Люси Монро – Pregnancy Of Passion (страница 6)

She had lost her baby because of him. She’d never said so, but their final argument, the stress of that confrontation had no doubt precipitated the miscarriage. It was a guilt he’d learned to live with, but he would not live with the knowledge he had done nothing to make it right.

However, it was patently obvious she was not prepared for talk of marriage yet.

He had to woo her. His mouth twisted cynically. He knew how he wanted to woo her. In bed. Seducing her would be far easier than talking the stubborn woman round to his way of seeing things. He would enjoy it more too.

She might not like it, but her body still reacted to him almost helplessly. Her pulse had increased with the barest touch of his hand on her neck. Given enough time and close proximity, it would simply be a matter of when they made it back into each other’s arms.

No matter what had gone before, back in her bed was a place he definitely wanted to be. Even marriage was not too high a price to pay to know that all her passion, all her fire would belong to him.

Elisa came out of the bathroom looking fragile, but lovely. She’d brushed out her hair and pulled it back with a clip. Her face had more color than it had earlier, but that was probably due to makeup rather than an improvement in her feelings. Not that her green eyes revealed anything. Their usually animated depths were blank of any emotion.

“Are you ready?” she asked, her voice as flat as her expression.

He detested that flatness, wanted to experience Elisa as she had been a year ago, not this buttoned-down stranger. But he had won one victory; he would consolidate his position before demanding more.

“I’m ready.”

Just those two words and her eyelids flinched. He wanted to curse. He’d been a stupid bastard a year ago. Even if she was like her mother, as her father had said, she’d been different in one key way. She’d wanted to marry him when she discovered she was pregnant.

He still wasn’t sure the baby was his. They’d only been together a month when she told him she was pregnant…What were the chances? But even so, he had decided to risk them because he had wanted her in his bed and in his life on a permanent basis. He’d made that decision too late and lived to regret his tardiness and stupidity.

“Let’s go.” He took her hand to lead her from the apartment.

She tried to pull away from him, the way she did from every single touch since they’d seen each other that morning in the jeweler’s. And just as before, he didn’t let go. She had to get used to his touch again. The prospect that she wouldn’t was not a circumstance he wanted to contemplate.

“Where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“I did not think so.”

Two hours later, they were back in the apartment, dinner having been nothing short of a disaster. She’d avoided looking at him, touching him and talking to him if she could.

The strain of it was showing on both of them.

She yawned.

“You need to go to bed.”

She nodded.

He looked around the small apartment. The cozy and inviting undersized sofa didn’t look so cozy as a possible bed. It was several feet too short for his over-six-foot frame. The pull-down bed would have been a slight improvement, but he had no doubt she would refuse to share it with him.

He looked at the floor with even less pleasure. “I suppose you’ll expect me to bed down on the carpet.”

Her eyes grew wide and a flush suffused her face. “I don’t expect you to sleep here at all.”

“I thought we settled this before we left.” It was a blatant untruth. He’d known she would balk at him spending the night.

She stiffened in pure, independent female outrage. “You’re not sleeping in my apartment.”

“I am until the auction is over.” His voice was as grim as his mood after dinner as the undesirable pariah. It was not an experience he was used to. Usually women fawned over him, even ex-girlfriends—but not this woman.

The look of horror that came over her made no improvement on his deteriorating mood.

“I’m not going to attack you,” he ground out. “I’m here to protect you.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Do you have a better solution? I’m not leaving you alone,” he added before she could open her mouth to answer.

She gnawed at her lower lip in a gesture he remembered from before. It indicated she was in serious thought.

The look of horror turned to one of disgust. “If you insist on being my bodyguard, you can spring for a suite with two bedrooms at a hotel or sleep in the hall. You pick.”

He stared at her. It couldn’t be this easy. “A hotel.”

“Fine. Give me a minute to pack.”

Elisa threw clothes into a suitcase with little consideration for what she was packing. He’d looked shocked when she suggested the hotel, but she knew how intractable he could be. He would spend the night with her no matter what she wanted. Her apartment was out of the question. Just the thought of sharing such small living space with him made her cringe. She needed a door to shut between them, a room to call her own, a bed that would hold no memories.

Not that he’d ever shared her bed in this new apartment, but somehow, if he stayed, she knew it would feel tainted by his presence. She would have to move again.

She refused to consider why he had such a strong impact on her emotions still, or why hate sometimes felt like the other side of a bruised and bleeding love.

CHAPTER THREE

LYING in bed in the luxurious hotel suite later, memories she was too exhausted to fight washed over her.

Seeing him had brought it all back.

The debilitating pain. The sense of betrayal. The grief of loss, but also the glory of possession.

For a short while, it had been the most glorious time of her life. She had belonged to someone, had a place in his life. Not a grudging place as she had with her mother. Not an inconvenient place as she had with her father.

Salvatore had accepted and desired her for herself.

Or so she had believed.

If it were possible to go back in time she would go back, not to the point where she had met Salvatore in an effort to make a different choice with him. But she would go back to those four short weeks when she had believed herself loved as she loved, and if she could she would stay there forever.

She would never know the misery of his defection, the humiliation of his hurtful beliefs about her, the desolation of his lack of commitment to her. All of that would be in a future she would not have to live…if it could be so. Nor would she know the pain of losing the one being she had been certain to belong to forever, who she would have spent a lifetime giving a mother’s love she had only ever dreamed of. 39

Her mind took her back to the moment when she had realized Salvatore was interested in her.

She’d been in Milan, attending an estate sale for a woman who was known for her jewelry collection. She remembered that her hotel room had felt stuffy because the air-conditioning unit was broken. The phone had rung just as she stepped out of a cooling shower. She’d considered letting the front desk just take a message, but in the end had traipsed across the room to pick it up, dripping and naked but for a thin towel wrapped around her.

“Hello?”

“Elisa. Salvatore here.”

Salvatore? “My father’s friend?” she squeaked, unable to believe he was calling her in her hotel room in Milan.

“I hope your friend as well, cara.”

Oh, he was smooth. “Yes, of course. Is something the matter with him?”

“Him?”

“My f-father.” She stumbled over the words, tongue-tied in a way she hadn’t been since adolescence.

“Why should you think that?” his voice purred down the line at her.

“You’re calling me.”

“And a man cannot call a beautiful single woman with any other reason than to discuss her father?”

The gentle mockery had her knees going weak and she plopped down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Of course, I just…”

“Come, cara. Surely you realized I was interested in you.”

Funnily enough, she hadn’t. “You mean because you flirted with me?” she asked, feeling gauche for saying it. But still, “I thought you flirted with every woman.”

“Do I?”

“I don’t know.” He was practically a stranger to her. She had grown up with her mother in America and, as close as her father and Salvatore’s father were, she and Salvatore had met only infrequently over the years when she visited her father in Sicily.