Page 74 of Taming a Heartbreaker

Even with all the gossip floating around, things between them were almost like they’d been in the beginning. But not quite. He knew his time was running out. Given what she’d just said to him, they had to talk. And they had to talk today. He would take her for a walk on the beach, and they would finally hash it all out.

He opened a drawer and searched around for his sun-glasses, smiling when he found the case buried at the bottom. He was about to close the drawer when he noticed a DVD case labeled, “For my Husband.” And it was dated the day he was supposed to meet her in Spain.

Curious about the video, he took it out of the drawer. After inserting the DVD into the player, he sat on the edge of the bed.

He smiled when Carmen appeared on the screen in what looked like a spoof of his very first job as a director, which was for a game show called Guess My Secret. She was talking to the camera, to him, daring him to discover her secret. The only clues she gave were a plate and a small clock. Soon she added a number of other clues into the mix—a pair of knitting needles and a jar of cocoa butter.

He was still scratching his head and laughing at her when she added more hints. Breath was sucked from his lungs when she placed two additional items on the table—a baby bottle and a bib. With a shaking hand, he reached over to turn up the volume while she smiled into the camera.

“Very good, Matthew. Since you’re a smart man, I’m sure you now know my secret. We are having a baby! That’s why I wanted to make our time here in Barcelona so special.”

“Oh my God!” he groaned. Carmen had been pregnant? Then what happened?

“Hey, Matthew, I was beginning to think you got lost up here. What’s going—”

Carmen entered the room and stopped talking in mid-sentence when she saw herself on the screen. Her gaze immediately sought out Matthew, and the pain she saw on his face tore at her heart.

“Is that true, Carmen? Had you planned to tell me that night in Barcelona that you were pregnant?”

She swallowed as she nodded. “Yes. I... I wanted to tell you in a fun way so...” Her words trailed off.

He nodded slowly and then asked the question she had been dreading. “What happened, Carmen?”

She lowered her head as she relived that night. The stomach pains that kept getting worse. Her not being able to reach him on his cell when she’d awakened that night, bleeding. Everything became a blur after that. Except the part about waking up and being told by a doctor that she’d lost the baby.

“Carmen?”

She lifted her head and met his gaze as her eyes filled with tears. And then she began speaking, recounting every single detail of that night. As she talked, she watched his expression. The shattered look on his face and the pain that clouded his eyes nearly broke her heart, and she felt his agony. A part of her was relieved to tell him the truth and no longer have the burden of keeping a secret on her shoulders.

“And you never told me,” he said in a broken tone. “You never told me.”

She pulled in a deep breath as tears threatened to spill down her face. “I couldn’t. I wanted that baby so much. Losing it, and then not having you there with me to share my pain, made me bitter, unreasonable. I tried contacting you first and when I didn’t get you, all I could think about was that I needed you and you were at work, away from me. In my emotional state, I blamed you.”

He bent his head and when he raised his eyes to her again, the pain in them had deepened. “And I blame myself, as well,” he said in a hoarse tone. “I blame myself because I should have been there with you. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for not being there.”

She saw the sheen of tears in his eyes and quickly crossed the room to him. As they clung to each other, tears she had held back since that night flowed down her face. She had cried then but it hadn’t been like this. Her shoulders jerked with sobs she hadn’t been able to let go of until now, until she was with him.

“I’m so sorry, Carmen. Now I understand. I had let you down by letting you go through that alone. I know I won’t ever be able to forgive myself for that.”

She leaned away from him, wiping her eyes. “You can, Matthew, and you must. It took me a while to see it wasn’t your fault, nor was it mine. The same thing would have happened if you’d been there. And being here with you this past week made me realize I can’t be angry at you for something you didn’t know about, something that was not in your control. I had tried telling you several times over the past week, but you kept wanting us to wait. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

She wiped more tears from her eyes. “The woman who owned the villa called her doctor and made arrangements for him to take care of me there, figuring that I would want to keep it from the media. With her help, I was able to avoid the circus that could have taken place. The doctor said I can try again,” she said, leaning up against him, holding tight. “But I so wanted that one,” she whispered brokenly, burying her face in his chest.

Matthew swept her off her feet and carried her over to the settee. He sat down with her cradled in his lap. He bent his head, and felt his wet cheek against hers.

“It wasn’t your fault, Matthew. It wasn’t my fault. It was just something that happened. We have to believe that so we can move beyond it. There will be other babies.”

He lifted his head to meet her gaze. “But will there be other babies...for us, Carmen? For you and me?”

Carmen knew what he was asking. He’d once told her that he didn’t want any other woman to have his child but her. And from the look in his eyes he still wanted that. He wanted to know if their relationship would ever get back to the way it was, when he was her whole world and she was his.

She shifted slightly in his embrace to wrap her arms around his neck. She wanted to make sure he heard what she was about to say. “I never stopped loving you, Matthew. The reason I wanted that baby so much was because it was a part of you, and a part of me. And the reason I hurt so much afterward was because I thought I had lost that connection. I thought the baby would bring us back together.” She paused a second and then said, “But I’ve discovered that all it takes to bring us back together is us. Being with you here this past week has shown me there is still an us, and I want that back so badly. I was never involved with Bruno. It was all a publicity stunt. The only man I ever wanted to belong to was you. Can you forgive me for shutting you out of my life when I needed you most? Can you forgive me for running away? I will never leave you again.”

“Oh, Carmen. I need you to forgive me, as well. I love you so much. I was so driven to give you the things you were used to having that I lost focus, I forgot about those things that truly mattered. You, and truly making you happy. I’ve been so lonely without you. And Candy, too, was just a publicity stunt. Hell, I was looking forward to spending time without her here. But when I arrived and discovered you, I wanted you to stay. At first I wanted revenge, to hurt you the way I was hurting, but I soon discovered it couldn’t be that way with us.”

She nodded. “I was going to make you want me and then leave again. Instead I ended up wanting you so badly I didn’t know what to do.”

“We’re going to handle our business differently from here on out,” he declared. “I’ve learned this week that I can balance my work and the rest of my life. Will you give me another chance to prove it?”

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