The Unwanted Wife

Chapter 5

There's a way out of this you know," he finally murmured.

"I know," his hooded gaze snapped back up to her face. "Have a baby, right? You want a son... and I'm the chosen incubator." She watched his face carefully but he betrayed not one iota of emotion other than a slight tightening of his jaw. "So what happens after I have this precious baby of yours? Who gets him after the divorce? You expect me to be nothing but a surrogate mother. I'm to bear him and you'll then take him away from me, right?"

She was aching to hear an affirmative from him, anything that would prove to her that he was the one who wanted the child and that she had misunderstood the conversation she had overheard between her husband and her father that morning.

"Of course I wouldn't take him from you," he shook his head, sending her heart plummeting. "I wouldn't be that cruel. Naturally you'd maintain custody," Theresa shut her eyes to shield her agony from him and she felt her scalding tears seep down her cheeks.

"How very... magnanimous of you," she whispered. "To be so desperate for something only to give it up in the end... you're so much more generous than I gave you credit for. How often would you want to see him?"

"I would naturally move back to Italy so I would probably see him two or three times a year. It is what you want, no? Less contact with me?" She inhaled deeply and her brow furrowed. Two or three times a year? That was all the time he would want to spend with a child who was half hers? She opened her eyes and met his gaze squarely.

"Like I said before, you're being quite generous but it's all moot anyway because I have no intention of having a baby with you!"

"You're being very childish, Theresa," he admonished quietly.

"No, I'm finally making my own decisions. Up to this point in my life, everything has been decided for me... this marriage would never have happened if my father hadn't decided that you would make the perfect son-in-law. After that, the wedding date, the venue, the cake, where we would live... it was all you or my father. I couldn't even choose my own wedding dress," the last emerged in a small, broken voice which quavered with remembered disbelief and outrage. Her father had simply had the dress delivered to her room with the direction that it was to be worn on her wedding day, no discussion and no choice.

"The only reason I got Lisa as a bridesmaid was because my father deemed it appropriate for my first cousin to be in the wedding party. If she'd been just a friend, I doubt she'd have fit the bill!"

"It turns my stomach to hear someone who's led such a privileged life whine on about how terrible her life is, you've been spoilt and you've had everything money could buy..."

"Except love, specifically my husband's love and my father's love... apparently I'm not quite worthy of that."

"You're feeling sorry for yourself and I'm getting sick of it."

"Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself," she acknowledged bitterly. "And it's very liberating. In the past all I've done is accept everything you and my father have dished out... thinking it was my lot in life, even thinking I deserved it; if two such powerful men as you thought I wasn't worthy of love and respect, then who was I to differ? But I'm starting to realise that I'm not the one at fault here. I'm not the one with the personality defect... at least my motives for marrying you were honest; I stupidly believed I loved you. Yours were less than stellar, weren't they? They certainly had nothing to do with love."

"They had everything to do with love," he suddenly thundered, silencing her abruptly as she stared up at him in wide-eyed shock. "Just not love for you." She blinked up at him; her green eyes the only colour in her deathly pale face.

"What does that mean?" She asked through barely moving lips. "Love for whom?" Was he referring to Francesca? If he really loved the other woman so much, why on earth marry Theresa? It made no sense.

"None of your damned business," he grated furiously, a muscle working frantically in his jaw.

"It never is," she finally nodded bitterly. "It has nothing to do with me, yet it affects every aspect of my life. You want something from me but you're unable to give me anything in return. Well, I've had enough of that, Sandro. You want a baby but this is my body and so it's my decision to make..."

"I'm your husband..."

"No. You are not my husband," she interrupted in a voice thickened with hatred and tears. "You have never been my husband. A husband loves, honours and cherishes! A husband is a lover and a champion... Look into the next room if you want to see what a real husband is, because you

are no such thing!" He reeled away from her, looking like a man who'd just been bitten by his favourite pet and she pushed herself away from the fridge to brush past him.

"Theresa, wait..." he grabbed one of her arms to prevent her from running off.

"I have to go, please tell Rick and Lisa that..."

