CHAPTER TWELVE
AT LEAST IT would signify that he meant something to her, Paolo thought as she drove away. At least if she asked for his love, he’d know she wanted it.#p#????#e#
The truth washed over him in a nuclear blast of heat and light. He loved her.
And like an H-bomb, the fallout left him blistered to his bones, blind and screaming silently.
Because she didn’t love him back.
Paolo understood love better than most. He had a huge family he cared for with all his heart. He would fight to the death for every single one of them, including Lauren. How could he have missed that this emotion tearing him up was love?
Because for the first time it was imbued with sexual need and something stronger. A pair-bond that went deeper than blood ties. It went all the way into his soul.
As he stood there in the darkening house, he wondered how he’d let the woman he loved walk away with such a shattered look in her eyes. He’d been so wrapped up in not betraying his own hurt, he’d ignored that she had needs, too. Needs that weren’t being answered because her pride was in the way and so was his.
She wouldn’t beg for his affection, but did she want it?
She had it regardless. Maybe she didn’t love him back, but he couldn’t keep it inside himself. Dio! Now that he recognized what filled him, it threatened to split him open if he didn’t express it.
* * *
Lauren had to pull onto a side street and have a good cry before she carried on to Milan. She thought about going back to the lake house, but honestly, what good would it do to slink back into the house with puffy eyes and a bruised heart? You couldn’t force someone to love you. It was either there or it wasn’t.
For her it was. Very much so.
Oh, Paolo.
Once she could see again, she carried on to Milan where she left the car with the valet of the apartment building and walked the few blocks to the restaurant. Five minutes in the ladies’ room repaired her makeup, but she was still fragile and emotional when she was shown to a table with not one, but two women.
The elder was her grandmother’s friend Luce. The younger was introduced as Emelia. Emelia was about Lauren’s age and bore a striking resemblance to photos of Lauren’s mother when Lauren had been a baby. Lauren sank into her chair, amazed and overcome.
Emelia had brought a snapshot of Mamie as a young woman. “My mother stole it from my father’s things. She was very bitter that her father had had an affair.”
“I wish I had remembered to charge my phone in the car so I could show you photos of my mother. I take after my grandmother, but you and Mom obviously take after our grandfather.”
They both smiled with pained fatalism as they concluded that neither of their mothers was likely to pursue this family connection. Oddly, that formed a bond of kinship between Lauren and Emelia that Lauren instinctively knew would grow over time. They took each other’s details and promised to be in touch.
As gratifying as meeting her half cousin was, however, Lauren knew it could have waited. She hadn’t needed to be so stubborn about it. As she strolled her way back to the Donatelli Tower and entered the elevator to the penthouse, she had to fight a resurgence of tears. She shouldn’t have argued with Paolo. The upside to being a doormat was never making anything worse than it already was. She’d just learned that the hard way.
But she supposed the problems in their marriage would have come to a head anyway. She just wished she knew how they were going to work it out. No matter how hopeless it seemed, they had to. They had a baby on the way.
Which meant she’d be groveling, and that made her teeth clench in protest.
The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Paolo stood on the other side, his Italian heritage in full display with an undertone of darkness to his skin, his eyes blazing with passionate emotion. “Where the hell have you been?”#p#????#e#
Lauren fell back a step, stunned. He still wore his rumpled clothes. His face was lined with fatigue and something else that made a fierce white light strike through her as he raked his gaze over her, pulling her apart.
“I told you, I had a dinner date.” She skittishly exited the elevator.
“Where? I left right after you did, but I didn’t pass you. I was watching for you. How fast were you driving, Lauren?”
She let him take the weight of her bag and sidestepped his intimidating nearness. “I pulled off to use the ladies’ room and need to again,” she excused, anxious to drag her composure together. What was he doing here? Her body shook with reaction while her mind raced. She wanted to take this as a good sign, but a sign of what? Did he want some needy pushover of a wife?