Hot-Blooded Italians. Sharon Kendrick

      ‘Hello?’ The voice of the woman who answered was smooth and with only a trace of an accent, probably bilingual.

      But Vincenzo only employed people who could speak Italian, as well as English, Emma remembered. He even preferred it if his employees also spoke the very particular Sicilian dialect—which was a mystery to so many. Because Sicilians looked out for one another, he had once told her. They were members of a unique club of which they were fiercely proud. In fact, the more Emma thought about it, the more surprising she found it that he had ever chosen to marry her at all—she who spoke nothing more than a smattering of anything other than her native tongue.

      He married you because he felt obliged to, she reminded herself. And didn’t he tell you that enough times? Just as the marriage broke down because you were unable to keep your part of the bargain.

      ‘Hello?’ said the woman’s voice again.

      ‘Would it be…?’ Emma cleared her throat. ‘Er, could you tell me how I could get hold of Signor Cardini, please?’

      There was a short silence—as if the telephonist was shocked that a faltering unknown should dare to ask to be put through to the great man himself.

      ‘May I ask who is calling?’

      Emma took a deep breath. Here we go. ‘My name is…Emma Cardini.’

      There was another pause. ‘And your call is in connection with…?’

      So there was no recognition of her name and no knowledge of her status. No respect, either—and something deep inside Emma bristled with hurt and rejection.

      ‘I’m his wife,’ she said baldly.

      The woman had clearly been wrong-footed and Emma could almost hear her thinking—What the hell do I tell her?

      ‘Please hold the line,’ she said crisply.

      Emma was forced to wait for what seemed like an eternity, while pinpricks of sweat beaded her forehead despite the chilly atmosphere in the cottage. She was just silently practising saying Hello, Vincenzo over and over in her head to make it sound as emotionless as possible, when the telephonist’s voice broke into her thoughts.

      ‘Signor Cardini says to tell you that he is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.’

      The humiliation hit her like a blow to the solar plexus and Emma found herself gripping on to the receiver as if she wanted to crush it in her clammy palm. She was just about to drop it back down onto the cradle when she realised the woman was still speaking to her.

      ‘But he says if you would care to leave a number where you can be contacted, he will endeavour to ring you when he has a moment.’

      Pride made Emma want to pass on the message that he could go to hell if he couldn’t even be bothered to speak to the woman he had married.

      But she could not afford the luxury of pride. ‘Yes, here’s my number,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have a pen?’

      ‘Of course,’ said the woman in an amused voice.

      After she had put the phone down, Emma went to make a cup of tea, cupping the steaming mug around her cold fingers as she looked out of the kitchen window at the little garden she had grown to love.

      Shiny brown conkers from a large tree on Andrew’s huge adjoining estate had fallen over the flint wall and all over her tiny lawn and path. She had planned to put one of those mini sandpits in an unused corner of the plot and to grow a fragrant white jasmine to scent the long summer evenings—but all those dreams seemed to be fast evaporating.

      Because that was another downside she hadn’t even considered until now. If she was forced to move from this rural idyll—where would her little boy play when he eventually started to toddle and then to walk? Very few cheap lets came with their own garden.

      The ringing of the telephone shattered her troubled thoughts and Emma snapped it up before it could wake the baby.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘Ciao, Emma.’

      The words hit her like a bucket of ice-water. He said her name like no one else—but then, nothing that Vincenzo did or said was remotely like anyone else. He was unique—like a rare black glittering gem with dark danger at its very core.

      Remember the way you’ve been practising saying his name in that bland and neutral way? Well, now is the time to put it into practice. ‘Vincenzo.’ She swallowed. ‘It was good of you to call back.’

      At the other end of the phone, Vincenzo’s hard lips twisted into a cruel parody of a smile. She spoke as if she were about to purchase a computer from him! In that soft English voice which used to drive him crazy—both in and out of bed. And despite the still-raw hostility of his feelings for her—even now he could feel the slow coil of awareness beginning to unfurl in his groin.

      ‘I found a brief window in my schedule,’ he said carelessly, flicking his dark gaze in the direction of the crammed diary which lay open on his desk. ‘What do you want?’

      In spite of having told herself that she didn’t care what he thought of her any more, Emma was woman enough to know a painful pang of regret. He spoke to her with less regard than he might use to someone who was removing the garbage from his house. How quickly the fires of passion could become cold grey embers which just left a dirty trace behind.

      So answer him in the same matter-of-fact way—keep this brisk and formal and it might not hurt so much. ‘I want a divorce.’

      There was a pause. A long pause. Eyes narrowing, Vincenzo leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him as he considered her statement. ‘Why? Have you met someone else?’ he questioned coolly. ‘Perhaps planning on remarrying?’

      His indifference pierced her—wounded her far more than it should have done. Could this possibly be the same Vincenzo who had once threatened to tear the limbs from a man who had asked her to dance, until she had calmed him down and told him that she had no desire to dance with any other man than him. No, of course it wasn’t. That Vincenzo had loved her—or, at least, had claimed to have loved her.

      ‘Even if I had met someone—I can assure you that I wouldn’t be taking a trip down the aisle. You’ve put me off marriage for a lifetime, Vincenzo,’ she said, wanting to try to hurt him back—but it was clearly a waste of time because his responding laugh was laced with cynicism.

      ‘Which doesn’t answer my question, Emma,’ he persisted silkily.

      Emma’s heart missed a beat. ‘And…I don’t have to answer it.’

      ‘You think not?’ Vincenzo swung round in his chair and gazed out at the London skyline—at the spectacular sparkling skyscrapers which dominated it, two of which he owned. ‘Well, in that case, this conversation isn’t going to get very far, is it?’

      ‘We don’t need to have a conversation, Vincenzo, we need—’

      ‘We need to establish facts.’ His words iced into hers. ‘Do you have your diary?’

      ‘My diary?’

      ‘Let’s fix up a date to meet and talk about it.’

      In the little cottage, Emma’s knees sagged and she clutched onto the table for support. ‘No!’

      ‘No?’ Now there was amusement in his voice as he heard the sudden panic in her voice. ‘You really think that I intend to have this discussion about the end of my marriage on the phone?’

      ‘There’s no need for face-to-face contact—we can do it all through lawyers,’ Emma ventured.

      ‘Then go ahead and do it,’ he retaliated.

      Was he calling her bluff because somehow he suspected she was in a weak position? But he couldn’t