From somewhere deep inside defiance emerged. How dare he try to boss her around when he denied her and their baby?
‘I tell my father what I darned well please.” She glared at Salvatore, her pain a ball of fire in her chest ready to explode and burn her heart to cinders. ‘you’re the father and I won’t lie to protect you either.”
His lip curled in contempt. ‘Don’t try it.”
And the most painful realization she’d ever had burst upon her with the power of a nuclear explosion and with as much inner devastation. If he loved her anything like the way she loved him, he would believe her. Full stop.
‘lt was all just sex for you, wasn’t it?”
‘What else would it be with a woman like you?”
She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Her heart was breaking and it was a physical pain so debilitating, she could barely stand.
He turned and left and she stumbled to her bathroom to be sick over the toilet.
Salvatore sprawled on the suite’s sofa his long legs stretched out in front of him and sipped at the single malt Scotch he’d poured shortly after Elisa had gone to bed. She had made a beeline for her room the minute they returned from dinner saying she was tired.
This he did not doubt.
She looked more than tired, she looked breakable.
A year on from the tragedy, she was nowhere near being over it. One look into her beautiful green eyes told him as much. Sorrow lurked there. Grief. And all of it his fault. He’d been brutal with her and she’d lost the baby.
His fault.
He rubbed at his eyes. Would he ever forget the image of Elisa lying on her bed in a pool of blood? She had tried to call him after that fateful night, the one in which she had attempted to convince him the baby she carried was his. He had denied her calls. She had come to see him in Milan and again he had refused to see her.
But gradually he had cooled down enough to think, to consider the possibility the baby was his, however unlikely. He realized he had allowed that other situation, the one born of youthful stupidity, to color his reaction to Elisa. So what if she was a lot like her mother, as her father claimed? She was different with him. She never acted promiscuously with other men, had in fact behaved as if she was barely alive unless she was with him. If he had not been assured by her own father that she was the sophisticated replica of her mother Salvatore would have thought she was innocent.
As innocent as she had claimed that awful night.
A month without her had severely dented the pride that had kept him away from her. He missed her like a physical ache and no amount of work made it go away. He had not even tried dating other women, feeling too raw from Elisa’s betrayal.
‘Why had she tried to convince him the baby was his? In the darkest hour of night, his conscience haunted him with the possibility that she had not been lying. Eventually he convinced himself that even if she was lying, he could understand why she had done it. She said she loved him and no doubt had been afraid of losing him.
Love wasn’t something he thought about. It was an emotion women used to justify their passions and gave strong men an excuse to act weak. But even so he could believe she cared about him enough to be afraid of losing him. Maybe she had even been afraid of facing pregnancy on her own.
Having made some decisions he went to see her again.
She did not answer the door on the first knock so he knocked louder. He knew she was home because he could hear her favorite singer faintly through the door. She never left electronic appliances turned on when she left the apartment.
He knocked a third time and then tried the door.
It turned in his hand. Angry with her lack of personal security, he shoved the door open and entered the apartment. He expected to find her in the bath the only place he could imagine her being and not hearing his pounding. Only the door to the bathroom was open and the small room was dark.
He turned toward the bedroom a feeling of unease assailing him. What if someone had broken in? What if she was hurt or worse? Horrific images of all too real scenarios flashed through his mind tearing at the moorings of years of discipline and teaching. He rushed into the bedroom ready to do battle, but there was no foe.
Only the small lump made by a woman curled up beneath the covers.
She wasn’t asleep, though. She was moaning and he could see tears streaking down her cheeks.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘ELISA?” He fell to his knees beside the bed where she was facing.
Her eyes opened the green depths dark with pain.
‘Salvatore? Why are you here?”