The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

“I had no way of knowing when that would be.”

“It is barely nine o’clock.” He said it like he couldn’t imagine going to bed this early. And probably, he couldn’t. The man needed less sleep than anyone she knew.

If he knew she’d gone to bed as early as seven, he’d be convinced she was ill. She saw no reason to enlighten him. “I was tired.”

“But you are not sick?”

“No.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?” He asked the question with the same lack of emotion he’d asked if she was sick to begin with.

The words skewered her. And there was no sense of anticipation in his features, no warming at the prospect, which hurt just like everything else did right then.

“No. Not pregnant,” she forced out of stiff lips.

“You are sure?”

She hadn’t started, but she was sure. “I’m positive.”

“Then this strange behavior is the result of period hormones?”

No doubt a good portion of what she was feeling and her willingness to act on those feelings was caused by hormonal imbalances. “If it pleases you to think so, then yes.”

Hormone driven, or not, the knowledge her marriage was over was real. His lack of love for her was fact. Her unpredictable reproductive system was not the stuff fantasies were made of and the pain inside her was a physical ache that made it hard to breathe.

He made an impatient movement. “Nothing about this situation pleases me.”

“I am sorry.”

“I do not want an apology. I want an explanation. You said you had things you wanted to talk about but I come back to the suite only to find you sleeping.”

“Is that a crime?”

“No, but you are making no sense to me right now.”

“Heaven forbid I should stop fitting in the slot you’ve assigned me to in your life.”

“I have done nothing to deserve your sarcasm.”

“Except refuse to listen to me.”

“On your timetable. I am here now. Ready to listen.” He spread his hands in an expansive gesture that also served to draw her attention back to his beautiful naked body.

Tears burned the back of her eyes, but maybe they were not as never ending as she had thought because no moisture glazed her vision. She was going to miss him so much and it did not even shame her to admit that part of that missing would be pure physical need going unmet. Because for her, the desire was part and parcel to the love and both would be starved of his presence soon enough.

She sighed, trying to breathe through a very different kind of hurt than what had been consuming her body for months now. “I realized that I was foolish to fly up here to talk to you. Waiting three days won’t change anything. I’m not even sure there is a point in having the discussion I wanted to have at all.”

Really, she just needed to tell him about her condition and then let him work out the details of the separation and divorce. But after her emotional holocaust in the shower, she didn’t have the wherewithal to discuss that with him. Her inner reserves were all gone and she simply couldn’t face telling him of her failure as a woman, as a wife, especially in the face of his obvious hostility.

“Why is that?” he asked in a dangerously soft undertone she was too drained to understand. Shouldn’t he be relieved she didn’t want to get all emotional with him?

“Some things cannot be changed.” No matter how much she wanted them to be.

“And what are those things?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now,” she admitted in a voice that sounded dodgy to her own ears.

In a move she did not expect, he came around to her side of the bed at supersonic speed and lifted her right out of it. “That is unfortunate because I do.”

She gasped and wrapped her arms around his neck to stop herself from falling. “You can’t always have your way.”

“That is not a concept I recognize.”

“Then it’s time you did.”

He tightened his hold on her. “Stop playing games and tell me what the hell has you acting so far out of character.”

The furious undertone in his voice said his patience was about used up. And the iron-hard glint in his brown eyes said he wasn’t giving up until she spilled, either. No matter what she wanted, no matter how hard it might be for her, he would settle for nothing less than full disclosure.

She knew it and finally accepted it. She’d started this thing and she had to finish it, no matter how much she might want to put it off. No matter how deeply she might regret her impulsive decision to come to New York. Tears choked her throat and she knew she couldn’t begin tell him about her body’s deficiency with even a semblance of emotional detachment. There was only one thing she could say.

And she wasn’t even sure how to say it.

Feeling pressured beyond endurance in her current overly emotional state and overwhelmed by the simple sensation of being held in his arms for what she was sure was the last time, she ended up just blurting it out, “We have to divorce.”

Eyes filling with inimical rage, he dropped her in an act of such utter repudiation her stomach knotted with pain to add on top of all the other hurt she was feeling. If she hadn’t grabbed him for support, she would have fallen flat on her bottom.

But he shook her touch off with disdainful rejection. “You bitch.”

She’d never seen him so angry and it scared her silly. “I…I h-have to tell you—”

“You will divorce me over my dead body,” he interrupted in a deadly voice.

Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t make anything come out. She tried, but no words would issue forth. It all hurt too much. She’d never believed she would have to say those fatal words to him. She would have done anything, given any amount of money…even years from her life not to have had to do so. And yet as horrific as his response was to her demand for divorce, she could not make herself speak the truth that labeled her a total failure as a woman.

He had hurt her too much and there was nothing left inside her of trust for his willingness to spare her emotions.

And the harshness of his reaction confused her…made it harder for her to think, to cope with what needed to be said. She simply had not expected him to respond with such fury. After all, they were in effect discussing the dissolution of what he considered a business contract. Nothing more.