LITMIR.BIZ

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it to bolster her battered spirit, and thrown it back at him in kind. But his humanity completed the crushing despair Gina had begun with her rejection.

      To Caroline’s acute embarrassment, she found herself sobbing with the abandonment of a child. Past the point of caring how he might view such weakness, she collapsed in his arms and let go.

      The floodgates opened. The tears flowed without end, accompanied by convulsive, almost primitive gasps of animal pain. Throughout, he said not a word. Instead he anchored her to him, and waited patiently for the storm to pass.

      Just as well. Her senses were numbed to anything but the terrible morass of misery threatening to engulf her. Without his solid strength, she’d have descended too far into hell ever to find her way out again.

      At last, though, the spate of tears slowed to a dribble, with only an occasional hiccup to fill the silence. Weak as a newborn lamb, she sagged against him.

      His shirt was soaked, but he didn’t seem to mind. Beneath the soggy fabric, his heartbeat, tireless and invincible, marked the passing seconds, its driving energy hers to use for however long she might need it. In a world gone increasingly crazy, he alone offered the haven she craved.

      Eventually he said, “Feeling better, Caroline?”

      Sounding like a woman with a serious adenoidal condition, she sniffled, “I suppose. It’s just so hard to accept that Gina wouldn’t turn to me for comfort. I understand it, up here.” She rapped her knuckles against her aching head. “I’m practically a stranger to her, after all. But my heart can’t seem to get the message.”

      He stroked her hair; long, sweeping caresses of the kind a man might employ to soothe a frightened mare. “You do know you overreacted to her just now, don’t you? That this is about more than just the children?”

      “Yes,” she admitted, perilously close to being swept under by another tidal wave of self-pity. “Every time I think I’ve accepted Vanessa’s death, it jumps up and bites me in the face all over again, and the least little thing sets me off. I’m an emotional wreck.”

      “You’re allowed to be. We all are. Just because we’ve paid our last respects to those we love, doesn’t mean we’re over losing them.”

      “But it’s not good for the children to see adults unable to cope. It frightens them.”

      “Exactly. They need a return to stability.” His hand stilled briefly, and when he spoke again, his voice was laden with a huskiness she couldn’t quite decipher. “They need us in harmony, cara mia.”

      She was beginning to think she needed him, far more than she’d ever have guessed. For reasons that defied logic, the man who’d once torn her life to pieces seemed to be the only one who could make her feel whole again. “Do you really believe we can make a go of marriage, Paolo?”

      “Yes,” he answered, without a second’s hesitation. “I absolutely do.”

      Trying to maintain a thread of common sense, she argued, “But apart from our both being committed to the children, what else do we have in common?”

      He drew his hand down her face and cupped her cheek in his long, elegant fingers. “How about the fact that I find myself wanting more and more to stand between you and anyone who tries to hurt you, my lovely lady? That when I see you cry, I want to take your sadness and turn it to laugher? And if those are not reasons enough to convince you, then what if I tell you that, despite everything that has gone before, I trust you and want very much for you to know that you can trust me.”

      “Trust takes times, Paolo,” she countered. “Like respect, it’s something that has to be earned.” And as long as I keep the secret of the twins’ paternity from you, I deserve neither your trust nor your respect…

      “Some things a man has to take on faith, Caroline,” he said, his dark, beautiful eyes scouring her face.

      Her heart pinched in guilty pain. “And you believe it’s worth it, to give up your single life for a woman you barely know?” she asked, struggling to turn a deaf ear on her conscience. She had to be sure, before she told him, she reasoned. Spilling out the truth prematurely could hurt their chances of making the marriage work for reasons other than convenience.

      He’d suggested a trial period of one year, but she was still looking for a happy ending to last a lifetime. Crazy though she might be, she’d fallen in love with him nine years ago, and realized she loved him still. All that foolish business to do with her legal rights to the children—what had that been about, really, but a desperate attempt to defend herself against his hurting her again?

      She had come prepared for a battle that had never taken place, she realized, and that she’d entertained, even for a minute, the idea of using the children as a weapon, left her sick with self-disgust.

      His mouth curled in a faint smile. “If you’re asking me, will I be faithful, I give you my word it will be so. The reason I’ve not taken a wife sooner is that I was not willing to make a promise before God that I knew I couldn’t keep.”

      Although it hurt to say the words, the question begged to be asked. “Yet you are now, with a woman you’ve admitted you don’t love?”

      “Yes,” he said, with a candor that dealt a savage blow to her romantic fantasies. “Much has changed recently. Tragedy has struck and turned us all, particularly you and me, in a new direction. Suddenly we have children to consider. They must be our first priority. That much we owe them.”

      “And what of the rest?” Common sense told her not to press the point, but she couldn’t help herself. “By themselves, children aren’t enough to hold a marriage together, and I ought to know. Despite having two young daughters and a wife who needed him, my father walked out on my mother and left her to bring up Vanessa and me on her own.”

      “Then your father amounted to less than a man. To sire two children, then abandon both them and their mother is despicable.”

      He took stock of her again. “Listen to me, Caroline, and believe me when I tell you, I will not desert you.”

      “Then why bother to include the option to dissolve the marriage after one year?”

      “Because I hoped it would make you feel less coerced. I am not so blinded by duty that I expect you to remain in a union you find intolerable. But let me make this much clear: if our marriage doesn’t last, it will be because you decide to end it.” His voice dropped suggestively. “And I intend to make it very difficult for you to arrive at such a choice.”

      If the way his arm tightened around her shoulders hadn’t warned her of his next move, the sexy, smoky note in his threat did. Starting with her forehead, he skimmed his mouth from her eyes to her jaw in a string of kisses that ended at her lips.

      Such a mouth should be against the law, she thought, all the reasons she should call a halt to his behavior evaporating. If, in the course of their marriage, he never did more than simply kiss her, she could die a happy woman.

      But he was bent on more erotic pleasure. With a low murmur of approval, he eased her down on the bed—not that he had to expend much energy to do that; already, she was limp with pleasure. Then, with the unhurried expertise of a man who’d had much practice, he unfastened the row of small pearl buttons running down the front of her nightgown, and parted the fabric to lay bare her breasts.

      Still not satisfied, he continued dispensing with the garment. It yielded to his efforts, sliding down her torso in a soft sigh of surrender until it puddled around her waist. Another tug, and he had it past her hips and down her legs until not an inch of her was spared his inspection.

      She had carried his two children practically full-term, and although her body had weathered the experience far better than most, the signs were there, if he cared to look for them. Plagued by a belated attack of nervous modesty, she tried to curl away from his gaze. But to no avail. Shaking his head in reproof, he manacled her wrists in the tender steel of one hand and imprisoned them above

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