by Sarah Morgan
‘Why would you worry about it? Had you ever tried for a baby before?’
‘No.’ She threw him a puzzled glance, surprised by the question. ‘You know I hadn’t.’
‘I don’t know that. I know very little about your past before you met me.’ He reached out, caught a strand of hair that was blowing in front of her face and tucked it behind her ear. ‘If I’m honest, I wasn’t very interested in your past.’
And she wasn’t interested in talking about it.
The touch of his fingers made her stomach tumble and Amy had to force herself to concentrate on the conversation. ‘I bumped into a friend of mine who runs an infertility clinic. She suggested I have some tests, so I did.’
‘And you didn’t think it worth mentioning to me?’ Some of the warmth had left his voice and she turned to him.
‘You have every right to be angry with me but you have to try and see it from my point of view. If I’d told you, you would have said that it was too soon to worry.’
‘It was.’
‘No! As it turns out, it wasn’t! And I was able to end our marriage quickly.’
‘And I’m supposed to be grateful for that?’
‘No. Yes.’ She wrapped her arms around herself to keep out the cold. ‘I don’t know. I just know that I ended something that would have ended anyway.’
‘You think I would have divorced you for being infertile?’ His tone was incredulous. ‘Is that truly what you think of me?’
‘No, actually.’ She turned to him, her voice flat. ‘I think you probably would have stayed with me because for all your arrogance and self-confidence you’re a decent man and I think you would have felt an obligation. I didn’t want that. Only one of us can’t have children in this relationship, so there was no need for both of us to suffer.’
His hands closed over her arms and he jerked her against him. ‘You think I didn’t suffer, tesoro?’ His eyes blazed into hers. ‘You think I didn’t suffer when you walked away from me?’
‘I’m sure you did.’ The wind howled angrily around them but she ignored it. ‘I’m sure you suffered. But nowhere near as much as we both would have suffered if we’d limped along in our marriage.’
He stared down into her face for a moment, as if trying to work something out. Then he released her and his voice was flat. ‘It’s cold. Let’s go home.’
He didn’t understand.
And she couldn’t expect him to.
Because she hadn’t told him who she was or where she’d come from.
Their marriage was doomed, she knew that.
But she’d promised to help out in the practice so she’d work these few weeks and then end it properly. By then she would have been able to convince Marco that it was the right thing for both of them.
They returned from their walk and Marco dragged her into his arms and kissed her, his mouth demanding and passionate. Then he released her suddenly and took a step backwards. ‘Let’s go to the Smugglers’ Inn.’
‘Now?’ Still dizzy from his kiss, she looked at him, trying to focus. ‘You want to go out?’
‘I think it’s a good idea. We need to talk. And if we stay here…’ he smiled the smile of a red-blooded male ‘…we won’t talk. Even I won’t be tempted to make love to you in front of the locals so we’ll talk on neutral territory.’
‘There’s really nothing left to say, Marco. We don’t have to go out. I could cook something.’
‘Out of what?’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Have you checked in the fridge, Amy? Housekeeping isn’t exactly my strong point at the best of times and these certainly aren’t the best of times. Unless you nipped out between patients, I’m guessing that you haven’t been to the supermarket either?’
His accent was more than usually pronounced and she gave a soft smile. ‘No, I haven’t. And you don’t have to tell me that house keeping isn’t your strong point. You’ve always been a very traditional Italian male. You want your woman in the kitchen.’
And she’d loved that.
She’d loved the fact that she had finally been able to create a home.
She glanced around her, at the house she’d chosen, the place she’d wanted to raise their children.
His eyes trapped hers and he inhaled deeply. ‘Not that traditional,’ he said huskily. ‘I was more than happy for you to pursue a career if that was truly what you wanted. But it wasn’t, was it?’
She shifted. ‘Do you want to argue about this now or shall we go to the pub?’
‘Subject avoidance appears to be your favourite activity at the moment.’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘Let’s go to the pub. Give me five minutes to change.’
