Expectant Bride

Ellie stared back at him, her heart thumping like a hammer behind her ribs, her eyes full of pain.

'Don't look at me like that...it makes it so much we worse,’ Dio groaned.

Instantly Ellie looked away. Yes, of course he would see how she felt. He always had been able to see inside her. Crushed by the awareness that even her love was obvious to him, she made no demur when he curved a surprisingly tentative arm round her and walked her away. The limousine was collecting a parking ticket beyond the park gates. Dio felt guilty. Obviously he felt guilty. He knew how much he had hurt her. And what was to be gained in trying to avoid a meeting that he was determined to force on her?

In the silence, Ellie stole a glance at him as the opulent car purred through the slow-moving traffic. In two and a half weeks he had contrived to lose quite a bit of weight, she noted. And now it was as if a divide the width of an immeasurable abyss separated them. She had never dreamt that Dio could look as downright sombre as he did now. The end of a marriage. Well, he wasn't so superficial that he was about to celebrate, particularly when she would be giving birth to their child in a few months' time.

'It's OK,' she said flatly.

'Nothing's OK,' Dio countered harshly. 'Where have you been staying?'

'A B&B out in the suburbs. I didn't feel like the hassle of looking for somewhere more permanent yet,' she admitted stiltedly.

‘Didn’t it occur to you that I'd be going out of my mind with worry?' he demanded with sudden force.

'Why should it have?' Ellie sighed. 'I've been looking after  myself for a heck of a long time. I'm not the helpless type.’

The silence seemed to thunder.

'No,' Dio conceded gruffly. 'But you can make me feel helpless.'

Her brow furrowed. 'Oh, you mean you looking for me and not being able to find me?' she gathered. 'There was no need for that. I wasn't planning to vanish for ever, or anything stupid like that. I made that clear in my note—'

‘Ne...yes: "Dio, I'm sorry, but I had to empty your wallet to get some cash.'" Dio quoted the opening line of her note flatly. '"Marrying you was a mistake. I'll be in touch. Don't look for me...but then I don't suppose you will, will you?"' 'I don't see why you have to quote the whole thing," Ellie protested, feeling even more foolish and exposed by that verbatim delivery. 'I was upset and I didn't have much time. You're lucky you got a note!'

Instead of exploding at that rather unjust stab, Dio froze in his distant corner of the back seat. 'I guess you're right about that.'

Ellie sent him a slightly bewildered glance, registering the raw tension etched into his bold, dark profile. 'I honestly didn't think you might get worried until later—' 'Much later. It took you eleven days to phone Sally,' Dio reminded her tautly. 'I had some stuff to work out'

Like how to live without him, how to exist with a ceaseless craving that got more agonising with every passing hour, how to close out the flawed memory of good times that could only have been utterly superficial on his terms. Great sex, she had assumed on their honeymoon, but dared she assume even that now.? For her, making love with Dio had been earth-shattering sensational perfection. But how did she really know what it had been like for him? He had been flatteringly insatiable, but maybe he was just rampantly oversexed, she reflected grimly.

'So what have you been doing with yourself?'

'I've been making plans.' Actually, she had done nothing but walk around all day, sit in the public library when she got tired, eat for the baby's sake and use up boxes of tissues at night. However, it would have taken torture to force an admission like that from her.

She had climbed out of the limo before she realised that they had not arrived at Dio's apartment building. Her bewil¬dered gaze absorbed the tall, imposing Georgian townhouse they had viewed the same day they'd parted. 'What on earth are we doing here?’

'I went ahead and bought it.' 'You did say it would be a good investment,' Ellie recalled as she opened the front door. 'I was joking.'

Had he been? Ellie had spent two and a half wretched weeks picking apart everything Dio had ever said or done, seeking evidence with which to bolster up her resistance level. Waste of time, she now conceded gloomily. One look at him, even in this strange, muted mode he appeared to be in, and she was back where she had been that first night on Chindos. Mesmerised. Poised there in his exquisitely tailored charcoal-grey suit, he was so gorgeous he still took her breath away.

'What did you do with the rest of my things?' Ellie asked to fill the simmering silence.

Dio frowned. 'They're here.'

'Where?'

'In the main bedroom.'

'Oh, right. You didn't tell the staff that I wasn't coming back.' Ellie started up the grand staircase.