In Too Deep_ Husband Material & the Sheikh's Bargained Bride - Brenda Jackson [31]
He was still scratching his head and laughing at her when she added more hints. Breath was sucked from his lungs when she placed two additional items on the table—a baby bottle and a bib. With a shaking hand, he reached over to turn up the volume while she smiled into the camera.
“Very good, Matthew. Since you’re a smart man, I’m sure you now know my secret. We are having a baby! That’s why I wanted to make our time here in Barcelona so special.”
“Oh my God!” he groaned. Carmen had been pregnant? Then what happened?
“Hey, Matthew, I was beginning to think you got lost up here. What’s going—”
Carmen entered the room and stopped talking in mid-sentence when she saw herself on the screen. Her gaze immediately sought out Matthew, and the pain she saw on his face tore at her heart.
“Is that true, Carmen? Had you planned to tell me that night in Barcelona that you were pregnant?”
She swallowed as she nodded. “Yes. I…I wanted to tell you in a fun way so…” Her words trailed off.
He nodded slowly and then asked the question she had been dreading. “What happened, Carmen?”
She lowered her head as she relived that night. The stomach pains that kept getting worse. Her not being able to reach him on his cell when she’d awakened that night, bleeding. Everything became a blur after that. Except the part about waking up and being told by a doctor that she’d lost the baby. “Carmen?”
She lifted her head and met his gaze as her eyes filled with tears. And then she began speaking, recounting every single detail of that night. As she talked, she watched his expression. The shattered look on his face and the pain that clouded his eyes nearly broke her heart, and she felt his agony. A part of her was relieved to tell him the truth and no longer have the burden of keeping a secret on her shoulders.
“And you never told me,” he said in a broken tone. “You never told me.”
She pulled in a deep breath as tears threatened to spill down her face. “I couldn’t. I wanted that baby so much. Losing it, and then not having you there with me to share my pain, made me bitter, unreasonable. I tried contacting you first and when I didn’t get you, all I could think about was that I needed you and you were at work, away from me. In my emotional state, I blamed you.”
He bent his head and when he raised his eyes to her again, the pain in them had deepened. “And I blame myself, as well,” he said in a hoarse tone. “I blame myself because I should have been there with you. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for not being there.”
She saw the sheen of tears in his eyes and quickly crossed the room to him. As they clung to each other, tears she had held back since that night flowed down her face. She had cried then but it hadn’t been like this. Her shoulders jerked with sobs she hadn’t been able to let go of until now, until she was with him.
“I’m so sorry, Carmen. Now I understand. I had let you down by letting you go through that alone. I know I won’t ever be able to forgive myself for that.”
She leaned away from him, wiping her eyes. “You can, Matthew, and you must. It took me a while to see it wasn’t your fault, nor was it mine. The same thing would have happened if you’d been there. And being here with you this past week made me realize I can’t be angry at you for something you didn’t know about, something that was not in your control. I had tried telling you several times over the past week, but you kept wanting us to wait. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
She wiped more tears from her eyes. “The woman who owned the villa called her doctor and made arrangements for him to take care of me there, figuring that I would want to keep it from the media. With her help, I was able to avoid the circus that could have taken place. The doctor said I can try again,