The Sicilian's Wife

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Megan’s bright head came up sharply, big green eyes becoming even bigger and darker.

‘Why do you say that? How do you know?’

His indifferent shrug dismissed her question as the irrelevant inanity it was.

‘If he cared anything about you, he would be here now—with you. He wouldn’t leave you to come home—face the music by yourself. I take it that was the reason for your tears?—Megan!’ he warned when she looked away, out of the window, down at the floor. Anything other than look him straight in the eye. ‘He didn’t come with you, did he?’

‘No.’

It was just a whisper, the barest thread of sound, and she drew invisible patterns on the floor with the toe of one bare foot, watching the process with an intensity that was totally unconvincing.

‘No, he’s not here. In fact he won’t be coming at all. Not ever.’

‘Not even when the baby…?’

‘No.’

She shook her head again, her expression that of a forlorn child.

‘He won’t come for me, or for the baby. He doesn’t want either of us. He never did. Not really. He was just having a bit of fun—playing around. As a matter of fact…’

She drew in another of those deep breaths that he had come to realise always preceded another of the announcements that were so shockingly disturbing to his emotional equilibrium.

‘He’s married.’

‘Married? Oh, Meggie, Meggie, you little fool!’

‘I didn’t know!’

Indignation rang sharp in her voice.

‘Do you think I’d even have gone out with—for one night alone if I’d known! If I’d so much as suspected? I’m not that much of an idiot!’

‘No?’ Once more those black eyebrows rose, cynically questioning her assertion. ‘It seems to me…’

‘Oh, I know how it seems to you—to the great, the all-knowing—the supremely infallible Cesare Santorino!’

Bitterness darkened Megan’s tone as she swung away to stare moodily into the empty fireplace.

‘We all know that you would never, ever make a mistake like that!’

‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ Cesare muttered bleakly, half to himself.

He made a mistake all right, coming here tonight, like this! Made a complete and total fool of himself! He’d thought of nothing else but this moment. Of the time when, freed from his promise to Megan’s father, he could declare the way he felt about her, the torch he’d been carrying for her for years as he’d watched her develop from a child into an adolescent and then into a beautiful young woman.

But he’d deceived himself totally into thinking that she felt something of the same. That she would wait for him, as he had determined to wait for her. She hadn’t waited! Hadn’t even thought about him! Instead she’d jumped straight into bed with someone else—a married man at that!

And how was he to know that this Gary had been the first?

The blazing rage that had been burning inside him stilled suddenly, the red-hot flames turning blue and icy. And cold fury was even harder to deal with than heated anger. Bitterness was cold—and jealousy—and hatred. And he hated even to think of Megan—his lovely, sweet innocent Megan in bed with someone else—giving herself to someone else!

He had never felt such an icy burn in his heart before. It stung like acid, seeming to eat away at his soul, leaving it broken and ruined, with great dark holes where his emotions should be.

‘And when was that?’ Megan’s voice broke into the blackness of his thoughts, jarring him out of the brooding darkness and into the present again, making him unwillingly aware of the way that she had turned back from the fire and was now staring at him in puzzled confusion.

‘What?’ he responded, struggling to get himself back under control. ‘What did you say?’

‘I wanted to know just when you made this great mistake you’re talking about,’ Megan told him. ‘What was this terrible thing you did and when?’

Idiota! Cesare cursed himself inwardly. You fool! You damn, damn fool! Now he’d alerted her attention, piquing her curiosity and centring it on him. And just when he was least capable of handling her questions. When he had only just realised how badly he’d misjudged everything and was incapable of explaining anything to her—if in fact he’d wanted to do any explaining!

On the contrary, he was determined that she should never find out how he had felt. He had come here tonight with the determination to tell Megan just that. To declare the instant attraction to her that had never faded over the years. To say that deep inside he actually believed he loved her and that he wanted her to spend the rest of her life with him.

But her rash words, her blunt declaration, had damaged those dreams beyond repair. He doubted if he would ever admit to them. He would never tell her how he felt—how he had felt, because he didn’t feel that way any more.

If the truth was told, he had no idea how he felt at all.

‘Cesare…’ Megan persisted, soft, but insistent.

‘Oh, it was nothing!’ he bluffed, veiling his eyes behind long black lashes in order to hide the truth from her. ‘Like you, I fell in love with the wrong person.’

‘And when was that?’

‘Years ago. I was little more than a child. Same age as you if you must know.’

It was like a slap in the face, Megan reflected miserably. A cool-voiced reminder that he thought of her as little more than an awkward, troublesome adolescent. Nothing had changed then since his brutal dismissal of her just over six months before.

‘Except that, unlike me, you didn’t end up with—unfortunate consequences!’ she tossed back, hiding pain behind sarcasm.

Don’t you believe it! Hastily Cesare bit the words back. Unfortunate consequences! He had given his heart into the keeping of a child. Put his life on hold until she was old enough to be his—and now she had turned out to be someone else entirely.

‘I got over it,’ he returned, lacing the words with acid. ‘You do. What is it you say—time heals all wounds.’

