The Proud Wife (13 page)

‘You weren't there to be talked to. You hid yourself behind locked doors.'

‘I wanted to be alone.'

Remembered pain was combining with the stress and fear of the present to create a swirling, whirling fog of emotion inside her head. She couldn't think straight; could barely even see straight no matter how hard she tried to focus. And she needed to focus because there was something in what Pietro had said. Something that reminded her of one day when, desolate and needing another woman to talk to, she had gone in search of his mother and found only a firmly closed and locked door to the other woman's apartments.

‘And was it because you wanted to be alone that you just up and left without a word, without any warning? No
real message—just “this marriage isn't what I thought it would be. I'm tired of it”.'

She would have said anything rather than admit how he had broken her heart. How she had realised that he had never, ever loved her and his only thought had been for the baby she was carrying.

‘I was supposed to stay after the way you behaved?' She stopped abruptly, shaking her head. ‘And if you were that worried then you could have come after me.'

It didn't seem possible that his face could close up any more but it was shuttered against her, as if steel gates had slammed to behind his eyes.

‘Of course I could,' Pietro scorned. ‘That was just what you wanted, was it not? You walked out like that as a test—proof that you could pull on my chain and I would come running after you.'

‘I…'

‘But you had that wrong,
cara
—so wrong. After weeks of not being able to get near you—talking to you through locked doors, being cut out of your life—there was no way I was going to be tested!'

He
thought he had been cut out of
her
life? Just the thought was like a red roar inside her head, making her thoughts swim dangerously.

‘And who could blame me?' Marina challenged, her chin coming up defiantly. ‘The marriage was over. You married me for the baby—there
was
no baby. And so there was no longer any need of—of
damage limitation
!'

She paused, expecting an answer, but none came. A deep, black frown came over his face, one that made his pale eyes blaze like molten silver. But he didn't say a word. And that was actually more disturbing than if he had flung acid right in her face.

‘And if…' She rushed on, not quite knowing how to
interpret the feelings behind that dark glare. ‘If you need that expression translated, then—'

‘I need nothing translated,' Pietro snarled. ‘I know only too well what “damage limitation” might mean.'

‘You should do, seeing as you were the one who described our marriage in that way.' Marina almost choked on the words.

His stillness was starting to frighten her. She couldn't read anything in those darkened, opaque eyes. They were closed off against her like the blank, carved stare of a marble statue. It was a sudden shock to her system, like a lightning bolt flashing through her body, that she wanted him to say something.
Wanted
him to refute her accusations—if he could.

‘I acknowledge that I said that.'

‘You acknowledge! Is that all? And do you also
acknowledge
that you said you were so disappointed?'

‘Disappointed? Hell, yes, I was disappointed,' Pietro acknowledged. It was only the truth—the bitter truth. ‘Disappointed that we had hurried into marriage without making sure of each other. Disappointed that it was such a rush that my mother thought you had ensnared me with the child.'

‘Is that truly what she…?' Marina began then let the sentence trail off, obviously reading her answer in his face.

‘Disappointed that I had made you feel trapped too. That I hadn't given you the sort of marriage you must have hoped for—dreamed of. Because, yes, because I had believed that marrying you fast was the best way to reduce the fallout from our relationship when it became public. So I cannot deny that I said that.'

‘I know you said it. And I know why you did. Was that
disappointment
too?'

‘I was disappointed that we lost the baby—that there would not be a D'Inzeo heir, not this time.'

But most of all he had been disappointed, shocked, by what he had seen in her eyes. By the loss he had seen there, a loss he couldn't seem to reach through to help her. In her face he had read the way that she had grown disillusioned and tired of their union. Every line, every shadow in her lovely face had told how things had changed, how this was no longer what she wanted. Even the glorious sexuality they had shared had dulled and faded, and her physical withdrawal had only added to and reinforced the facts he had already known.

Disappointed
, he'd said.
Hell, yes, if we'd known this was going to happen, we wouldn't have had to resort to the over-hasty damage-limitation of our mad dash down the aisle
. That at least would have given them a chance to work the relationship through, to allow the white-hot passion to fade, as it obviously, inevitably, had done for Marina.
Perhaps, in the end, it was for the best. We don't have a marriage to bring a baby into
.

‘And, because of that, there was no longer any need to pretend. The reason why you married me was gone and you—'

‘You make it sound as if I
wanted
you to lose—'

‘Well, did you not?' she shot back at him. ‘“It was for the best”.' She quoted his own heartless comments, sounding so much worse coming from her lips. ‘“We don't have a marriage to bring a baby into”.'

‘I hated myself when I said that.'

‘And you must know that I hated you too.'

How could he not know? It had been the final straw, the last piece of evidence of just how bad things had got. Just how huge a mistake their rushed and forced marriage had been. Seeing the way that it was destroying Marina, looking
into her eyes and seeing how dead and opaque they were, he had known that there was nothing left in their marriage to salvage. The fact that she had walked out had not come as any surprise to him; it was only what he had expected. She would not be coming back. And he hadn't had the right to even think that she would.

He had made one phone call, and her reaction to that had told the whole story. They had sunk so low that the only honourable thing he'd been able to do was to let her go. Leave her alone to find happiness somewhere else.

But when he had thought that she had found happiness with
someone
else it had changed everything. He had stopped using his head and instead had reacted in a very different, very primitive way. He had become the alpha lion roaring in defiance of another male moving in on his territory.

But Marina was no longer his to protect.

‘You had every right to feel that way,' he acknowledged. ‘I was not the husband you needed when it mattered most.'

