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.
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