‘Except that in my case, time can only make things worse.’ Unthinkingly Megan touched a hand to her lower body, bringing Cesare’s dark-eyed gaze to the spot.

‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as I can be.’

‘Have you seen a doctor?’

‘Cesare, I don’t need to see a doctor. I know what’s happening to me! I haven’t had a period for the past two months and I was always regular as clockwork—same time same day. I’ve been feeling sick in the mornings—and I did one of those horrible tests from the chemists. It came up positive.’

‘I understand that those things aren’t always accurate.’

‘Stop clutching at straws, Cesare! I’m pregnant. There’s no two ways about it!’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Megan admitted honestly.

‘You’re not thinking of an abortion?’

If he hadn’t been such a great businessman, then Cesare could have had a great career as an interrogator, Megan found herself thinking. He fired the questions at her, cold and hard and fierce, like rounds of bullets from a machinegun, hardly giving her time to think. She had had enough of his stony-faced disapproval, that cold-eyed, critical glare.

‘No, I’m not thinking of an abortion! I couldn’t and I wouldn’t! Not that it’s any business of yours!’

‘I was only trying to help!’

‘By suggesting that I got rid of my baby? I can do without that sort of help!’

‘Megan, that isn’t what I meant!’

‘Isn’t it? Sounded like it to me! Well, can I remind you, Signor Santorino, that this is my baby! And as such it has nothing whatsoever to do with you!’

‘Which, Signorina Ellis,’ Cesare returned viciously. ‘Is exactly the way I want it.’

‘Fine!’ Megan tossed her head as she spoke, her russet hair flying, her chin coming up in defiance. ‘I’m glad we understand each other!’

‘Oh, we do!’ Cesare returned darkly. ‘Believe me, I understand perfectly! And as I prefer not to stay around when it is made so patently clear that my company is not welcome, I’ll say goodnight.’

‘At last! I thought you’d never leave!’

She saw his dark head go back sharply at the spite in her tone and knew with a deep, tearing sense of regret that she had succeeded far better than she had ever anticipated in making him think she couldn’t stand the sight of him. The real fact was that nothing could be further from the truth.

Or did she mean that nothing could be closer to the truth?

She didn’t know. Couldn’t decide whether she couldn’t wait to see the back of him, and would frankly be delighted if she never saw or heard from Cesare Santorino again in all her life. Or if the terrible suspicion that her heart would break if he left now and never came back was in fact the true one and the determined anger only a camouflage shield, thrown up to protect herself from the truth.

‘I’ll see you around.’

She was so choked up that she could only nod in response to his curt goodbye. She knew that her silence made her look even colder and more distant than ever but it was all that she could manage. A cold, cruel hand was clutching at her throat, cutting off all her ability to speak and she knew that if she so much as opened her mouth she would burst into tears or find some other way of making a total fool of herself.

So she watched in silence as he spun on his heel and walked away from her. She had always known that the library was a big room, a long room, but never before had the walk from the bay window where she stood to the door seemed so protracted, so endless.

And Cesare seemed to be deliberately taking his time about it. Or was that her deceiving herself? Because he never paused; never hesitated or looked back. He just kept putting one foot in front of another in his determined march away from her.

Still silent, she watched him cross the polished wooden floor, then the thick dark red and cream rug, then the floor again. She almost spoke then but caught back the words, clamping her lips tight on them. She let him get to the door, watched those strong fingers close around the handle, turn it…

‘Cesare!’

His name burst from her, impossible to hold back.

‘Cesare, please!’

He had thought she was going to let him go. He told himself it was what he wanted. That he was leaving, right now, for good! He was never, ever coming back. The crazy dreams of love and marriage and forever that had been in his thoughts when he had arrived at the house had crumbled into dust. He could almost imagine he was trampling them into the ground as he walked.

He was leaving. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew it would be via the nearest bar. Dio, but he could do with a drink!

And then she spoke. Just his name, on a whisper so quiet and soft that at first he wasn’t at all sure he had heard anything. And his march towards the door was so determined, so unstoppable that he barely hesitated. He even grasped the handle of the door and turned it.

‘Cesare, please!’

It stopped him dead in his tracks, still with his hand on the door.

‘Please don’t go!’

How could he resist the appealing in that voice; the slight, shaken tremble on the first word that had clearly escaped her in spite of her determination not to let it. For a couple of seconds, feeling fought a nasty little battle with rational thought—thought reminding him of how he had felt a moment earlier, the kicked-in-the-teeth sensation that had followed her announcement. He tried hard to revive some of the fury, the disgust, the burning jealousy. And failed.

And then, as he had known it must inevitably do, emotion won. There was no way he could resist that appeal to his sympathy. And so, letting his hand drop again, he turned back to face her.

‘What do you want, Megan?’

She was still standing exactly where he had left her, her slender body stiffly upright, fine-boned arms hanging loose at her sides. She was so pale—ashen—that her eyes seemed unnaturally dark above her bloodless cheeks, and the skin looked as if it was stretched taut over the high, slanting cheekbones.