She had to see that. She was a smart, logical woman and she had always been fair-minded in the past.
“But you didn’t just keep me a secret from the press. You didn’t tell your family about me, because you
didn’t want to marry me.
How can you say that your sudden volte-face regarding marriage isn’t the result of my pregnancy? Of course it is, and that makes me the extra baggage that comes along with a baby, not a woman desired for her own sake.”
“No, it does not. I do want you for your own sake. Your pregnancy has precipitated my proposal happening
now
, but I would have gotten around to introducing you to my family and sought marriage eventually regardless.” It had taken a lot of thinking after she kicked him out of her house, but he’d ultimately reached that conclusion.
Not that he would have admitted it to her. He had still been fighting the eventual outcome, but he wasn’t fighting it anymore.
S
HE
gasped, her attention firmly welded to him. “Now, you are rewriting history. Don’t say stuff like that. It isn’t fair.”
“I am not rewriting history. I want you in my life. To keep you, I was willing to go public with our relationship. You are an addiction I cannot break, one I have no
desire
to give up. If the alternative
was
losing you, I would have married you. I am sure of it.”
“Do you hear what you’re
saying
?” She sounded very upset and she was practically shouting.
He didn’t know what had bothered her so much about what he had said, but it was not good for her to get so worked up in her condition.
“Calm down,
amante
.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!
You just got through saying that if I’d blackmailed you into marriage by withholding my body
,
it would have worked
. Even in your arrogant brain, that can’t be seen as a compliment.”
“It certainly was not an insult and I did not use the word blackmail.”
“But that’s exactly what you were talking about. Emotional blackmail—and it is something I abhor.”
“Why so adamant?”
“My mother excelled at it. My parents were overprotective and there were times I rebelled…like the year I joined a soccer team in grade school. My doctors said it should be fine, but Mom was scared I’d be hurt. She pulled out the guilt guns to get me to drop the team. It was always about how much she and my dad sacrificed for
me, how much she would worry and how unfair that would be to her
. Never mind that her fears strangled my childhood.”
“You would not do that to our child.”
“No, I wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t do it to you, either.”
“I did not say that you would.”
“You implied it.”
“No, I did not.” Were all pregnant women so irrational? “I said that, given the choice between watching you walk out of my life and marriage, I would have married you.”
“Gee, thanks. A begrudging marriage is every girl’s dream for life.”
He grimaced at her sarcasm. “I can say nothing right with you, can I?” he asked in a driven tone.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m having a hard time believing you.”
“That is obvious.”
“Before, you said marriage was never on the cards, and now you say that it would have been even without a baby. Don’t you think that’s a little inconsistent?”
“I also said I would
never
go public with a private relationship, but I was prepared to do it for you. Listen,
cara
,” he said through teeth gritted with the frustration of trying to explain something she was determined not to get, “I know you did not break up with me with the intention of forcing my hand.”
He reached
over and squeezed her thigh
and then left his hand on her leg, needing the physical connection. “Had you done so, you would not be the woman you are, and therefore such a compelling addiction for me. Most likely, in that scenario, it would not have worked, but the net result was the same. If the way I have expressed myself is clumsy, I am sorry. I only meant to say that marriage was no more a certain dead loss between us than me claiming you as my lover in a public way.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“We have established that.
But
I do not lie to you. I never have,” he said, his own temper fraying around the edges.
“You can’t know you would have wanted to marry me if I wasn’t pregnant. You’re only guessing at that…saying it because you think it’s what I need to hear.”
“And do you need to hear it?”
“No. Yes…I don’t know!”
“If it is not, what
do
you need to hear,
tesoro
? Tell me what the big obstacle is in your mind to our marriage.”
She laughed, but it was not a humor-filled sound. “I need to know you love me.”
“Like you love me?” he asked, his anger growing.
Words were all that held her back?
A simple declaration of love to match her own?
“Yes,” she said defiantly.
He took his hand from her thigh, fury that he did not understand roiling through him. “You were willing to walk away from me, to cut me completely from your life. As far as I know, you still are. You refuse to marry me, even for the sake of our unborn child.
That
is the kind of love you want me to feel for you?”
“I—”
“You want me. You enjoy my company.
But
love? I doubt it. Love is not that easily dismissed.”
“I didn’t dismiss you.”
“What would you call your refusal to get back together, to accept the olive branch I offered to keep you in my life?”
“I do love you.”
“They are just words,
Danette
, and they mean nothing in the face of actions that prove otherwise.
But
if saying them will make you more amenable to marriage…then I love you. Now, will you marry me?”
“No!”
“Why not?
I’ve given you the words you said you wanted.”
“There has to be feeling behind them.”
“Like your so-called feelings for me?” he asked scathingly. “Trust
me,
there is more than enough feeling behind them.
The feeling of wanting to go into the future with you at my side.”
“Stop it! You’re twisting everything I’m saying.”
“Perhaps I learned that skill from you.”
“Please, Marcello. I don’t want to argue anymore.”
He pulled into the driveway of her small cottage, stopping close to the front steps, his movements jerky. Anger pulsed through him, but he knew he had to get it under control. “I’m coming inside.”
“Not to argue more,” she said pleadingly and with an expression that would have moved a rock to compassion.
Even a very angry Sicilian rock.
“I do not want to argue with you.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to argue with you, either.”
“Then let us go inside,
cara
.”
Hours later, he held
Danette
curled close into his body, but he was nowhere near sleep. How was he going to convince her to marry him…and soon? He did not want her to walk down the aisle on the verge of giving birth.
