The Unwanted Wife (Unwanted #1)(54)
“This is where I have to be, this is where I’m staying. Stop arguing with me for God’s sake!” he growled.
“You are not going to blame me for this too, Sandro,” she fumed impotently. She recognized the stubborn tilt of his jaw and the steely resolution in his eyes and knew that his mind was made up. He wouldn’t budge on the issue unless something drastic happened to change his mind. “The only reason you’re here now is because of my father and his corrupt little blackmailing scheme! My father and I have messed up your life and your family enough; don’t make it worse by staying here with me of all people, when the family you sacrificed your freedom for needs you the most.”
“Don’t you ever,” he seethed, grabbing and gripping her hand so tightly that he nearly cut off the circulation, “lump yourself into the same category as your father again, Theresa. None of this is your fault and right now you need me too.”
“I do not need you,” she enunciated clearly. “I refuse to let you martyr yourself like this. Duty above all else. Is that right? Long-suffering Sandro, who’s always doing the right thing and always putting everybody else’s needs before his own. Sacrificing his happiness at the altar of familial obligation. I am not going to be your obligation, Sandro. I refuse to. Go and be with your family!”
“You are my family, damn it! You, you, you!” He shouted, and she jumped in fright, her jaw going slack as he leaped from the sofa to loom over her furiously. So rarely did Sandro lose his cool that Theresa stared up into his frustrated, wretched face in shocked silence. All the air seemed to leave his sails and his shoulders sagged as he dropped to his knees in front of her, bringing his eyes down to the same level as hers. “I want to be here with you. Why is that so hard for you to understand?” His voice had dropped to a whisper. His eyes suddenly, shockingly, filled with moisture, which he made no attempt to hide from her, and he muttered something in Italian, his voice thick with emotion. She bit her lip and shook her head.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered regretfully, and he reached out a hand to cup her cheek.
“My father is dying, cara,” he repeated in English, his voice absolutely wracked with emotion. “Please, I need you not to fight with me right now.” She nodded and reached out with both hands to stroke his hair back from his broad, proud forehead. The gesture seemed to undo him, and his face crumpled before he wrapped his strong arms around her thickened waist and buried his face in the mound of her stomach while Theresa curled her upper body protectively over his head as she whispered soothing little snippets into his hair.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to make this more difficult; I just thought that you were staying out of some misguided sense of honor and obligation. I would hate that, Sandro. I would hate for you to stay and then if the…if the worst happened, you would blame me because you couldn’t be there at his side.”
“I know,” he murmured, lifting his head to look up at her, his face inscrutable, despite the roiling emotion she could see in his eyes. “And I can see why you would think that. I have blamed you for way too much in the past and treated you terribly, but you have to believe me when I tell you that the last thing in the world I want to do anymore is hurt you, Theresa.” She said nothing, knowing that even though it would not be intentional, he would still hurt her when he eventually left. And then again when they divorced and he eventually married Francesca. All of those things were as inevitable as the sunset. They would happen and they would devastate her.
“So what did you want to ask me?” she asked, without acknowledging his fervent words. The omission did not go unnoticed and Sandro flinched slightly before taking a deep breath and levering himself up off his knees to sit down on the sofa beside her, angling his body so that he could face her.
“I want you to meet my father,” he repeated, and her eyes showed her confusion.
“I’m not sure I understand. You know that Doctor Shelbourne has prohibited any flying during my third trimester.”
He smiled slightly before shaking his head. “Theresa, cara, you really need to catch up to the twenty-first century,” he teased halfheartedly. It had become a standing joke between him and Rick, of all people, that Theresa was so technologically backward. She could barely operate her mobile phone, so e-mailing, instant messaging, and every other form of electronic –inging left her completely baffled. She had wiped out the hard drives on three laptops in as many years and now kept her records strictly on paper in a filing cabinet in her office.
“So then, what do you have in mind?” she asked.
“Certainly nothing that involves either you or my father flying anywhere. Have you never heard of video-conferencing?” he asked, brushing back a strand of hair that had slipped from its anchor behind her ear, to swing into her face. He always did little things like that lately; he was always touching her, petting her, and after her initial discomfort with all the contact, Theresa now barely noticed it and just enjoyed the pampering.
“That thing where you have a meeting and you can see people on the other side of the world on a monitor in the room?” she asked vaguely, and he grinned.
“Yes…I often speak to my family in Italy by that means,” he revealed.
“Okay.” She nodded slowly. “So when do you want to do it?”