"No," he interrupted gently. "You stay. This is your family, you are right this is your place and I should not have intruded. I'm sorry..." his eyes skirted away from hers as he made apology and Theresa's jaw dropped at his second apology in twenty-four hours. She felt certain that the world would grind to a halt at any moment. "I will leave now... it is how it should be." With that he dropped her arm and walked out, leaving her to stare after him in confusion.

The house was dark and quiet when she got home, with no seething Sandro waiting at the front door this time, just echoing silence as she made her way upstairs and back into the spare bedroom. After a hot shower, she collapsed into bed and didn't stir until the following morning, when she woke to bright sunlight. She sat up in confusion as she tried to get her bearings and realised that she wasn't in the spare bedroom anymore. A quick glance around confirmed that she was back in the master suit and a glance down at the empty space beside her confirmed that Sandro had indeed slept beside her. She peeked down at herself and was relieved to note that she still had on the t-shirt she had worn to bed.

She checked the clock and groaned when she realised that she had slept to nearly ten in the morning. Pushing the tumbled mass of her hair out of her face, she got up and was alarmed when the room started spinning wildly around her. She stumbled a couple of steps before reaching for the headboard of the bed and steadying herself. She frowned slightly as she tried to recall the last time she had had a decent meal... definitely not the previous day's breakfast, which had come back up after that overheard phone call, or lunch which had been spoiled by Sandro's appearance at Rick and Lisa's place and dinner had been a non-event. Even though Rick and Lisa had urged her to eat the night before, Theresa just could not stomach the thought of food after the day she'd had! Saturday had been much of the same; all she'd had to eat was popcorn at the movies.

Now she was paying the price for all those missed meals. Heading for the shower she decided to treat herself to a decent brunch. Monday was the housekeeper's day off and they had no other live-in staff so Theresa had the house to herself. She was looking forward to just spending the day on her own, trying to figure out what her next move would be. She couldn't leave him and it seemed that he couldn't leave her. So what now? Sighing she decided to switch off her brain until after she'd eaten lest she lose her appetite again.

Less than an hour later she was dry-heaving over the commode in the downstairs guest bathroom. Just the smell of frying bacon and eggs had been enough to set her off. After her stomach stopped revolting, she stumbled out onto the patio, as far away from the nauseating smell of cooked food as she could possibly get, and sank down onto a chaise longue overlooking the huge infinity swimming pool.

"No..." she whispered staring blindly at the edge of the pool, where the aquamarine water of the pool seemed to merge with the darker blue of the ocean and the cobalt blue of sky. "No no no no... no... please God! No..."

She buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth slightly. Her system was just off-kilter because of the gut-wrenching events of the last forty-eight hours. Naturally she'd feel nauseous after not eating in so long. It was all perfectly logical... she was simply overreacting.

She couldn't be this unlucky, not after finally making some kind of progress in achieving independence from this marriage. She tried to remember when her last period had been but she had been under a lot of stress lately and her period had been affected so that was not the most reliable way to gauge anything. She got up gingerly and was relieved when the movement didn't upset her equilibrium, heading toward the kitchen, she braced herself for a fresh onslaught of nausea but thankfully her stomach stayed as steady as a rock. Breathing a sigh of relief, she headed toward the stove and picked up the pan, averting her eyes as she deposited the congealed mess that would have been her meal, into the waste disposal unit. She settled on black tea and dry toast instead determinedly putting her irrational fear of pregnancy out of her head.

After finishing the unappetizing meal, she headed for the bright, sunny attic which she had transformed into a workroom and put on some music while she immersed herself in her work. She so often lost herself up here, loving the serenity that usually came over her when she was working but today she just couldn't concentrate.

She had an image in her mind, knew what she wanted but she just couldn't put it down on paper. She sat in front of her drawing board, staring at the fifth blank sheet of paper in half an hour, resting her elbow on the tilted board and her delicate chin in one hand as she stared at the paper and willed the image into existence. She raised her pencil, resting the nib on the paper, before sighing resignedly and shaking her head in frustration. She dropped the pencil and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

"Relax... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he soothed.

