Christmas at the Castello(18)

Her eyes flew open.

"For you," he drawled. "Although you know I am available whenever you have the urge."

She scowled at him and stood. Swayed slightly. He stepped to her side  with a lightning-quick reflex and slid an arm around her waist. "What's  wrong?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes fluttering closed in a far-too-pale face. "I just stood up too fast."

He frowned as she leaned into him. "Does this happen a lot?"

"It's my cardiovascular system catching up." She took a few more  breaths, then stepped away from him. She didn't look much steadier on  her feet. He cursed and slid an arm under her legs and back to pick her  up. Her protests ringing in his ears, he carried her inside and up the  stairs past a wide-eyed Lucie, who probably thought they were destined  for a night of hot sex. He wished.

"This is unnecessary," Diana muttered as he shouldered his way into her  room and nudged on the light. He set her down on the carpet, keeping  his arm around her because she still looked far too pale for his liking.  She extracted herself and looked expectantly toward the door. "Thank  you."

He shook his head. "I want you in bed first. Otherwise I'll have visions of you keeling over in the bathroom."

"Coburn, I'm fine."

He sat down on the bed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Go brush your teeth."

She marched off to the bathroom and shut the door with a loud thump. He  turned the bed down and waited. When she came back a few minutes later,  her cheeks had recovered a bit of color. "You can go now."

"Get undressed first and into bed."

She shook her head. "Out."

"I don't take orders from fainting pregnant women."

"I didn't faint."

He set his jaw.

She muttered an expletive under her breath, raised her arms and  stripped off her dress. His gaze drifted down over her lacy white bra to  her flat stomach. "When will you start to show?"

"Not for a while."

She reached past him for her nightshirt. He caught her hand with his,  bringing it to the curve of her stomach. Her breath hissed from her  throat as his fingers flattened across her warm, silky skin. His baby  was in there. His baby. A surge of emotion passed through him, almost  blinding in its intensity. Up until this point, he had felt only anger  and frustration, but this, this was something else entirely. Elemental.  Powerful.         

     



 

He raised his gaze to Diana's. Something passed between them then-the  knowledge that they had created this together. That no matter how mixed  up they had been when they had made this life, it was about to transcend  them both.

He moved his gaze back up over her breasts, straining against the lace  of her bra. They were swollen, larger than the handful he'd always  coveted, the tips of each peak stained a darkish red-brown.

"Your body is already changing."

Her nipples hardened beneath his gaze. Her cheeks were filled with a  rosy color when he lifted his eyes to hers. She curled her fingers  around his hand on her stomach and pulled it away, confusion darkening  her eyes to inky black pools. "Leave, Coburn."

"Why?" A husky note infiltrated his voice. "You know how much easier this would be if you let me get under your skin."

"Easier how? So you can have your way?"

He immersed himself in the hazy, conflicted desire shining in her eyes.  "Because of all the things we've screwed up, this has always been  right."

"No." Her denial pierced the air between them, an iron edge to her  vehement tone. "This is what we do, Coburn. We use sex to cover up all  the other things that are wrong with us. If you truly want this to work,  it has to be about more than that."

"See, that's where you and I see it differently." He reached up and  tucked a wayward chunk of her hair behind her ear. "For me, sex is part  of the solution."

She turned and reached for her nightshirt. Stripping off her bra with  maximum efficiency, she pulled on the short, less than feminine cotton  shirt he'd always hated, hiding her curves from view. But not before he  got a perfect silhouette of her ripe, swollen breasts, which woke his  frustration from that afternoon up in a hurry.

"How about," he offered silkily, dropping his gaze to her bare,  delectable thighs, "I just take care of you? The way you like it best?  It would put you to sleep...get all that frustration out. We don't even  have to call it sex."

Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato. "Get out of my room."

He shrugged and strolled to the door. "Call me if you change your mind. I'm just around the corner."

The bad word she uttered under her breath made him smile. "Oh, and,  Diana...?" He turned around, absorbing her mutinous stance, hands  clenched by her sides. "I'm expecting us both to bring things to the  table this week. Things that will help us bridge this divide between us.  So use the time between now and tomorrow to think of what you want to  address. Questions you have for me, things you hate about me... This is  your chance. But be ready by nine. I'm taking you for a sail."

"A sail?"

"Arthur has a beautiful sixty-five footer. Assuming you still remember how to man a boat?"

"I'm rusty, but yes. What does this Arthur do if he owns million-dollar islands and beautiful yachts?"

"Airlines. Railroads. He's an old friend from my cycling days."

She eyed him. "So this is what we're going to do? Address our marriage like a grocery list?"

He lifted a shoulder. "You took sex off the table. I'm just following your lead."

He left then. She needed rest. And if he wasn't going to spend his  night buried in his wife's delectable body, he had a handful of pressing  emails to address.

He took a glass of brandy into the library, sat down at the desk and  flicked on his computer. But he couldn't seem to focus. His head was too  busy processing the raw and unabridged version of his marriage  according to his wife. She had chosen to call out "irreconcilable  differences" on the divorce papers sitting in his office, which would  have made sense to him given their different philosophies on life. But  unbeknownst to him, she had also apparently spent their entire marriage  waiting for him to call it quits and walk out the door. Just as her  father had.

Heat moved through him. He was nothing like Diana's father. Wilbur  Taylor was a megalomaniac with a god complex that came from being a  world-renowned surgeon everyone treated like a rock star. He considered  everything and anything in this world his domain, including the women in  it, his affair with a fellow surgeon simply being the longest standing  of his string of indiscretions. Yet Diana's mother had chosen to stay.  Why?         

     



 

He took a slug of the brandy, twisting the chair to look out at the  sea, now shrouded in darkness, its great mass an inky pool you could  lose yourself in a million times over. Wilbur Taylor's infidelities were  just one reason he didn't respect the man. The way he treated his  daughter had been inexcusable to him, the tactics and subtle threats he  had used to nourish Diana's need for perfection coming at the cost of  her happiness. So that she would follow in his footsteps-so that she  wouldn't let the family name down.

It had always taken him hours to soothe Diana after a visit with her  parents. That was why he disliked them so much. That and the fact that  Wilbur had never considered him good enough for his daughter...

His mouth curved in a bitter twist. How would Diana's father react now  if his daughter had brought him home with stars in her eyes? Perhaps the  newly minted CEO of a Fortune 500 company, instead of the overlooked  second-in-command, would meet with his approval? Would have been a  suitable alternative to the young surgeons Wilbur had kept shoving down  Diana's throat even after they were married.

He sat back in his chair and took his brandy with him. It would make  sense given her family history that his wife might have harbored a fear  he might do to her what her father had done to her mother if, at any  time, he had given her pause to doubt him. If he had spent his time  admiring other women as he'd watched Wilbur Taylor doing. Instead, he  had consistently deflected the attention of women who hadn't cared if  he'd worn a ring on his finger or not because he was rich and  good-looking and being a wealthy man's mistress wasn't the worst gig in  town.

He hadn't needed to stray. He'd loved his wife. He hadn't given any of  those women more than a passing smile when Diana had abandoned him on  social nights out for work. And yet here she was doubting him? His  supremely confident wife who had never been fazed by the women who had  chased him.

What were those women to you? A salve for your embittered soul? A way to prove I meant so little to you?

Her words from the night they'd conceived their baby came back to him.  He had taken it as her usual arrogance. Bitterness. What if it had  actually been a whole other side of his wife he'd never known existed? A  vulnerability at her core she'd never displayed. The fact that she'd  left him, shattered him, when he'd taken those women didn't seem to  matter. In her eyes, he had proved her right all along.