Innocent Wife, Baby Of Shame

She closed her eyes. This was too much. She couldn’t cope with this avalanche of feeling.

‘I loved you, Keira,’ he said, the slight break in his voice making guilt assail her all over again. ‘You killed that love.’

‘I know…I don’t blame you…what I did was unforgivable. I can’t even forgive myself…’

Patrizio moved to the other side of the room and stared sightlessly out of the window. He had prepared himself for her defiance, not her despair. She looked pale and vulnerable, as if her world had collapsed around her. It reawakened every protective instinct he had felt for her from the first moment he had met her. Her beguiling mix of wild child and sensual woman had been a devastatingly attractive package. He had broken all his rules and married her within weeks of meeting her. But it didn’t matter what desire still leapt between them now—the reminder of how she had given herself to someone else would stay with him for ever.

He had never been able to remove the vision of her lying naked in Garth Merrick’s bed. The morning after their heated argument, he had felt a little ashamed of how he had reacted to her request for a divorce, realising with hindsight that it was probably just a knee-jerk response. When he’d cooled down at bit he conceded she had been justifiably upset. The photos were very well done, and given the context of Keira’s deep-seated insecurity, which he knew stemmed from her difficult relationship with her father, it would be all too easy for her to think she had been betrayed. He wanted to find her and apologise for not taking her concerns more seriously, but instead of finding her taking shelter with her friend, she had done the very last thing he had expected her to do.

It still made nausea rise like a thick hot tide in his stomach when he thought of the gloating pride on Merrick’s face as he’d greeted him at the door of his flat…

‘Where is my wife?’ Patrizio ground out.

‘She’s in bed,’ Garth said with a combative look. ‘She doesn’t want to see you, Trelini.’

‘But I want to see her,’ Patrizio said, pushing the door back against the wall with a vicious slap of wood on plaster.

He had found the bedroom without any trouble as it was the only one in the flat. And inside it he found his wife lying totally naked on the bed, her body sprawled like a whore’s, her eyes closed in blissful unawareness of his presence.

‘Don’t wake her,’ Garth said from behind him, his voice low. ‘She had a migraine. She was sick for hours.’

Patrizio clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted to shake her awake, to drag her by the hair out of her lover’s bed, but he knew it would be pointless. Hatred burned like a forest fire in his belly and he swore he would never set eyes on her again.

And he hadn’t.

Until today.

Patrizio slowly turned around to find her sitting with her head bowed, the bitten nails of one hand picking at the skin near her cuticles on the other. She looked pale and fragile, like a bird that had had its wings clipped and was struggling to fly again.

She lifted her head as if she had sensed his gaze on her and her pale cheeks slowly filled with delicate colour. He saw the up and down movement of her throat and the way the tip of her tongue came out to brush a film of moisture over her lips.

He had to harden his resolve all over again. He had known it would be hard, but not this hard. He hadn’t expected it to hurt so much to see her. It physically hurt to look at her. Pain knifed through him, like a thousand scalpels reopening old wounds that had taken every single day of the two months of their separation to start to heal over.

‘Patrizio…’ Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it, but he saw her mouth moving and suddenly realised she was speaking. ‘I—I want to thank you for doing this to help the boys…I know it’s not what either of us wants. I just want you to know I’ll try and do my best to make sure it works.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised that his voice sounded so even when he’d had to drag it past a golf ball–sized lump in his throat. ‘It was all I could think of to resolve the situation.’

‘It’s only for six weeks…’

‘Yes.’

He looked away, unable to hold her wounded violet-blue gaze any longer. ‘If you are not feeling well enough to eat out this evening we can postpone it until tomorrow evening,’ he said. ‘One day will not make much difference either way.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling much better now. Besides, I need to eat something.’

He moved to the other side of the room and, taking a small envelope off the coffee table, came back across and handed it to her.

Keira looked at it warily. ‘What is it?’

