiveness he experienced with Jennifer that day, which had been the beginning of their tempestuous and ultimately doomed union.

And now?

Now he believed that what had happened had been a cocktail of hormones which had combusted at a time in his life when he’d craved some kind of excitement. He had been right all along. Love was not real. It was a story they fed you which sold movies and books. That was all.

Jennifer rubbed distractedly at her forehead. ‘This lift is taking for ever.’

He had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed.

‘Is it?’ he questioned, as there was a sudden lurching kind of movement, followed by complete and deafening silence. Matteo looked from the disbelieving accusation in Jenny’s eyes to the stationary arrow on the illuminated panel. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he mused. ‘Seems like we’ve run into a little trouble.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘You think I’d joke about something like that? You think perhaps I’ve set this up?’ he demanded. ‘Lured you into this lift so that I can be alone with you?’

Jennifer turned glacial blue eyes on him. ‘And have you?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Have I? Believe me when I tell you, cara, that I can think of a lot more agreeable companions to be stuck with than a woman who does not seem to know the reason of the word “trust”!’

‘And I’d rather be with the devil himself than some arrogant and egotistical sex maniac who can’t resist chasing anything in a skirt!’

His black eyes narrowed as he felt the bubble of rage begin to simmer up. ‘You dishonour me with such a description!’ he declared furiously.

‘It’s the truth!’

‘Ah, but it is not the truth, and deep down you know that, Jenny! You saw the amount of women who threw themselves at me! It was never the other way round.’

Yes. Those women who would pass him their telephone numbers openly in restaurants, right in front of her face, as if she were just part of the furniture. Or those others, who would use more devious methods to get the attention of the devastatingly handsome actor.

The shop assistants and the flight attendants who would slyly slide him their details. The doctors and lawyers who would invent the need for a meeting with him. It seemed that none of them had any shame—any woman with a pulse wanted her husband.

‘Did you ever stop to think what it was like for me, as your wife?’ she demanded.

‘Of course I did! You made it damned impossible for me to do otherwise!’

‘Did you? I think you used to treat it as an amusing little game—batting those gorgeous eyes as if to say, I’m not even doing anything, and still they bother me!’

‘Oh, Jenny—that was your insecurity talking, not mine. I’d gone beyond the stage where I needed fans to bolster my ego.’ His eyes darkened. ‘But, beyond refusing to leave the house, the only way to stop women coming on to me was to increase our security—and that brought its own claustrophobia.’ There was a pause. ‘And anyway, you know damned well that I pushed those women away.’

‘But you stopped pushing eventually, didn’t you, Matteo?’ she questioned, and she felt that familiar pain stabbing at her heart. And although part of her wondered why she was putting herself through yet more pain, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. ‘When you looked at Sophia. And you wanted her. Are you denying that?’

There was another kind of silence now—fraught and terrible in the already silent lift. Yes, he had been guilty of the sin of desiring another woman, but it should have remained just one of those unacted-upon desires which made up a human life. People were not immune to desiring other people even if they were married. Only the truly naïve believed otherwise. And it was the naïve who fell victim to mistaking that forbidden desire for love. Matteo had seen it, and known it for exactly what it was. Unfortunately, Jenny had not.

He had been filming with Sophia, and their on-screen chemistry had been so hot it had sparked off the set. Everyone in the industry had been talking about it. And eventually Jennifer had got to hear about it.

But even if she hadn’t developed such an obsession with it their marriage had already been at crisis point. Their work schedules had kept them apart so much that all she’d been getting were reports from the newspapers and photos of him with Sophia. She had picked away at the rumours—like a teenager worrying at a blemish on her face—until eventually her jealousy and suspicions had blown up. Trust between them had already been destroyed by the time he had kissed Sophia.

‘You can’t deny it, can you, Matteo?’ she persisted. ‘That you wanted Sophia?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ he demanded. ‘Because by then what I did or didn’t do was irrelevant! We were no longer a real couple. We were so far apart from each other that we might as well have been existing on different planets.’ He looked at her across the confined space and his dark eyes were sombre. ‘You know we were.’

Jennifer bit her lip so that he wouldn’t see it trembling, because now there was pain in his eyes, too, and somehow that made it worse. It was far easier to think that Matteo was immune to the hurt of their break-up. Because if he shared even a fraction of her heartbreak, then somehow that only emphasised the precious thing they had shared and now lost.

‘Oh, what’s the point in discussing it? There’s nothing left to be said.’

Matteo stilled. ‘Well, for the first time in a long time we are of one accord, cara,’ he said softly.

Another barb. Yet more pain. But Jennifer silently thanked her ability to act as she kept her face from reacting and flicked him an impatient look instead. ‘Look, just concentrate on getting us out of this mess, will you, Matt—since you’re the one who got us into it.’

‘Are you implying that I’ve trapped you?’ he laughed softly.

‘No implication,’ she answered. ‘You have.’

He narrowed his eyes and listened. ‘Can you hear anything?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘Got a phone?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither. The truly successful never carry phones to events like this, do they?’ he mused. ‘That would make us far too accessible to the big wide world—and there’s always someone to take our messages for us.’

For a moment Jennifer was surprised by the unfamiliar note of cynicism which had crept into his voice. ‘Surely Matteo d’ Arezzo hasn’t become disenchanted with the jetset world which brought him riches and fame?’

‘Isn’t that inevitable?’ he questioned drily. ‘Doesn’t it happen to everyone?’

‘Not to you.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought that success was your very lifeblood.’

‘Success on its own isn’t enough,’ he said tightly. ‘I don’t want to stay on this merry-go-round of a life until it chews me up and spits me out.’

