The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

Eventually he carried her to the oversize glass shower stall and they made love again under the cascading spray before washing and then going to bed where she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She woke up alone and buried her face in his pillow, wallowing in Claudio’s lingering scent.

The night before had been incredible. He’d woken her sometime in the early hours of the morning and made love to her with such tender gentleness, she had cried when she climaxed. He’d held her afterward, rubbing her back and whispering how much he enjoyed her body and how beautiful she was in Italian.

But after three years, she realized being beautiful to him was not enough. It was not love and could not last forever because outer beauty did not last forever. And outstanding sexual satisfaction could not make up for her inability to give him the one thing he expected from her.

Heirs for the Scorsolini throne.

It was time to tell him the truth.

But when she went downstairs, it was to discover he’d flown out for a meeting in New York. She’d forgotten all about his trip and didn’t know if she could wait the three days until his return to settle things between them.

She didn’t miss the fact that he’d left without bothering to wake her and kiss her goodbye, either. Somehow, that made everything worse. Maybe because it was a huge indication of the lack of true intimacy in their relationship and any real reliance he had on her.

There wasn’t any. They were married, but she was no more necessary to his life than any of his other many employees. If it wasn’t for the sex, their relationship would not be any more personal than it was with any of the others, either. And when the sex wasn’t on, neither was their relationship. How many business trips had he scheduled during her monthly? Had he ever once asked her to accompany him? No.

She was a convenience to him and she might as well admit it.

But damn it, it hurt.

She needed to be more to him. The only hope for their future was for her to mean something more to him. Which meant there was no hope at all.

Her mobile phone chirped and she scooted up in bed to answer it. When she saw that it was Claudio, her breath caught. She flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Good morning, bella.”

For some reason that endearment hurt this morning. Wasn’t she more than a face and a body to him? Was her value truly determined by her outer looks and her poise as her mother had always insisted it was?

“Good morning, Claudio.” She waited expectantly for him to get to the purpose of his phone call.

“I’m on my way to my hotel and wishing you were with me.”

Her heart stopped. “Are you really?”

“Sì. I do not like when our schedules separate us.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me to come with you?” she asked, hope uncurling like a slow bud inside her heart.

“You have your obligations. I have mine.”

“And do the obligations always come first?”

“They must. It is our duty.”

“They don’t always for Tomasso and Maggie or Marcello and Danette.” But then his brothers were in love with their wives.

One of the things that had hurt the most this past few months was seeing what a Scorsolini prince in love acted like and acknowledging it was nothing like Claudio’s behavior toward her.

“My brothers are not in line to be the next ruler of Isole dei Re. They can afford to put duty second on occasion. The country does not depend so heavily on them. And their wives do not have the same requirements put upon you as my wife.” He spoke like a teacher reciting a lesson to a student that he had recited many times before.

The practiced patience in his voice was worse than if he’d snapped at her.

“I miss you,” she said baldly.

“I have been gone less than a day.”

“Are you saying you don’t miss me?” she asked, wishing the question did not feel like a razor shredding her insides. So much for him wishing she was there.

“I will miss you tonight.”

If he had planned it, he could not have said anything more wounding. “In bed,” she said flatly.

“We are good there.”

“But nowhere else?” she asked, for once making no effort to hide how much that displeased her.

“Do not be ridiculous. You are my wife, not my concubine. Why would you even ask such a question?”

“Perhaps because that is the only place you deign to miss me.”

“I did not say that.”

“Excuse me, but you did.”

“I did not call you to get into an argument.” The frozen tone of his voice came across the phone line loud and clear. “But for the record, if you took what I said to mean such a thing, it did not.”

Maybe he didn’t know he meant it that way, but he had. The facts spoke for themselves.

“Why did you call? We both know it was not merely to say hello. I don’t rate those kinds of phone calls from you.”

“What is the matter with you? Perhaps that is exactly why I called.”

She wasn’t even remotely convinced. “Not likely.”

“I was thinking of you and wanted to hear your voice, all right?” he asked, sounding thoroughly annoyed with her.

Oh. Man. Did he mean it?

Of course he meant it. Claudio never consciously lied, but still she had to ask, “Is that true?”

“I do not make it a habit of lying to you.”

“I know you don’t. It’s one of the things I appreciate most about you.”

Her father had lied to her, to her mother, to anyone at all…all for the sake of convenience and had called it diplomacy. But she didn’t think that that kind of diplomacy belonged in a family. It was best saved for other politicians, all of whom were expecting it.

“Can you say the same thing?”