Deciding that jeans were perfectly acceptable for a casual supper at the Smugglers’ Inn, Amy didn’t bother changing but went into her bathroom, splashed her face with cold water and applied some make-up. Remembering everyone’s comments on how pale she was, she gave her cheeks an extra swipe with the blusher brush and then decided that she looked like a clown and rubbed it off again.
She was pale, yes. But apart from that she looked quite normal. Nothing like a woman whose insides were in turmoil and whose heart was breaking.
‘Ready?’ Marco stood in the doorway, a black jumper brushing the hard lines of his jaw, his eyes glittering dangerously. There was fire and confrontation in his eyes and Amy swallowed, remembering the passion that had exploded between them that morning. And the previous evening.
Perhaps they were right to go out.
They couldn’t just carry on making love, could they? What did that solve? Nothing. If anything, it made things worse. They were becoming more and more entwined in the emotional web they were spinning and before long it would be almost impossible to extricate themselves.
Realising that the evening wasn’t going to be easy, Amy gave a sigh as she followed him out of the room and waited while he locked the front door.
It was dark and cold and she snuggled deeper into her coat.
‘Do you think it’s going to snow again?’ She slid into the Maserati, enjoying the warmth and the smell of leather.
‘I have no idea.’ Marco waited while she closed the door. ‘I hope not. The car hates it. I hate it. The only place I want snow is when I’m skiing and there isn’t much of that on the North Cornish coast.’
Amy smiled at the thought of skiing in Penhally. ‘The car is still working, then, despite the cold?’
‘Sì, occasionally.’ Humour in his voice, Marco leaned across and fastened her seat belt then slid his hands over the steering-wheel in a gesture of affection. ‘Except when she wants to make my life difficult. Which, of course, she does quite often.’ The engine gave a throat roar and Marco steered the car onto the coast road.
‘Why is it a “she”? Why does it have to be a woman?’
‘Of course she is a woman.’ Smoothly he changed gear, his eyes fixed on the road. ‘You only have to look at her temperament. She’s moody some times. Unpredictable. Determined to frustrate. And then other times—she is a dream.’ He spoke with such affection that she looked at him with disbelief.
‘Marco Avanti, you’re a qualified doctor, not a little boy with a toy. You’re just a little bit crazy, do you know that?’
He turned his head quickly and gave her a sexy smile. ‘Crazy is good, no? Sensible is…’ He removed one hand from the wheel and slid it over her knee. ‘English? No passion. No emotion.’
Feeling the sudden rush of heat inside her body, Amy coloured, relieved that it was dark. Everything she knew about passion and emotion she’d learned from him. Her response to him had always astonished her. It was as if he drew out a part of her that she hadn’t known existed.
‘We’re so different. How did we ever end up together?’
‘Because what we have is powerful.’ He increased speed and she gripped the edge of the seat and gasped.
‘Marco! Are you planning to end the year with a speeding ticket?’
‘Calm down. This car spends so long in the garag
e that she needs a run occasionally. And, anyway, the police have better things to do than check my speed.’ Marco swooped into the car park and turned off the engine.
Feeling relieved that they were still alive, Amy undid her seat belt. If he were less macho, would it be easier to resist him?
Or was it his blatant, unashamed masculinity that was so attractive?
Marco was red-blooded male, through and through. Women sensed it within moments of meeting him. She’d sensed it.
She shivered as she slammed the car door and felt the wind whip round her body. ‘It’s cold.’ She felt his arm slide round her and then he was urging her across the car park and into the welcoming warmth of the pub. ‘Buenas noches, Marco,’ Tony called out from the bar, and Marco sighed.
‘You just wished me good night in Spanish, my friend. Buona sera is Italian. Don’t you ever listen to anything I tell you?’
‘Depends what it is.’ Tony reached for a glass, a smile on his face. ‘If you’re telling me to eat less fat, no, I don’t listen. If you’re ordering a drink, my hearing improves.’
Marco glanced around the pub. ‘It’s quiet.’
