A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [39]
But he had to keep his distance. Had to hold himself together and not give in to hunger that was like an ache in every cell. At least until he had told her the truth.
‘So where do you want me to begin?’
The withering glare she turned on him from those beautiful eyes might have quelled a lesser man. As it was, he felt the ice in it seem to penetrate his flesh, chilling, if only for a second, the heated rush of his blood.
‘They say that the beginning is a good place to start.’
The beginning. The beginning was when he and Lucia had been so young, so innocent. Little more than children when they had first met. Barely in their teens when they had known that they were right for each other—meant to be together. But those were his memories, and his alone. She had no right to any part of them.
‘Gio…’
Terrie’s tone warned that he had hesitated too long.
‘Either tell me or…’
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. The swift flicker of her eyes towards the door, the stubborn set of her jaw, the defiance in her gaze, all made her meaning more than plain. Drawing in his breath on a rough, uneven hiss, Gio raked one hand forcefully through his hair.
‘Lucia and I were married for over ten years…’
‘Ten!’ She hadn’t expected that. ‘You must have been…’
‘Childhood sweethearts.’
Gio’s confirmation was grim.
‘She was all I had ever wanted in a woman—in a wife. I loved her from the start—and I never stopped loving her.’
His tone defied her to question the stark assurance of the declaration. But Terrie had no thought of doing any such thing.
He had loved his wife. She could have no doubt about that. It was there in the clouded depths of his eyes, the tautness of his jaw, the raw, roughened note in his words.
And it brought both a glorious excitement to her mind and in the same instant a terrible chill to her heart to see it there and recognise it for what it was.
What Gio had felt for Lucia had been true love. Total love. The sort of love that she had only ever dreamed a man could feel. The sort of love that she had prayed she might one day find for herself, if she was truly lucky.
But Gio hadn’t felt that love for her. His heart had been given to another woman long ago, and she was beginning to doubt if there was anything left in it for anyone else.
‘What happened?’
‘We were married. We planned on the whole happy-ever-after—home, kids, everything. For a while we had everything, even the baby she dreamed of.’
‘Paolo.’
‘Yes, Paolo.’
Something changed in Gio’s expression, his jaw clenching, his gaze losing focus. On an abrupt movement he swung away from her, pacing across the room to stand and stare out of the window, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his expensively tailored jacket. He assumed an intense interest in the traffic going past in the street, but Terrie had caught the betraying sheen filming his eyes, and the stiff, defensive set of those broad shoulders told its own story.
The need to touch him, to try to reach him, to communicate her understanding was almost overwhelming, but a terrible sense of uncertainty held her back. If she went to him now he might reject her, repulse her tentative gesture with an angry impatience or worse. And, feeling as she did right now, she knew she couldn’t bear that.
Since the moment that he had appeared at her door again, her emotions had been on a roller-coaster ride of reaction. Shooting up in the simple delight of seeing him one moment, only to plunge down into the depths of despair at the knowledge of how little she meant to him the next.
She wanted to hate him. Hate him for the way he had treated her. The way he had used her and discarded her without a second thought. Hate was simple and easy and it precluded all other, more dangerous emotions. But hatred wasn’t what she felt for him. She’d tried and, in spite of everything, had found that that wasn’t what was in her heart.
And that was the truly scary thing.
‘So you had Paolo…’
She had to force herself to speak. The broad, unyielding wall of his back couldn’t have been any more off-putting if it had had notices