Once a Ferrara Wife... (13 page)

He had no idea.

Alarmed by her own emotional reaction, she blinked rapidly. She was just tired. Really tired. ‘So you’re a mind-reader now?’ ‘Are you telling me I’m wrong?’

‘No.’ But it wasn’t all of it. Despite the searing heat, a chill washed over her. ‘It’s one more barrier between us, that’s for sure.’

‘Not to me.’ His accent was suddenly more pronounced than usual, his eyes a deep, intense shade of black as he looked at her with fierce intensity. ‘I love you. I have some
work to do to prove it to you, but I
do
love you. And I am sorry that I wasn’t with you when you received that news. I can’t even imagine how you must have felt.’ Laurel didn’t enlighten him.

It was too soon for a conversation of that depth, particularly when she knew that her feelings on that subject would probably shock him.

‘I should have been there to support you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not surprised you walked out on me.’

It was the first time he’d admitted that her response might have been justified.

‘I didn’t do it to punish you. I did it because I decided I was better on my own. Safer.’

His hands lifted to her shoulders and she felt the strength in them as they tightened. ‘Safer?’

‘I was protecting myself.’

That admission drew a frown from him. ‘From me?’ ‘From hurt. It’s instinctive.’

‘I know. I’ve learned that about you. But I wish you’d just shouted at me instead of walking out. I wish you’d lost your temper and told me how you felt.’

‘Telling you wouldn’t have changed anything. I didn’t leave because I was angry with you. I left because I knew I couldn’t trust you again. I didn’t dare.’ She felt the tension ripple through his hard frame and he pulled her closer, the contact sending a spasm of awareness through her body. The physical side of their relationship had clouded everything else and it was having that same effect now. And she knew he was feeling it too because when he spoke his voice was raw and rough.

‘And now? Are you willing to take that chance?’ ‘I don’t know.’

‘Because you don’t trust me not to let you down again or because of the children thing?’

‘Both. You want children. That’s a fact. We talked about it often and your mother asked me on a daily basis when I was going to give you babies.’ Laurel tried to pull away from him but he gave a rough curse and pulled her back into the curve of his arms, resting his chin on her head.

‘Mi dispiace,
I’m sorry. That was insensitive of her and I had no idea. I will speak to her.’

‘It’s what she wants for you.’ Her voice was muffled against his chest and he held her, oblivious to the tourists strolling past them. They watched with idle curiosity, no doubt wondering what the spectacularly handsome Sicilian man was saying to the dark haired girl in his arms.

‘Let’s just deal with the whole children thing right now because it is clouding the real issue here. Answer me something honestly—’ Gently, he stroked her hair away from her face. ‘If it had been me who couldn’t have children would you have left me?’

‘Of course not!’ It was a reasonable question but she knew it wasn’t the relevant one. ‘It isn’t the same.’

‘It’s
exactly
the same.’

‘No. It’s more complicated than that.’ Although she could have stayed like that for ever, she eased away because this was a conversation that needed to be completed. ‘Perhaps it’s easier for me because I didn’t grow up dreaming of families and children. I didn’t have those ambitions. I suppose I just didn’t believe in happy endings. But you did.’

‘I wouldn’t describe it as an ambition. More of an assumption. And if you think that what you just told me would change the way I feel about you then you truly have no idea how much I love you.’ His voice was decidedly unsteady. ‘Which means I still have a great deal to prove.’

‘I don’t want you to jump through hoops, Cristiano—’ This time she did pull away from him. ‘I don’t even know if we have a future together. You’re asking me to take a leap
of faith and I’m not sure I can do that, especially after what I’ve just told you. It’s huge.’

‘Compared to losing you, it’s minuscule.’

She didn’t know whether it was his husky voice or the look in his eyes, but the tense little knot inside her unravelled and she realised that no matter what she said or did she would always love this man and the depth of that love would always make her vulnerable.

‘It’s not just you.’ Admitting it was hard. ‘It’s me. I’m just not good at relationships. I’m not sure if I can give you what you want from me.’

‘Because of what I did to you two years ago? Or because of what someone else did to you years before that?’ His gentle tone smoothed the edges of the blunt words, his gaze fixed on hers as he broached a subject she’d carefully dodged for the whole time they’d been together. ‘Yes, I behaved badly and you have every right to be angry with me but your trust issues didn’t begin with me.’

And he was right, of course. Her trust issues, her refusal to depend on others, had begun years before she’d met him. They were fossilised into the foundations of who she was.

