Innocent Wife, Baby of Shame

That was it, surely. Besides, coming off the pill could make things go a little haywire, she reasoned. There was no way she could have…

She shrank back from where her thoughts were heading. ‘It’s not going to happen, Patrizio,’ she said, wondering if it already had. The only trouble was, how on earth was she going to tell him? Panic rushed through her until her head began to spin with it. She hadn’t had a period for two months, which meant…She gulped in shock. Oh, God, how would she even know for sure whose child it was?

Patrizio frowned at her subdued tone and slumped posture. Her face was milk-white, the tiny dusting of freckles sprinkled over her nose standing out in stark relief from the pallor of her skin.

His chest felt tighter than it should, as if his heart had swollen to twice its size. He was finding it harder and harder to maintain his anger towards her. He had even begun to wonder if what Jamie had hinted at was true. Perhaps Keira didn’t remember anything because nothing had actually happened—it was, after all, Merrick’s word against hers. Patrizio wasn’t sure of the motivation behind such an action, although he suspected jealousy would be way up there somewhere. Merrick had been a constant presence in Keira’s social life until he had come on the scene and swept her off her feet.

He took a step towards her, his hand going to the satin-softness of her arm, his fingers curling around her wrist like a bracelet. ‘Is there any chance—any chance at all—that Merrick lied to you about what happened that night?’ he asked, wondering for the first time why he hadn’t asked her this before.

Keira blinked back tears as she lifted her gaze to his. ‘I don’t know…Why would he do that?’

His thumb stroked back and forth over her thudding pulse. ‘We married within a matter of weeks of meeting. He might have felt cast aside or something. It can happen in close relationships—one party resents the new-found happiness of the other.’

She gnawed at her lips as she thought of those rumpled sheets and her naked body lying amongst them.

‘Cara?’ he prompted.

‘No…’ Her voice was not even audible.

‘I can’t hear you, Keira.’

She compressed her lips even tighter as the tears filled her eyes as she met his gaze. ‘I’m sorry…but I don’t think he was lying.’

His hand fell away from her wrist. ‘So we are back to square one,’ he said heavily.

‘Only if you choose not to forgive me,’ she said in a small voice.

He scraped a hand through his hair as he put some distance between them. ‘I wish I could, but it is just too close to home,’ he said, leaning one hand against the wall, his head hanging down as if in defeat.

Keira frowned at the hollowness of his tone. ‘What do you mean?’

He turned and straightened with a grim look. ‘Do you remember I told you my father was injured in a car accident several years before he died?’

‘Yes, of course I remember. It was so sad. I don’t know how he coped with being permanently disabled. It must have been truly devastating.’

‘Yes, well, he coped with it a whole lot better than my mother.’

Keira unconsciously held her breath. Patrizio had rarely spoken of his parents; he seemed to avoid the subject whenever she had raised it but she had assumed it was because he felt so helpless over his father’s disability and his death from cancer a few years later.

‘My mother had several affairs with other men after my father’s accident,’ he said. ‘She didn’t bother hiding it. I think in a way she was proud of it. It disgusted me to see her cavorting with whoever was available while my father sat strapped in his chair, unable to even feed himself.’

Keira felt her heart tighten at the thought of how his father must have suffered. It made Patrizio’s anger towards her all the more understandable. He must have felt as betrayed as his father had done and, with the frenzied activity of the press violating his privacy over the last two months, just as helpless.

‘I wish you had told me all this before,’ she said.

‘What difference would it have made?’ he asked. ‘Would it have stopped you behaving the way you did?’

Keira had no answer. Guilt and regret were her constant companions and had been ever since that night. What she had done was beyond belief. She had never thought herself capable of such wanton behaviour.

‘Go to bed, Keira,’ he said after a short but tense silence. ‘You have shadows upon shadows under your eyes. You look like you haven’t slept properly for weeks.’

Eight weeks, she thought as he moved towards the door, but she didn’t say it out loud. What would be the point? He didn’t want to hear how she had cried her heart out for the mistake she had made. He wanted her to pay for it indefinitely, by reminding her at every opportunity of what she had thrown away. That was why he was determined to divorce her. Forgiveness wasn’t a word he had in his vocabulary.

‘Are you coming to bed now too?’ she asked instead.

He turned and raked her with his eyes. ‘Not satisfied yet, Keira?’

She straightened her shoulders, what little pride she had left glittering in her gaze as she forced herself to meet his. ‘I will never be satisfied until you look at me with respect instead of hatred and loathing in your eyes,’ she said.