Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!. Sharon Kendrick

don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’ he drawled. ‘You wanted a divorce—and you’re damned well getting one! Technically, that makes me a free man, Jenny—and at liberty to date whom I please.’

      ‘But you weren’t technically free in New York, when you started your affair with her, were you, Matteo? When the cameras caught you kissing her?’ The words were out before she could stop them and he stared at her, an odd expression in his eyes which Jennifer had never seen before.

      ‘I hadn’t slept with her then,’ he said slowly.

      The use of the word then cut through her like a knife. ‘But now you have?’ She swallowed. ‘Slept with her?’

      It was both a statement and a question, and there was a long and uneasy pause. For, no matter what the circumstances leading up to the act had been, Matteo knew he had broken his marital vows. ‘Yes.’

      Jennifer clamped her clenched fist against her mouth as the cold rip of jealous rage tore through her heart. But what had she expected? For him to carry on denying a physical relationship? To pretend that his undeniable attraction towards the stunning Italian starlet had remained unconsummated?

      Matteo was a devastatingly attractive and virile man. He needed sex like most men needed water. Well, she had asked the question, and she had only herself to blame if he had given her the answer she had dreaded.

      She had thought that the pain of their break-up couldn’t possibly get any worse, but in that she had been completely wrong. He had said it now. He had slept with Sophia. His body had lain naked against hers, warm skin against warm skin. He had entered another woman, had pushed inside her and moved and then thrown his head back and groaned out his pleasure in the way she knew so well—the way he had done with her.

      And spilled his seed inside her? Made this other woman pregnant, like the pressmen had suggested earlier?

      Biting against her fingers, Jennifer fought hard to prevent herself from retching. The mind could be a wonderfully protective organ—allowing you to block things out because they were too painful to contemplate—but it could be capricious and cruel, too, and Matteo’s words triggered an inner torment as images of his infidelity came rushing in, like some unwanted and explicit porn film.

      Jennifer leaned against the steel wall of the lift, beads of sweat gathering above her upper lip as she pictured her husband naked with another woman.

      Matteo frowned and made an instinctive move towards her. ‘Cara, you are faint?’

      ‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ she spat, and shrank even farther against the metal, which felt cold against her bare back. She wiped the back of her hand over her clammy face. ‘And don’t you dare come near me!’

      A wave of sadness washed over him and he wondered how something which had seemed so perfect could have deteriorated into a situation where Jennifer was staring at him as if he was her most dangerous and bitter enemy.

      Maybe he was. Maybe that was what inevitably happened when a marriage broke down. Maybe the myth of an ‘amicable’ divorce was exactly that—a myth.

      He stared at her as she moved a little restlessly, as if aware of how tiny the enclosed space was. Her proximity was distracting. Matteo’s senses felt raw—as if someone had been nicking at them with a razor. Yet when he looked at her he felt nostalgic for times past, and that was always painful—for it had never been real. Because memory played tricks with your emotions. It tampered with the past and rewrote it—so that everyone saw it differently. He knew that Jennifer’s version of it would be different from his own, and there was nothing he could do about that.

      But maybe that was only part of it. For the eyes didn’t lie, did they? He studied her and thought how much time had changed her. Tonight she was all sleek Hollywood film star—her heavy blonde hair caught up in an elaborate topknot with a few artistic tendrils tumbling down around her face. Her gym-tight body was encased in clinging sapphire silk, and she was bedecked in priceless diamond and sapphire jewellery.

      How little she resembled the rosy-cheeked girl with tousled hair and bohemian clothes he’d fallen in love with. Was it the same for her? Did she look at him and see a stranger in his face today?

      And a floodgate was opened as the reflection triggered a reaction. Forbidden thoughts rushed into his head with disturbing clarity, and Matteo remembered the pure magic of meeting her. Of feeling something which had been completely alien to him.