Jennifer blinked. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’

He looked at her and his eyes were like chips of jet. ‘Was I really so ruthless, Jenny?’

She thought about the way they’d pored over their working schedules like two prospectors who’d just struck gold and now she recognised her own ruthlessness, too. Oh, how stupidly short-sighted you could be when fame came tapping at your door. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe we both were.’

She felt the hot pricking of sweat on her forehead and ran her tongue over parched lips, noticing that his black gaze was trying not to be drawn to them. She hoped to God that he didn’t think she was giving him the come-on. Fractionally, she moved away from him. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘We don’t have a lot of choice. We wait.’

‘For how long?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Did she think this was easy for him? Her standing so close and off-limits—her luscious body barely covered in some flimsy gown which made her look like…

‘Do you want to sit down?’ he suggested carefully. Because surely that way he wouldn’t have to be confronted by the tantalising thrust of her breasts?

Jennifer didn’t know if she dared move. She was aware that her panties were growing damp and that if she wasn’t careful Matteo would guess. He had always been so perfectly attuned to her body and its needs that his senses would be instantly alerted to the physical manifestations of desire. Briefly, she shut her eyes, summoning thoughts which would kill that desire stone-dead. But it wasn’t easy.

‘You’re okay?’ he asked softly.

She opened them. Think of his betrayal. Of his doing with another woman what he had stood up in church and declared was for her and her alone. ‘Oh, yes—I’m absolutely fine! Just wonderful! I’m trapped in a service lift in a foreign country with my cheating ex-husband. Exactly the way I would choose to spend my Saturday night!’ She rubbed her fingertips against the necklace which was digging into her throat.

‘Why don’t you take that off?’ he suggested, as he saw the red mark she’d left there. Her skin was moist and a damp tendril of hair was clinging to her neck.

She met his eyes. ‘I beg your pardon?’

He gave a snort of savage laughter. ‘Madre de Dio—don’t look at me like that!’

‘I wasn’t looking like anything!’

‘Oh, yes, you were,’ he contradicted softly. ‘With shock and horror written all over your face. As if I were suggesting some kind of striptease when all I meant was that your necklace doesn’t look very comfortable.’ He ran a disparaging glance over the heavy, wide choker which gleamed around her slender neck. ‘Studio told you to wear it, did they?’

‘Yes.’ But he was right. She was aware of the costly gems digging into her flesh, making her feel as if she was wearing some upmarket dog-collar. Blindly, her hand reached up behind her, tried to reach the clasp, but failed—and there was no mirror…

‘You want me to do it for you?’ he questioned.

Jennifer hesitated, because it seemed almost too intimate a thing to do. The putting on and the taking off of a necklace was the kind of thing a husband did for his wife in the seclusion of their bedroom when they were properly married—not about to enter one of the biggest divorce battles of the year. Yet what choice did she have?

‘I guess so. Never has the word “choker” seemed so appropriate,’ she added sardonically.

He gave a wry smile. ‘Turn around, then.’

But, confronted with the sight of her bare back, Matteo found his mind slipping into forbidden places. He silently cursed as he felt his erection grow even harder, thankful that she couldn’t see his face—for he was certain that it had contorted into a pained expression of exquisite sexual frustration.

‘You see…ex-husbands do have some uses,’ he observed evenly, and lifted his fingers to unclasp the necklace, letting it slide into the palm of his hand like a heavy and glittering snake. ‘There. Better?’

‘Much…thank you.’ Jennifer composed her face and turned—noting the dull flush of colour which was accentuating his high cheekbones. She knew what it meant when he looked like that—or at least she thought she did. Was he just getting overheated, or…?

Did he still want her? Was he imagining what they would have been doing in here if they were still married? Him rucking up her dress and pushing at her panties, unzipping himself and thrusting deep inside her, with her back pushed against the steel wall?

Oh, Lord—what was the matter with her? How could the thought of sex with him be so unbearably exciting despite everything that had happened between them? Everything they’d said and thought and done and accused each other of.

‘Do you want me to put it in my pocket?’ he asked. ‘What?’ asked Jennifer blankly.

He held the gems up. ‘This.’

‘Sure.’ She nodded her head and turned away, unwilling to watch him slide them into his trousers, some sixth sense telling her what her eyes did not want to see—that he was hard and aroused.

So why did that thought give her some kind of primitive satisfaction instead of shocking her to the core?

As the minutes ticked by she could feel beads of sweat trickling down her back and a faint dampness gathering beneath the heaviness of her breasts. Shifting her position in her high-heeled shoes, she could see the faint sheen on Matteo’s olive skin, and she swallowed as their eyes met in an uncomfortable moment of awareness.

‘It’s hot,’ he said huskily.

‘Yes.’ She looked into his face because there was nowhere else to look. Nowhere to run. The bare steel walls seemed to be shrinking in on them, and suddenly Jennifer was terrified of this false intimacy—frightened of the sensations which were beginning to creep over her skin and the thoughts which were flooding into her head.

She turned away from him and lifted up her fist, pounding it hard on the metal surface of the wall and wincing as she struck.

‘Help! Let us out!’ she called. But the silence was deafening. She raised her voice. ‘Let us out!’

‘Why do you shout when no one will hear us, Jenny?’ ‘Somebody’s got to hear us! Because being in here with you is driving me mad!’

‘I thought you liked that aspect of our relationship.’

‘I wasn’t talking sexual!’

His eyes drifted over the hard points of her nipples. ‘Weren’t you?’

‘Oh, can’t you keep your mind on something other than your bloody libido?’

Matteo almost smiled. She was angry. And she was aroused, too. He knew that with a certainty which only increased his own desire to an almost unbearable pitch. Would he ever again know a woman as intimately as he did this one?