The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (11 page)

Therese
was like a quiet wraith sitting on the seat beside Danette during the car ride to the palace. She spoke only in response to questions from Danette.
Claudio
, she ignored entirely. Luckily his family had already decided she’d taken his father’s ill health hard and he did not think her behavior would give rise to speculation on his sister-in-law’s part.

But when
Therese
had gone rushing from the waiting room, he’d had to convince his stepmother not to follow her. He had suspected that her distress had not been centered solely on his father’s condition and he hadn’t wanted to take the risk of his family finding that out.

She’d refused to meet
Claudio
’s gaze for the past few hours. He didn’t know what she’d seen when she’d looked to him for solace in his father’s hospital room. He’d been certain that his anger toward her did not show because he had not wanted to upset his father. Yet, something she had seen in his eyes had upset her to the point that she had looked away with an expression on her face that made him want to grab her and hold her, no matter how stupid that desire made him feel.

After that, she did not look at him again…not then and not later.

If the prospect of imminent divorce was so upsetting, then why the hell had she asked for one? Or was the reality of her perfidy coming home to roost?

She was beloved by both his parents and he knew they would be hurt deeply if there was to be a divorce. Particularly if they were to discover that
Therese
had betrayed her wedding vows. She adored both his father and his mother and would not want to see either hurt by her actions.

Was she finally starting to realize what the result of those actions would be?

Pity she hadn’t considered it before becoming involved with another man. Just thinking of her with someone else made him feel murderous and he had to bite back angry questions he would rather be boiled in oil than ask in front of Danette. Was
Therese
regretting that involvement now? Was she counting the cost now that it was too late, wishing she had not asked for the divorce? Or was he merely engaged in wishful thinking?

Perhaps it was simple worry for his father that had upset her so much, but Claudio had never once seen her as lacking in control as she had been when she’d practically run from the hospital room. And he could not get past the fact she still would not look at him.

His jacket smelled of her…a soft floral scent that had the power to drive him mad with need.

His muscles were rigid with the desire to reach out and take her in his arms. Not that he would have done so in the circumstances, even if she had not asked for a divorce and confirmed his worst suspicions. He did not engage in public displays of affection. His dignity as future sovereign on the Scorsolini throne demanded he be circumspect in his dealings with his wife.

But seeing his younger brother kiss his wife, not caring who was there to watch had given
Claudio
a strange twinge in the region of his heart.

And he was almost positive that it had impacted
Therese
as well. If he had not thought it impossible in the face of the night’s revelations, he would have believed she was hurt that he was not that way with her. He’d seen her giving his brothers and their wives oddly wistful looks over the past couple of months and wondered at them.

Had she gone looking for affection from a man who was more outwardly expressive? The thought flayed his ego and his sense of masculine confidence. To not be all that his woman needed was not a prospect any man wanted to contemplate. Yet, how could a man who had to hide his relationship with her give her public affection?

And the relationship was hidden very well. Until she’d asked for divorce,
Claudio
had been almost certain his suspicions in that direction were mere musings of a befuddled male brain. Because he’d never once seen even a hint of impropriety on his wife’s part.

He’d spent the hours on the plane going back over the last year, trying to see where she might have strayed. What had at first glance appeared to be a casual greeting took on different significance until he forced his overactive brain to stop dissecting his memories.

This was doing him no good and driving him crazy in the bargain.
Claudio
would let Hawk do his job and then he would confront the truth head-on. Like a man.

Like he had faced the prospect of his father’s death…with no whining, or refusing to accept what such an event would mean for his own life. He had been taught since he was a small child that life must be faced and dealt with from the perspective of one’s birthright. His carried more responsibility with it than most and those responsibilities pervaded every aspect of his life—including his marriage.

He had known for as long as he could remember that one day he would rule
Isole
dei Re.
He had accepted that duty and all that it entailed on every step of the journey through his life. He had never rebelled against what his birthright dictated. There had been no need for him to make promises to his father that he would fulfill it should the unthinkable happen and the older man not survive surgery.

Both men were fully confident in
Claudio
’s suitability for the job. He had been born to it and raised to know what that meant. He was a crown prince, destined to be a king. Yet, they had talked, as his father had told
Therese
they must…about political issues, family circumstances and personal matters.

His father had revealed a way of thinking that had shocked
Claudio
, but nothing more astonishing than the fact that the older man was still very much in love with Flavia.

All of the nonsense about the Scorsolini Curse his father told him about had been just that. Every mistress after Vincente’s divorce (and apparently there had been none between the one indiscretion and when the marriage’s dissolution became final) had been an attempt on his father’s part to forget his love for a live woman. Not a dead one.

Oh, he had loved
Claudio
’s mother all right, but he had fallen fast and deeply for Flavia. Too fast and too deep. It had made him feel incredibly guilty, like he was being unfaithful to his first beloved wife. Particularly when Flavia had gotten pregnant with
Marcello
. Before that, he had at least had the comfort of knowing his relationship with Flavia was merely a sexual one.