When she didn’t answer, he sighed. ‘I know your life was hell as a child and that you learned never to trust anyone, but I’m telling you that you
can
trust me. I messed up, but that wasn’t because I didn’t love you. I was crazy about you. I adored every independent inch of you. Yes, I made a bad judgement but even that wasn’t quite as straightforward as it seemed because the situation was complicated. Now
stop
thinking and worrying and let’s just go home and spend some time together.’ Lacing his fingers into hers, he led her back onto the main street that led towards Piazza Sant’Antonio.

‘By “spend some time together” I assume you mean have sex.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant. That’s the one area of our relationship
that has never needed any attention.’ He paused to kiss her, indifferent to whoever might have been watching, the touch of his mouth a sensual reminder of what they’d shared the night before.

Her head spun and she wondered dimly whether this whole thing would have been easier if the sexual attraction between them hadn’t been so extraordinarily powerful.

‘I can’t think when you do that.’

‘Good.’ His slumberous gaze moved to her mouth. ‘You think far too much.’

Right now all she could think about was sex. And she could tell by the way those heavy-lidded eyes darkened that he was thinking the same thing. In fact she knew he was because when she started to move he caught her hips and pulled a face.

‘Don’t move for a minute.’

Because he was usually the one with all the control, it was fun to tease him. ‘What happens if I move?’

His teeth were gritted. ‘I’ll probably be arrested for indecency. Stand still. And stop looking at me like that.’

She licked her bottom lip slowly and heard him mutter something in Italian. ‘I didn’t understand that.’

‘Probably just as well.’ He exhaled slowly and stepped away from her. ‘Let’s get back home quickly. Move.’

L
AUREL
lay naked in a warm after-sex glow, her limbs tangled with Cristiano’s as they watched the sun set over Mount Etna, turning the sky a deep rosy gold.

‘It’s as if the island’s on fire.’
Like their relationship,
she thought. If their love were a colour, it would have been red. Red for hot. Red for passion.

He rolled her onto her back. ‘Not just the island.’ He lowered his head and immediately she was consumed by the hungry demands of his kiss.

Red for desire.

She felt her own heart pounding and the thrill of excitement mount as his hand stroked down over her thigh in a smooth, possessive movement.

Being with Cristiano was the ultimate adrenalin rush, an experience of such erotic intensity that her senses were constantly humming.

‘Did you really not have an affair?’ She hated herself for asking, for sounding like someone needy and insecure when she’d always prided herself on her independence but part of her—
the part she wished she could dig out and throw away—
couldn’t stop torturing herself with that scenario.

He went utterly still. ‘Do you have any idea what my life was like after you left?’

‘Awkward. I expect a lot of people told you I was a heartless woman and you were well shot of me.’

The flash in his eyes told her how close to the mark she was with that comment and it hurt. He saw the hurt because he was looking for it. ‘I’ve never been interested in other people’s opinions.’

‘I imagined you slowly working your way through layers deep of admirers.’

‘You imagined?’ His hand slid into her hair, his jaw tight as he scanned her tense features. ‘That imagination of yours needs retraining. After you left, the only relationship I had was with the business, apart from the occasional flirtation with the whisky bottle. Reality was me working an eighteen-hour day in the hope that when I eventually fell into bed I’d be too tired to think about you.’ That frank admission made her heart lift.

He’d missed her.

‘Did it work?’

‘No. But we had two record years.’ His eyes gleamed dark with self-mockery. ‘Company profits have trebled.’ ‘So—’

‘No, I didn’t.’ His voice harsh, he slid his hand under her bottom. ‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Even anger and pain doesn’t kill love, apparently. I was so angry that you’d walked out on our marriage I didn’t go any deeper than that. If I had, we might have reached this point sooner.’ This point was his hands and mouth claiming her, driving her wild until she forgot everything except the magic they created together.

In the aftermath of another sexual explosion, she lay still, her cheek against his chest, her hair spread over the pillow.

This,
she thought,
was the part they’d been good at.

The part they hadn’t been so good at was the rest of it.

And the responsibility for that didn’t all rest with him, she acknowledged. She’d been at fault too. She’d guarded herself. She’d been afraid to let him in. She hadn’t even considered such a thing as second chances.

Had she been unfair?

And what about now?

She knew that he was waiting for her to say,
I love you.
And she couldn’t. She just wasn’t ready.

The past hung between them, an obstacle to everything, including her ability to confide and his ability to understand her.

