The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

She licked her lips, wishing again they were not going downstairs for dinner with his father. She wished even more that the twinges of pain in her pelvis were just the regular preperiod cramps she had believed them to be when she first went off the pill so they could try for a baby. “I spent the whole morning with representatives of Isole dei Re’s foremost women’s organization discussing the need for day care services and preschools on the islands.”

He frowned as if he couldn’t understand what bothered her about that. She’d had many such meetings and they had all gone rather well. However, all he said was, “I thought Tomasso’s wife was spearheading that.”

“The helicopter flight between the islands exacerbates Maggie’s morning sickness, but she didn’t want to put the meeting off. I convinced her to let me take her place. Looking back, I should have had the delegates flown to Diamante to meet with her instead.”

His hands dropped from her face and she felt an immediate chill from the withdrawal, though she was sure he hadn’t meant it that way. “Why? You and Maggie share views on this subject. You have certainly discussed it enough to cover all the points adequately.”

“Not according to the delegates.” She grimaced. “They felt that a woman without children, moreover one who had never been forced to work for her living, could not comprehend the challenges faced by working mothers. They believe that Maggie is ideal for this endeavor and that I should keep right out of it.”

“They said this to you?” He didn’t sound offended on her behalf, merely curious. He could have no idea how much the other women’s disapproval had hurt.

She felt both exhausted and savaged, especially after the phone call from her doctor in Miami. “Yes.”

“It is a good thing that you grew up learning political diplomacy then.”

“Meaning it might have upset you if I had told them all to take a flying leap?”

Claudio gave a masculine chuckle as if he could not imagine such a thing. “As if you would.”

“Maybe I did.”

But he just shook his head. “I know you. No chance.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” In fact, she knew he didn’t. After all, he’d never once latched on to the fact that she’d married him because she loved him. The marriage of convenience aspect had been a plan hatched in his and her mother’s more mercenary brains.

“Did you?” he asked with a sardonic brow raised.

She wanted to say yes just to prove him wrong, but told the truth instead. “No, but I wanted to.”

“What we want and what we allow ourselves to do are rarely the same thing. And it is a testament to your suitability to your position that you live by this stricture.”

She turned away from him and started putting on her jewelry. “And you wonder why I compared being a princess to being a prisoner?”

“Are you unhappy, Therese?”

“No more than most people,” she admitted. She’d been raised from the time she was a tiny child to hide her true emotion, but she was so tired of pretending.

“You are unhappy?” Claudio demanded in a voice laced with unmistakable shock.

The man so well-known in diplomatic circles for his perspicacity was thick as a brick where she was concerned.

“Two of the delegates were less than subtle in expressing their belief it was past time I gave you an heir,” she said instead of answering.

“And this upset you?” Again the shocked surprise.

“A little.”

“But it should not. Soon you will be able to share happy news on that score.”

She winced as his words sprinkled salt into wounds left open and bleeding by the doctor’s phone call.

“And if I can’t?” she asked, testing waters she was not ready to tread into.

His big, warm hands landed on her shoulders and he turned her to face him with inexorable movements. “You are bothered that you have not yet conceived? You should not be. We have only been trying for a few months. The doctor said that women who have been on the pill for a prolonged time can take longer to get pregnant, but it will happen soon enough. After all, we know everything is in working order.”

Worse than salt on wounds, those words were like the lashing of a cruelly wielded whip. Prior to marrying three years ago, he had required they go through several tests including blood type and the compatibility of his sperm with the mucus on her cervix. He had also requested she have her fertility cycles tested, just to be sure.

Knowing that a big part of why he was marrying her was so that she could provide heirs for the Scorsolini throne, she had agreed without argument. Everything had come back normal. They were compatible for pregnancy and she was as fertile as any other woman her age.

The biggest surprise for her had been his desire to wait to have children for a while. She hadn’t understood it, still wasn’t sure why he had requested they wait, but now she knew that whatever chance they had of making babies together was over.

Unable to stand any level of intimacy in the face of what she knew was to come, even such a simple touch, she turned away from him.

Helpless anger filled Claudio as Therese moved from him, her womanly curves taunting a libido that ached for her night and day. He wanted to grab her back and demand to know why after three years his touch was no longer acceptable, but that would be the act of a primitive man and the crown prince of Isole dei Re was in no way primitive.

Besides, physical rejection from her was not a new thing. It had been happening for months now, but each time she turned away from a physical connection, it still shocked him. After two years of receiving an incredibly passionate response on every occasion when he touched her, he could be forgiven for finding it nearly impossible to reconcile to her sudden change of heart.

Prior to the last few months, he would have sworn that Therese loved him. She’d never said so, but for the first two years of their marriage, she had shown in many subtle and not so subtle ways that she felt more for him than the mercenary satisfaction of a woman for a marriage well contracted. Her love had not been one of his requirements, so he had not dwelt on it too much…until it was gone.

It was not that he needed the emotion from her, but he could not help wondering where it had gone and why she no longer seemed to want him with the latent passion that had drawn him to her in the first place.

Her physical rejections had started a month or so after she went off the pill so they could try for a baby. At first, he had thought that maybe her hormones had been at fault. After all, he’d read about that sort of thing happening, but in the intervening months it had gotten worse, not better.

Then sometimes she would make love with him the way she used to and all his concerns on that score would disappear. Only to reappear when she turned him down again. He was not a man who had suffered much rejection in his life, particularly from a woman he desired physically. For it to come from his own wife was totally unacceptable.

And it had been happening more and more lately.

He’d begun to wonder if deep down, she did not want to get pregnant. “Do you not want my baby? Are you frightened of what will happen?”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her, her face going unnaturally pale. “Yes, I want your baby. More than anything. I don’t know how you could believe anything else.”

She was so fervent he could not doubt her. “Then there is nothing about this situation that should upset you.”

The look she gave him from her green eyes was not encouraging, but he forged on, certain of his own conclusions. “Soon enough you will be able to silence busybodies with the reality of a pregnancy. As for today, you will simply play the scenario differently next time and send the delegates to meet with Maggie.”

She spun to face the mirror and pulled her silky, long brown hair up into a twist on the back of her head with deft fingers, securing it with a clip. “And that makes it all okay, does it?”

“It should,” he said with some exasperation. “I do not understand why you are reacting so strongly to this. You have dealt with far more annoying people than these women.”

Therese shrugged her delicate shoulders and headed toward the door. She was so beautiful, almost ethereal in her appearance despite curves that proclaimed her one hundred percent woman. And at times like this he felt as if she was as untouchable as a spirit. But she was his wife, it was his right to touch her.

He did it, taking her arm as she walked by.

She stopped and looked up at him, her beautiful green gaze filled with a vulnerability he did not understand and liked even less. It implied an unhappiness he did not want her to feel.

“What?” she demanded.

“I do not like to see you like this.”