‘Early yet. Most folks are still tucked up indoors, away from the weather. It’ll be crowded later. Always is. What will it be? Amy?’
‘I’ll have fizzy water.’
Tony lifted an eyebrow at Marco. ‘Is she going to be decent company on fizzy water?’
Marco gave a slow, masculine smile. ‘Unlike most of you Englishmen, I don’t need to get my women drunk in order to seduce them. My company alone is enough.’
His comment was so outrageously arrogant that Amy couldn’t hold back her laughter and he turned towards her, his attention caught, his expression curious. ‘What is funny?’
‘You’re funny. You make me laugh. You always did.’ Realising that paying him compliments wasn’t going to help create distance between them, she turned away quickly and settled herself at the table by the fire. ‘Nice fire, Tony.’
‘Are you two eating? Specials are up on the board.’
Amy stared at the scrawl on the black board, wondering if she dared admit she wasn’t hungry. There was something about being in love with Marco that just drove her appetite away.
‘I’ll have the goat’s cheese salad,’ she muttered, and Marco frowned.
‘She’ll have lamb hotpot. And I will, too.’ He sat down opposite her and Amy gaped at him.
‘I don’t want lamb hotpot!’
‘Amy.’ His voice was patient. ‘You look as though you’ve eaten nothing for the past two years. This morning you missed breakfast. The sandwich that Kate gave you at lunchtime came back uneaten. You are eating less than that baby we referred to the hospital. Tonight you’re having lamb hotpot and you’re eating it, even if I have to fork it into your mouth myself.’
‘But I’m not—’
‘Not hungry?’ He finished the sentence for her and gave a nod of understanding. ‘So—something is the matter? You are off your food because you are so in love with me you can’t see straight, no?’
‘Don’t start, Marco. I don’t love you. And you don’t love me. Not enough.’
He studied her face in silence. ‘All right. Because I need you to recover your appetite, we’ll play a different game for the time being.’ He leaned back, his dark eyes glittering in the light of the fire. ‘I tell you one thing you don’t know about me and you tell me one thing I don’t know about you.’
‘I don’t like lamb hotpot. There.’ She smiled innocently. ‘That’s my one thing. Now it’s your turn.’
‘I don’t like really skinny women?’
She laughed. ‘You should do an article for the local paper. It would help soothe all those poor women sobbing over the extra pounds they gained over Christmas.’
‘Only women think that thin is attractive. All men prefer curves.’
Tony delivered the hotpot to the table and Amy sighed as she picked up her fork and looked at it without enthusiasm. ‘Why is it that you always get your own way, Marco?’
‘Because I’m always right?’ His expression grew serious. ‘I didn’t get my own way when you left, Amy. That wasn’t what I wanted.’
She stilled, the fork balanced in her fingers, her heart in her throat. ‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about this now.’
‘You made the decision for both of us, just as I did with the hotpot.’ His eyes challenged her. ‘You didn’t like it when I chose your food.’
‘That’s not the same thing at all.’
‘You’re right, it isn’t. To select someone’s meal for them…’ he waved a hand dismissively ‘…that is nothing, I agree. But to choose someone’s whole future—now, that’s entirely different, amore.’
‘That’s not fair, Marco. A relationship can’t work if one of the people involved doesn’t want it to work. And I didn’t—it wasn’t what I wanted.’
‘You’re lying. You wanted it but you were afraid.’ He leaned forward. ‘My beautiful, cowardly Amy. You were afraid that infertility would wreck our marriage. So you wrecked it anyway. That is woman logic.’
‘Woman logic?’
‘Sì.’ He dug into the hot pot. ‘A man would not wreck something just in case.’
She inhaled deeply. ‘It wasn’t “just in case.”’
‘Eat.’
‘But—’
‘Eat, Amy, or I will have to force-feed you.’
She sighed and stabbed a small amount of food with her fork.
Marco sighed. ‘Now put it in your mouth—yes, like that. Good. And now another mouthful. These tests you had done—I want to know what they told you.’