‘It wasn’t all your fault.’ Her cheek was against his shoulder, her hand resting low on his stomach. ‘I expect people to let me down so it’s better not to trust them in the first place.’

‘I
did
let you down.’

‘But I gave you one chance.’ The thought that she’d been too harsh knocked the breath from her lungs but his arms tightened as if he sensed her confusion.

‘You were protecting yourself. I understand that. You’ve been let down so badly in the past and I let you down again.’

The sting of guilt about her own part in their break up made her speak. ‘I’ve been there before. I’ve felt the excitement, the hope—that warm feeling of belonging that comes when you think someone wants you to be with them. And when that went wrong, when I wasn’t what they wanted me to be, I hurt so badly I promised myself that I wasn’t going to let it happen again.’

His hand stilled. ‘Are we talking about a man?’

Knowing how possessive he was, it was to his credit that his grip on her didn’t slacken.

‘You were the first man I’d slept with. You know that.’

‘Then who? Who hurt you?’ His voice was rough. ‘Talk to me.’

It was obvious that he wanted answers. And he deserved that much, didn’t he? ‘When I was little I was almost adopted.’

‘Almost?’ He was puzzled and of course he would be because someone like him would have no reason to know that it was even possible to be ‘almost’ adopted.

‘When I was in care a couple visited me several times. They thought I might be “the one”. They’d wanted a baby, but there was no baby and at least I was a girl. They really wanted a girl. For ten years they’d been trying to have their own. Spent a fortune on IVF and then turned to adoption and found that too many years had passed and now they were too old to be given a baby. They’d even prepared the house—done up a room especially. Painted it all in pink with tiny fairy lights. They needed a child to match the room and their dreams. They thought I was that child. I wasn’t blonde and blue-eyed, but I got to spend a weekend with them. They took me home.’ Remembering was hard, even after so many years. She remembered the perfume the woman had worn and her perfect clothes. Two cars in the driveway and space, so much space. ‘I didn’t care about all the pink, but I cared about the books. You should have seen the books.’ She could still picture them clearly in her head, rows of books, colourful spines facing outwards, as attractive as jars of sweets in a sweet shop. ‘Children’s books, fairy stories—everything. I’d never had a book of my own when I was young. Never read a fairy story in my life. And this couple loved books. He was an English teacher and she worked in a florists. There were books and flowers everywhere. And they picked me. They wanted me. I was so excited.’

‘You went to live with them?’

Pulling away from him, she rolled onto her back. ‘No. That first night staying with them I was so stressed at being in a strange place with strange people I really couldn’t breathe. I had an asthma attack. We spent the whole time in the emergency
department, and after that—’ she paused, surprised that memories so old could still feel so new ‘—after that they decided that it was better to be childless than have me. They didn’t sign up for a sick child, midnight dashes to the emergency department, worry and anxiety. They wanted a child who was going to fit into that room, all golden curls, pink dresses and everything perfect. I wasn’t that person—which was a shame because I’d fallen in love with the room. Not the pink, but the books. I loved the idea of having a door I could shut with all the books on the inside. I was going to pretend it was a library. I was going to read every single one and it was going to be an adventure.’ Conscious that she’d revealed more than she’d intended, she lightened the tone as she turned her head to look at him. ‘So now you know why I’m such a mess. No books.’ And no family, but she didn’t mention that part. Didn’t mention the devastation and sense of rejection that had followed that traumatic experience. ‘Maybe if I’d read a few fairy tales I wouldn’t be such a disaster. The trouble is, I wouldn’t know a happy ending if I fell over it.’

The silence stretched between them and Cristiano raised himself on his elbow so that he could look at her. His eyes were dark pools of appalled disbelief. ‘You’re saying they changed their minds?’

‘It happens. That’s why they did a trial. It’s important that the adoption process is right for everyone. I wasn’t right for them.’ And that shouldn’t still hurt, should it? ‘It was hard for me because I was very young and I let myself trust them. When they said I was going to be their little girl, I believed them, which was stupid really because I already knew that adults usually didn’t mean what they said.’

His face was paler than usual. ‘And after that?’

‘After that I pretty much made myself unadoptable. It was better for everyone that way.’

‘Because you didn’t want to risk it happening again.’ His
voice husky, he reached out and stroked her hair away from her face. ‘How old were you?’

‘Eight.’ She saw his expression change. ‘I was eight years old. But I’d spent all of those eight years between foster homes and care homes so I wasn’t your average eight-year-old.’ She felt his arms wrap around her and then he was pulling her against him again, and this time his grip was that much tighter.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I try not to think about it. It’s in the past. It isn’t relevant.’ Even as she said the words she knew they weren’t true. And so did he.

