His Suitable Bride(123)

‘What if I do want this, Rowan? What if I want all of this?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

He was so close now that all she would have to do was reach out and pull him to her. She looked up. And wished she didn’t have to look into his eyes.

‘Take a look around. Don’t you know where we are yet?’

She shook her head, feeling seriously confused. He took her hand and led her back into the room. Suddenly it was clear. The room was so sensually decorative … so romantic. A bottle of champagne peeped out from an ice bucket on a nearby table, two crystal flutes beside it sparkled. She gasped, and her hand tightened reflexively around his.

‘It’s the honeymoon suite.’ She felt sick. What kind of joke was this?

He turned her around to face him, his hands on her shoulders.

Anger surged. ‘Sandro, I don’t know what this is all for, but you can ring down right now and tell them we’re not staying here. I don’t know what you think—’

She broke free. He couldn’t know, could he? Had she been so transparent? Frantically she tried to deny her feelings, deny that he might have read them.

‘We do have to talk, Isandro—but does it have to be here? I mean, isn’t this some sort of mockery?’

‘You think that wanting to make a new start is mockery?’ His voice was frigid.

Rowan looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What new start? We’re getting divorced. I’m moving out.’

‘I’ve stopped divorce proceedings.’

Her jaw dropped and her heart stopped. ‘You’ve what? Why?’ she asked a little wildly.

‘I think it’s obvious now that we should stay married. There’s Zac. And your safety to consider.’

Rowan felt cornered, trapped. ‘So in effect nothing will have changed? It’ll still be a marriage of convenience, only now you know what happened, so you can forgive me for my past sins, I’ll be allowed to be a mother to Zac, and you can keep us safe if we’re all together.’

‘Is that so bad a prospect?’ he asked quietly, a different quality in his voice.

‘No … yes!’ Rowan threw her hands up in the air. He didn’t know what he was asking. It was heaven and hell. Her heart was pumping so hard that it threatened to burst from her chest. She looked at him and begged him silently to understand, not to do this.

‘Isandro, I can’t. I won’t. It’s not fair on me or you or Zac. He deserves to have two parents who love one another, and I won’t stand by and watch you sacrifice your happiness just out of a sense of pity and duty. We can live a perfectly happy life divorced. I can live nearby, see Zac …’

‘No. I won’t have that.’

Rowan blanched at the vehemence in his voice.

He came and pulled her over to a silk-covered sofa, sitting her down. She could feel the tension in his body transmitting into her own. She ached for him even now, body and soul.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he got in first. ‘Rowan, just … let me speak, okay?’

She nodded warily. His hands were on hers, heavy.

‘Professor Villiers showed me around today, and without going into the details of your case told me what you would have gone through. I saw the quarantine room … he told me about the treatments. That was why you had the bad dreams, wasn’t it?’

Rowan closed her eyes weakly. It was all coming back. ‘Don’t …’

‘I won’t. But …’

She opened her eyes again, and the pain in them nearly stopped Isandro—but he had to keep going. ‘It nearly destroyed me to see what you had to endure, Rowan. No one should have to feel they have no option but to endure that alone. And I’m sorry—I’m so sorry that you felt that was your only option.’

Rowan shook her head. ‘You really don’t have to do all this just because—’

‘I’m not. You made your own choices. I wish you’d included me, but I think I can see now why you didn’t. I couldn’t take it in when you told me first. I had no real concept of what you faced until today …’

That made her sit up. She looked into his eyes. He was sincere.

‘When we got married I was away a lot. Too much I can see now. I saw it at the time too … but you were never meant to get in the way of my business. I didn’t know why I was suddenly feeling … wanting …’ He stopped ineffectually. ‘We had no time to get to know one another properly. You got pregnant so quickly.’

‘Which never should have happened.’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘It would have happened sooner or later, Rowan. The truth is I desired you from the moment I saw you. I just hid it under very elaborate plans to marry you to further my career in Europe. I had an agenda and nothing was getting in my way. You see, I’d never planned on marrying for love or desire, after seeing what it did to my parents. When my sister and I were in our teens my father was driving home one night. He and my mother were having one of their passionate arguments and he crashed the car, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.’