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Seethingly silent, she shook her head, and he returned to her side.
Damn him, he knew she couldn’t bodily throw him out. He was establishing his physical superiority, claiming territory. But this was her territory, and he was an intruder.
Looking down at the vodka without drinking, he said softly, ‘You surely don’t expect me to walk away now?’
If only. But she owed it to herself to try. ‘Would you,’ she inquired baldly, ‘if I asked you to?’
He was still staring into the depths of his glass. The liquid didn’t move—his hands were perfectly steady. Unlike hers. Her whole body was racked with tiny, invisible tremors. It was a moment before he said, ‘Are you asking?’
She stopped breathing. She was sure she could hear her heart beating, slow and heavy, and her throat was locked.
Say it. ‘Yes.’
She’d said it, not as decisively as she’d have liked to, but clearly enough, even if her voice was low in her throat.
Seconds ticked by. Then he lifted the glass and swallowed, lowered it again, holding it in both hands. He turned his head and she received the full force of the ferocious blaze in his eyes, so that she recoiled, her lower lip briefly caught in her teeth.
‘No,’ he said.
She shot to her feet, then halted because the sudden movement had made her a little dizzy—the damned brandy again—and besides, where was there to run to? He could corner her easily before she’d taken half a dozen steps.
As if to confirm it, he downed the remainder of his drink and stood up too, leaving the glass on the carpet by the couch. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t run from me any more, Roxane.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I’M NOT running.’ It made her sound as if she’d fled without thought, in blind fear. The room tilted, and she hastily sat down again. ‘I’ve never run from you.’
‘What would you call it, then?’ he demanded.
‘It was a decision. A rational, sensible decision.’
His lip curled. ‘Rational? Sensible?’
A sensation sickening in its familiarity washed over Roxane. Helplessness, despair, and mingled with it a deep, inexpressible longing. ‘You don’t think I’m capable of that. But it was the best decision of my life.’
His jaw tightened and a small muscle in his cheek kicked almost invisibly. The anger that still smouldered in his eyes turned bleak before thick black lashes hid them. ‘Was it necessary,’ he asked bitingly, ‘to be so dramatic—cutting off all contact, swearing your parents to secrecy, making me communicate through your lawyer as if I were some brute who had beaten you?’
‘I told him you hadn’t,’ she said swiftly, looking down at her hands, wound tightly into each other. The solicitor had jumped to obvious conclusions, and she’d made sure he didn’t retain them. ‘You’re not a brute, Zito.’
‘God—’ he breathed the word as if it rasped his throat ‘—I thought I’d never hear you say my name again.’
Roxane winced, thankful that her head was still bent and he couldn’t see her face, shadowed by the shoulder-length sable fall of her hair. But the change in his voice forced her to look up, her clear green eyes wondering.
To find his expression rigid and unreadable, his gaze cool, almost indifferent. ‘Did it occur to you that if I wanted you back I could have found you?’
‘I know you could have.’ She tried to ignore the gibe in his caveat, if I wanted you… Zito could afford to pay any number of private detectives, for as long as it took.
‘You’d made it clear you didn’t want to be found.’ He paused, a corner of his mouth curving satirically. ‘Or were you hoping that I’d somehow do it anyway and come running after you, begging you to return to me?’
Sometimes, weakly, she had fantasised that he would track her down regardless of her efforts, that he’d come to her with apologies and promises and a new understanding—a changed and humbled man, and everything would miraculously be all right. There had been long cold nights when the fantasy had helped her through to another dawn.
But it would be fatal to admit it. ‘No!’
She thought she saw a brief flare of some emotion—frustration? disappointment?—before he resumed the guarded watchfulness he’d shown earlier. She must have been mistaken, falling prey to all-too-familiar wishful thinking. ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ she said.
He swung away from her, pushing back the jacket of the perfectly tailored suit by shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
Zito’s clothes had always been impeccable, discreetly expensive but worn with an insouciance that made them part of the man, not any kind of status symbol to impress others.
