LITMIR.BIZ

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is not true. At no point did I accuse you of neuroses.’ He sprang to his own defence but Laurel wasn’t in the mood to listen.

      ‘You were always labouring the fact that I found it hard to tell you how I was feeling. “Trust me,” you said in that same seductive voice you always use when you’re determined to get your own way. So I did. On that day, I put all my trust in you. I told you I thought something was badly wrong and that I didn’t trust the doctor. I told you I was scared. That’s the first and only time I’ve admitted that to anyone. For the first time in our relationship I put my trust in you and your response to that enormous risk on my part was to dismiss my concerns as less valid than the doctor’s and return to your meeting. With your phone switched off.’

      She saw the exact moment he recognised the impact of that decision.

      His breathing turned shallow. His bronzed handsome face lost some of its colour. ‘It was a particularly bad moment—’

      ‘It was a particularly bad moment for me, too.’ This time she wasn’t letting him off the hook. ‘When you said, “I have to go now, but I’ll call you later. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” how did you think I’d feel?’

      ‘I was trying to reassure you.’

      ‘No, you were trying to reassure yourself. You needed to convince yourself I’d be fine in order to justify staying there and not immediately flying home. You made the judgement that I was overreacting. You didn’t once think about the fact I had never asked you for anything before. You didn’t think of me at all, so don’t talk to me about love. Even if I hadn’t lost the baby, the fact that I’d asked for your help when I’d never, ever called you at work before should have been enough.’ The words poured out of her along with her feelings and there was nothing she could do to stop it now because her control had been swept away by the violent force of her emotions. ‘You say that I killed our marriage by walking out but it was your empty, useless verbal pat on the head that did that. It was the first time in my life I’d asked another human being for help. And you dismissed me. And because I was panicking, because I couldn’t actually believe that you’d done that, I phoned you one more time, only to discover that you’d turned your phone off.’

      He stood immobile, as if every shot she’d fired had gone straight into his brain. ‘You didn’t tell me that you felt that way.’

      ‘Well, I’m telling you now. And do you know the worst thing?’ It had been hard to open up but now that she had, the hard part was stopping. ‘Because I had allowed myself to trust you, depend on you, for one horrible minute I actually thought that I couldn’t handle the situation without your help. I actually had to remind myself that before you came along and insisted on being the macho protector, I did perfectly well by myself. Once I’d reminded myself of that fact, I calmed down and took myself to hospital.’ She emphasized the word ‘myself’ but it was the word ‘hospital’ that drew his attention and had his brows meeting in a deep frown.

      ‘You went to the hospital? Why was that necessary?’

      ‘Because neither my doctor nor my husband believed anything was wrong. Fortunately I knew differently.’ She watched the tension spread across those wide, powerful shoulders.

      Standing there naked, he should have looked vulnerable but Cristiano didn’t know how to look vulnerable. Even in this most sensitive of situations, he was the one in command.

      ‘I had no idea you went to hospital. You should have told me.’

      ‘When? When was I supposed to tell you? I tried telling you but you had switched your phone off to avoid the inconvenience of talking to your neurotic wife. By the time you finally fitted me into your demanding schedule, I’d coped with it by myself. There was no point in telling you.’

      ‘Now you’re being childish.’

      The accusation robbed her of breath. ‘I asked for your help, you didn’t give it. I told you I was scared, you didn’t come. Did you really think I was going to carry on begging for attention? I did what I’ve always done. I sorted it. That isn’t childish, Cristiano. It’s adult behaviour.’

      ‘Adults don’t walk away from a difficult situation.’ A muscle flickered in his jaw. ‘Even given the difficult circumstances, there was no excuse for sulking.’

      ‘Sulking?’ Her voice shook and she could barely say the words that needed to be said. To steady herself, she took a slow, deep breath. ‘God, you have no idea. I don’t know why I’m even wasting my breath having this conversation. You say I don’t talk but the biggest problem is that you don’t listen. I say, “I’m in trouble” and you hear, She’s neurotic; she’ll be fine. If that’s love, then I don’t want it or need it.’ Dragging her phone from her bag, Laurel punched in a number and ordered a taxi in shaky Italian, shocked by the powerful and utterly alien urge to leap on him and do him physical harm.

      Watching her through eyes glittering with frustration, Cristiano dragged in a driven breath. ‘You will not leave this room until we’ve finished talking.’

      ‘Watch me.’

      ‘Basta! Enough!’ His face as pale as Sicilian marble, his muscular frame taut, he blocked her path. ‘I realise that a miscarriage is a shattering experience for a woman. I, too, was very upset at the loss of the pregnancy, but it’s important to keep this in perspective. These things happen. My mother lost two babies and then went on to have three healthy pregnancies. Our problem is not the miscarriage, it is our marriage. If we can sort that out then we will have more children.’

      Laurel stood still, frozen by the chill of her own emotions, wondering how someone so emotionally expressive could be so monumentally insensitive towards the feelings of others. ‘We won’t be having more children, Cristiano.’

      ‘I made you pregnant the first time we had unprotected sex. After tonight you could already be pregnant. You probably are.’ His unquestioning confidence in his own virility increased her tension tenfold.

      ‘I’m not pregnant.’ Her lips were stiff and the blood pounded through her skull. ‘That isn’t possible.’

      ‘A miscarriage doesn’t—’

      ‘I didn’t have a miscarriage.’

      His brows met in a frown. ‘But—’

      ‘I had an ectopic pregnancy.’ Just saying it brought back the memories and she had to pause and hitch in her breath, which surprised her because she’d thought that by now the experience should have been nothing more than a bad memory. She pressed the flat of her hand to her abdomen, to that part of her that had malfunctioned with such devastating consequences. She thought of their child. ‘If I hadn’t followed my instinct and gone to hospital when I did, there is a strong chance I would have died when the tube ruptured. As it was, they operated within fifteen minutes of my arrival and they saved my life. I owe them that. They were brilliant.’

      The silence was shattering.

      She’d never witnessed Cristiano at a loss. She’d never witnessed him unsure and out of his depth.

      But she was witnessing it now.

      The blistering self-belief was nowhere in evidence and he actually shifted his position as if he needed to rebalance himself, the foundations of his rock-solid confidence severely shaken by her unexpected admission.

      Deciding that it was only fair to give him the right of response, Laurel waited.

      And waited.

      No sound emerged from his lips. His face was the colour of pale marble and his hands were clenched into fists by his sides. He looked utterly shattered by her dramatic revelation.

      ‘You should have told me.’ His hoarse exhortation shattered the silence. ‘It was wrong of you not to.’

      Any sympathy she might have felt dissolved in that unguarded, judgemental comment. Even now, it seemed, the fault was hers.

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