"Well, you did," she retorted furiously. "Why on earth are you skulking around at home this time of day anyway? Usually you don't get home until seven or eight." He always left for work before seven in the morning and usually returned well after the time most "normal" husbands would come home.

"I thought that we could spend the afternoon together," he muttered distractedly while his keen eyes absorbed every aspect of the room. He was walking around now, barely paying her any attention, lifting things, fiddling with her tools, until Theresa couldn't take it anymore.

Don't touch that!" She snapped impatiently when he lifted a pair of cutters that had cost the earth to import.

"You design jewellery," he whispered in astonishment, his eyes finally lifting to meet hers and Theresa's own gaze fluttered away, while her cheeks fired with embarrassment.

"I know they're no good," she ventured nervously, waving at the large portfolio he had lifted from one of her other workstations: she had the drawing board for designing, a work table for actually making the jewellery, a small cutting table for cutting wire and shaping semi-precious stones and her desk which housed her laptop, for paperwork and correspondence. "And I know that I should not be wasting my time with it. But it's just a hobby... so..." her voice petered off as he continued to flip through her portfolio with an absorbed frown, occasionally lingering on a page before moving on. She stood in front of him, fidgeting nervously, waiting for the scathing set down that would undoubtedly follow. He suddenly turned the open book toward her.

"This is your cousin's engagement set," he observed, tapping at the picture of the diamond and white gold earring, pendant and ring set she had made for Rick a few years before.

"Yes but they're Rick's design. I just made them."

"I can tell they're not your design. Your things are more..." he paused and Theresa braced herself. "Raw... elemental... why don't you work with real gemstones, instead of semi-precious stones?

"Uncut precious stones are insanely expensive. Semi-precious stones are cheap and easy to find and if they're damaged in any way while I'm setting them, it's no big deal." He grunted again, obviously barely hearing her as he went back to flipping through her portfolio.

"And this is what you do all day?" He looked back up at her for confirmation.

"Well I can hardly sit around and twiddle my thumbs all day, can I?" She challenged and his eyes flickered slightly. She snorted disdainfully as she realised that that was exactly what he'd thought she did all day. He probably thought she spent her days shopping and lounging around in beauty salons.

"Why did I not know this about you?" He asked quietly and she shrugged.

"Just one more thing you never bothered to learn about me," she said dismissively.

"Just one more detail you didn't offer about yourself," he responded fiercely and her eyes snared his in challenge.

"Would you have been interested if I'd told you?" He was honest enough to avert his gaze at the question and remained silent in response to it.

"How many of these have you sold?" He changed the subject, indicating toward her portfolio.

"None," she shrugged. "The only jewellery in that portfolio that I don't still have is the set I made for Rick and even those were just a favour."

"But why keep them hidden?"

"They're not good enough. Just a silly hobby, a waste of my time, really, I couldn't compete with the real designers out there anyway."

"It's uncanny, I hear your voice but it's like listening to your father speak. He told you that you weren't good enough didn't he? And you believed him?" He seemed uncharacteristically furious about that.

"No... yes... no... Look, I know that I'm not good enough; I have received no formal training. I printed stuff off of the Internet, did a bit of reading and started experimenting. I'm the only one who ever wears these and then only around the house!"

"I think that you should have Bryce Palmer or Pierre de Coursey have a look at these," she fidgeted slightly, not entirely sure what to make of his sudden interest and praise.

"I wouldn't want to waste their time, they're busy men." The two men he had referred to co-owned one of the most exclusive jewellery companies on three continents.

"I hardly think you'd be wasting their..."

"Look Sandro... just drop it, please," she interrupted harshly and his eyes snapped up to her strained face. His own expression remained impassive and he shrugged carelessly before slowly closing the portfolio and placing it back onto her desk.

"Suit yourself," he muttered, before continuing his amble around the room. She watched as he picked things up, inspected and replaced them. She remained seated, swivelling her desk chair every so often to keep him within sight. He eventually stopped his restless pacing to come to a standstill directly in front of her. She lowered her eyes to his expensive size eleven Italian loafers and fidgeted with the pencil she had picked up again.

