Page 48 of Italian Baby Shock

Yet something had changed and he wanted to know what.

‘Lark,’ he repeated, sharper this time. ‘What’s going on?’

She was still a moment, then he heard her take a deep breath and turn back to him. Her cheeks were wet, her lovely green eyes red. ‘I’m sorry, Cesare,’ she said thickly. ‘But I can’t do this any more.’

He stared at her, not understanding. ‘What do you mean? You can’t do what?’

‘I can’t be your wife, not like this.’

A feeling of foreboding began to gather inside him. She’d touched him reverently. Kissed him as though he were precious, and no one had ever done that to him before. No one had ever held him as if he mattered, as if he was important.

But even so, there had seemed something deliberate about the time she’d spent doing it. As if she was savouring it, savouring him. Then that light in her eyes as he’d slid inside her that he didn’t understand. It had looked like grief.

It was a goodbye.

He went cold all over. ‘Tell me what you’re actually saying,’ he demanded. ‘Exactlywhat you’re saying.’

‘I can’t keep sleeping with you.’ She sat up abruptly and turned, slipping off the bed. ‘I can’t keep being...intimate with you. That has to end.’

‘What?’ He stared at her in bewilderment. ‘Why?’ And then, in a hot flare of jealousy, he scowled. ‘Have you found someone else?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’ She was dressing and he found it unbearable all of a sudden. He reached out over the mattress, catching her hands and pulling her back down on the bed again.

‘Tell me,’ he growled, turning her over and pinning her beneath him. ‘Why can’t you sleep with me any more? And why are you crying?’

She swallowed, her jaw tight. ‘Let me go, Cesare.’

‘No. Did I do something to hurt you? What?’

‘Yes,’ she burst out suddenly, passionately. ‘You did do something. You made me fall in love with you.’

The words echoed around the room, a slow horror dawning inside him.

‘Love?’ he echoed stupidly.

Her eyes glittered and this time she didn’t look away. ‘I know you don’t want it and I know you said love would never be any part of this marriage and I thought I was fine with that, but... I’m not. I love you, Cesare. I love you so much.’

This time, he was the one who pushed himself away from her as if she’d burned him, horror deepening, the anger that he’d thought he’d vanquished rising along with it.

‘No, Lark,’ he said in a rough voice. ‘No. I told you—’

‘I know what you told me.’ She sat up, pain stark in her eyes. ‘And don’t worry, I’m not asking for you to love me in return. I know how you feel about that. And I’m not going to leave—I would never take her away from you and I’m not leaving her—but I can’t keep pretending we have a real marriage when we don’t.’

‘Why not?’ he demanded, fury abruptly running through his veins. At her for changing everything when he’d thought things were perfect, and at himself for not realising that making her happy might have had this effect on her. For not seeing her growing feelings.

Another way you’re selfish. You didn’t even think about howshemight feel. All you wanted was your damn new legacy.

Yes, and why shouldn’t he? He was a selfish bastard and he’d never made any secret of the fact. Yet something like self-loathing wound through him all the same.

‘Because I can’t.’ More tears were rolling down her cheeks and for some reason the sight of them hurt, like small slivers of glass pushed beneath his skin. ‘I spent my childhood loving my mother, hoping it would help her, fix her somehow, but it didn’t. I don’t want to do it again.’

The fury felt as if it was choking him. ‘I’m not broken, Lark. Why the hell would you think I need fixing?’

‘You don’t,’ she said passionately, wiping futilely at her tears. ‘It’s not that. It’s just... I want to love you so much. I want to make you as happy as you made me, but sometimes I feel as if there’s a part of you that you keep shut away, a part that you don’t want me to see. And it’s like that night again, Cesare. Where you have all of me, but I have nothing of you.’

He knew what she was talking about. The days when the pressure of trying to keep both her and Maya happy, to not give them any reason to doubt and mistrust him, got to him. Sometimes he found himself furious for no reason and always when he should have been happy. It felt as if he was missing something, lacking something, and he couldn’t pinpoint what, which angered him. He didn’t want her to see that, didn’t want his anger to become something toxic, the way his parents’ had, and so he’d shut himself away and dealt with it, only coming out again when it had gone.

She didn’t need to see that. No one did.

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