And he was not the husband she needed now either. He had allowed the fact that she looked like the old Marina, the woman he had first met, to influence him, to make him think that they could go back, at least to the blazing, passionate affair they had never had a chance to burn out the first time round. The way she had responded to him in bed might have led him to think that way, but she wasn't the
old
Marina. She was the
new
Marina. The woman she could be—the woman she had become without him in her life. Without a mistaken and miserable marriage to bring her down.

With the memory of the woman that marriage had made of her so clear in his mind, he could see the shadows that just remembering it had brought back to her face, clouding
her eyes. He had no right to drag her back into that private hell. No right even to ask.

‘You were right to walk away.'

How had this happened? Marina asked herself. How had Pietro managed to take her accusations, her pain, her terrible sense of betrayal and acknowledge them all—yet leave her feeling that she couldn't let him do that? That nothing was black and white and she was not innocent in all this.

You saw only what you wanted to see
.

Oh, dear God, had she been so shattered by the loss of the baby, by the way she had felt her marriage was collapsing around her, that she had let her fears run away with her? If that was so, then how could she possibly live with herself? But how could…?

We made this baby together. The only failure is that we did not lose it together.

You weren't there to be talked to. You hid yourself behind locked doors.

I have a strong aversion to locked doors…

Had he wanted to comfort her? Tried? If he had believed she had locked the doors against him as her husband, then had she been the one who had driven him away?

Suddenly she knew she had to do something, say something. Try anything.

‘Can we start again?'

It was all she could manage. But, quiet and soft as it was, it seemed to have the same effect on him as a savage slap in the face, bringing his head up sharply, his eyes flashing rejection of what she had said.

‘Pietro, please! If I can forgive you…'

It was meant to be an olive branch, an attempt to bridge the gaping chasm between them. But if she had hoped it
might appease him just a little then she couldn't have been more wrong. It had exactly the opposite effect.

‘Forgive?'

If his eyes had blazed before, they were positively incandescent now.

‘Start again?' he repeated and the shocking flatness of his tone was far more worrying than anything that had gone before. ‘Did you not hear what I said?'

‘Yes—that we could have…an affair.' She couldn't put the rest of it into words.

But he was shaking his dark head, the slow, adamant movement taking all hope of reconciliation with it.

‘I was not suggesting a new beginning but a way of ending it. A way of getting this hunger out of our systems so that we can both walk away and not look back. That is all I want.'

Suddenly Pietro pulled out his phone and spoke into it crisp, sharp words of Italian, a series of staccato commands that were snapped out so fast she didn't have a chance to catch any one of them.

‘What is it?' she asked, trying desperately to make some sense of all this. ‘What's happening?'

‘What is happening,' Pietro told her harshly, ‘is that you are getting everything you want. You are getting out of here now, with the divorce finalised just as you wanted. As soon as I get back to Palermo, the papers will be drawn up, signed and sent to you. You wanted nothing—fine; you will get nothing. And you can choose exactly the terms on which this divorce is put in motion. Irretrievable breakdown of the relationship—that about sums it up. Unreasonable behaviour—ditto. Any of those and I will not fight you in court for a second.'

A dreadful feeling of hopelessness, a sense of having destroyed something that could have been truly special,
really wonderful, was creeping over her like some slow cancer. It was working its way thorough her body, reaching up to her heart—her soul—and eating away at it, shattering it for ever.

Because that was when she realised, when she knew without any sort of doubt and with a terrible, tearing sense of devastation, that she still loved Pietro. That she had never stopped loving him. In spite of everything. And she feared that somewhere along the line she had taken an appallingly wrong turning, but she had no idea where.

‘Pietro—' But he was turning away from her, fastening his shirt, pulling his belt tight at his wait. The way he stamped his feet into his boots spoke so eloquently of his determination, his rejection of her.

‘I'm leaving now.' It was a stark declaration, blunt and non-negotiable. And she couldn't think of a way to stop him. She couldn't begin to understand just how things had gone so terribly wrong so fast.

‘But what can I do? How will I…?'

‘My chauffeur will come and collect you. Take you to the airport.'

‘Can't you?' At least on the journey there they might have a chance to talk. She might be able to get through to him when now he was totally closed off to her.

The look he turned on her seared her from head to toe, the blazing ferocity of his rejection threatening to reduce her to pile of crumbled ash right where she stood.

‘I cannot bear to be in the same room as you any more, let alone in the confines of the car.'

His hand came up in front of him, fingers bent into a claw-like shape. At first it looked like a defensive gesture, but then he let those clenched fingers close together. This time it seemed as if he was thinking of crushing something, needing to obliterate it from his life, from his mind. Seeing
it, Marina felt bitter tears burn at the back of her eyes at the thought of what she had done. Yet she still didn't know how she had done it, only that she had blundered desperately and blindly.

‘Just tell me…'

‘There is nothing to tell,' Pietro continued, obviously fighting for the command of himself he wanted. ‘You were right. It is better to end it now—sharp, clean. My driver will take you to the airport. The jet will be waiting for you there.'

And that was almost too much.

‘But I don't need the jet.'

‘You will take my plane,' he told her, every inch of the control he had aimed for now securely slammed into place, and every bit of him closed off from her. ‘It is the quickest way to get you back home.'

He wanted her out of his life as fast and as securely as possible. He didn't have to say it. The thoughts were stamped onto his face, etched in the lines scored from his nose to his mouth, blazing in his eyes.

‘I'll take the plane.'

His only response was a silent nod. He slid the phone back into his pocket and headed for the door.