She nearly leaped out of her skin and dropped the pencil with a muffled yelp when he captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently tilted her face up until she raised her vulnerable gaze up to his unfathomable chocolate brown eyes. He let go of her chin to stroke the back of his hand down her soft cheek and she tried her best not to cringe from his touch but she wasn't quite successful in masking her reaction because his eyes iced over and his hand dropped heavily back to his side.

"What other secrets are you keeping from me, I wonder?" He mused beneath his breath.

"I have no secrets," she responded.

"What would you call this?" He indicated the room with a sweeping gesture and she laughed but there was absolutely no humour in the harsh and abrasive sound

"This was hardly a secret," she shook her head bitterly. "If you'd come here at any time over the past year and a half, you would have known about this. I never lock the door... you were free to enter at any time."

"Why would I have had any reason to come up here?" He asked in his most maddeningly pragmatic voice. "It's hardly the most logical place for a workshop."

It's also the one place I spend most of my time so of course you've never bothered to come up here," she responded sarcastically. "You've never willingly sought me out before, Sandro... and I believe that the only reason you're doing so now is because things aren't going according to whatever Master Plan you have devised for this so-called marriage of ours. Pretending an interest in me is your latest way of trying to keep me compliant, isn't it?"

"Stop trying to second guess me, cara," he admonished gently. "You have no idea what makes me tick or what's going on in my head."

"Oh, I think I could definitely say the same about you. In fact I think I know you a lot better than you do me!"

"I doubt that," he dismissed, dropping his hands into the trouser pockets of his tailor-made, expensive suit, half-reclining against her work table and crossing one long leg over the other in a pose of sartorial, casual elegance.

"Fine..." she tilted her head as she ran a contemptuous gaze over him. "How do I take my coffee?" He frowned at the question before shrugging carelessly.

"Black..." he stated with the utmost authority.

"No, you take yours black, I don't drink coffee."

"This is pointless," he dismissed. "And juvenile..."

"Everything about me, or to do with me, is pointless to you," she observed bitterly.

"That's hardly..." he began but she interrupted him again, barely able to credit her own daring. She had never once stood up to him this way before but she was done being a doormat and just because she was trapped in this marriage at the moment did not mean she would to allow them to walk all over her anymore.

"Everything except my womb of course..." she laughed half-hysterically. "You have a lot of use for that! That's all I am to you, a womb on legs!"

"You're being ridiculous," he scoffed.

"What about my birthday?" She asked suddenly, still ignoring him. "When's my birthday?" His jaw clenched and he remained mute, keeping his eyes glued to hers.

"I see no need to prove myself in this way..."

"You can't answer it, can you?" She challenged. "Yours is on the twenty-fifth of February. You have four older sisters, Gabriella, Sofia, Isabella and Rosalie, and a large extended family, you dislike spinach and are allergic to bees, you like..."

"Enough!" He sliced an impatient hand through the air in front of his face, cutting her off abruptly. "This is bordering on stalkerish and it proves nothing other than you possess a creepy excess of information about me, which I must admit, I am more than a little uncomfortable with."

"Hardly stalkerish," she shook her head. "I have been living with you for more than eighteen months and I loved you when I married you, I was interested in knowing you. These are the kinds of mundane facts married couples know about each other. Everything I know about you, I had to learn for myself, none of it was ever volunteered. You didn't know about my hobby, or how I take my coffee, or birthday, is not because I've been secretive... I mean those things are hardly secrets, it's because you were just not interested enough in getting to know me. That's how it's been for the last eighteen months and that's how it still is, despite your sudden feigned interest in me." He started to say something but she raised her hand to quieten him and was amazed when he actually shut his mouth.

"I know now that I wasn't the bride you would have chosen for yourself," she managed to say it despite the huge lump in her throat but she couldn't meet his eyes as she acknowledged that painful fact. "You made that pretty clear on our wedding night and every day since then. But I think that at the very least, I deserved to be treated with some show of respect..." She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling and wrapped her arms around herself. He said nothing in response, just kept staring at her thoughtfully.

"I don't really know what you want me to say," he finally admitted and she smiled sadly.

"I know," she acknowledged with a dip of the head. "That's a major part of the problem."