Amy stopped chewing and put down her fork. ‘I had the usual done. The laparoscopy—’
‘You had a laparoscopy?’ He interrupted her, his tone rough. ‘When? How? Where was I?’
‘Busy. Working.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
The breath hissed through his teeth. ‘All right—carry on. You had a laparoscopy. And then?’
‘I had mild endometriosis. Nothing that needed treating. Just enough to have completely blocked my Fallopian tubes.’ Her hand shaking, Amy picked up her fork again.
‘So the laparoscopy suggested that your Fallopian tubes were not patent, is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Eat.’
Amy stared at the food on her fork. ‘I really don’t think I—’
‘Eat.’
Aware that the pub was filling up and that a few people were glancing towards them, Amy dutifully took another mouthful of food. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Then you need to do more vigorous exercise, amore, increase that appetite of yours,’ Marco purred softly, and her eyes flew to his.
‘No, we mustn’t. We mustn’t do that again,’ she whispered softly, and he lifted an eyebrow.
‘And why not?’
‘Because it is just confusing things.’
‘I’m not confused.’ He gave a slow, sexy smile and reached across the table and took her fork from her hand. ‘I know exactly what I want. And I know exactly what you want, too, tesoro.’
‘I want a divorce.’ She heard his sigh and bit her lip. ‘Marco, I know that we have fun together and I know that the sex is good.’ She glanced swiftly towards the crowd at the bar but no one was paying them any attention. ‘But our relationship can’t carry on. It’s over.’
The humour was gone from his eyes. ‘It isn’t over. We met and the chemistry was so powerful that for three days we didn’t get out of bed. We made love almost continuously. Do you remember that, amore?’
Of course she remembered that. ‘Perhaps that was the problem. We let the sex cloud our judgement. Sharing a bed is very different from sharing a life.’
‘So you’re still pretending that there is no emotional connection between us and never was?’
Trying to ignore the faint sarcasm in his tone, she straightened her back and didn’t look at him. ‘I like you, of course—’
‘Amy, a woman doesn’t lose her appetite over a serious case of “like”. You were in love with me and you are still in love with me. Please, at least admit that.’
Her stomach churned. ‘Answer me one question, Marco.’ She pushed her plate away from her. ‘How many times has a woman ended a relationship with you?’
‘Never.’
Finally she looked at him. ‘That’s what I thought. So perhaps it’s just very difficult for you to accept that I want to end the relationship.’
‘You’re implying that this is all about my ego?’ He let out a long breath and shook his head in blatant disbelief. ‘Sometimes, Amy, you are more trouble than the Maserati and that, as you say in English, is really saying something. Now, eat and forget our problems.’
Reluctantly Amy took a few more forkfuls of food. ‘It’s quite good,’ she conceded, ‘for hotpot.’
‘Sì. And you are going to eat all of it. You’re a good cook. Who taught you? Your mother?’
‘No, my grandmother. She loved cooking, especially baking. Her cakes were amazing. She was quite a homely, domestic person. My mother wasn’t.’ Discovering that she was hungrier than she’d thought, Amy slowly ate her way through the bowl of food.
‘Why did you stay with her on your own? Did your mother never join you?’
‘She was always working and she needed somewhere for me to go during the holidays. And, anyway, they didn’t get on. They had a difference of opinion.’
‘About what?’
‘About me. My mother never really wanted children.’ Talking about herself felt uncomfortable and with a flash of panic she swiftly she changed the subject. ‘How’s Michelle Watson? Is she home from hospital?’
‘Yes, and they have changed her asthma medication.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Poor Carol worries so much about her. I’m planning to call and see her tomorrow.’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘Sunday is the only day I have time to fit in that sort of visit. I need to check on her. She needs the support. And I also want to check on Lizzie.’
‘They certainly didn’t seem like a perfectly harmonious family.’ Amy glanced around to check that no one was listening to them and then lowered her voice. ‘I wondered whether Lizzie might be suffering from more than teenage tantrums.’