Chapter Seven
IT HAPPENED SO quickly that Marnie didn’t have time to snatch a breath of resistance before she was rolled onto her back with the same swiftness that she’d been scooped into Domenico’s arms and laid on the bed.
Propping himself onto his forearm, he glowered down at her. ‘I’m doing my best to give you everything you want, and all you have to say is that it isn’t real?’
‘But it won’t be, will it?’ As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the misery reflecting in her voice. Being spooned into him and listening to his rich voice while his breath had danced through her hair and the sensation of their fused mouths still buzzed so deeply on her lips and in her veins…
If he put his hand to her heart, he would know beyond doubt how deeply he affected her, and she wished desperately for a means to numb both her heart and her body to him, wished too, that the longing to slip back into the pretence that had got her through the early months of their marriage wasn’t so very strong.
‘We’ll both know it’s fake and that you’re just going through the motions and pretending. ’
His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. ‘We spend our lives going through motions, from brushing our teeth to driving a car. Does that make those things any less real?’
She wanted to cry. ‘You know what I mean. I can’t pretend our marriage is some kind of artificial simulation. Not now.’
‘That kiss we just shared felt real. Damned real. That didn’t feel artificial or like going through some motion.’
In the beat of a heart, hot colour flooded her face. She wanted to deny that the kiss had been shared, but they would both know her denials were a lie.
She’d never had control of her physical responses to Domenico any more than she had control of her heart.
The intensity of the light brown eyes staring into hers increased, but his jaw loosened, his mouth and voice softening. ‘Why did you marry me, Marnie?’
Her heart virtually punched its way through her chest. ‘You ask that now, months after we divorced?’
‘Do you know why I thought you said yes?’
The colour on her cheeks now at saturation point, she shook her head.
‘I knew you had a crush on me, and I thought myself such a great catch that I couldn’t see a reason why any woman would say no.’
Taken off guard at such brutal honesty, she gave a small shout of laughter.
Oh, that was such a very Domenico thing to say.
In all the years she’d known him, he’d never suffered from false modesty.
He knew exactly who he was and where he was going, one of the many things that had left her, the girl who’d never dared imagine a future for herself, so awed about him in those early years.
She’d never met anyone like him before. Just being in a room with him was intoxicating.
The gorgeously sensual mouth curved into a smile.
Bending his elbow, eyes not breaking the lock between them, he rested his cheek on his palm and gently ran a finger the length of her nose. Quivers of sensation followed his trail.
‘The sun’s made your freckles come back out,’ he murmured. ‘I like your freckles. I like that you don’t try to hide them.’ The smile dimmed. ‘I don’t like that you try to hide what’s on the inside, so tell me, why did you agree to marry me?’
Because I wanted what we are sharing right this very moment, lying on a bed, talking and gazing into each other’s eyes, our bodies so close I can feel the heat emanating from you.
Blinking back tears, she whispered, ‘You already called it. You were a great catch I already had a crush on.’
He raised a lazy, disbelieving eyebrow. ‘We had no pre-nup—you could have screwed me for millions if you’d wanted, but you let me screw you over without fighting back and walked away from our marriage without anything.
You’re far too intelligent to snare yourself a rich man and walk away with nothing if that was your reason for marrying him, and I know, too, that you wouldn’t marry someone because of a crush, so I ask you again, why marry me?
What did you want from me that compelled you to say yes? ’
‘I didn’t want anything.’
‘If you didn’t want anything, then you wouldn’t have had any expectations that I failed to reach the mark on.’
Sometimes she really hated how forensically his mind worked.
She’d seen it applied so many times over the years in a professional context that the few times he’d tried to apply it to her in the months after she left him, she’d been able to stonewall him.
But those other times, they hadn’t been lying together on a bed with his face so close to hers that she could see the thick stubble breaking through the skin on his cheeks.
Those other times, Domenico’s eyes had danced with malicious loathing, not with attentiveness, and whether it was the physical closeness or the intensity, she didn’t know, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out was the truth.
‘I didn’t just have a crush on you, Dom,’ she said quietly.
