The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

She had wanted to be a mother. She’d wanted it so much. Why had he wanted to wait? Why? It wasn’t fair. If she had gotten pregnant right away, the endometriosis might never have even shown up. But “if onlys” were as futile as wishing on the moon, an exercise for small children who still believed the possibilities of life were endless.

She had learned they were far too limited. She’d wanted to give birth to the Scorsolini heir and raise him knowing that love lit his path, not duty, that there was more to life than his position. She’d wanted to rectify the mistakes her parents had made with her. She’d wanted a chance at love, knowing that her children would love her, even if their father could never bring himself to do so.

Hadn’t she loved her parents, no matter how much they hurt her? And she would have been a good mother, a truly loving mother. She would never have made her children feel they were nothing more than the sum of what they could do for her.

Falling to her knees, she cried, “God in Heaven, it isn’t fair!” The words echoed around her in the shower stall, no one there to answer…or if He did, she did not hear the Heavenly voice.

She covered her face and sobbed, but eventually her tears had to abate. She’d cried herself dry. She turned off the shower, her throat sore and her eyes almost too puffy to see out of. No way would anyone looking at her now not know how she’d spent the last hour, but it didn’t matter. Claudio wouldn’t be back for ages and when he did arrive, she planned to be asleep. She was beyond tired, her emotional reserves used up completely.

She hadn’t realized how exhausting her pretense of contentment had become until she gave herself permission to let it go. With aching limbs, she pulled on a nightdress and climbed into the bed, not caring that it was just going on seven o’clock.

Without thought, her hand automatically searched out his side of the bed, but of course it was empty. As it had been on so many nights of their marriage and would be every night once she left New York. A dry sob caught in her throat and she bit it back, but she’d soaked her pillow with silent tears before she managed to slip into a fitful sleep. Her last thought that tears were never ending…

She woke sometime later to the sound of the shower going in the bathroom and light spilling from the cracked door into the bedroom. The digital clock beside the bed read nine o’clock. She blinked, trying to think what that meant. It was earlier than she had expected him, but not so early that she could trick herself into thinking he’d rearranged his time for her.

The shower cut off and a minute later, Claudio strolled into the room, completely naked and drying his hair with a white towel. He leaned over to flick his bedside lamp on the lowest setting, casting his bronzed body in a golden glow.

Her mouth went dry as desire and emotional need spiraled low in her belly. It had no place in the devastation inside her and yet it continued to bloom as if her heart had not been decimated in her chest.

He tossed the towel to the side and looked over at her. He paused when her eyes caught his dark gaze. “You are awake.”

“You’re back.”

“Obviously.”

She winced at his sarcasm. “How did your meeting go?”

She didn’t really care, but nothing else came to mind and total silence simply did not work right then. Nevertheless, she had no doubts that the meeting had gone exactly as he had wanted it to. He was that kind of man. It took a will of iron with the intelligence of Socrates and Einstein combined to defeat Claudio’s plans.

Or a woman’s rebellious reproductive system, a voice in her head mocked. He couldn’t battle that, no matter how smart and stubborn he was, could he? And in all likelihood, he wouldn’t want to. It would require her having treatments that may or may not be successful for pregnancy that the press was bound to get wind of.

She couldn’t bear the thought of what that would mean and knew he wouldn’t tolerate such an intrusion into his life.

“It went much as I expected it to.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that you are very good at getting your own way.”

“I am not selfish.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“Roberto said you did not eat dinner.”

“I ate on the plane.”

Claudio frowned. “A cup of coffee and two cookies is not dinner.”

“It was all I wanted.”

“Skipping meals is not healthy.”

“One missed dinner is not going to kill me.”

“Are you sick?” He asked it so baldly, without the slightest trace of compassionate concern that she winced again. “If you are, you should not be traveling.”