The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

She didn’t know how long she sat there, thoughts skittering through her brain. It could have been a few minutes, or as long as an hour, but at some point he came back into the room, his expression one she had never seen on his face before.

“Get dressed.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHAT? Why?” Was he kicking her out of the suite because she’d asked for a divorce? No, that made no sense.

“We have to fly back to Lo Paradiso immediately.”

She jumped up from the chair, holding the blanket tight around her like a shield. “Is something wrong?”

“My father had a heart attack.”

“No.” Not King Vincente. “How bad is he?”

“He is stable, but requires a bypass surgery. He is in the hospital,” Claudio gritted out, his eyes accusing. “He is alone, without any family around him because you saw fit to fly up here for no good reason.”

“Where is your brother?”

“On his way now that I have called him. Papa refused to have him called and allowed me to be contacted only after he had stabilized. Had you been there, this would never have happened.”

She gasped. “You cannot blame me for him having a heart attack.”

“No, but had you been there, you would have contacted my brothers and myself despite my father’s wishes. He could not have ordered you like a servant.”

“Are you sure about that?” Perhaps the king would not have ordered her compliance like that of an employee, but she cared for him and might well have acquiesced for the sake of his stress levels.

But then she acknowledged, she would have somehow managed to do what she thought was best…which would probably have been to call Claudio. She, and the rest of the family, were used to relying on him in a crisis. Indeed, her first reaction when she had started having pain in her lower abdomen had been to tell Claudio, to ask for his help dealing with it.

She had decided against that course of action out of a need to protect him.

“Yes, I am certain. You would have contacted me, even if Papa had not known you had done it,” Claudio said, showing he knew her well in almost every way but the one that counted most to her.

He did not know of her love for him and could not care less about its existence, she painfully admitted to herself.

“You have been contacted now,” she pointed out.

“What if he had died? What if it is worse than he told me that it is?”

“I could not have controlled either of those outcomes and I have no doubt you have spoken to the doctor already and know exactly the extent of your father’s illness.”

“I have and it is not good. You should have been there,” he repeated as if that betrayal was as bad as her request for a dissolution to their marriage.

“You’re not being fair. You know I felt I had to come. I needed to talk you.”

“About breaking your promises to me. And yet you had already decided before I returned to the hotel suite tonight that the discussion could wait. What was so imperative was not really that important to you at all. You left on a selfish whim and my father paid because of it. I made a huge miscalculation when I asked you to marry me,” he said in a final slash of derision.

However, she was too inured by her own anger at his reaction to the news of his father’s illness to experience the pain his words would have caused a few short hours ago. “I can see how you might think that way,” she said with a sigh. “But there are things I still have to tell you.”

“I do not want to hear them.”

“You need to.”

The disdain in his expression said it all. He was listening to her explanations when hell froze over. “I am leaving here in ten minutes. If you wish to go with me, be dressed.”

Therese spent the first two hours of the flight between New York and Lo Paradiso simmering with anger. She’d taken a seat as far away from him as possible when they boarded the plane and hadn’t even cared when he showed every sign of being content with that fact. A one word description of his behavior came to mine and it was anything but complimentary.

When had she ever given Claudio cause to believe that she was flighty or selfish? She had fulfilled her duty as princess, dismissing her personal needs time and again, but apparently two years as the perfect diplomat’s daughter and political ally had gone up in smoke with one act he did not approve of.

Didn’t she, as his wife, deserve even a little understanding in that regard? But he’d made it clear…she was a princess, first, last and always to him. Her role of wife was always overshadowed by her primary role as his future queen. The knowledge shredded what was left of her feminine ego.