She needed the familiar ssurroundings.
Upon arrival at her apartment she had tried to dismiss them, but it had been their turn to be obstinate. So she’d left them in the hall and still felt guilty about it, but not enough to invite them inside her small home .
After taking them something to drink and offering them chairs from her dinette set, which they refused, she had left them to do their sentinel duty and gone to take a shower. She’d needed to be clean and she could not stand the thought of strangers in her tiny apartment while she did something so intimate.
She wasn’t in the mood for company period. Her mind was functioning again but barely. The thought of putting on a calm facade for the two men was anathema to her so she left them in the hall and didn’t even care if her neighbors thought it odd she had two armed guards outside her door.
She dressed and brushed her long hair into a wet ponytail. Then she made herself some coffee all the while her mind spinning with the reality of the night before.
She had let Salvatore make love to her.
Unprotected sex.
The words pulsed in her brain like a blinking neon sign. Garish. Loud. Impossible to ignore.
She’d gotten good and mad at Salvatore, but she was the idiot who had allowed him admission to her body-a man who had proven his only feelings for her were lust. She hadn’t once considered the possibility of pregnancy. Had not thought to ask about protection. Which was gross negligence on her part, or just plain insanity. She didn’t know which.
She went to take a sip of her coffee but put the cup down again remembering something she’d read during her pregnancy a year ago. She got up from her small dinette table and dumped her coffee down the drain.
Some doctors thought caffeine wasn’t good for babies and if she was pregnant she wasn’t going to lose this baby .
She wasn’t.
She pressed her hand into her lower abdomen. Did she harbor Salvatore’s baby in her womb? Was she nurturing new life? She was still confused, still devastated by the very possibility of conception. Nevertheless a fog that had shrouded her mind and heart since the involuntary termination of her first pregnancy began to dissipate. A very tiny spark of warmth began to glow deep in her heart.
The fear was still there. So was the anger. The pain had not miraculously disappeared but underneath it all a sense of life and living she had thought gone forever furled into fragile being.
‘you look lost in thought, cara mia.”
She spun away from the sink to find Salvatore less than ten feet away. Her gaze skittered to the door.
‘I sent them away.”
‘How did you get in?” His dark eyes looked wary. you did not answer my knock.”
She hadn’t heard him come in either. She had been very lost in thought. ‘So?”
‘So, I picked the lock. The door is not very secure. I am not happy about this. You could be accosted in your sleep and never even hear the perpetrator trying to get in.”
She shook her head .
‘I assure you it is true.”
‘I wasn’t denying it.”
Why had she never realized that the man liked to argue? Probably because before the arguments even small disagreements like this had ended in bed. A place she had thoroughly enjoyed being with him. Before.
‘I was trying to clear my mind.”
His mouth quirked.
‘Did it work?”
‘No.” She wasn’t sure what would. It was as if her life was just out of focus, but for the first time in months… she wondered if it was going to stay that way.
‘Why didn’t you just knock again? Louder.”
‘I was worried.”