It had never occurred to her that his heart had broken the same day his marriage had. He had been grief-stricken, feeling as though he’d lost the unborn child that had turned out to be another man’s. Of course he wouldn’t let himself believe her when she claimed he’d fathered this one. Of course he wouldn’t.
Lauren struggled her heels free of the sand and took a few steps toward the water, tortured by the memory of how quickly she had dismissed Paolo’s behavior at the wedding. He’s drunk, Ryan. It doesn’t mean anything. She hated having her own deep hurts trivialized and yet she’d been guilty of doing it to Paolo. Was she coming at their current situation only from her own side and failing to look at how it impacted him?
If she was, she knew why. She didn’t want anyone to know how much Paolo attracted her, least of all him. Every deflective action she took was a big, dirty, smokescreen to hide her fascination with a man who was far beyond her league and never likely to return her interest.
Lauren twisted a ring on her finger, not her wedding band, Paolo noted, and was annoyed with himself for attaching significance to that detail. He ought to be concentrating on the chasm of anguish she was churning up: that excruciating time when his father had just died and the baby he’d expected was gone. The spans on either side of his life had snapped and he’d been at loose ends, tumbling disoriented into a bleak gorge, aware there would be a very hard, painful landing before anything would straighten out again.
He’d been wrong to look to Lauren, a freshly minted bride, to soften his impact. He certainly shouldn’t be thinking Grazie, Dio, because Lauren Bradley was not wearing her husband’s ring now.
Her anxious gaze lifted from the water. “I’m not trying to make waves or to hurt your mother or ruin your career, Paolo. But try to understand. I’ve been patient all my life, waiting to grow up and leave home, waiting until Mamie didn’t need me, waiting to join my husband overseas, waiting to see all the places Mamie spoke about. Now you’re asking me to wait again? Until when? Twenty years from now when this baby is grown?”
“How is visiting all the places your grandmother talked about living your life? It sounds as though you’re trying to relive hers.”
It was a throwaway comment, something to ward off feeling guilty or softening with empathy, but her face froze. Her surprise faded into stunned culpability as her gaze dropped to the ground. She folded her arms protectively across her chest.
“I suppose that’s fair. I didn’t see it that way, but...” She moved to the water’s edge where she stood in silence for a long time.
After a few moments he ambled forward to join her, sensing he’d shaken her up more than he’d intended to. The weight of defeat in her profile gave him a pang of conscience. He hadn’t meant to be hard on her. He knew that a girl in her twenties was more apt to party than nurse an old woman. He couldn’t argue that she’d been tied down a long time.
“I lack imagination,” she said, rubbing her arms and looking down to kick at the loose stones among the sand. “I always choose the safe route. I told myself I was finally doing something bold and exciting, but you’re right. This is just a rerun of Mamie’s adventure. How is being exciting so easy for everyone else and I’m just...not?”
That’s not true. The statement formed on his tongue, but he swallowed it back, not willing to articulate that even though she usually did her best to look as mousy and timid as possible, she’d been drawing his notice for years. When she laughed, everyone turned to enjoy the sound.
“Define ‘exciting,’” he muttered to deflect from what he was thinking. “For most it’s a problem with impulse control. A lack of stopping sense. Addiction to adrenaline.”#p#????#e#
“Is that what it is for you?” Her shiny-penny eyes lifted to his with a light of genuine curiosity and he felt the catch. Immediately the urge took him to hook his arm across her back, pull her into him and to hell with consequences.
He tempered it, pushed his hands in his pockets and stared out across the water. “I suppose it’s been all of them at one time or another, but these days it’s none,” he answered, feeling as restless as the kicked-up peaks on the water. “I’m dull as old knives and intend to stay that way.”
She laughed, richly and openly. “Oh, I am so sure, Paolo! Men like you don’t change. Life is one big game that you have to win.”
“I’m not like that anymore,” he insisted, ruffled by her pronouncement.