His eyes were steady on hers. ‘Your wedding and engagement rings,’ he said.

She took the envelope with fingers that felt numb and useless. ‘You kept them?’

He gave an indolent shrug. ‘I hadn’t got around to selling them after you sent them back to me. I was waiting until the divorce was finalised.’

She bit her lip and slowly took them out of the envelope, the crackle of the stiff paper sounding like someone stepping on bubble wrap. The rings lay in her palm, shining up at her with glittering eyes of accusation.

‘You had better put them on and keep them on while we are acting out this charade,’ he said into the silence. ‘Once it is over, you can keep them or send them back to me as you did the last time. I do not care either way.’

He turned to pick up his keys from the coffee table, the noise of them jangling against each other more like the sound of clanging bells in the thick silence.

Keira got to her feet, her legs still feeling shaky, but somehow she managed to follow him from the room and out to the car.

He didn’t talk on the way to the restaurant he had booked on Toorak Road. She glanced at him once or twice, her heart contracting as she saw his clenched jaw and tight mouth and the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

She let out a tiny sigh and wished she could turn back the clock. How different things might have been if that night had never happened. But it had and she had no way of undoing the damage. Even Garth had drifted away from her; their lifelong friendship had never quite recovered from that stolen night of passion.

Patrizio parked the car and came around to open her door, the cooler night air lifting the bare skin of her arms into tiny goose-bumps. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked, sliding his hand down the length of her arm to capture one of her hands in his.

Keira felt the latent strength in his fingers, her blood thrumming in her veins at the thought of feeling his touch all over her body once more. Her most secret place moistened and pulsed with longing to feel his hard presence plunging inside her again.

‘N-no…’ she said, shivering as his thumb moved back and forth over the leaping pulse under the translucent skin of her wrist.

He held her gaze for a moment, his expression hard to read. She felt his thumb come to a standstill, as if he were measuring the thud, thud, thud of her blood racing beneath her skin.

‘You are nervous, cara?’ he asked.

Keira wished he wouldn’t keep using those wonderful Italian terms of endearment he had used so often in the past. It didn’t seem right now when he hated her so much. ‘A bit,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I can do this now it comes to the crunch.’

‘We have eaten together many times in the past, Keira,’ he reminded her. ‘Let us pretend the last two months did not happen. It will be much better that way.’

He led her into the restaurant, where they were greeted by the maître d’. ‘Mr Trelini and Mrs Trelini!’ His eyes lit up. ‘What is this? I cannot believe my very own eyes. You are having dinner together?’

‘Yes,’ Patrizio said. ‘We are celebrating our reconciliation.’

‘Congratulations!’ the maître d’ gushed. ‘That is wonderful, eh? No nasty divorce and no greedy lawyers.’

‘Right,’ Patrizio said with a smile and expression that spoke volumes.

Keira felt herself mentally recoiling at how obstructive she had been over the divorce. The female lawyer representing her had encouraged her to push for a fifty-fifty settlement and, although she hated doing so, she had agreed. It had been a desperate measure on her part as she knew Patrizio would fight it every inch of the way, but at least their divorce wouldn’t be finalised until they reached some sort of agreement. She’d rationalised that it would give her a few extra weeks to try and get him to reconsider his refusal to forgive her. It wasn’t as if she wanted Patrizio’s money; she had wanted his love and forgiveness much more than any amount of wealth.

They were shown to their table and left with the wine list. ‘Do you want red or white wine?’ Patrizio asked as he began to peruse the list.

‘I’d better stick to mineral water,’ she said, fidgeting with her purse. ‘I don’t want to trigger a headache.’

He lowered the list to look at her, a shadow of concern in his dark gaze. ‘Have you had more migraines than usual lately?’

She found it hard to keep her emotions in check with his coal-black eyes on hers. ‘Yes…’ she said, dropping her gaze from his. ‘It’s stress related mostly. I’ve got some pills to take now…they help a lot…’