Chapter Two #2
He sank onto a hard-backed chair close to her and studied her some more. The lighting up here was much brighter than in the basement, and now he could see just how tired she was. And thin. She’d lost more weight than he’d thought in his initial assessment.
‘Are you not eating?’
‘I try,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just struggling to hold anything down. I kept trying to put it down to stress, but I think I was in denial.’
‘Deliberate denial?’ He tried not to sound too pointed.
Her stare fell to the floor. ‘Maybe.’ He had to strain to hear her, but then her voice strengthened a little as she looked back at him. ‘I know this baby is what you married me for, but I’m not coming back to you.’
‘We’re going to be parents, Marnie.’ It was a fight to keep his voice even-tempered. ‘You know how I feel about children being raised by committed parents.’
‘I do, yes, but I feel just as strongly that children shouldn’t be raised by parents who hate each other.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
Her lips fleetingly curved in a sad smile. ‘Since when have you been a liar?’
He ran his fingers through his hair and tried, again, to keep a grip on his temper.
The only thing Domenico hated about Marnie was how she’d outmanoeuvred him with the divorce.
She’d let him make love to her night after night, never breathing a word about any unhappiness, while behind his back she’d been putting everything in place to leave him.
She’d even given the tenants of her flat notice to leave so it would be free on the day she made her move.
When she’d left the restaurant after handing him the divorce papers, she’d got into a cab and driven out of his life.
He’d returned home and found much of her dressing room empty.
While he’d spent his days working, she’d spent hers secretly packing much of her stuff away and transporting it across London.
So sneaky had she been that she’d done it all under the household staff’s noses, because if they’d been aware of what she was up to, they would have told him immediately.
This was the first time she’d been back in his home since they’d left for their wedding anniversary meal.
Gripping the sides of the armchair, she got unsteadily to her feet. ‘We’ll have to have the big conversation about our baby’s future another time. I need to go home; I don’t feel well.’
‘This is your home.’
Still holding onto the armchair, she speared him with a pained stare. ‘This was never my home, and even if it was, we’re divorced.’
‘That was your choice, not mine.’
‘Yet you were the one celebrating it with a party. Not me.’
‘I wouldn’t have celebrated if I’d known you were pregnant.’
‘No, you would have been running a rampage through the courts to stop the divorce going through. Never mind what I wanted, it’s all about what you want. It’s always what you want that matters. Everyone else is just a bit player in the production written, directed and starring Domenico Cannavaro.’
‘That’s not true,’ he bit back angrily. ‘I gave you everything you could possibly want. I denied you nothing.’
‘No, you gave me everything you thought I could possibly want.’ Closing her eyes, she shook her head and breathed in through her nose. ‘I didn’t come here to rake over the past, Dom, and right now I don’t have the strength to argue.’
She was the only person he’d never corrected for calling him Dom, he thought dimly as he wondered how the hell he was supposed to play this.
Since she’d left him. Marnie had proved herself immune to threats and dirty tricks—she was much, much tougher than he’d believed or given her credit for—and impervious to cajoling flattery, but damn it, she was carrying his child.
She couldn’t expect him to settle for anything less than their remarrying because he was damned if he was going to be a part-time father.
He could threaten her with a custody fight, but if he knew Marnie, she’d have already put contingencies in place to stop that happening.
To think he’d admired her clever brain from the day he’d spotted her new face behind the desk of his London reception.
She’d mastered the switchboard within a week.
Most people needed a month, but Marnie thought like a chess player.
When a vacancy had come up on his personal team, he’d thought of the fresh-faced young Englishwoman and her quick, clever brain, and taken a punt on her.
Years later, he’d married her thinking he knew her, and it infuriated him to know how badly he’d misjudged her.
Domenico prided himself on reading people like books.
It was how he outmanoeuvred them, was how he’d turned his father’s small corporate law firm into the juggernaut it was today.
He would never have imagined she’d turn that clever brain as a weapon on him.
‘You look like you’re going to be sick again,’ he observed, noting the way she was breathing and the fresh loss of colour on her face. She was still to let go of the chair.
She took a few more deep breaths. ‘It will pass.’ But still she didn’t let go.
‘How are you planning to get home?’
‘Taxi.’
‘You’re going to sit in the back of a cab filled with other people’s body odour for what, thirty minutes?’
Her cheeks puffed out, and then she swallowed before her hand went over her mouth, and she staggered to the bathroom by the front door.
Unlike the bathrooms in the basement where the toilets were separated from the handwashing facilities, this was an ordinary bathroom, and when a couple of minutes had passed and he knocked before pushing the unlocked door open, he found her kneeling over the toilet.