But then he had been forced to marry her and completely replace the first wife in his life. Intense feelings of guilt mixed with a grief he had never let himself vent in a public manner plagued Vincente the first years of his marriage. He had found it impossible to utter the necessary words of love to Flavia because he could not admit those feelings even to himself.

He had known his lack of outward affection had hurt Flavia, but he had told himself he could do nothing to mitigate that.

Yet, the feelings inside him grew until he was desperate to find a way to deny them. Finally, in a state of confused grief both for what he had lost and the state of his current marriage, he had betrayed his promise of fidelity. Flavia had found out and while she had been willing to suffer a marriage with love on only one side, she had refused to tolerate infidelity.

Proving she had not been raised to put duty above all, she had taken all three boys to her parents’ home in Italy and filed for divorce. Out of shame, King
Vincente
Scorsolini
had done nothing to prevent his wife divorcing him. He’d made up the fiction of the Scorsolini Curse to soothe his aching conscience and lacerated pride shortly after the divorce.

He had even believed it until he woke up to reality at Tomasso’s wedding. They’d been walking along the beach with the children afterward. Vincente had taken a long look at the woman who had given birth to his third son as she chatted away with their grandchildren.

For some reason he still did not understand, but had confided to
Claudio
that he thought it might have been a premonition of things to come, everything had fallen into place after more than two decades of idiocy. Or so he had labeled it.

Claudio
did not know what to make of his father’s revelations, or why the older man had made them to him. But he knew that his father had finally accepted his love for Flavia and was prepared to act on that love. If
Claudio
knew his father as well as he thought he did, his stepmother’s days as a single woman were numbered.

Provided King
Vincente
survived surgery.

Chapter 6

When they reached the palace,
Therese
managed to get out of the car and walk side by side with
Claudio
all the way to their private apartments without so much as making a second’s eye contact or allowing her hand to brush against his. It bothered him. He did not like being ignored by his wife and she still was his wife, no matter if she wanted to pretend otherwise.

He followed her slender form into the apartment, a sense of being ill-used riding him with the tenacity of a jockey in the last leg of the Melbourne Cup.

She looked so damn lost though and it infuriated him that even amidst his own turmoil, he cared. “You should have come back to the palace with Tomasso and
Maggie
.”

“I didn’t want to,” she said in that soft voice that even now impacted his libido. Damn it, she was everything he had ever wanted in a woman…except faithful.

But had she been unfaithful? Was she only thinking about it? Was her request for a divorce in preparation to entering another relationship? The questions blindsided him with the possibility that while her heart might have strayed, her body might yet remain his alone.

“I noticed,” he ground out, frustrated by her on more than one level and several he did not want to examine too closely.

“I wanted to be there if anything else happened,” she said with a sigh as she slipped her shoes off and padded across the sitting room in stocking feet.

The longer she went without looking at him, the more irritated he became. The fact that he found himself following her like a puppy dog did not improve his temper any, either. “You being there could have made no difference.”

“That isn’t what you said when we were in
New York
.”

“I was angry.”

“And taking it out on me. I noticed.”

And who did she think he should have taken his anger, spawned by her request for a divorce, out on? Rather than ask a question for which he did not want an answer, he said, “I do not like the idea of you sleeping on a sofa in the waiting room. You were so out of it, you did not even notice me coming into the room.”

She’d cuddled into his suit jacket, though, whispering his name as she did so and he’d felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. How could she still seek his comfort in the night when she wanted someone else?

They were in the bedroom now and she went to the cupboard to pull out a nightgown. “Security was on duty the entire time.”

His tie was already long gone, but he shrugged out of the suit jacket that carried her scent mingled with his own. Like their bodies did after making love. He did not like remembering that. For reasons he could not fathom, he wanted her now more than ever.

He should be disgusted by the thought of touching her. But far from it, since considering the alternative that she was still his alone in a physical sense, the need to stamp that possession on her body once again grew with every breath he drew in. “That is not the point.”

“There is no point…not to arguing about it now.” She headed for the bathroom, clearly intent on finishing her changing in there when only days ago, she would have undressed in front of him quite naturally. “What is done is done.”

He supposed that was how she saw the demise of their relationship, but he was not so accepting. “We agreed that we would present a united front for the time being.”

“A united front does not mean I am going to start taking orders like your pet dog.”

“Look at me, damn it!” he exploded, having had his fill of talking to the back or top of her head.

She did, her body turning rigidly to face him, her head coming up and her exotic green gaze glaring defiantly at him.

He glared right back, his patience completely gone. “I have never treated you in such a demeaning fashion.”

“Let’s not get into how you treated me at all,” she said scathingly. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Are you saying that your request for a divorce is because you are unhappy with your treatment in this marriage?” The thought had never occurred to him. The weak sense of hope that coursed through him at the possibility made him angry and yet elated at the same time.