A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [31]
‘You are creasing it…’
‘So I am!’
For a second she was tempted to rip the photo in two but then, rethinking, decided against it. It wasn’t this Lucia’s fault that she had an unfaithful rat for a husband. That she was married to a man who couldn’t keep his trousers zipped up.
‘Here…’
She flung the photograph in Gio’s general direction, watching with burning, dry eyes as it flew a little way then floated down to the bed. The way he picked it up, concerned for its appearance, was another cruel twist of the knife in her already desperately wounded heart.
‘Don’t you think it’s rather too late to be concerned?’ she questioned bitterly, swallowing down the burning taste of acid in her mouth. ‘Last night would have been a better bet if you’d wanted to pretend to have a guilty conscience. Or you could at least have the face to try the old “my wife doesn’t understand me” routine.’
‘It wouldn’t be true.’
Gio was looking down at the picture, his concentration intense.
‘If you want to know the truth, then Lucia always understood me perfectly.’
‘Poor thing…’
The words slipped out before she could catch them back.
‘I feel sorry for her. Being married to someone like you. It must be a hell of a life.’
To her horror, her mouth quivered on the last sentence, the words breaking painfully in the middle. And when she looked into Gio’s stunning face, saw once again the stony, opaque-eyed look that had settled over his features, it was more than she could do to keep her control. The tears that she had been fighting from the moment that he had headed for the door after telling her he was leaving were now swimming revealingly in her eyes and she set her jaw, swallowing hard, refusing to let them fall.
‘Or does she have her—bits on the side as well? Is that it, Gio? Do you have some sort of an open marriage?’
‘No!’
The opaque look vanished in an instant. He looked horrified at the thought, shocked right through to the depths of his heart.
No, that was wrong. Not the depths of his heart. Giovanni Cardella didn’t possess a heart. He couldn’t or he wouldn’t have behaved in this callous, unfeeling way.
‘Lucia would never do any such thing. She has standards…’
That brought her head up sharply, brilliant eyes burning into his in defiance.
‘And so do I!’
He had the nerve to look doubtful. Or something. She wasn’t at all sure how to interpret the look that flashed across his face, made his gaze suddenly unsteady, but it obviously wasn’t total agreement with what she had said.
‘I do! I don’t sleep with married men, Signor Cardella—at least not when I know they are married! But you didn’t even have the honesty to tell me! You lied!’
‘No…’
‘No,’ she repeated, her voice dulled by pain. ‘No, you never actually lied to me. You just never answered the question, did you? Instead you distracted me with details about your sister-in-law and her pregnancy and the fact that she—she lives in Sicily. With your br-brother. And, I presume—with your wife!’
‘No.’
‘No? Then where…?’ Hastily she caught herself up. ‘No—don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I don’t want to know anything about her—or about you—or about your son…’
Liar! her heart reproached her in anguish. Liar, liar, liar!
She did want to know—though she would rather have died than to ask him. She wanted to know what had been in his mind when he had approached. Why he had picked on her. Had he truly only wanted a quick sexual fix, a one-night stand, nothing more?
‘Teresa…’ Gio began.
But the sound of her name on his lips, the wonderful sound of those lyrically accented syllables that had set her heart soaring just a few short hours before, was more than she could bear. It brought her to the edge of her rapidly crumbling control and threatened to push her over.
‘Don’t say it!’ she flung at him. ‘Whatever you were going to say—whatever sort of an excuse you were going to come up with—then don’t do it! I told you, I don’t want to hear a word! I don’t want to know!’
Suddenly too restless with pain to stand still, unable to bear the burn of his watchful ebony eyes, she set up a restless