"No, what are you trying to get at?" Had there been a bout of flu or something that went around after she left Sicily? Why would it have affected her so long?
"I'd say you were showing signs of pregnancy if you didn't have an IUD. Mrs. Banning said you were exhausted the first few weeks you were here, that you'd only started looking like you were getting your sleep recently. You still have dark circles under your eyes."
"Don't we all?" From what she'd seen of the two families at the lawyer's office, Annette didn't think anyone was getting enough sleep since news came of the accident.
"Yes, of course, you are right. I have not been myself lately, either."
Was that his oblique way of saying that the Carlo she knew would never have written that contract?
"I'm not signing your ridiculous sex contract."
"I never expected you to." He sighed, suddenly looking even more weary than before. "I wrote it when I was tired and maybe I'd had one too many glasses of whiskey from my brother's stash in his office. Writing that contract was a stupid thing to do."
"And you showed it to me why?"
His chiseled features reddened, but he just shook his head.
"You wanted to humiliate me," she guessed.
Sex hadn't given him closure. Maybe this had.
"You were not humiliated." He sounded disgruntled, but also kind of in awe of her.
Her lips tilted in a half smile. "No. You missed out on your bit of revenge for being stood at the altar. Poor you."
"That is not the way I see it."
"If you don't rip it up, I'm going to ask Mrs. Banning to burn your breakfast every day until you go back to Sicily."
Annette wasn't leaving those words about Joyce and Fantino's possible deaths in writing. She did not care if it was rational. Annette did not feel rational. She felt terrified. Terrified of losing Joyce permanently. Frightened for Jo-Jo and what the baby's future held.
"Your plans for revenge are so much more prosaic than mine." Carlo sounded admiring.
On that, they could agree. "But effective. You don't do well without a proper breakfast."
"You know me well, or I thought you did."
"And now you've decided that I don't?" Annette heaved herself up from the floor and washed her face with cold water before drinking some more water.
Her stomach felt settled, but for how long? The source of her stress was standing right in front of her.
"You were going to sign the contract."
"Until I read that clause. How could you put that in there?"
"I was being thorough."
"And the list of sexual fantasies wasn't thorough enough?"
He grimaced, high cheekbones burnishing an even deeper red. "That was…" He waved his hand. "It was late at night when I wrote that. I had been working nonstop for days and I had not slept properly since leaving Sicily. I thought you would be offended by the sex stuff, yell at me…"
He'd said something like that when she'd been running for her room.
Annette sidestepped Carlo and went into the bedroom, but then she stopped, just looking around, unsure what she wanted to do now. Jo-Jo would not be up from her nap for another hour. She still slept longer in the afternoon than during morning nap time.
"Why would you want me to yell at you?" she asked him.
Because of course Carlo had followed her, like he'd been doing since she dashed out of the dining room.