The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you the flu, or something. I’m not sick.” Not with anything he could catch anyway.

He did not look appreciably cheered by that assurance. “I expected you to be awake when I got back, but you were not.”

“I had no way of knowing when that would be.”

“It is barely nine o’clock.” He said it like he couldn’t imagine going to bed this early. And probably, he couldn’t. The man needed less sleep than anyone she knew.

If he knew she’d gone to bed as early as seven, he’d be convinced she was ill. She saw no reason to enlighten him. “I was tired.”

“But you are not sick?”

“No.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?” He asked the question with the same lack of emotion he’d asked if she was sick to begin with.

The words skewered her. And there was no sense of anticipation in his features, no warming at the prospect, which hurt just like everything else did right then.

“No. Not pregnant,” she forced out of stiff lips.

“You are sure?”

She hadn’t started, but she was sure. “I’m positive.”

“Then this strange behavior is the result of period hormones?”

No doubt a good portion of what she was feeling and her willingness to act on those feelings was caused by hormonal imbalances. “If it pleases you to think so, then yes.”

Hormone driven, or not, the knowledge her marriage was over was real. His lack of love for her was fact. Her unpredictable reproductive system was not the stuff fantasies were made of and the pain inside her was a physical ache that made it hard to breathe.

He made an impatient movement. “Nothing about this situation pleases me.”

“I am sorry.”

“I do not want an apology. I want an explanation. You said you had things you wanted to talk about but I come back to the suite only to find you sleeping.”

“Is that a crime?”

“No, but you are making no sense to me right now.”

“Heaven forbid I should stop fitting in the slot you’ve assigned me to in your life.”

“I have done nothing to deserve your sarcasm.”

“Except refuse to listen to me.”

“On your timetable. I am here now. Ready to listen.” He spread his hands in an expansive gesture that also served to draw her attention back to his beautiful naked body.

Tears burned the back of her eyes, but maybe they were not as never ending as she had thought because no moisture glazed her vision. She was going to miss him so much and it did not even shame her to admit that part of that missing would be pure physical need going unmet. Because for her, the desire was part and parcel to the love and both would be starved of his presence soon enough.

She sighed, trying to breathe through a very different kind of hurt than what had been consuming her body for months now. “I realized that I was foolish to fly up here to talk to you. Waiting three days won’t change anything. I’m not even sure there is a point in having the discussion I wanted to have at all.”

Really, she just needed to tell him about her condition and then let him work out the details of the separation and divorce. But after her emotional holocaust in the shower, she didn’t have the wherewithal to discuss that with him. Her inner reserves were all gone and she simply couldn’t face telling him of her failure as a woman, as a wife, especially in the face of his obvious hostility.

“Why is that?” he asked in a dangerously soft undertone she was too drained to understand. Shouldn’t he be relieved she didn’t want to get all emotional with him?

“Some things cannot be changed.” No matter how much she wanted them to be.

“And what are those things?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now,” she admitted in a voice that sounded dodgy to her own ears.

In a move she did not expect, he came around to her side of the bed at supersonic speed and lifted her right out of it. “That is unfortunate because I do.”

She gasped and wrapped her arms around his neck to stop herself from falling. “You can’t always have your way.”

“That is not a concept I recognize.”

“Then it’s time you did.”

He tightened his hold on her. “Stop playing games and tell me what the hell has you acting so far out of character.”

The furious undertone in his voice said his patience was about used up. And the iron-hard glint in his brown eyes said he wasn’t giving up until she spilled, either. No matter what she wanted, no matter how hard it might be for her, he would settle for nothing less than full disclosure.