The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (14 page)
If she even looked like she was going to get personal, he made an excuse to leave…or walked away without an excuse. When he was there to begin with. Which wasn’t often. She saw him more frequently in the company of others than she did in the privacy of their suite and that was rare enough.
He had always had a backbreaking schedule, but now it was even worse. He had to cover both his own responsibilities and those of his father. As a world leader, those duties were such that he could not leave any of them undone. He’d always functioned on less sleep than she did, but now she wondered sometimes if he slept at all.
His brothers pitched in where they could, but
No matter how much his angry rejection hurt, she felt badly for him, worried about him and wished about ten times a day that she had waited to ask for a divorce until after the crisis had passed. He refused to accept comfort or help from her in any form and she didn’t blame him, but she longed to help him somehow.
Her request for a divorce had stung his pride and shattered his ego when he could least afford that kind of wounding. He needed a full store of inner strength in his current circumstance, but he was handicapped by his anger over her defection. She wanted to explain that it wasn’t defection, but the physical pain from her endometriosis and the haziness resultant from the drugs she took to control it depleted her ability to pursue anything.
It was all she could do to make it through each day, much less fight with her husband to put their marriage to rights…only to convince him that it had to end anyway.
In every way she looked, she couldn’t help but see that it would have been so much easier on both her and
The guilt of hindsight weighed her down, making it harder than usual to deal with her physical pain and there were some nights she simply laid in her lonely bed and cried. As the doctor had predicted, this month’s pain was worse than the one before once her period arrived and some days she didn’t know how she was going to survive it.
Her own duties did not magically disappear because of the family crisis, but in fact increased. And she had to spend at least part of every day at the hospital, where she put on her best front. She visited King
She was leaving King
He looked almost haggard with tiredness, but when he saw her, the mask of invincibility fell into place.
“You need to rest,” she said instead of a greeting, laying her hand on his arm.
He shrugged off her touch with a frown. “I am fine.”
“No, you aren’t. Everyone says you’re pushing yourself too hard, but no one knows what to do about it.”
“There is nothing to do. It is my duty to care for my country while my father is ill.”
“Your brothers—”
“Have their own responsibilities.”
“They’re worried about you.”
He glared down at her. “Did one of them ask you to speak to me?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Both of them actually.”
“I should have known you would not evince concern on your own.”
“I care about you,
“Of a certainty…you do not.”
She winced at the surety of his tone and the cynicism in his dark gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Now if you will excuse me, I have only twenty-five minutes to spend with my father.”
“Are you coming home afterward?”
“No.”
“You have to sleep sometime.”
“Is that an invitation to your bed?”
Without volition, her expression twisted in revulsion at the thought of sharing her body intimately with him while pain racked her so incessantly.
He paled, his gaze hardening. “Well, that says it all, does it not?”
“No.” She reached out to grab him before he could walk away. “Please,
He glared down at her. “You have nothing to say that I would want to hear.”
A cramp so severe sliced through her she slumped against the wall the moment it hit her. She couldn’t do this right now. Casualties were all around her and she could do nothing to help any of them. Her own self included.
“All right. I’ll see you later…whenever.” Forcing limbs to walk that just wanted to crumble, she left.
* * * * *
She had just been using him.
The knowledge had hurt more than anything he had ever known, which in turn had filled him with fury. She wasn’t supposed to hurt him. She was his woman, flesh of his flesh…bone of his bone. The quintessential helpmate and lover…only she’d turned out to be a betrayer instead.
The fury brought about by that realization had not abated in six days. He walked around feeling like a bomb ready to explode. He was grateful for the extra workload of his father’s responsibilities because it gave him an outlet for the energy generated by his suppressed emotions.
He did not want his brothers to worry, but he had no intention of slowing down.
His father and his country needed him even if his wife did not.
* * * * *
She’d bled through.
It wasn’t anything new since the endometriosis had begun, but usually if she got up and changed frequently in the night, she didn’t have to worry about it. She’d been so exhausted when she went to bed that she slept four hours straight.
She’d also forgotten to take her pain meds, she now remembered.
She tried to get up to take care of both problems, but fell back to the bed, a cry of pain tearing from her throat. The tiniest movement brought about sheer agony.
But remaining still hurt, too. So much she could barely breathe because of it.
