Page 58 of On His Bride's Terms

Faye nodded. ‘I did.’

‘What’s going on? What on earth has seeing me with the baby got to do with anything?’

Faye was wringing her hands in front of her. ‘That’s just it. It has everything to do with everything. With us. I saw how you looked at her, Primo. How you’ve started to heal the rift with your brother. And that’s amazing. But I can see what you’re thinking. That maybe you want this too...what he has. Areallife. Family.’

The wordlovewas on her tongue, but she bit it back. He might want more, but she was sure that love wasn’t part of it.

He looked at her. ‘Yes...maybe. And I have been wanting to talk to you. Can’t you see that what we have between us is so much stronger than we expected it would be? It’s made me think that perhaps...perhaps it could be possible to do things differently. I’d never thought about children before as anything but a means to an end...extending the family legacy and name,’ he went on. ‘But creating a family with you, Faye... You’ve inspired me to want something I never thought I wanted before. Never thought I could have.’

Emotion rose, burning inside Faye. She did her best to stop it from spilling over. ‘That’s just it, you see. I can’t give you that.’

Primo shook his head again. ‘What is so awful about the prospect of having a family with me, Faye?’

‘You’re not listening to me. I said, Ican’tgive you that. Literally,cannot.’

He made a snorting noise. ‘You mean won’t. What is it? Are you using this as a bargaining chip to get something even more?’

Faye was horrified. Never would she have thought he’d go there. ‘No! How could you think that?’

But you have deceived him.

‘Primo, please listen to me. There’s something I haven’t told you. I haven’t been entirely...transparent.’

He opened his mouth, but she put up a hand to stop him. He closed his mouth. She lowered her hand.

‘When I was with my first husband, I got pregnant straight away. A textbook conception.’ Faye tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘But within a few weeks I was bleeding. A miscarriage. It got complicated. I was taken into hospital. They cleared the miscarriage, but they told me I needed an operation or I might die.’

She forced herself to look at Primo.

‘I had to have a partial hysterectomy.’

Primo was looking at her blankly.

Faye forced herself to spell it out. ‘They took my uterus, Primo. I have no uterus. I cannot bear children.’

After a long moment he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’

Faye sank down on the end of the bed. ‘Because I’ve never told anyone, really. Not even my father knows. I hardly knew you. I didn’t think it was any of your business.’ A little defensively, she said, ‘And I told you right from the start that I wouldn’t have children. So youknew.’

Primo was shaking his head. ‘No, you don’t get to pin this on me, Faye. You saidwouldn’t. There’s a big difference between that andcouldn’t. And do you know what that difference is? The belief that there’s a possibility that you’d change your mind.’

‘I didn’t think it would ever be an issue. I had no idea that our marriage would become something neither of us expected. I’m sorry, Primo. I should have told you the truth from the start.’

Even amidst the tension between them right now, Faye felt as if something heavy was lifting from her shoulders. The weight of her painful secret.

Primo looked at her, eyes widening. He snapped his fingers. ‘That’swhy you insisted on the six-month get-out clause. You never had any intention of this lasting longer than six months, did you?’

She couldn’t lie. ‘No.’

Primo’s jaw was tight. ‘I told you at the very beginning that I didn’t play games, but this has all just been one long game to you, haven’t they? All you were interested in were the short-term benefits, and yet you ensured you’d reap the long-term benefits for your father and your family business.’

Faye stood up again. ‘Don’t pretend you started out with any better intentions than I did. You got your business deal and your convenient wife as a bonus. Why would I have shared my most private pain with someone who had picked me out of a file of potential wives?’

‘Because you knew very well that I always had the long term in my sights. And because as soon as we met it was clear that the spark between us was anything butconvenient.’

‘We could have just had an affair. Maybe that’s all it should have been.’

‘That horse has bolted, Faye. I don’t usually let people get the better of me, but you blinded me.’

---