his lovely house in Belgravia held only bad memories for her. She couldn’t meet him there, would probably die of mortification before she’d even stepped over the threshold!
‘Here, then,’ he clipped. And now he really was angry: not hot, Italian angry but frozen, arctic angry. ‘In an hour. It is all I can offer you. And don’t be late,’ he warned. ‘I am working on a very tight schedule and as it is I will have to fit you in between two important meetings.’
‘OK,’ she agreed, wondering sinkingly if meeting him at his office was any better than meeting him at the house they had once used to share? In all honesty she had no idea, because she had never been to his place of work before. ‘How—w-what do I do? When I arrive there, I m-mean?’ she asked, her bottom lip beginning to feel as if it had been completely mutilated by her own anxious teeth. ‘W-will I have to tell someone who I...? Only I don’t like...’
‘Coming out of hiding?’ he suggested acidly. ‘Or don’t you like admitting your legal association to me?’
‘Sandro...’ she whispered huskily. ‘Can’t you appreciate how difficult I’m finding this to do?’
‘And how difficult do you think I am finding it?’ he threw back gruffly. ‘You walked out of my life two years ago and have never bothered to so much as show your lovely face since!’
‘You told me not to,’ she reminded him. ‘When I left, you said—’
‘I know what I said!’ he bit out. Then he sighed, and sighed again. ‘Just be here, Joanna,’ he concluded wearily. ‘After all of this, just make sure you don’t chicken out at the last minute and stand me up, or so help me, I’ll—Oh, damn it,’ he muttered, and the line went dead.
And suddenly Joanna felt dead: dead from the neck up, dead from the neck down. Dealing with Sandro had always ended up with her feeling like this. Drained, so sucked clean to the dregs of her reserves that it was all she could do to slump against the phone booth wall while she wondered wearily why she had set herself up for all of it in the first place!
Then a sudden vision of Arthur Bates sitting behind his cluttered desk as he issued his ultimatum flashed in front of her eyes, and, with the usual shudder, she remembered exactly why.
‘Payment, Joanna, comes in cash or in kind,’ he had declared in that soft and silken voice of his. ‘You know the score here.’
Payment in cash or in kind...
The very words had made her feel sick.
‘How long have I got to pay?’ she’d demanded with an icy composure that completely ignored the second option.
But the man himself had refused to ignore it. He had waited a long time to bring her down to this low point and he meant to savour every second of it. So he’d sat back in the creaky leather desk chair, inserted a heavily ringed finger into the gap between two gaping buttons on his overstretched shirt, then taken his time sliding his eyes over her slender figure, so perfectly defined beneath the tiny white waiter’s jacket and black satin skirt she had to wear for work.
‘Now would be good,’ he’d suggested huskily. ‘Now would be very good for me...’
Which had had the effect of freezing her up like a polar ice cap. ‘I meant to pay the money.’ She’d made it clear. ‘How long?’
‘A debt is a debt, sweetheart.’ He’d smoothly dismissed the question. ‘And you are already two weeks late with your payments.’
‘Because I was off work with the ’flu,’ she’d reminded him. ‘Now I’m back at work I can pay you as soon as I—’
‘You know the rules,’ he’d cut in. ‘You pay on time or else. I don’t make them for fun, you know. You people come to me to help you out of your financial difficulties and I say, Yeah—good old Arthur will lend you the cash—so long as you understand that I don’t take it nicely if you don’t pay me back on time. It’s for your own sake,’ he contended. ‘If I were to let you get behind, then you’d only end up in a worse mess trying to play catch-up again.’
He’d meant she’d have to borrow more from him to keep up the extortionate repayments on his high interest loan and thereby sink further in his debt. It was a clever little ploy. One which kept him, the loan shark, firmly in control.
But for her it was different, and she’d always known it. Arthur Bates didn’t want her money, he wanted her body, and by getting behind with her repayments she had played right into his hands. What made it worse was that she worked for him, which meant he knew exactly how much she earned; he knew he was in control of that part of her life. She waited on tables or worked behind the bar of his seedy little nightclub—the same club where she had got herself into debt by stupidly playing at its gaming tables.
Which actually meant that Arthur Bates believed he was in control of Joanna’s life every which way he wanted to look at it.
But then, Arthur Bates didn’t know about her marriage. He didn’t know about her connection to the powerful Bonetti family. He didn’t know she had a way out of the whole wretched mess—if she could find the will to use it.
Even with that will, she’d realized she was going to need time—time Arthur Bates was not predisposed to give her. So, there she had been, standing in front of him, feeling her skin crawl as his eyes roamed expressively over her, and she had done the only thing she could think of doing to gain herself time. She had lowered her lashes over the revulsion gleaming in her eyes, and offered him the sweet, sweet scent of her defeat.
‘OK,’ she’d muttered huskily. ‘When?’
‘You’ve finished for the night,’ he’d said. ‘We could be at my apartment in fifteen minutes...’
‘I can’t,’ she’d replied. ‘Not tonight, anyway...’ And she had given an awkward little shrug of one slender white shoulder. ‘Hormones,’ she’d explained, and had hoped he was quick enough to get her meaning because she was loath to go into a deeper explanation.
He’d understood. The way his expression flashed with irritation told her as much. ‘Women,’ he’d muttered. Then, suspiciously, ‘You could be lying,’ he’d suggested. ‘Using that excuse as a delaying tactic.’
Her chin had come up at that, blue, blue eyes fixing clearly on his. ‘I don’t lie,’ she’d lied. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘How long?’ he’d asked.
‘Three days,’ she’d replied, deciding she could just about get away with that without causing more suspicion.
‘Friday it is, then,’ he’d agreed.
And she’d felt too sick to do more than nod her head in agreement before she’d turned and walked stiffly out of his office, only to slump weakly against the wall beside his closed door, in much the same way she was now slumping in reaction to Sandro.
Only there was a difference, a marked difference between having reacted as she had through sickened revulsion at what Arthur Bates wanted to do to her, and reacting like this through helpless despair at what Sandro could do to her.
Sighing heavily, she forced herself to move at last, pushing out of the telephone kiosk
