Читать книгу Modern Romance November Books 1-4 - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 20

CHAPTER TEN

‘SO WHEN...?’ THERE was a pause. ‘When exactly were you going to tell me, bedda mia?’

The words left Salvio’s lips like icy bullets but he knew immediately that his aim had been accurate. He could tell by the way Molly froze as she came out of the bathroom, the white towelling robe swathing her curvy body like a soft suit of armour.

‘Tell you what?’ she questioned.

Maybe if she’d come straight out and admitted it, he might have gone more easily on her but instead he felt the slow seep of anger in his veins as her guileless expression indicated nothing but a lie. A damned lie. His mouth hardened. ‘That you aren’t pregnant.’

She didn’t deny it. She just stood in front of him, the colour leeching from her face so that her milky skin looked almost transparent. ‘How did you...?’ He saw the sudden flash of fear in her eyes. ‘How did you know?’

Her confirmation only stoked the darkness which was building inside him. ‘You think I am devoid of all my senses?’ he demanded. ‘That I wouldn’t wonder why you turned away from me last night, then spent hours clinging to the other side of the mattress...pretending to be asleep?’ he finished with contempt.

‘So it’s because we didn’t have sex,’ she summarised dully.

‘No, not just because of that, nor even because of the way you disappeared into the bathroom when we got back from my parents’ house and refused to look me in the eye,’ he iced back. ‘I’m not stupid, Molly. Don’t you realise that a man can tell when a woman is menstruating? That she looks different. Smells different.’

‘How could I ever be expected to match your encyclopaedic knowledge of women?’ she questioned bitterly. ‘When you’re the first man I’ve ever slept with.’

Salvio felt the pounding of a pulse at his temple. Was she using her innocence as a shield with which to defend herself? To deflect him from a far more disturbing possibility, but one he couldn’t seem to shake off no matter how hard he tried. ‘Or maybe you were never even pregnant in the first place,’ he accused silkily.

She reacted by swaying and sinking down onto a nearby sofa, as if his accusation had taken away her ability to stand. ‘You think that?’ she breathed, her fingers spreading out over her throat as if she was in danger of choking.

‘Why shouldn’t I think that?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve never actually seen any proof, have I? Is that why you didn’t want to tell my parents about the baby—not because it was “too early” but because there was no baby?’

‘You really believe—’ she shook her damp hair in disbelief ‘—that I would lie to you about something as important as that?’

‘How should I know what you’d do if you were desperate enough? We both know you were having trouble paying off your brother’s debt and that marriage to me would mean the debt would be wiped out overnight.’ His gaze bored into her. ‘And I was careful that night, Molly. You know I was.’

She was still staring at him as if he were the devil incarnate. ‘You’re saying that I...made it up? That the whole pregnancy was nothing but an invention?’

‘Why not? It’s not unheard of.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens less often these days but I understand in the past it was quite a common device, used by women keen to get a wedding ring on their finger.’ His mouth hardened. ‘Usually involving a wealthy man.’

Her body tensed and Salvio saw the change in her. Saw the moment when her habitual compliance became rebellion. When outrage filled her soft features with an unfamiliar rage which she was directing solely at him. Her eyes flashing pewter sparks, she sprang to her feet, damp hair flying around her shoulders.

‘I was pregnant,’ she flared, her hands gesturing wildly through the empty air. ‘One hundred per cent pregnant. I did two tests, one after the other—and if you don’t believe me, then that’s your problem! And yes, I was waiting until this morning to tell you, because last night I just couldn’t face having the kind of discussion we’re having now. So if keeping the news to myself for less than twelve hours is harbouring some dark secret, then yes—I’m guilty of that. But I’m not the only one with secrets, am I, Salvio?’

He heard the allegation in her voice as he met her furious gaze full on and braced himself for what was coming next.

‘When were you going to let me know you’d been engaged before?’ she continued, her voice still shaking with rage. ‘Or weren’t you going to bother?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘My mother told you?’

‘Of course your mother told me—how else would I know?’

‘What did she say?’

‘Enough.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I know the woman you were going to marry was rich and I’m not. I know she was beautiful and I’m not.’

Something about the weariness in her tone made Salvio feel a sharp pang of guilt. He stared at her shadowed eyes. At the milky skin now tinged with the dull flush of fury. At the still-drying shiny hair and the voluptuous curves which had lured him like a siren’s call into her arms. And he felt an unexpected wave of contrition wash over him.

‘You are beautiful,’ he stressed.

‘Please. Don’t,’ she said, holding up her hand to silence him. ‘Don’t make things even worse by telling me lies!’

