But she supposed the problems in their marriage would have come to a head anyway. She just wished she knew how they were going to work it out. No matter how hopeless it seemed, they had to. They had a baby on the way.
Which meant she’d be groveling, and that made her teeth clench in protest.
The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Paolo stood on the other side, his Italian heritage in full display with an undertone of darkness to his skin, his eyes blazing with passionate emotion. “Where the hell have you been?”#p#分页标题#e#
Lauren fell back a step, stunned. He still wore his rumpled clothes. His face was lined with fatigue and something else that made a fierce white light strike through her as he raked his gaze over her, pulling her apart.
“I told you, I had a dinner date.” She skittishly exited the elevator.
“Where? I left right after you did, but I didn’t pass you. I was watching for you. How fast were you driving, Lauren?”
She let him take the weight of her bag and sidestepped his intimidating nearness. “I pulled off to use the ladies’ room and need to again,” she excused, anxious to drag her composure together. What was he doing here? Her body shook with reaction while her mind raced. She wanted to take this as a good sign, but a sign of what? Did he want some needy pushover of a wife?
“Why didn’t you answer your mobile?” he demanded the minute she emerged.
“It needs to be charged,” she said, drying her still-damp palms on her backside before finding the phone in her purse. She walked it to the dock in the corner.
Had she really been wishing he had come with her? Right now his dynamic presence made her feel like her world was crashing in. If she was still sometimes overwhelmed by the effect he had on her physically, at least she was used to it, but there was a fresh intensity to him that seemed like a lasso swirling above her head, waiting to alight around her and yank her in. It made her wary because she knew if it happened, she was done. There’d be no self-protection left.
“What, um, changed your mind about coming?” she hazarded to ask.
“I wanted to know something.” He scowled at the way she circled away from him toward the windows on the far side of the sofa. She could see his reflection, arms folding with dismay.
Not sex, then, and definitely not because he missed her. Lauren looked at her feet, then lifted her head. The view of Milan was a blanket of sparkling lights that her blurring eyes didn’t see.
“You could have called,” she pointed out.
“I wanted to see your face when I asked.”
“Oh, good God, it wasn’t a man, Paolo.” She swung around so he could see the hurt and offense on her face. “It was a friend of my grandmother’s and my half cousin. Or quarter. I don’t know what we are, but she was nice and I’m happy I met her. Okay?”
“Of course it wasn’t a man. Because you love me, don’t you?”
She sucked in a pained breath, feeling tricked into turning around and letting him see what a devastating effect his question had on her. She couldn’t hide the truth, not from him. That sort of dissembling had been peeled away layer by layer over the past weeks of intense physical closeness.
It seemed an especially nasty betrayal that he just stood there staring at her, silently demanding the truth from her. Demanding she bare her soul. Insisting she reveal what she wanted most in this world so he could tell her she couldn’t have it.
Well, damn him anyway.
“Yes,” she declared with a hint of defiance and tried to stare him down, but her brows were twitching and her inner barriers quivering under the onslaught of intense feelings she couldn’t contain.
He was far better at it than her, penetrating into her psyche with a look that burned all the way from across the room.
“How long have you loved me?”
She couldn’t help flinching. His voice was almost tender, but the question was so cruel she could hardly bear it.
“I don’t know.” She realized she couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t loved him. When his opinion hadn’t mattered. When his attention hadn’t scored her like a knife. When every cell in her being hadn’t been tuned in to him. Her lips trembled and her body convulsed in a shivering shrug. “Forever?”#p#分页标题#e#
“Then why in hell did you marry Ryan?” he asked in a voice that cracked.
She flinched, possibly able to withstand contemptuous fury but he sounded hurt.
“I was young and stupid,” she said defensively, rallying with a pained, “You know what that’s like. You did the same thing. You married that other woman.”