“I never said that!” Her lungs felt as though glass dust poofed into them, but she couldn’t bring herself to pour out how forlorn she was without him. “Just because I know how to live around a man’s schedule doesn’t mean—”
“Stop throwing him in my face,” he cut in.
She jerked her head back. He had a very tight rein on his temper, she realized, and it ignited hers.
“Is that what I’m doing?” she asked shakily. “Because I thought I was explaining that after a lifetime of going along with everyone else, I’m taking one evening for myself. Which I invited you to come along on, but I’m retracting that. If you want to join me in Milan, you can follow in your own car.”
She shouldered her bag, shaking with anger that was a precious cover for the hurt that was crippling up her insides. He really did only want a bedmate not a lifemate.
“Don’t hold your breath, cara,” he said scornfully.
“Oh, I won’t. I’m equally aware that I don’t mean a damn thing to you beyond a sex partner and a vessel for your child.” So vulnerable she felt naked, she asked, “What do you want, Paolo? A wife who wheedles and begs for your affection? One who makes her husband the source of her self-esteem and happiness? You don’t want that burden any more than Ryan did and my pride won’t let me sink to those depths again.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
AT LEAST IT would signify that he meant something to her, Paolo thought as she drove away. At least if she asked for his love, he’d know she wanted it.#p#分页标题#e#
The truth washed over him in a nuclear blast of heat and light. He loved her.
And like an H-bomb, the fallout left him blistered to his bones, blind and screaming silently.
Because she didn’t love him back.
Paolo understood love better than most. He had a huge family he cared for with all his heart. He would fight to the death for every single one of them, including Lauren. How could he have missed that this emotion tearing him up was love?
Because for the first time it was imbued with sexual need and something stronger. A pair-bond that went deeper than blood ties. It went all the way into his soul.
As he stood there in the darkening house, he wondered how he’d let the woman he loved walk away with such a shattered look in her eyes. He’d been so wrapped up in not betraying his own hurt, he’d ignored that she had needs, too. Needs that weren’t being answered because her pride was in the way and so was his.
She wouldn’t beg for his affection, but did she want it?
She had it regardless. Maybe she didn’t love him back, but he couldn’t keep it inside himself. Dio! Now that he recognized what filled him, it threatened to split him open if he didn’t express it.
* * *
Lauren had to pull onto a side street and have a good cry before she carried on to Milan. She thought about going back to the lake house, but honestly, what good would it do to slink back into the house with puffy eyes and a bruised heart? You couldn’t force someone to love you. It was either there or it wasn’t.
For her it was. Very much so.
Oh, Paolo.
Once she could see again, she carried on to Milan where she left the car with the valet of the apartment building and walked the few blocks to the restaurant. Five minutes in the ladies’ room repaired her makeup, but she was still fragile and emotional when she was shown to a table with not one, but two women.
The elder was her grandmother’s friend Luce. The younger was introduced as Emelia. Emelia was about Lauren’s age and bore a striking resemblance to photos of Lauren’s mother when Lauren had been a baby. Lauren sank into her chair, amazed and overcome.
Emelia had brought a snapshot of Mamie as a young woman. “My mother stole it from my father’s things. She was very bitter that her father had had an affair.”
“I wish I had remembered to charge my phone in the car so I could show you photos of my mother. I take after my grandmother, but you and Mom obviously take after our grandfather.”
They both smiled with pained fatalism as they concluded that neither of their mothers was likely to pursue this family connection. Oddly, that formed a bond of kinship between Lauren and Emelia that Lauren instinctively knew would grow over time. They took each other’s details and promised to be in touch.
As gratifying as meeting her half cousin was, however, Lauren knew it could have waited. She hadn’t needed to be so stubborn about it. As she strolled her way back to the Donatelli Tower and entered the elevator to the penthouse, she had to fight a resurgence of tears. She shouldn’t have argued with Paolo. The upside to being a doormat was never making anything worse than it already was. She’d just learned that the hard way.