She didn’t let her smile slip, but her blue eyes glinted with anger. ‘We’re separated, Matteo,’ she murmured. ‘Which no longer gives you the right to pass judgement on me. So let’s skip the character assassination and just get this evening over with, shall we?’
‘It will be my pleasure, cara,’ he said softly. ‘But you will forgive me if I don’t offer you my arm?’
‘I wouldn’t take it even if you did.’
‘Precisely.’
Jennifer had been dreading the première, but it was doubly excruciating to have to walk into the crowded cinema with her estranged husband by her side. All eyes turned towards them with a mixture of expectancy and curiosity as they took their seats in a box. For a few seconds conversation hushed, and then broke out again in an excited babble, and Jennifer wished herself anywhere other than there.
But there was no comfort even when the lights were dimmed, because for a start she was sitting right next to him—next to the still-distracting and sexy body. And the giant image which now flashed up onto the screen made it worse. For it was Matteo. And Jennifer. Playing roles which they must have been crazy to even consider when their marriage had been showing the first signs of strain.
They’d been cast as a couple whose marriage was being dissected in an erotically charged screenplay. There were other characters who impacted on the relationship—but the main one was the other woman. The irresistible other woman, who threatened and ultimately helped destroy the happiness of the couple who’d thought they had everything.
Art imitating life—or was it life imitating art?
It wasn’t real, Jennifer told herself fiercely. If she and Matteo had been strong together, then no woman—no matter how beautiful—could have come between them.
But it was still painful to watch. And even if she closed her eyes she couldn’t escape, for she could still hear the sounds of their whispered lines, or—worse—the sounds of their faked cries of pleasure. Hers and Matteo’s. His and the other woman’s. How easy it was to imagine the other woman in his arms as Sophia, and how bitterly it hurt.
Jennifer watched as her own screen eyes fluttered to a close, her lips parting to utter a long, low moan as her back arched in a frozen moment of pure ecstasy.
‘I’m coming!’ she breathed.
All around her Jennifer could hear the massed intake of breath as the people watched her orgasm—watched her real-life husband follow her, his dark head sinking at last to shudder against her bare shoulder.
She closed her eyes to block out the sight and the sounds—but nothing could release her from the torment of wondering what the audience were thinking and feeling. Perhaps some of them were even turned on by the blatant sexuality of the act.
It was a ground-breaking film, but now Jennifer suppressed a shudder. It no longer looked clever and avant-garde, but slightly suspect. What kind of job had she been sucked in to doing—to have stooped so low as to replicate orgasm with her real-life husband while the cameras rolled?
And then—at last—the final line. The amplified sound of herself saying the words ‘Now she’s gone. And now we can begin all over again.’ The screen went black, the credits began to roll and there was a moment of stunned silence as the cinema audience erupted into applause.
The lights went up and Jennifer stared down at her hands to see that they were trembling violently.
‘Ah! Did the emotion of the film get to you?’ mocked the silken tones of Matteo, and she looked up to see that his eyes were on her fingers. ‘You’ve taken your wedding band off, I see?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I threw it away, actually.’
His black eyes narrowed. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘Of course I’m not.’ Jennifer wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t experienced a thrill of triumph at the look of shock on his handsome face. But any triumph was swiftly followed by anger. Did he think it a comparable shock to seeing those snatched long-range photos of him kissing Sophia in a New York park?
She turned her blue eyes on him. ‘What on earth does a woman do with a redundant wedding ring?’ she questioned in a low voice. ‘I don’t have a daughter to leave it to, and I’m too rich to need to pawn it. So what would you suggest, Matteo? That I melt it down and have it made into earrings—or else keep it in a box to remind me of what a sham your vows were?’
He bent his head towards her ear, presumably so that the movement of his lips could not be seen, but Jennifer felt dizzy as his particular scent washed over her senses.
‘How poisonous you can be, Jenny,’ he commented softly.
‘I learnt it at the hands of a grand master!’ she returned, as he straightened up and she met his cold smile with one of her own. ‘Oh, God,’ she breathed, their slanging match momentarily forgotten. ‘Here they come.’
Matteo shook himself back to reality, irritated to realise that he had been caught up with watching the movement of her lips and the way that the great sweep of her eyelashes cast feathery shadows over the pure porcelain of her skin. Insanely, he felt himself grow hard.
But he wouldn’t beat himself up about it. You didn’t have to be in love with a woman to want to…to…
Dignitaries were bearing down on them. He could see a cluster of executives and all the other acolytes that the film world spawned. His eyes narrowed and he turned to Jennifer.
‘You’re not going to the after-show party, I presume?’ he demanded.
‘Why not?’
‘Perhaps it bothers you that I will be there?’
‘Don’t be silly, Matteo,’ she chided. ‘You aren’t part of my life any more—why on earth should it bother me?’
His eyes hardened. ‘Then we might as well go there together. Si?’
That hadn’t been what she’d meant at all. Jennifer opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again. Maybe this way was better. She would have Matteo by her side as they walked down the endless red carpet and into the waiting car. And while he might not have been faithful at least he had always protected her, and she missed that. Badly.
‘People will talk.’
‘Oh, Jenny.’ His laugh was tinged with bitterness. ‘People will talk anyway. Whatever we do.’
She met his eyes in a moment of shared understanding which was more painful than anything else he had said to her, for it hinted at a former intimacy so powerful that it had blown her away.
And suddenly Jennifer wanted to break down and weep for what they had lost. Or maybe for what they had never had.
‘Come on,’ said Matteo impatiently. ‘Let’s just go and get it over with.’
SOMEHOW THE LONG SCARLET flight of steps seemed safer this time around—and so did the legion of press waiting at the foot of them. As if Matteo had managed to throw the mantle of his steely strength over Jennifer’s shoulders and was protecting her and propelling her along by the sheer force of his formidable will.
Even the questions which were hurled at them about their relationship had somehow lost their impact to wound her. As if Matteo was deflecting them and bouncing them back with one hard, glittering look and a contemptuous curl of his lip which made women go ga-ga and photographers quake.
The party was in one of the glitziest hotels along the Croisette itself, but Jennifer found herself wishing that it was being held in one of the restaurants