Now he was inspecting the walls that she’d painted palest jade green and hung with cheap reproduced art, along with a couple of originals by local unknowns.
His gaze next disdained the calico covers hiding the shabbiness of her comfortable secondhand couch and the mismatched armchairs facing it across the low table that bore the honourable scars of a chequered life. For a few seconds his attention was caught by the worn, silky antique rug that Roxane had spent too much on but loved all the more for it.
He swept another sharp-eyed glance about the room, before he turned to her.
Roxane asked defiantly, ‘Don’t you like it?’
He didn’t answer immediately, and when he did his voice was expressionless. ‘It’s very attractive. Small but…cosy.’
‘I like small.’
For a moment the wicked, teasing sexual humour that had attracted and excited and confounded her when they first met gleamed in his eyes, lifting one eyebrow and a corner of his mouth in subtle disbelief. And damn, she responded to it as always, with a frightening mix of inward laughter and sheer wanton, bone-melting desire.
Keeping her expression blank, she hoped her eyes wouldn’t betray her.
The laughter died and his mouth went hard. To her considerable surprise, he looked away first. ‘Is the house yours?’ he asked, almost as if it were a random question plucked from the air.
‘Mine and the bank’s.’
Her stock answer, but she should have expected the sudden stabbing quality of his stare. ‘If you needed money you could have asked me. Through your lawyer if necessary. I told him—’
‘I don’t want your money. I have a good job and I can afford the mortgage.’
‘Mortgage!’
He made it sound like a dirty word. Roxane smiled thinly. ‘It’s what we little people have when we need to buy a house.’
‘You have no need to buy a house. I can give you anything you need—hell, I did give you everything!’
‘Not everything,’ she said softly, sadly. Not the one thing she needed above all.
Furious, he said, ‘I loved you!’
She wouldn’t even think about what that past tense meant. ‘I know. I know you did. In your own way.’
He thrust a hand savagely over his hair, the frown turning to a scowl. ‘I gave you my heart and my soul, everything that was in me. I don’t know any other way.’
Of course he didn’t. Maurizio Riccioni never had done a thing in his life except in his own inimitable, confident, and usually hugely successful way. Why should he have ever imagined that his marriage, his wife, might not succumb to that combination of self-assured charm and incisive decision-making?
Almost compassionately she said, ‘It wasn’t all your fault. I was too young, and I should have said no when you asked me to marry you.’
‘You did,’ he reminded her.
Yes, she had, the first time he asked her, showing a shred of common sense. But her opposition hadn’t lasted long. She’d soon had her fears and scruples overturned one by one under the onslaught of Zito’s clever brain, unswerving will, and devastating kisses. He had even talked her parents round, despite their misgivings about their only daughter marrying at nineteen.
He’d reluctantly waited until she turned twenty, and on her birthday she’d stood beside him while they exchanged their solemn vows in the cathedral in Melbourne, with all the trimmings and before several hundred guests.
But marriage was more than a frothy white dress and a champagne reception. And theirs hadn’t stood the test.
‘I should have stuck to my refusal,’ she admitted.
‘Thank you.’ His voice held an acrid note. ‘Sometimes I wish I had beaten you.’
‘Zito!’
He managed to look both shame-faced and impatient. ‘You know I’d never hurt you, or any woman! But it would give me a reason for your desertion—something that made sense.’
He started prowling round the room again, stopping at the small desk that she’d found in one of the few remaining Ponsonby junk shops that didn’t have pretensions to being an antique store. When she’d sanded and polished it the grain of the timber had come up nicely.
Zito took a hand from his pocket and idly shifted aside a ‘personal invitation’ to subscribe to a book club at a ‘once-only’ price, revealing the envelope underneath.
‘Those are private!’ Not that she had anything in particular to hide. There was only more junk mail, bills and a letter from a cousin in England.
He looked at her unseeingly, his finger stilled on the sheet of paper, then lifted his hand, looking down again. Finally he turned fully. ‘Ms Roxane Fabian?’
Why did she feel guilty? Roxane shrugged.
‘You told me you were happy to take my name,’ he said, his voice thickening, ‘when we got married.’
