He looked stunned. ‘You saw that?’
‘Of course I saw that!’ Lexi tried to wriggle out from beneath him.
‘Stay still,’ he muttered. ‘I’m hurting all over as it is.’
To her annoyance, she went perfectly still beneath him. ‘Do you think I enjoy making up fantasies where my so-called husband gets passionate with another woman in our bed while I’m—?’
‘Whose phone?’ he cut in, and she could feel all the muscles in him tensing.
‘Claudia’s phone. Though how she managed to take pictures of what you were both up to while—what?’ Lexi said as his face drained of colour, his eyes turning that horrible black onyx.
He didn’t answer. Something about the way he suddenly rolled away from her to land on his feet by the bed and then just stood there stone still, staring at nothing, made Lexi sit up again, with a funny feeling of alarm crawling around in her chest.
‘Franco?’ she prompted uncertainly.
Franco didn’t even hear her. A red mist had risen across his eyes, in the centre of which was an image Marco had planted there of him twined in the throes of passion with Lexi. But the twined couple he was seeing right now was himself with Claudia, as described by Lexi, who had been sent that image by—
As if he was drunk out of his head for the first time since the night Lexi had lost their baby Franco moved across the room and out of it without saying another single word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEXI sat hugging her knees and stared after him, aware that something terribly dramatic had happened here—only she just didn’t know what it was.
He’d looked—shattered.
Was that her fault? A guilty squirm struck down the curve of her backbone. She was supposed to be here to take care of him, not to get into fights with him every five minutes. She was supposed to be sensitive to his fragile mental state.
Marco … He’d actually talked about Marco just before he—
Scrambling out of the bed, she ran after him. The guilty feeling worsened when she found him sitting on the edge of his own bed with his face buried in his hands.
‘Franco?’ She went to drop down in front of him. ‘Are you all right?’
For a few seconds he didn’t move or say anything. Feeling that clutch of concern growing inside her, Lexi reached up and gently threaded her fingers between the spread of his own fingers, then tugged them away from his face.
‘I’m OK,’ he husked.
Well, he didn’t look OK. The grey cast was back, strain carving out each feature, as if he was labouring under some terrible shock. And the most disturbing thing of all was that she thought she could see the burn of tears lurking behind the awful haunted look in his eyes. As if he knew what she was seeing, he lowered his heavy black lustrous eyelashes and swallowed, following it up by clearing his throat. She still held his hands, so she could feel a slight tremor running through them.
Was he finally giving in to his grief for Marco?
‘I’m sorry if I went too far fighting with you,’ she whispered contritely. ‘I keep forgetting you’re—’
‘Off my head?’ he offered, when she hesitated over saying something similar.
‘Unwell,’ Lexi substituted, making a half smile tilt the corners of his tensely held mouth.
‘Sick, crazy, stupid, blind …’ he offered as other alternatives.
‘Is your eyesight still not good?’ she asked sharply. ‘Is that why you had a fight with the furniture downstairs?’
It seemed to Franco to be as good an excuse as any to leave her with. Better that than the truth anyway. ‘I think I might have done some damage to the wound in my thigh,’ he admitted.
She looked down at his legs, her dusky eyelashes trembling as she lifted up their clasped hands so she could scan his pale chinos for evidence of blood—but there was none. All he’d probably done was bruise it—just another one to add to the many he already had, he thought grimly.
Lexi heaved in a breath. ‘Right, then, we had better take a look.’ Glad to have something practical to think about other than the strange, thickly intense emotions swirling around the two of them right now, she reclaimed her hands and stood up. ‘You—you’ll have to take your trousers off.’
‘You’re intending to play nurse—dressed like that?’ Franco drawled, grazing a mocking glance over her short pink nightie.