“Secrets? I have none to tell,” he said, lifting his head and looking her in the eye as he spoke his bold-faced lie.
She tilted her head, but her gaze was soft with affection. “I’ve always imagined you fell in love with someone you couldn’t have. That’s why you won’t marry and have children when you would make such a wonderful husband and father—”
“Lauren,” he said gently. “I adore you. Let’s keep it that way. Stop now.”
“But then I saw you with Gwyn.” Here was the woman who was strong enough to be Paolo’s match. She rarely had to show this sort of steel because her sweet nature inevitably paved smooth streets wherever she went. But Paolo was not as domesticated as he appeared. A weak woman would not have fared well as his wife.
“Take him,” he said, rolling Arturo into her arms. “We’re not having this conversation.” He started back to his office.
“I spent five years married to a man who didn’t love me because I was afraid of what I felt for Paolo. Five years sleeping with the wrong man,” she said to his back. “She’ll find someone else you know.”
He was at the door, feeling the latch like a knife hilt against this palm. A pain in his chest was the blade. He twisted it himself.
“She’ll try to make babies with him,” her voice continued in brutal purity behind him. “I did. Because she’ll think that any man’s baby is better than no baby at all...”
He almost had the door shut on her. Rude, but necessary.
Her voice elevated. “If you won’t tell me, at least tell her why you’re breaking her heart.”
He pulled the door closed and turned the lock for good measure. Then he leaned his forehead upon it, blood moving like powdered glass in his arteries, the baby’s body heat still imprinted on his aching arm.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GWYN THOUGHT SHE was doing pretty well. It had been two months and most of the paparazzi vultures had learned that she lived a very boring life, going from Henry’s to work to the grocery store to the dentist to the quickie oil change place. Even she was bored with her life.
Which is why she went on a date with a friend of her brother’s. She told herself it was any number of things: getting back on the horse, research about a possible move to New York, interest in a career change to landscape architecture—hilarious. As if she had any interest in watching grass grow. But it was also an opportunity to eat in a restaurant where she didn’t work, to see a jazz trio and wear one of the dresses she couldn’t bring herself to discard.
She also told herself it was a test, to see if she could let any man other than Vito kiss her.
She was honest with him, told him up front that it was her first date since “it” had happened. He was good-natured, kept things casual and friendly, was a gentleman and a pleasant companion, making her laugh. He made her forget for moments at a time that she was pining and lost without the man she really loved.
But at the end of the night, when he moved to kiss her, she balked. It was instinctive. He wasn’t Vito. It felt wrong.
He drew back, solemn and knowing, ruefully disappointed. “Not ready, huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He picked up her hand and kissed her bent knuckles. “I’ll be back at the end of the year. We can go out again then. See if you feel differently.”
“Thank you,” she said, privately sighing. But I won’t.
Then Henry turned on the porch light and they both chuckled.
Travis was at the breakfast table when she walked into the kitchen the next morning.
“Do not look at anything,” he warned.
She knew the paparazzi had gone crazy. Cameras had been flashing around them all evening.
“He said we could go out again the next time he’s in town.” She poured a cup from the coffee he’d made. “But he doesn’t realize how notorious I really am, does he?”
Travis said it wouldn’t matter to his friend and as Gwyn went about her week, she wondered if anything mattered. It certainly hadn’t mattered to Vito that she was dating other men.
Because deep in a sick corner of her soul, that was the real reason she had done it. She had hoped he would see one of those images that had been taken of her dining and dancing. She had hoped it would make him react.
Nothing.
Crickets.
Which was as painful and disheartening as the fact that she’d felt nothing for a perfectly nice man when he’d acted like he liked her, not just her face or body or the bare skin he’d seen online, but her.
With a shaky sigh, she looked down at the payments she was approving and wondered how many times she’d written her initials without taking in what she was actually signing. She started again.