‘I didn’t mind…it was no big deal.’
‘It was to me. A very big deal.’
Just as reverting to her maiden name had become important for her. She supposed it was symbolic. ‘An ownership thing?’ she accused, trying for mild amusement.
He controlled his temper, covering it with a hard laugh. ‘If you thought that, then you were too young.’
Or too stupid, his tone implied. ‘You didn’t think so…then.’
His reaction was barely noticeable, but Roxane was so attuned to his every tiny movement she saw the stiffening of his muscles, the infinitesimal recoil. She’d pierced the armour of his self-confidence, however minutely.
The elation she felt disconcerted her. She had never deliberately set out to wound Zito. Of course she’d known he would be upset and angry when she left him, but she’d had no thought of revenge or punishment, only a dire need for self-preservation.
In her long and probably incoherent farewell letter she had assured him that she didn’t hate him, and he shouldn’t blame himself for what he couldn’t help. She had tried not to hurt him any more than the simple fact of her departure inevitably would.
Maybe the hurt had gone deeper than she’d expected. He’d had more than twelve months to get over it, but his jabbing little remarks weren’t accidental.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was too much to expect you’d understand.’
‘Was there another man?’ he asked abruptly. And looked around again, as if searching for evidence. ‘Have you left him too?’
Roxane’s temper snapped. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He couldn’t conceive that she’d just wanted to be alone, that she could manage on her own? ‘Another man, after living with you for nearly three years?’
At her scorching tone he looked arrested, almost confused. She added, ‘And how dare you suggest I was unfaithful?’
Her anger seemed to give him pause. He shot a look at her from under his brows. ‘For months I tortured myself with the thought…’
It hadn’t even occurred to Roxane that he would think that. How could he have…? This was further proof that he’d never really known her, never bothered to comprehend her deepest needs. A small ache shifted from somewhere near her heart and lodged in her throat, stifling her voice. ‘You were wrong.’
A lifting of his shoulder, a tilt of his head, seemed to indicate it was not important. But of course it was. His pride would have suffered, and he had a surfeit of that. If the truth were known, pride was probably the real reason he had refrained from sending someone looking for her, rather than respect for her stated wishes.
‘You broke your other marriage vows,’ he said. ‘Why not that one?’
‘It’s different!’
‘How?’
The question was unanswerable. ‘Anyway, you were wrong,’ she reiterated.
He gave her a piercing stare, and nodded as if accepting that. ‘And now?’ he inquired softly.
‘Now?’ About to snap a hot rejoinder, Roxane paused, her chin lifting. ‘Now my private life is my own.’
His eyes narrowed, and she had to resist an instinct to let hers skitter away.
A shrill burring made her jump, and she said foolishly, ‘That’s my phone.’
Careful not to rise too hurriedly this time, she went to the hallway to lift the receiver. ‘Yes?’
Zito stood regarding her through the open door while she tried to give her attention to the caller. ‘Yes, Leon.’
Wrenching her gaze from Zito’s inimical stare, at the corner of her eye she saw him swing round and disappear from her line of sight.
‘Saturday?’ Roxane forced herself to concentrate. ‘Yes, it is short notice. Wait while I get my diary.’
She dug it from the bag she’d left by the phone. ‘You do mean Saturday next week? What kind of party? If it’s black tie formal…’
Leon assured her it wasn’t. An impromptu welcome home, he said, for a son returning from overseas with his new fiancée. ‘A family affair. About a hundred guests.’
‘Just an intimate little gathering?’ Roxane felt sorry for the unknown young woman. ‘So the relatives get to cast their eyes over the bride-to-be?’
‘It could lead to more introductions. These people are some of Auckland’s best-known socialites. I hope you’re free to supervise as well as make the arrangements?’
Roxane’s own social life was low-key and intermittent. ‘I’ll be there on the night,’ she promised.
‘I know I can rely on you.’
Silly to feel a glow of satisfaction at the banal words, but when she returned to the little sitting room after hanging up, her lips were curved in pleasure.
