Innocent Wife, Baby of Shame

‘She’s in bed,’ Garth said with a combative look. ‘She doesn’t want to see you, Trelini.’

‘But I want to see her,’ Patrizio said, pushing the door back against the wall with a vicious slap of wood on plaster.

He had found the bedroom without any trouble as it was the only one in the flat. And inside it he found his wife lying totally naked on the bed, her body sprawled like a whore’s, her eyes closed in blissful unawareness of his presence.

‘Don’t wake her,’ Garth said from behind him, his voice low. ‘She had a migraine. She was sick for hours.’

Patrizio clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted to shake her awake, to drag her by the hair out of her lover’s bed, but he knew it would be pointless. Hatred burned like a forest fire in his belly and he swore he would never set eyes on her again.

And he hadn’t.

Until today.

Patrizio slowly turned around to find her sitting with her head bowed, the bitten nails of one hand picking at the skin near her cuticles on the other. She looked pale and fragile, like a bird that had had its wings clipped and was struggling to fly again.

She lifted her head as if she had sensed his gaze on her and her pale cheeks slowly filled with delicate colour. He saw the up and down movement of her throat and the way the tip of her tongue came out to brush a film of moisture over her lips.

He had to harden his resolve all over again. He had known it would be hard, but not this hard. He hadn’t expected it to hurt so much to see her. It physically hurt to look at her. Pain knifed through him, like a thousand scalpels reopening old wounds that had taken every single day of the two months of their separation to start to heal over.

‘Patrizio…’ Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it, but he saw her mouth moving and suddenly realised she was speaking. ‘I—I want to thank you for doing this to help the boys…I know it’s not what either of us wants. I just want you to know I’ll try and do my best to make sure it works.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised that his voice sounded so even when he’d had to drag it past a golf ball–sized lump in his throat. ‘It was all I could think of to resolve the situation.’

‘It’s only for six weeks…’

‘Yes.’

He looked away, unable to hold her wounded violet-blue gaze any longer. ‘If you are not feeling well enough to eat out this evening we can postpone it until tomorrow evening,’ he said. ‘One day will not make much difference either way.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling much better now. Besides, I need to eat something.’

He moved to the other side of the room and, taking a small envelope off the coffee table, came back across and handed it to her.

Keira looked at it warily. ‘What is it?’

His eyes were steady on hers. ‘Your wedding and engagement rings,’ he said.

She took the envelope with fingers that felt numb and useless. ‘You kept them?’

He gave an indolent shrug. ‘I hadn’t got around to selling them after you sent them back to me. I was waiting until the divorce was finalised.’

She bit her lip and slowly took them out of the envelope, the crackle of the stiff paper sounding like someone stepping on bubble wrap. The rings lay in her palm, shining up at her with glittering eyes of accusation.

‘You had better put them on and keep them on while we are acting out this charade,’ he said into the silence. ‘Once it is over, you can keep them or send them back to me as you did the last time. I do not care either way.’

He turned to pick up his keys from the coffee table, the noise of them jangling against each other more like the sound of clanging bells in the thick silence.

Keira got to her feet, her legs still feeling shaky, but somehow she managed to follow him from the room and out to the car.

He didn’t talk on the way to the restaurant he had booked on Toorak Road. She glanced at him once or twice, her heart contracting as she saw his clenched jaw and tight mouth and the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

She let out a tiny sigh and wished she could turn back the clock. How different things might have been if that night had never happened. But it had and she had no way of undoing the damage. Even Garth had drifted away from her; their lifelong friendship had never quite recovered from that stolen night of passion.

Patrizio parked the car and came around to open her door, the cooler night air lifting the bare skin of her arms into tiny goose-bumps. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked, sliding his hand down the length of her arm to capture one of her hands in his.

Keira felt the latent strength in his fingers, her blood thrumming in her veins at the thought of feeling his touch all over her body once more. Her most secret place moistened and pulsed with longing to feel his hard presence plunging inside her again.

‘N-no…’ she said, shivering as his thumb moved back and forth over the leaping pulse under the translucent skin of her wrist.