The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

“I don’t know. My brain is getting fuzzy.”

He frowned and got up from the bed.

“If you follow the pattern from last night, you will not be cognizant enough to converse at all in about twenty minutes and there is something I wish to discuss before that happens.”

“It was worse last night because I’d lost so much blood and gotten so little sleep,” she said woozily.

“If you say so.” He began pulling her shoes off. “You have said that surgery is the prescribed cure for endometriosis?”

“Not a cure exactly, but close. It’s my best chance for living a fairly normal, pain-free life.” She watched as he put her shoes aside and then rolled down her thigh-highs. His eyes flared with hunger as he looked at her exposed legs, but his touch was almost completely impersonal.

“What do they do? They only have to remove your reproductive system?”

At least this conversation was easy. She’d researched the alternatives so thoroughly, she thought she could recite them and their benefits or detriments in her sleep.

“No. Not anymore. They can actually usually remove the growths of tissue through laser surgery. Recovery time is minimal and I don’t even have to stay overnight in the hospital afterward.”

“But you will.”

“I will?” she asked delicately, her eyes narrowing.

The look he gave her from his brown eyes said she could argue all she liked, but his mind was made up. “Even laser surgery carries risk and is traumatic to the body. I do not agree with this move in the medical community of dismissing a patient from care too early.”

“I’m sure insurance companies have more to do with that than doctor preferences. If you are willing to pay for it, I have no doubt the hospital will happily keep me in residence.” She wondered if doing so would help assuage his guilt.

“And this surgery…it is a guaranteed fix?”

“No, but like I said…it’s my best chance. A high percentage of the women who elect to have the surgery end up having it again sometime down the road.”

“It seems a small price to pay if it will alleviate the kind of pain and bleeding you have been having.”

“That’s how I see it.”

He was taking her dress off and she was letting him. No matter what she said to the contrary it felt wonderful having him care for her like this. Especially knowing that soon he would not be there to even scrub her back in a sexy shower.

He did not offer to get her a gown, but said, “Do you need to fix things up for the night?”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Yes.”

But before she could stand up on her own, he was once again lifting her and carrying her into the en suite. He left her to take care of things and was undressed and in bed, his laptop and papers scattered around him when she returned to the bedroom.

“You don’t have to go to bed just because I am.”

“It is no hardship after the week I had, I assure you.”

She nodded, too sluggish from the pain meds to argue further. “Will you at least try to go to sleep before midnight?”

“Do you want me to?” he asked as if the idea pleased him.

“Yes. I don’t want you having a heart attack like your dad.”

“That would be unfortunate, would it not? After all, who would run our country if we were both convalescing?”

“The mind boggles, but I wasn’t thinking about the good of Isole dei Re,” she said more candidly than she would have if she wasn’t slightly loopy from the pills. “I worry about you. I l—um…I’m going to sleep.”

She climbed into the bed, unable to believe she had almost blurted out her love for him.

Claudio worked beside the sleeping Therese, his mind split between his duties and his wife. If she but knew it, that was not such an uncommon state of affairs. But to hear her tell it, she mattered to him only in a very peripheral way.

And he had allowed her to believe so. It had been a conscious decision, but he had not foreseen the consequences. He had been protecting himself from taking his father’s path. He’d never wanted a love that could turn a strong man into a cheat. After the talk with his father in the hospital, perhaps he understood what had driven Vincente so many years ago, but with understanding did not come peace.

The result was the same. Love made fools of men.

But had denying the tender emotion in his relationship with Therese been any big improvement over the vulnerability love caused? He still felt vulnerable…he still felt fear at the prospect of losing her. That was no improvement…and after his erroneous conclusion drawn from her behavior, he felt a fool.