“Yes babies are resilient,” he nodded. “I have no doubt he will be fine but what about you? You won’t be able to enjoy your newfound freedom if you damage yourself irreparably during this pregnancy.”
“I’ll be fine,” she dismissed with a flick of the hand.
“How the hell can you be so god damn cavalier about your health?” He snapped and Theresa quite suddenly lost all patience with him.
“I really don’t see how any of this is your business, Sandro. My pregnancy, my body and the rest of my life are no longer issues you need to concern yourself with. To all intents and purposes, you’re free to go off and have a blast. In fact why don’t you go out with a couple of the floozies you so enjoy dangling from your arm every time there’s a photographer nearby? Go out, get wasted, bang a bimbo. Celebrate your impending freedom in the time honoured tradition.”
“What time is your doctor’s appointment tomorrow?” He asked calmly, simply ignoring her rant as if it had never happened. She glared at him, before turning away and heading toward the door. She had her hand on the doorknob when he spoke again. “I never, not once, was unfaithful to you during this marriage, Theresa.”
She halted at the door, her back stiffening as his words sank in and she found herself caught between wanting to open the door and wanting to turn around to meet his eyes. In the end she simply stood there, with her hand on the doorknob and her head bowed. He came up behind her and she flinched when his hands dropped down onto her shoulders and his large body brushed against her narrow back.
“What makes you think I believe you or even care anymore? She asked quietly, fighting to keep the anguish she was feeling from her voice.
“I don’t blame you for not caring,” his lips were practically brushing against her ear as he whispered. “But I wanted you to know. I know how it looked but I wasn’t thinking about the consequences. I wanted to show your father how little his damned contract was affecting my life and very selfishly, didn’t spare much thought to what it was doing to you. I want you to know that it wasn’t you I was trying to hurt.”
“So you keep saying,” a betraying quaver crept into her voice. “But guess who always wound up getting hurt anyway?”
“I know…” his lips were doing more than just accidentally brushing up against her ear now, they seemed to be nuzzling the sensitive flesh beneath her ear and they were definitely moving down her neck. “It was stupid and I realised it was a bad move from the first but once the papers sank their teeth into the juicy story of recently-wed Alessandro De Lucci playing away from home, everything I did came under scrutiny and any woman I had even a passing conversation with became my latest ‘mistress’. It got completely out of control.”
“Let me go,” she demanded weakly, when his lips trailed down to her collarbone.
“Cara,” he groaned. “I honestly don’t think that I can.” For a moment she was tempted to let him keep going, especially when one of his hands circled her waist to rest on her ribcage just below the upward curve of her breast. Her entire body tensed as her mind rebelled against what she about to do but she lifted her foot and stepped down on his instep, hard. He swore and leapt back, leaving her feeling momentarily bereft, before she came to her senses and fled.
Chapter Five
“What are you doing here?” Theresa paused on the threshold to the kitchen and stared at the big man who stood in front of the open refrigerator wearing only baggy sweatpants, without shoes or a shirt. He turned around slowly to meet her eyes and she swallowed past the huge lump in her suddenly dry throat, God he was so much more beautiful than she remembered. She, however, felt unattractive and sloppy in the Sylvester the Cat silk shortie pyjamas she was wearing. She knew that she had a sleep crease down the side of her face and her hair looked like a bird’s nest.
“I live here,” he replied casually, one hand grasping a carton of orange juice and the other lazily rubbing back and forth over the rippled contours of his abdomen. Her fascinated gaze fell to that hand and she imagined her own hand replacing his. She shook herself slightly to rid herself of the erotic image and focused on her outrage at seeing him so casually standing in the kitchen.
“You’re usually at work by this time,” she pointed out.
“Yes, I am,” he agreed. “But since you go to great pains to not be around when I head out in the mornings or come home at night, I figured the only way I’d know what the hell was going on with you was to stay at home today.”
“You can’t simply stay at home,” she was appalled by that notion. “You’re the boss.”
“Exactly and if the boss can’t take the occasional day off then there’s really no point in being the boss,” his voice was casual, light even but his eyes roamed over her small figure almost hungrily, taking in every single detail of her fuller face and rounder figure. They had been living past each other for nearly three months, with Theresa deliberately evading him when he was in the house. She tended to ignore his text messages and let the machine take his calls. He left little notes for her, sometimes asking her to dinner, sometimes asking after her health, he had recently stuck a Post-it on the fridge reminding her to buy new prenatal vitamins because he’d noticed that she was running out! When she’d forgotten to buy the vitamins despite his reminder, she’d found a new bottle on the kitchen table and a Post-it, with a half-dozen exclamation marks drawn on it, stuck to the lid.
He never entered her bedroom uninvited and she never did any inviting. They still shared the bathroom that connected the two bedrooms which was how he had known that her vitamins were running low but Theresa took great care to shower after he left in the morning or before he returned in the evenings. Now, after successfully avoiding him for nearly three months, finding him so casually standing in the kitchen, half naked and gorgeous, was a bit traumatic to say the least.