“Theresa,” the quiet voice coming f

“Theresa,” the quiet voice coming from behind her sent her flying out of her seat in alarm, she half-turned, half-crouched in a defensive position before she realised that it was Sandro’s voice. Of course that didn’t make her feel any safer than an unknown intruder would have done. He had both hands up, palms facing her, to keep her calm.
“Relax… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he soothed.
“Well, you did,” she retorted furiously. “Why on earth are you skulking around at home this time of day anyway? Usually you don’t get home until seven or eight.” He always left for work before seven in the morning and usually returned well after the time most “normal” husbands would come home.
“I thought that we could spend the afternoon together,” he muttered distractedly while his keen eyes absorbed every aspect of the room. He was walking around now, barely paying her any attention, lifting things, fiddling with her tools, until Theresa couldn’t take it anymore.
“Don’t touch that!” She snapped impatiently when he lifted a pair of cutters that had cost the earth to import.
“You design jewellery,” he whispered in astonishment, his eyes finally lifting to meet hers and Theresa’s own gaze fluttered away, while her cheeks fired with embarrassment.
“I know they’re no good,” she ventured nervously, waving at the large portfolio he had lifted from one of her other workstations: she had the drawing board for designing, a work table for actually making the jewellery, a small cutting table for cutting wire and shaping semi-precious stones and her desk which housed her laptop, for paperwork and correspondence. “And I know that I should not be wasting my time with it. But it’s just a hobby… so…” her voice petered off as he continued to flip through her portfolio with an absorbed frown, occasionally lingering on a page before moving on. She stood in front of him, fidgeting nervously, waiting for the scathing set down that would undoubtedly follow. He suddenly turned the open book toward her.
“This is your cousin’s engagement set,” he observed, tapping at the picture of the diamond and white gold earring, pendant and ring set she had made for Rick a few years before.
“Yes but they’re Rick’s design. I just made them.”
“I can tell they’re not your design. Your things are more…” he paused and Theresa braced herself. “Raw… elemental… why don’t you work with real gemstones, instead of semi-precious stones?”
“Uncut precious stones are insanely expensive. Semi-precious stones are cheap and easy to find and if they’re damaged in any way while I’m setting them, it’s no big deal.” He grunted again, obviously barely hearing her as he went back to flipping through her portfolio.
“And this is what you do all day?” He looked back up at her for confirmation.
“Well I can hardly sit around and twiddle my thumbs all day, can I?” She challenged and his eyes flickered slightly. She snorted disdainfully as she realised that that was exactly what he’d thought she did all day. He probably thought she spent her days shopping and lounging around in beauty salons.
“Why did I not know this about you?” He asked quietly and she shrugged.
“Just one more thing you never bothered to learn about me,” she said dismissively.
“Just one more detail you didn’t offer about yourself,” he responded fiercely and her eyes snared his in challenge.
“Would you have been interested if I’d told you?” He was honest enough to avert his gaze at the question and remained silent in response to it.
“How many of these have you sold?” He changed the subject, indicating toward her portfolio.
“None,” she shrugged. “The only jewellery in that portfolio that I don’t still have is the set I made for Rick and even those were just a favour.”
“But why keep them hidden?”
“They’re not good enough. Just a silly hobby, a waste of my time, really, I couldn’t compete with the real designers out there anyway.”
“It’s uncanny, I hear your voice but it’s like listening to your father speak. He told you that you weren’t good enough didn’t he? And you believed him?” He seemed uncharacteristically furious about that.
“No… yes… no… Look, I know that I’m not good enough; I have received no formal training. I printed stuff off of the Internet, did a bit of reading and started experimenting. I’m the only one who ever wears these and then only around the house!”
“I think that you should have Bryce Palmer or Pierre de Coursey have a look at these,” she fidgeted slightly, not entirely sure what to make of his sudden interest and praise.
“I wouldn’t want to waste their time, they’re busy men.” The two men he had referred to co-owned one of the most exclusive jewellery companies on three continents.
“I hardly think you’d be wasting their…”
“Look Sandro… just drop it, please,” she interrupted harshly and his eyes snapped up to her strained face. His own expression remained impassive and he shrugged carelessly before slowly closing the portfolio and placing it back onto her desk.
“Suit yourself,” he muttered, before continuing his amble around the room. She watched as he picked things up, inspected and replaced them. She remained seated, swivelling her desk chair every so often to keep him within sight. He eventually stopped his restless pacing to come to a standstill directly in front of her. She lowered her eyes to his expensive size eleven Italian loafers and fidgeted with the pencil she had picked up again.
She nearly leaped out of her skin and dropped the pencil with a muffled yelp when he captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently tilted her face up until she raised her vulnerable gaze up to his unfathomable chocolate brown eyes. He let go of her chin to stroke the back of his hand down her soft cheek and she tried her best not to cringe from his touch but she wasn’t quite successful in masking her reaction because his eyes iced over and his hand dropped heavily back to his side.
“What other secrets are you keeping from me, I wonder?” He mused beneath his breath.
“I have no secrets,” she responded.
“What would you call this?” He indicated the room with a sweeping gesture and she laughed but there was absolutely no humour in the harsh and abrasive sound
“This was hardly a secret,” she shook her head bitterly. “If you’d come here at any time over the past year and a half, you would have known about this. I never lock the door… you were free to enter at any time.”
“Why would I have had any reason to come up here?” He asked in his most maddeningly pragmatic voice. “It’s hardly the most logical place for a workshop.”
“It’s also the one place I spend most of my time so of course you’ve never bothered to come up here,” she responded sarcastically. “You’ve never willingly sought me out before, Sandro… and I believe that the only reason you’re doing so now is because things aren’t going according to whatever Master Plan you have devised for this so-called marriage of ours. Pretending an interest in me is your latest way of trying to keep me compliant, isn’t it?”
“Stop trying to second guess me, cara,” he admonished gently. “You have no idea what makes me tick or what’s going on in my head.”
“Oh, I think I could definitely say the same about you. In fact I think I know you a lot better than you do me!”
“I doubt that,” he dismissed, dropping his hands into the trouser pockets of his tailor-made, expensive suit, half-reclining against her work table and crossing one long leg over the other in a pose of sartorial, casual elegance.
“Fine…” she tilted her head as she ran a contemptuous gaze over him. “How do I take my coffee?” He frowned at the question before shrugging carelessly.
“Black…” he stated with the utmost authority.
“No, you take yours black, I don’t drink coffee.”
“This is pointless,” he dismissed. “And juvenile…”
“Everything about me, or to do with me, is pointless to you,” she observed bitterly.
“That’s hardly…” he began but she interrupted him again, barely able to credit her own daring. She had never once stood up to him this way before but she was done being a doormat and just because she was trapped in this marriage at the moment did not mean she would to allow them to walk all over her anymore.
“Everything except my womb of course…” she laughed half-hysterically. “You have a lot of use for that! That’s all I am to you, a womb on legs!”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he scoffed.
“What about my birthday?” She asked suddenly, still ignoring him. “When’s my birthday?” His jaw clenched and he remained mute, keeping his eyes glued to hers.
“I see no need to prove myself in this way…”
“You can’t answer it, can you?” She challenged. “Yours is on the twenty-fifth of February. You have four older sisters, Gabriella, Sofia, Isabella and Rosalie, and a large extended family, you dislike spinach and are allergic to bees, you like…”
“Enough!” He sliced an impatient hand through the air in front of his face, cutting her off abruptly. “This is bordering on stalkerish and it proves nothing other than you possess a creepy excess of information about me, which I must admit, I am more than a little uncomfortable with.”