She looked across the empty expanse of the bed.
Pain tore through her and she moaned, tears drenching her eyes and wetting her cheeks hotly as her body contorted in misery. If she could just get to the pain meds, but she couldn’t even reach the bedside table.
How could she have forgotten to take them?
She inched toward the edge of the bed, but the progress was slow going. How far away was the table? Pain made everything around her hazy. Maybe if she rolled. She pushed from one side to her stomach and almost blacked out from the pain. It would have been welcome if she had, she thought muzzily.
Still feeling dizzy, she pushed to her back to complete the roll, but instead of coming down on the mattress, she felt nothing but air and then landed on the floor with a thump. She could hear someone whimpering and she wanted to help them, but she couldn’t move. She tried to focus in the near darkness, but could barely make out the shape of her nightstand. It looked further away than it had from the bed.
She reached for it, sobs wrenching from her throat and doing nothing to lessen the pain racking her body.
“
It hurt her eyes and she closed them, collapsing against the floor in a shivering heap as
“What happened?” He dropped to her side, his hand on her shoulder. “You are bleeding. I will call an ambulance.”
“No!” She looked up at her tall, gorgeous husband, her eyes awash with tears she was trying to blink back now that he was here to see them. “I need my pain pills. In…the…drawer,” she gasped out around another wave of cramping.
“Pain meds are not going to stop this bleeding.”
“Don’t need to…it’s my period.”
“Like hell. You are hemorrhaging.”
He picked up the phone and she cried out. “No! Please,
He dropped the phone and then she felt a blanket settling over her. He tucked it around her as he picked her up, but he did not lay her on the bed. He headed for the door.
“Where…going?” she asked weakly.
“The hospital and you can save your arguments. I won’t call an ambulance if that’s what you want, but you need a doctor.”
“I’ve seen a doctor. Told you…my pills…need them.”
“You need a hell of a lot more than pain pills,” he ground out without breaking his stride.
“Yes. Surgery. Not today.”
“Yes, today. If that is what you need, you get it now.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?” he asked as he stopped in front of the intercom by their door.
“Not safe.” She looked at him, her face contorting with another spasm of pain. “Please. I need the pills.”
He looked down at her, his eyes narrowed. “You need a doctor.”
“Please,” she begged, in so much pain she would have given anything for those pills.
His jaw looked hewn from rock. “All right, but you had better be right about the blood. I will not let you die on me. Do you hear?”
He jogged back into the bedroom, careful not to jar her and then he gently laid her onto the bed before opening the bedside drawer. He pulled out a prescription bottle, looked at it and then opened it, shaking two tablets into his hand. There was a glass of water beside the bed.
She’d poured it from the carafe and put it there to take her pills with and then spaced it, she now remembered. One of the negative side effects of taking them to begin with was her spotty memory. She lived in fear of taking too many and overdosing, which might explain the number of times she ended up in severe pain wishing she’d kept to her schedule.
He put his arm behind her shoulder and lifted her into a semisitting position and helped her take the pills as if she could not do it herself. And the truth was, she couldn’t. It was taking everything she had not to scream at the agony ripping through her insides.
After she swallowed the pills, he carefully laid her back on the bed.
“How long?”
“Twenty to thirty minutes.”
“Can I do anything else?”
She was in far too much pain to refine on the fact that the man asking had been treating her like a leper for the last few days. “Hot water helps.”
“To drink or to soak in?”
“Soaking…shower, too.”
He nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. She heard water running and then he was back and he was naked. She couldn’t make sense of that and didn’t even try.
She simply tried to control the pain as he picked up the phone beside the bed and spoke some instructions into it about having the bed cleaned and remade. She was just glad he wasn’t calling a doctor in after all.
She had gone through too much to keep her secret from the media…she didn’t want to risk it with a doctor. Even a Scorsolini Royals approved one.
“I am going to undress you.”
“Okay,” she said woozily, the drugs taking effect quickly because she’d taken them without food.
He removed the blanket and her clothes with careful hands. He cursed when he saw how much blood was on her legs. He surveyed her grimly. “You are certain this is only period blood?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He simply bent and lifted her from the bed. As gentle as he was, the movement still jarred her and brought on a wave of dizziness as pain overcame her again.