Once a Ferrara Wife...

Laurel stood still, frozen by the chill of her own emotions, wondering how someone so emotionally expressive could be so monumentally insensitive towards the feelings of others. ‘We won’t be having more children, Cristiano.’

‘I made you pregnant the first time we had unprotected sex. After tonight you could already be pregnant. You probably are.’ His unquestioning confidence in his own virility increased her tension tenfold.

‘I’m not pregnant.’ Her lips were stiff and the blood pounded through her skull. ‘That isn’t possible.’

‘A miscarriage doesn’t—’

‘I didn’t have a miscarriage.’

His brows met in a frown. ‘But—’

‘I had an ectopic pregnancy.’ Just saying it brought back the memories and she had to pause and hitch in her breath, which surprised her because she’d thought that by now the experience should have been nothing more than a bad memory. She pressed the flat of her hand to her abdomen, to that part of her that had malfunctioned with such devastating consequences. She thought of their child. ‘If I hadn’t followed my instinct and gone to hospital when I did, there is a strong chance I would have died when the tube ruptured. As it was, they operated within fifteen minutes of my arrival and they saved my life. I owe them that. They were brilliant.’

The silence was shattering.

She’d never witnessed Cristiano at a loss. She’d never witnessed him unsure and out of his depth.

But she was witnessing it now.

The blistering self-belief was nowhere in evidence and he actually shifted his position as if he needed to rebalance himself, the foundations of his rock-solid confidence severely shaken by her unexpected admission.

Deciding that it was only fair to give him the right of response, Laurel waited.

And waited.

No sound emerged from his lips. His face was the colour of pale marble and his hands were clenched into fists by his sides. He looked utterly shattered by her dramatic revelation.

‘You should have told me.’ His hoarse exhortation shattered the silence. ‘It was wrong of you not to.’

Any sympathy she might have felt dissolved in that unguarded, judgemental comment. Even now, it seemed, the fault was hers.

‘If you’d been here, I wouldn’t have had to tell you,’ she snapped, her hand closing round the handle of her suitcase. ‘The doctor would have told you. And he also would have told you that I can’t have more children. They removed one tube and the other is such a mess there is no way it’s up to the job, so you’ll have to find someone else on whom to publicly demonstrate your astonishing virility.’ Eyes stinging, throat dry, she hauled the suitcase towards the door, knowing that the taxi would already be waiting. If there was one thing you could depend on in a Ferrara hotel, it was efficiency and attentiveness to the needs of the guests. It was just a shame that same attentiveness hadn’t spilled over into their marriage. ‘Don’t follow me, Cristiano. I don’t have anything left to say to you.’

CHAPTER SIX

THE door slammed.

Cristiano flinched, the sound reverberating through his skull.

He stared at the empty space that moments before had held Laurel and her suitcase. A furious, fire-breathing Laurel. Even when he heard the revving sound of an engine vanishing into the distance he still didn’t move. He was incapable of moving. His brain and body felt disconnected, frozen at the point she’d made her shocking confession.

Ectopic pregnancy?

She’d almost died?

As the stark, shocking truth sank into his brain he stumbled through to the bathroom and was violently ill.

His brain produced a kaleidoscope of vile images. Laurel clutching her phone, confessing that she had a bad feeling. Him, switching his phone off while he went into one more meeting. And the worst image of all—a bunch of gowned surgeons battling to save the life of the woman he loved.

A life he hadn’t even known was at risk.

A love she didn’t believe in.

Trying to clear his head, Cristiano lurched into the shower and turned the jets on full force and the temperature to cold.

Minutes later he was shivering, but his brain still wasn’t functioning.

He kept thinking of her alone in a hospital room, her fears dismissed by those closest to her.

Her accusation that he was the one who had pushed her to confide in him and trust him rang loud in his brain. He remembered that single phone call with uncomfortable clarity, including the part where he’d placed all his trust in the doctor’s opinion and dismissed her anxieties.

Phone call. He had to make a phone call.

Cristiano turned off the shower, knotted a towel around his hips and sleepwalked back into the bedroom, trying to remember where he’d put his phone. He stared blankly at his suit, strewn carelessly on the floor in the hot burn of passion.