He didn’t want to feel tenderness for her, but unfortunately he was human, and so it was impossible not to feel it for someone so clearly suffering. Crouching beside her, he gently rubbed her back. From the contents of the bowl, there had been nothing in her stomach to vomit up.
It was when she let him help her to her feet that he understood what a bad state she was really in, and even as he wondered how the hell she’d made it across London to him, he was working out how he could play it to his advantage.
‘Listen to me,’ he said once he’d helped her out of the bathroom and back to the armchair. ‘You’re in no fit state to be travelling anywhere. Stay here for the night.’
Her chin wobbled, and she shook her head.
‘I know staying here is the last thing you want, but you’re not well, Marnie.
How are you going to manage the stairs to your flat?
’ She lived on the eighth floor of a tower block that would look at home in a dystopian movie.
That one time Domenico had visited her there, the elevators had been out of order.
The stench of the stairwells had been strong enough to make his eyes water, so God knew what the elevators would smell like when they were working.
Her little flat had been a clean, bright, fresh oasis of tranquillity amidst a sea of detritus.
A tear rolled down her cheek.
He looked away. He’d never seen her cry before and didn’t particularly care to see it now. Especially didn’t care for the tightening in his chest from it.
‘How about we make a deal? You stay here for the night, and in the morning, if you’re feeling well enough to travel, I’ll get one of the drivers to take you home.’
A long time passed before she sniffed and wiped the tear away with her fingers. ‘You promise you’ll take me home in the morning?’ she whispered.
He scented victory. ‘I promise. Let’s get you upstairs to bed,’ he added before she could change her mind.
But victory was indeed his as all the fight had gone out of her. Docile as a newborn lamb, she let him wrap an arm around her and leaned her weight into him so he could help her back to her feet. No sooner was she upright than she was swaying, fisting his shirt in an effort to hold herself steady.
The ground floor of Domenico’s London home had triple-high ceilings, which meant triple the number of stairs to climb to reach the first floor.
Marnie was in no fit state to climb them.
She must have known it too, for when he lifted her into his arms, she looped her arms around his neck without protest.
Domenico was six foot three, Marnie a good foot shorter than him and probably half his weight, but she felt much lighter in his arms than he’d imagined she would.
More fragile, too. As he carefully made his way up the cantilevered stairs, her hair tickled his throat and chin and he kept catching wafts of her shampoo.
It was a familiar scent that filled his chest with a pang of emotion so sharp he assumed it came from knowing she was, finally, carrying his child.
For that alone, he would take care of her during this sickness and work at forgiving her blatant treachery over the timing of telling him.
She couldn’t seriously believe a piece of paper dissolving their marriage meant they wouldn’t get back together.
It was obvious that pregnancy hormones had conspired to convince her of the rightness of the path she’d taken in leaving him when all she had to do was open the door of her flat to realise what a foolish mistake she’d made.
Marnie had to know it would be much better for their child to live with both its parents as a family under the shelter of Domenico’s enormous wealth.
Yes, he decided, his plan formulating quickly.
He would work hard to rid himself of his fury at all her underhanded behaviour these last six months, and if he could make that effort, then she could work to rid herself of her anger at his supposed failings as a husband.
Hadn’t they worked in complete harmony for six years without a cross word between them?
With a little coaxing, she would soon come to her senses. Now that she had a child to think of, she would accept that it was in everyone’s best interest for them to remarry.
Only when he opened his bedroom door did she come back to life with a quiet, ‘No.’
‘I need to be able to watch over you,’ he pointed out reasonably, keen to start being all solicitous and caring over her condition.
‘No. My room.’
As he’d talked himself into a forgiving and giving mood, he acquiesced without further argument and opened the door to the adjacent room. Gently, he deposited her on the bed. ‘I’ll get you some water. Do you need anything else?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want to borrow a T-shirt to sleep in?’ He’d kept everything she’d left behind in her dressing room until exactly five weeks and six days ago, when he’d returned to his home from his night in her flat and ordered everything to be donated to charity.
To think he’d been a breath away from ordering it all to be doused in petrol and set alight!
If Marnie had learned about that, he imagined she might take it personally, so it was just as well he’d decided she wasn’t worth the cost of the petrol.
The next shake of her head was more violent.
Promising to return shortly with fresh water, Domenico slipped out of the room and finally allowed himself a smile of grim satisfaction that his not-so-docile Marnie was back where she belonged and, even better, was pregnant with the child they’d both so longed for.