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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.’