Her dignified response surprised him. Had he been expecting gratitude for his throwaway compliment about her looks? Was he, in his own way, as guilty as Lady Avery had been of underestimating her? Of treating her like an object, rather than a person—as someone born to serve rather than to participate? Did he think he could behave exactly as he liked towards her and she would just take it?

‘You are beautiful,’ he affirmed, as repentance flowed through him. ‘And yes, I was engaged before. I didn’t tell you because...’

‘Because it’s too painful for you to remember, I suppose?’

The pulse at Salvio’s temple now flickered. In a way, yes, very painful—though not in the way he suspected she meant. It was more about the betrayal he’d suffered than anything else because, like all Neapolitans, he had an instinctive loathing of treachery. It had come as a shock to realise that Lauren hadn’t loved him—only what he represented. He gave a bitter smile. Perhaps he should have had a little more empathy for Molly since he too had been treated like an object in his time. ‘It happened a long time ago,’ he said slowly. ‘And there seemed no reason to rake it up.’

She looked at him in exasperation. ‘Don’t you know anything about women? On second thought, don’t answer that since we’ve already proved beyond any reasonable doubt that what you don’t know about women probably isn’t worth knowing. Except maybe you don’t know just how far you can push them before they finally snap.’ She tugged the towelling belt of her white robe a little tighter. ‘Who was she, Salvio?’

Salvio scowled. Did he really have to tell her? Rake up the bitterness all over again? He expelled air from his flared nostrils, recognising from the unusually fierce expression on Molly’s face that he had to tell her. ‘Her name was Lauren Meyer,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I met her at an official function on a pre-season tour of America and brought her back here with me to Naples.’

‘And she was blonde, I suppose?’

‘Yes, she was blonde,’ he said, ignoring her sarcastic tone. ‘What else do you want to know, Molly? That she was an heiress and that she loved fame and fortune, in that order?’

‘Did she?’

‘She did. She met me when I had everything.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘And dumped me the moment I lost it all.’

‘So, what...happened?’ she said, into the silence which followed.

Salvio’s lips tightened, because Lauren had been the catalyst. The reason he had kissed goodbye to emotion and battened up his heart. During his career there had been plenty of women who had lusted after his body and his bank account—but he’d made the mistake of thinking that Lauren was different.

His gaze flicked over to the dark sweep of the bay before returning to the grey watchfulness in Molly’s eyes and suddenly he was finding it easy to talk about something he never talked about. ‘After the accident, she came to visit me. Every day she sat by my bedside, always in a different outfit, looking picture-perfect. Always ready to smile and pose for the photographers who were camped outside the hospital. She was there when the physiotherapists worked on my leg and she was there when the doctor told me I’d never play professional football again. I’ll never forget the look on her face.’ His laugh was harsh. ‘When I was discharged, she didn’t come to meet me, but I thought I knew the reason why. I went home expecting a surprise party because she loved parties, and that’s when I discovered she’d flown back to the States and was seeing some all-American boy her parents wanted her to marry all along. And that was that. I never saw her again.’

There was a pause while she seemed to take it all in.

‘Oh, Salvio, that’s awful,’ she said. ‘It must have felt like a kick in the teeth when you’d lost everything else.’

‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted your pity, Molly. I told you because you wanted to know. So now you do.’

‘And, did you...did you love her?’

He felt a twist of anger. Why did women always do this? Why did they reduce everything down to those three little words and place so much store by them? He knew what she wanted him to say and that he was going to have to disappoint her. Because he couldn’t rewrite the past, could he? He was damned if he was going to tell her something just because it was what he suspected she wanted to hear. And how could he possibly dismiss lies as contemptible if he started using them himself? ‘Yes, I loved her,’ he said, at last.

Molly hid her pain behind the kind of look she might have presented to Lady Avery if she’d just been asked to produce an extra batch of scones before teatime, and not for the first time she was grateful for all the training she’d had as a servant. Grateful for the mask-like calm she was able to project while she tried to come to terms with her new situation. Because in less than twelve hours she’d lost everything, too. Not just her baby but her hopes for the future. Hope of being a good wife and mother. Hope that a baby might help Salvio loosen up and become more human. And now it was all gone—whipped away like a rug being pulled from beneath her feet. There was no illusion left for her to cling to. No rosy dreams. Just a man who had once loved another woman and didn’t love her. A man who had accused her of lying about her baby.

A baby which was now no more.