‘We both know it’s relevant. It’s the reason you protect yourself so fiercely. It explains a lot.’ His arms tightened possessively as if he wanted to make up for all those years of isolation and loneliness.

‘You’re right. It does still affect me in that it has influenced who I am. Because of that I made up my mind that the only person I was going to depend on was myself. I didn’t really have close friends because I didn’t trust anyone enough to form a bond.’

‘You made friends with Dani.’

‘Technically, she made friends with me. We were in the same accommodation at college and she’s like you—she’s so emotionally open, she won’t take no for an answer. Every time I closed the door to my room, she opened it. She was always dragging me out to various events. She wouldn’t let me hide and truthfully I loved her company. She was the first real friend I’d had. And she never let me down.’ Laurel’s eyes filled. ‘When I left you she should have ended our friendship, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t.’

‘My sister is fantastic, but don’t tell her I said that.’ Humour lightened the roughness of his voice and the hand that stroked her hair was gentle. ‘It’s no wonder that you left after what I
did. And I know that this is a mess but we can fix it. We
will
fix it. I won’t accept a different option.’

‘What if we can’t? I’m so afraid of being let down it colours everything I do.’ It felt so good to be this close to him again that she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It would have been frighteningly easy to just close her eyes and let him decide for both of them. ‘Once you trust someone they hold the power to hurt you.’

Strong hands flipped her on her back and he covered her with the lean, muscular length of his body. ‘I love you. I messed up badly but you’re going to forgive me because you love me too. And it isn’t because you don’t love me that you’re hesitating, it’s because you’re afraid.’

‘I know.’

‘And you can get over that. You’re the toughest, strongest woman I know. I can’t believe how you’ve coped with so much on your own. That awful day two years ago—I wasn’t listening to you properly,’ he confessed in a raw tone. ‘You rang me and you told me you were worried but the doctor had already told me he thought you’d be fine so half my mind—more than half my mind if I’m honest—was on the business deal I was trying to close. It is no defence, but it was something I’d been working on for five years. Had I known how frightened you were, I would have dropped everything and come.’

‘I was terrified.’

He gave a groan of remorse and rolled onto his back, taking her with him. His hand was in her hair, his eyes holding hers. ‘I wish I could rewind the clock and do things differently. You have no idea how much I wish that.’

‘It wouldn’t change anything. You wouldn’t have jeopardised a deal for me, Cristiano.’

‘My marriage was more important than any deal but at the time I didn’t realise it was a choice. I didn’t realise just how
important it was to you that I be there. It’s no excuse but the doctor
did
assure me that you would be fine.’

His eyes were beautiful, she thought. Or perhaps it was his eyelashes that were beautiful. Dense and inky-black, they framed a gaze that read her all too easily. Most men were emotionally inarticulate but Cristiano was the exception. He had no trouble expressing his feelings and no problem interpreting hers. His emotional sophistication far exceeded hers. Which made his response to her desperate plea for him to be there all the more out of character.

If he’d been distracted then it must have been a major distraction. ‘Why was that deal so important to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter now. There are no excuses for the way I behaved.’

‘Tell me about the deal, Cristiano.’

He lay still, and then he sighed and sat up, raking one hand through his hair. ‘It goes without saying that it came at the worst time. Five years of work that came to a head the day before you flew back from London. I’d planned for us both to have dinner. Instead you were flying in and I was flying out.’

Too late she remembered that he’d been preoccupied on the phone—that he’d barely responded the first time she’d tentatively mentioned that she thought something might be wrong.

‘What was so important about that particular deal?’

He stared down at his hands and gave a bitter laugh. ‘You ask me that now and I can’t even remember. It was another prime piece of land that would have been perfect for an exclusive resort hotel. More of what I already do. Except that this was bigger than anything we’d dealt with and I wanted it badly. I knew that owning that island would secure the future of the company and our reputation at the top end of the business.’

‘Was the company in trouble?’

‘No, but no business that majors in tourism can afford to be complacent. The whole market is volatile. That’s another reason we operate at the expensive end.’ His bronzed back was sleek and smooth, the muscles in those shoulders a blatant declaration of his physical power. ‘You accused me of being a workaholic and you’re right. That is what I am.’

Laurel remembered what Dani had said about him having held everything together after their father had died. ‘I suppose you had to be. You found yourself in control of everything at a young age.’