He’d thought for sure that his mom’s lecture on the pains of being royal and illegitimate would carry enough weight to sway her. She was a compassionate woman after all, but she had still refused to commit to the marriage.
She said she wanted love, but he had to acknowledge that saying the words in the way he had done in the car wasn’t going to help his case. He wasn’t sure he could give them to her otherwise, though. He had loved Bianca, and the feelings he had for
Danette
were entirely different.
Other than their inability to have children, his life with Bianca had been near perfect. They’d been friends since childhood and hardly ever fought. Things hadn’t been perfect, and he would always carry that burden of guilt. However, he knew he had loved her and Bianca had loved him, though, like
Danette
, that love had had limits he had not recognized until too late.
Even before the debacle of the photo spread on his father’s party, his relationship with
Danette
had been more volatile. She challenged him in ways his Sicilian wife never had.
And
their sexual relationship was very different than what he’d known with Bianca, too. He wanted
Danette
with a consuming passion that broke through his control in a way his desire for Bianca had never done. He wouldn’t have had sex with her on a desk under any circumstances. For him,
obsession
best described his feelings for
Danette
, but she wanted the hearts and flowers.
He’d prefer the actions that backed up the sentiments. If she loved him, she would agree to marry him…she would not have walked away from him without a backward glance. No, he had to think her real hang-up was because he had denied wanting to marry her before she’d gotten pregnant. Her feminine pride was smarting and he couldn’t fix it.
He couldn’t alter the past. Not even a prince had that power. He had tried to tell her that he would have wanted to marry her eventually anyway, that his saying the contrary was only so much hot air when weighed against losing her. That had offended her, too.
But
the truth was, only his knowledge of his supposed sterility had held him back before. He hadn’t realized it, hadn’t wanted to face the unpalatable truth. What man wanted to acknowledge such a deficiency?
Certainly no prince of the
Scorsolini
family.
Because of that, he’d convinced himself and her that he had balked at a long-term commitment because he had been unsure of his ability to be faithful. However, lying there in the dark next to a body he knew he would crave until the day he died, he had no choice but to admit the truth.
He, Marcello
Scorsolini
, Prince of
Isole
dei
Re, had hidden like a craven boy behind that excuse rather than face being less of a man than he wanted to be. He hadn’t wanted to go through the demoralizing attempts at trying to make a baby and failing as he had in his marriage to Bianca. He had not wanted to ever face losing another woman the way he had lost her.
But
cowardice was its own punishment and he had played the coward. Now he faced the punishment—a lack of trust from his woman that should not be there.
He had wanted to protect
Danette
, too. It hadn’t all been about him. He had not wanted to put another woman through the pain his sterility had brought to Bianca. Only one thing had hurt more than knowing he was a failure as a man in that department: knowing that his inability to give Bianca a baby had become a festering wound in her heart.
And
in the end, it had killed her. In denying himself a future with
Danette
, he had also been protecting her.
She wouldn’t see it that way, though. She could have no idea what it did to a woman to crave children and not be able to have them. She was standing safely on the other side of an abyss that had haunted him for close to a decade and Bianca for every year of their short marriage.
Danette
would never feel the dark cold that wafted up from its depths to chill a man or woman’s soul.
And
he was glad of that, but because she was innocent of that kind of pain, she could not comprehend what a miracle her pregnancy was. Nor could she give full credence to how very much their child deserved everything they could give…including a stable and settled home life with married parents.
She was too busy being offended he hadn’t wanted to marry her before, and trying to decide if he was a good risk or not.
She’d believed him when he said he was uncertain of his faithfulness factor. She wasn’t about to dismiss that issue now, even if he was ready to.
He was not proud of his stupidity in hiding behind that excuse, but once again, he had no power to alter the past.
However, that did not mean he would give up. He
would
convince her to marry him. Other than his inability to get Bianca pregnant, he was not a man who failed. He had doubled
Scorsolini
Shipping’s income in Italy through tenacity and his ability to fix problems and find solutions.
Danette
would not know what hit her if she thought she was walking out of his life with his child in her womb.
He wasn’t walking away from her, either. From this point on, they would be together, married or not. If she refused to move into his home, then he would move in with her.
And
he would sleep on the bloody sofa if she denied him her bed. He was in it now because she’d fallen asleep before she could tell him not to share it, though he had no doubt that in the mood she’d been in…had she been awake when he came to bed, she would have.
She would probably call his actions sneaky. He called them desperate.
Marcello took
Danette
to the doctor’s office the next morning to confirm her pregnancy. He asked loads of pertinent questions, but for every one he asked,
Danette
had two.
The one area of medicine she had avoided reading about while she hung out in doctor’s waiting rooms as a teenager was pregnancy. It had hurt too much to read about something she planned to deny herself, but now she wanted to know
everything
.
The doctor was really forthcoming, but Marcello still thought they should stop at a bookstore and get some printed material on it. They walked out of the store an hour later with two shopping bags full of books and magazines on pregnancy, parenting and early childhood development.
“You aren’t seriously going to read all of those books, are you?” she demanded as he tucked her into the back of the limousine with as much care as if she were made of Dresden china.
He’d been seriously nice to her all morning despite their ugly argument in the car the night before and the fact that she’d been less than pleasant when she woke up beside him that morning. He didn’t argue with her. He didn’t bring up marriage. He simply took care of her and it felt very, very strange and very, very good.