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‘From now on you will dress as I want you to dress,’ he smoothly declared. ‘It is part of your therapy that you will dress up to your beauty and not down to your low opinion of yourself.’
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that so she didn’t try to look for one, because he was only telling it how it was. She did dress down, but she always had done; it wasn’t something that had developed because of what had happened to her. She’d always had an aversion to pandering to vanity—perhaps because that was what her mother had done. Until she became ill, her mother’s life had revolved around how to get the best from herself. It had never seemed to occur to her that she was naturally pretty; she’d felt she had to work at it constantly, to the point where more often than not she’d gone right over the top.
Not that Sandro was likely to dress her in over-the-top garments, because his own sense of good taste just would not let him.
‘What’s happened to your housekeeper?’ she asked in a clear change of subject. ‘She hasn’t been near the place today, as far as I can tell.’
‘I’ve given her the next couple of weeks off,’ he explained, pouring a bone-dry Chianti into lead crystal wine glasses. ‘I thought we could do with the privacy while we get used to each other again.’
Privacy so he could keep the pressure on her, Joanna corrected silently. She might be neurotic but she wasn’t a fool; she knew he was still a man on a mission.
Which effectively ruined any hopes of them sharing this meal with any more harmony than they had shared during lunch. By the time it was over she felt so damned uptight that when Sandro climbed to his feet she almost jumped out of her wits.
‘I will go and get my shower and change now, if you don’t mind,’ he said coolly, ignoring her reaction.
‘Fine,’ she said, coming to her feet herself. ‘I’ll just clear up here, then I think I’ll go to bed,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I’m very tired...’
Hint—big hint. She expected another argument; she expected him to order her to stay right where she was until he got back.
But, ‘Suit yourself,’ was all he said as he walked away. ‘I’ll use another room so I won’t disturb you.’
Another room. Joanna wilted in sinking relief, only to come upright again almost immediately when it suddenly occurred to her that he was behaving out of character by saying that!
What was he up to? she wondered as she cleared away the dinner things. Why ease the pressure now, after piling it on so steadily throughout the long day?
Well, there was one thing for sure, she decided: she wasn’t hanging around to find out!
So she was shut safely in her room and curled up in bed by the time she heard him come out of that other bedroom further down the hallway.
He didn’t even pause to listen at her closed door as he passed by it.
She frowned, not understanding him—not understanding him one little bit! She didn’t understand herself either, because there was something niggling at her insides that felt very much like disappointment.
She fell asleep like that, still niggled, still tense, clutching a spare pillow to her front as if it were a magic charm that could ward off any unwanted callers.
Yet, if that was its function, it didn’t work. The unwanted callers came in her dreams. She supposed she should have expected it after what she’d been through over the last couple of days. As it was, she woke up sweating, gasping for breath in the darkened bedroom, frightened and disorientated for the few fevered seconds it took her to remember where she was. Then she just lay there, waiting for it all to fade away again.
But it didn’t fade away, and she knew she was going to have to get up and out of here while she gave herself time to get over the whole horror.
She was just about to slide out of the bed when her hand touched something very warm and alive lying next to her, and all of a sudden everything inside her went haywire, shooting her into a sitting position as her mouth opened wide and she let loose an ear-piercing scream.
It brought Sandro awake with a start that had him sitting up too, before he had even opened his eyes. ‘What the hell—?’ he gasped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘OH,’ JOANNA whispered in quivering relief. ‘It’s you.’
‘Who the hell else would be sleeping next to you?’ Sandro rasped, so angry that she realised he was responding to her shock, not her comments.
‘Bad dream,’ she breathed in an attempted explanation.
‘Ah,’ he said, for once sounding the disconcerted one. Then, more gently, ‘Are you OK?’
She shook her head, fighting not to suffocate in air that, to her, reeked of the stench of stale beer and male body odour. It was amazing how the subconscious mind could be so brutally authentic when it wanted to torture you.
‘I can’t stay here,’ she said, and scrambled out of bed to drag on her robe. She hurried from the room without even bothering to ask what he was doing in her bed! It didn’t seem that important when other far more dreadful horrors were having a field day in her mind.
The rest of the apartment was in darkness, the quietness in itself almost as suffocating as the room she had just left. Still trembling in the aftermath, she made for the drawing room, her bare feet moving silently on cool mosaic flooring as she walked down the hall and pushed open the drawing room door.