She wanted to bury her face in her hands and sob out her heartbreak but somehow she resisted the compelling urge. Instead she chose her words as carefully as a resigning politician. ‘I don’t want to upset your parents but obviously I can’t face going for lunch today. I mean, there’s no point now, is there? I don’t think I’m capable of pretending everything’s the same as it was—especially on Christmas Day. I think your mother might see right through me and there’s no way I want to deceive her. So maybe it’s best if I just disappear and leave you to say whatever you think is best.’ She swallowed. ‘Perhaps you could arrange for your plane to take me back to England as soon as possible?’

Salvio stared at her, unprepared for the powerful feeling which arrowed through his gut. Was it disappointment? Yet that seemed much too bland a description. Disappointment was what you felt if there was no snow on the slopes during a skiing holiday, or if it rained on your Mediterranean break.

He furrowed his brow. After Lauren he’d never wanted marriage. He’d never wanted a baby either but, having been presented with a fait accompli, had done what he considered to be the right thing by Molly. And of course it had affected him, because, although his heart might be unfeeling, he was discovering he wasn’t made of stone. Hadn’t he allowed himself the brief fantasy of imagining himself with a son? A son he could teach to kick a ball around and to perfect the elastico move for which he’d been so famous?

Only now Molly wanted to leave him. Her womb was empty and her spirit deflated by his cruel accusations and she was still staring at him as if he were some kind of monster. Maybe he deserved that because hadn’t she only ever been kind and giving? Rare attributes which only a fool would squander—and he was that fool.

‘No. Don’t go,’ he said suddenly.

She screwed up her eyes. ‘You mean you won’t let me use your plane?’

‘My plane is at your disposal any time you want it,’ he said impatiently. ‘That’s not what I mean.’ His mouth hardened. ‘I don’t want you to go, Molly.’

‘Well, I’ve got to go. I can’t hang around pretending nothing’s happened, just because you don’t want to lose face with your parents.’

‘It has nothing to do with losing face,’ he argued. ‘It has more to do with wanting to make amends for all the accusations I threw at you. About realising that maybe—somehow—we could make this work.’

‘Make what work?’

‘This relationship.’

She shook her head. ‘We don’t have a relationship, Salvio.’

‘But we could.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘Aren’t I?’ He lowered his voice. ‘I get the feeling you weren’t too unhappy about having my baby.’

She stared down at her feet and as he followed the direction of her gaze, he noticed her toenails were unvarnished. It occurred to him that he’d never been intimate with a woman whose life hadn’t been governed by beauty regimes and his eyes narrowed in sudden comprehension. Was that shallow of him? She looked up again and he could see the pride and dignity written all over her face and he felt the twist of something he didn’t recognise deep inside him.

‘If this is a soul-baring exercise then it seems only fair I should bear mine. And I couldn’t help the way I felt about being pregnant,’ she admitted. ‘I knew it wasn’t an ideal situation and should never have happened but, no, I wasn’t unhappy about having your baby, Salvio. It would have been...’

‘Would have been what?’ he prompted as her words tailed off.

Somebody to love, Molly wanted to say—but even in this new spirit of honesty, she knew that was a declaration too far. Because that sounded needy and vulnerable and she was through with being vulnerable. She wished Salvio would stop asking her all this stuff, especially when it was so out of character. Why didn’t he just let her fly back to England and let her get on with the rest of her life and begin the complicated process of getting over him, instead of directing that soft look of compassion at her which was making her feel most...peculiar? She struggled to remove some of the emotion from her words.

‘It would have been a role which I would have happily taken on and done to the best of my ability,’ she said. ‘And I’m not going to deny that on one level I’m deeply disappointed, but I’ll... I’ll get over it.’

Her words faded into silence. One of those silences which seemed to last for an eternity when you just knew that everything hinged on what was said next, but Salvio’s words were the very last Molly was expecting.

‘Unless we try again, of course,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about?’ she breathed.

‘What if I told you that fatherhood was something which I had also grown to accept? Which I would have happily taken on, despite my initial reservations? What if I told you that I was disappointed, too? Am disappointed,’ he amended. ‘That I’ve realised I do want a child.’

‘Then I suggest you do something about it,’ she said, her words brittle as rock candy and she wondered if he had any idea how much it hurt to say them. Or how hard it was to stem the tide of tears which was pricking at her eyes. Tears not just for the little life which was no more, but for the man who had created that life. Because that was the crazy thing. That she was going to miss Salvio De Gennaro. How was it that in such a short while he seemed to have become as integral to her life as her own heartbeat? ‘Find a woman. Get married. Start a family. That’s the way it usually works.’

‘That’s exactly what I intend to do. Only I don’t need to find a woman. Why would I, when there’s one standing in front of me?’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I mean, Molly. I mean every word and I’m asking you to be my wife.’

