If not for that hangover and the memories of how badly her inhibitions had been lost that night, she’d probably be sitting in a corner somewhere drunk.
Oblivion sounded like the dream. Drink away the pain. Drink away the tortured thoughts plaguing her. Drink away the tortured emotions ripping her insides to shreds.
He would come home at some point, when he’d dragged himself out of whoever’s bed he’d fallen into. Dragged himself off whichever woman or women he’d spent the night screwing.
She couldn’t trust herself drunk. Couldn’t trust she wouldn’t do or say something to betray her desolation, and this self-awareness had her kicking at the base of the island in anguished fury.
How could she have developed emotions for Tommaso Esposito that induced such pain at him doing what Tommaso Esposito always did? He screwed around. That’s what he did. He jumped from one woman to the next without an ounce of conscience.
But it had always been him for her, she thought miserably, barely feeling the throbbing pain in her big toe from the kick. Her stupid heart had attached itself to Tommaso Esposito when she’d been seven years old and had never let go. Her one lover before him had come the day after his thirtieth birthday party, when she’d been so frightened of how their dance had made her feel and of the sickness at seeing him disappear into his hotel room with another woman, that she’d gone to a nightclub, the kind of nightclub he’d never be seen in, and did what Tommaso did as effortlessly as he breathed.
It had been horrible. The worst night of her life. It didn’t matter how much she’d begged her body to respond, it hadrefused to feel anything but revulsion. The direct opposite of how it responded to Tommaso. Only Tommaso.
Spooning the tiramisu into her mouth, she closed her eyes and welcomed the bitter sweetness hitting her palate. She needed that sweetness so badly, needed it to help drive the sickening images of Tommaso with another woman that kept forming in her mind.
His friend had quipped in Gino’s nightclub that Tommaso had been obsessed with her. Maybe he had been. There had long been something there between them, but whatever it had been on his part was clearly over, and she wished desperately that it were the same for her because her obsession with him had taken a life of its own.
Maybe kissing her had been as vomit-inducing as he’d joked with his family. Or maybe he’d just got her out of his system and become bored, and, oh, God, theagonyof thinking that.
She rammed another giant spoonful of the sweetly bitter creamy deliciousness into her mouth.
There should be no pain. Not for him.
She needed to toughen up. Find the belligerence she’d entered this marriage with and loosen the chains binding her so tightly to him.
But the chains weren’t the ones that came from their farce of a marriage. They were forged from her own heart, and she crammed yet more tiramisu down her throat and willed it to settle on her heart and soothe it. Prayed for it.
She’d methodically made her way through half the dessert when her ears pricked up. The kitchen overlooked the front of the house, and she carried the bowl to the window and looked out.
The car Edoardo chauffeured Tommaso in was pulling up outside the front door.
Only dimly aware that her toe was throbbing, she hurried back to her stool and spooned more sweet goodness into her mouth, praying with all her might for it to soothe her nerves as well as her now painfully cantering heart.
She would be calm. She would be collected. She would be nonchalant. She would give nothing of any emotion away. She would ask him if he’d had a nice evening. However he responded, she would act with serene dignity and then wish him a goodnight and go up to bed. He wouldn’t want her after sating himself in Lord knew how many other women.
She was still schooling herself on how she was going to behave when he entered the kitchen. A beat before their eyes clashed and her nostrils were invaded by the scent of another woman’s perfume, she spotted the smear of deep red lipstick on his cheek.
Tommaso took one look at Gabriella sitting at the kitchen island, her hair loose, beautiful face free from makeup, her pink dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, and his heart ballooned.
Smiling, she lifted her chin and, with a strange sing-song quality to her voice, said, “How was the party? Did you have a good time?”
How was he supposed to answer that? With the truth?
He couldn’t begin to understand the truth.
She dipped her spoon into the bowl he assumed contained the dessert they should have shared, and put a heap of it into her mouth.
“Gabba…” He swallowed in an effort to temper his thumping heart.
She finished her mouthful. “I thought you wouldn’t be home for hours. I wasn’t even sure if you’d be back for breakfast.” She offered the spoon out to him. “Want some? It’s delicious.”
Watching her closely, disarmed by her casual attitude, he shook his head.
She shrugged and dug the spoon back into the bowl. “More for me, then.” She gave another smile. “What was her name?”
He shook his head, but before he could speak, she said, “Thinking about it, don’t tell me. I’m sure the day will come when you’re compelled to wheel me back out in society, and I don’t want to find myself pitying every Monica or Angiolina or Francesca I meet thinking they were the ones to suffer your sexual attentions.”
His chest and throat filled with the pounding of his heart, he held her stare. “There wasn’t anyone, Gabba.”
