The Unwanted Wife(19)

“Theresa,” he whispered, his voice alive with misery. Nothing more, just that, just her name. It was as if he recognized that nothing he could possibly say at that moment would make any difference to the pain she was feeling.

“My God.” She swiped at a few errant tears, furious with herself for allowing him to see them. “Every time you came you practically prayed for me to give you a son. That was the only thought in your mind, every single time…escape! At a time when most people can’t even remember their own names, you were begging me to give you a son because life with me was so incredibly unbearable for you.”

“It wasn’t you,” he interrupted lamely. “It was the situation.”

“So this son you so desperately wanted.” She tried to keep her voice level, even while it cracked with strain. “You don’t really want him, I take it? He’s just a means to an end?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” he admitted uncomfortably.

“I mean, surely you wouldn’t want anything to do with a child spawned with a woman you despise and carrying the blood of a man you consider your enemy?”

“The child has never seemed real to me,” he murmured with brutal honesty. “I had some vague idea that you would have him and I’d move back to Italy afterward. I never thought beyond that.”

“With a father who felt nothing for him, a mother who didn’t want to get pregnant, and a megalomaniacal grandfather waiting in the wings, it’s probably best that the last one didn’t make it,” she concluded heartbrokenly.

“Don’t you ever say that,” Sandro snapped, one of his hands reaching out to enfold her tightly furled fists on the tabletop. “He would have been loved.”

“What makes you so sure of that? When you admit that you don’t know how you would have felt about him?”

“I know you,” he murmured huskily. “And you have a capacity for love that boggles the mind. Of course you would have loved that baby; it’s the only way you know how to be.”

“How am I supposed to keep living with you now, Sandro?” she asked him helplessly. “It was bad enough before but the thought of going home with you now is almost completely unbearable.” His hand loosened its grip around hers, and he reached up to stroke the side of her cheek tenderly.

“We’ll get through this,” he whispered, and she flinched away from his touch. His eyes flickered with some strange emotion before his hand dropped back down to the table.

“I’m tired,” she said quietly. “Take me back to the house.” He nodded and summoned the waiter over to ask for the check. Theresa’s eyes dropped to the full table regretfully.

“Such a waste,” she whispered half to herself, but she was surprised when Sandro overheard her and asked the waiter to multiply their order by fifty and deliver it to the nearest homeless shelter.

Nothing much else was said between them until they got home, where Theresa excused herself under the pretext of being tired and closeted herself in her room for the rest of the afternoon.




“Sandro.” Theresa cautiously breached the sanctity of his study later that night. In all the time they had been living in the house, it was the first time Theresa had ever set foot in the study while he was in it. He looked up to see her hovering uncertainly in the doorway and stood up abruptly, nearly sending his chair toppling. She jumped backward at the sudden violent movement, but he was around his desk in an instant and approaching her with one hand outstretched.

“Theresa,” he intoned huskily. “Please come in.” He seemed almost eager to have her there. Not exactly the reception she was expecting. He steered her toward the huge leather easy chair in one corner of the large study, seating her before taking the chair opposite hers. He leaned toward her, with his hands loosely clasped together and hanging down between his thighs.

“I want to know why,” she whispered, after a lengthy silence. “I want to know what commodity you so casually traded my happiness for. What meant so much to you that you were willing to give up your precious freedom for it?”

He was quiet for so long that she wondered if he would bother to respond.

“Not many people know this, but my father has been extremely ill. We’ve tried to keep it out of the news,” he said in a low voice, keeping his head down and his eyes fixed on his hands. “He grew up on a wine farm. Not a very profitable vineyard, but it had been in our family for generations and it meant a lot to him. It was the land he was born on, the land he imagined retiring to and eventually dying on.

“Unfortunately the bank ran into some financial straits after my grandfather died and my father exacerbated the situation by making some terrible financial decisions. The vineyard was one of many unavoidable casualties while my father tried to recoup his losses. He soon found his footing and got stinking rich, but by then the vineyard had been purchased by your father, who quite stubbornly, despite anything my father offered him, refused to sell. There’s some bad history between them. Apparently they met at Oxford and formed their ridiculous business rivalry there. So while the vineyard was pretty worthless to a man as wealthy as your father, I can only conclude that he enjoyed having that kind of leverage over my father.” He shrugged helplessly.

“All of my life I remember my father waxing lyrical about that place. He always regretted the fact that none of his children had been born on that land and the guilt of losing a huge chunk of family history ate at him. Over the last few years, his quest to get it back became an obsession. In the meantime, his health started to deteriorate badly. He was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, and the doctors weren’t optimistic. Medical science has managed to keep him with us this long, but it’s an uphill battle. Naturally his impending death made the loss of that land even more unbearable for him, and it was killing us to watch him suffer emotionally, physically, and mentally. I wanted to give him his pride and dignity back. I wanted him to find peace and die happy. So I approached your father, who, having seen your reaction to me after our first meeting, finally relented and came up with the terms of sale as you now know them.” Theresa flushed miserably when she remembered how obviously infatuated she had been the first time she had seen Sandro and recognized her own, unwitting role in this façade.

“How’s your father?” she asked tightly, and he nodded slightly, his face betraying the first hint of emotion since he had started telling the sorry tale.

“Content, now that he’s home.” His voice was absolutely racked with the pain he was trying so desperately to disguise.

“And your family knows about this ‘deal’ you made for the land?” she asked, her own voice high with tension.

“Yes.”

“No wonder they never expressed any desire to meet me, or made any overtures of friendship toward me,” she said, half to herself, and he made a muffled sound and moved a hand toward her face. She flinched away from his reach, and his hand dropped down into the no-man’s land between them.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said tonelessly. “I see now how impossible your situation must have been.”

“Even so, I could have treated you less…” he began, his voice bitter with something very close to self-loathing.

“Never mind,” she cut him off, not really in the mood to hear his moans of regret and self-recrimination. “Thank you for telling me.” She got up slowly, always mindful of the dizziness, and he jumped up along with her.

“Theresa, wait…please…” he began.

“I don’t think there’s much more to say.” She turned toward the door.

“What about us? Our marriage?”

“I suppose we go on as we always have.” She shrugged listlessly. “Only, without the intimacy, Sandro. I really couldn’t handle that anymore. We lead separate lives.”

“I don’t want that,” he said hoarsely, sounding almost horrified by the prospect.

“It won’t have to be for too much longer,” she murmured faintly, wondering why the door seemed to be getting farther away with every faltering step.

“What do you mean?” he asked in alarm. “Theresa?” This last when she swayed slightly. He put a steadying arm around her narrow shoulders and led her back to the chair she had just vacated.

“That’s it,” he snapped, crouching in front of her while his hands went up to frame her pale face. “I’m calling the doctor! This is—”

“I’m pregnant,” she cut across his words in an appallingly weak voice. But quiet and shaky though her statement was, it was enough to stop him in his tracks. He went pale and sank back onto his heels as he absorbed the words.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly, one trembling hand reaching up to brush her soft hair from her face.

“I just took four home pregnancy tests in the space of two hours,” she confessed. “End result: three pink strips and one blue, all telling me that I’m going to be a mommy in a few months’ time. I could take the remaining two tests that I have stashed away upstairs, but I couldn’t force myself to drink any more water,” she joked weakly. He didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes glued to her face.