Molly blinked in confusion. He was asking her to marry him—despite the fact she was no longer carrying his baby? She thought about the first time she’d ever seen him and how completely blown away she’d been. But this time she was no longer staring at him as if he were some demigod who had just tumbled from the stars. The scales had fallen from her eyes and now she saw him for what he was. A flawed individual—just like her. He had introduced her to amazing sex and fancy clothes. They’d made love on a giant bed overlooking the Bay of Naples and he had kissed her belly when a tiny child had been growing there. She had met his parents and they had liked her—treating her as if she were already part of the family. And somehow the culmination of all those experiences had changed her. She was no longer the same humble person who would accept whatever was thrown at her. The things which had happened had allowed her to remove the shackles which had always defined her. She no longer felt like a servant, but a woman. A real woman.

Yet even as that realisation filled her with a rush of liberation, she was at pains to understand why Salvio was making his extraordinary proposition. He was off the hook now. He was free again. Surely he should be celebrating her imminent departure from his life instead of trying to postpone it?

‘Why do you want to marry me?’ she demanded.

His gaze raked over her but this time it was not his usual sensual appraisal—more an impartial assessment of her worth. ‘I like your softness and kindness,’ he said slowly. ‘Your approach to life and your work ethic. I think you will make a good mother.’

‘And that’s all?’ she found herself asking.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Surely that is enough?’

She wasn’t certain. If you wrote down all those things they would make a flattering list but the glaring omission was love. But Salvio had loved once before and his heart had been broken and damaged as a result. Could she accept his inability to love her as a condition of their marriage, and could they make it work in spite of that?

Behind him, Naples was framed like a picture-postcard as he began to walk towards her and for once his limp seemed more pronounced than usual. And although the thrust of his thighs was stark evidence enough of his powerful sensuality, it was that tiny glimpse of frailty which plucked at her heartstrings.

‘I wanted this baby,’ he said simply.

Her heart pounded—not wanting to be affected by that powerful declaration. But of course she was affected—for it was the most human she had ever seen him. ‘You had a funny way of showing it.’

He lifted his shoulders as if to concede the point. ‘I’m not going to deny that at first I felt trapped. Who wouldn’t in that kind of situation? But once I’d got my head around it, my feelings began to change.’

Molly felt the lurch of hope. Could she believe him? Did she dare to? She remembered the way he’d kissed her belly yesterday—and how loving she’d felt towards him as a result. And that was dangerous. When she stopped to think about it, everything about this situation was dangerous. ‘So this time you’re not asking me to marry you because you have to?’ she continued doggedly. ‘You’re saying you actually want to?’

‘Yes.’ His shadowed jaw tightened. ‘I do. For old-fashioned reasons rather than the unrealistic expectations of romantic love. I want a family, Molly. I didn’t realise how much until the possibility was taken away from me. I want someone to leave my fortune to—because otherwise what’s the point of making all this money? Someone to take my name and my genes forward. Someone who will be my future.’

Molly’s heart clenched as she listened to his heartfelt words. She thought of his pain when he’d lost his career and fortune in quick succession. She thought about the woman who had betrayed him at the worst possible time. The woman he had loved. No wonder he had built a wall around his heart and vowed never to let anyone touch that heart again. She drank in the hardness of his beautiful face. Could she dismantle that wall, little by little, and would he allow her close enough to try? She knew it was a gamble—and, despite all the stern lectures she’d given her little brother, a gamble she intended to take, because by now she couldn’t imagine a life without him.

But if she was to be his wife then she must learn to be his equal. There had been times in the past when she’d told Salvio what she thought he wanted to hear because that was all part of her training as a servant. But it wasn’t going to be like that from now on. From now on they were going to operate on a level playing field.

‘Yes, I will be your wife,’ she said, in a low and unemotional voice.

He laughed, softly. ‘You drive me crazy, Molly Miller,’ he said. ‘Do you realise that?’

The look she gave him was genuine. ‘I don’t know how.’

‘I think,’ he observed drily, ‘that’s the whole point. Now come here.’

He was pulling her into his arms and for a moment Molly felt uncertain, because she had her period and surely... But the touch of his fingertips against her cheek was comforting rather than seeking and the warmth of his arms consoling rather than sexual.

‘I’m sorry about the baby,’ he whispered against her hair, so softly that she might have imagined it.

It was the first time he had ever held her without wanting sex and Molly pressed her eyelids tightly shut, her face resting against his silky shoulder, terrified to move or to speak because she was afraid she might cry.