‘It was much more than that. When I met you, I’d barely left school.
I’d just finished my exams and entered the world of work, and it was terrifying for me.
I was surrounded by adults, and frightened of so many things, but the biggest thing was screwing it all up and being fired, and then you swept in when I’d been there only a few days and…
’ She smiled as the sweet memory filled her head.
‘I was the lowest of the low in your workforce—I was literally the most insignificant person there—and you took the time to welcome me, and then you said that I’d impressed you.
That made my whole year. It was validation of a kind I’d never known before, and when you chose me, personally, to work on your personal team…
that made my life. And so I made you my life. ’
How could she not have when, after a life spent feeling invisible, this gorgeous, gregarious, wildly successful man hadn’t just noticed her but seen something in her that no one had seen before? Something worthwhile. Something worth investing his time and energy into bringing to blossom.
She swallowed, her voice dropping even lower.
‘In my eyes, you were akin to a god, and I worshipped you. I would have done anything for you. When you asked me to marry you, it felt like all my dreams had come true, and I was so blinded by my feelings and the pedestal I’d put you on that it took me a long time to realise none of it was real and that my dreams were made of sand and your feet were made of clay. ’
The deep crease in his brow made her heart turn over, and without thinking, Marnie rolled onto her side to face him and gently palmed his stubbly cheek.
‘You know, saying all that aloud…’ A wave of regret and pain caught in her throat.
‘It makes me see that none of this was your fault. It was mine. You never lied to me. My expectations and hopes were all mine, and I married you with dreams no human could live up to, because all I ever wanted from our marriage was for you to be my Prince Charming.’
Tears filled her eyes as the depth of her naivety rang clear for the first time.
‘I wanted the fairy tale,’ she whispered.
‘I wanted to be rescued like the princess from a fairy tale and smothered with love and for you to put me on the same pedestal I’d had you on for all those years.
I knew you didn’t do love and romance, and yet still I let those dreams live and breathe.
You made it very plain that you were marrying me only because you wanted children, but I closed my ears.
I let myself believe what I wanted to believe. ’ What she’d needed to believe.
He cleared his throat before hoarsely asking, ‘What did you want rescuing from?’
She gave a tiny, helpless shrug. ‘My life.’ And as she made the confession she barely comprehended herself, she felt a movement in her belly that made her snatch her hand from his cheek and roll onto her back to lift her top and touch her little bump.
Alarm flashed in the light brown eyes. ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, a dazed smile breaking out. How lucky that she’d kept her jeans on and left them unbuttoned! ‘I can feel…’ She groped for his hand and guided it to the spot on the lower part of her abdomen where she could feel the fluttering and pressed down.
‘Can you feel it?’ She rested her hand on his searching fingers as excitement of such purity she felt like she could float to the ceiling skipped through her.
His face a mask of concentration, he shook his head. ‘It’s our baby?’
‘Yes.’ Her smile widened. ‘It feels like tiny ripples beneath my skin.’ She sighed as the flutters faded away and nuzzled her head closer to his. ‘It’s stopped. I’m sorry you didn’t feel it.’
His face broke into a smile. ‘Seeing your reaction was en…’ He cut himself off, his eyes suddenly widening. Spreading his fingers out over her belly, he gently smoothed them over the skin. ‘You have a bump.’
Euphoric at feeling her baby’s movements for the first time, she laughed. ‘Yes.’
She could feel as well as see his awe as he continued to run his hand over the bump cocooning their baby, and when he lifted himself to place a tender kiss on her swelling stomach, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, so natural that the tears that had been threatening to fall since he’d joined her in the rose garden finally spilled over.
When he looked back at her, his brow creased again, the lines even deeper than before. ‘What’s wrong?’
Too choked to speak, she shook her head and lifted her arms to him.
He didn’t hesitate, lying back beside her and gathering her to him.
She twisted into him, holding him tightly as she rested her cheek on the warm solidity of his chest and let the silent tears flow. She didn’t even know what she was crying for but the way Domenico was holding her and stroking her hair gave more comfort than she would have believed.
How many times during their marriage had she longed to be just held like this?