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CHAPTER FOUR
‘CRISTIANO, are you even listening to me?’
Cristiano turned, disconcerted to realise he hadn’t heard a single word his lawyer had spoken.
He’d left the villa at sunrise, attempting to relieve his rocketing tension levels with a punishing run before the warmth of the new day turned to blistering heat. After that, he’d swum. Then he’d caught up on his emails.
Nothing had deleted thoughts of Laurel from his brain.
He wanted to see her as the heartless bitch who had treated their marriage vows as nothing but instead he kept seeing her, pale and vulnerable as she struggled to breathe, stressed out of her mind by being back with him. Accustomed to handling a variety of emergencies on an everyday basis, he’d been appalled by the panic that had gripped him witnessing her struggle for air. He’d been perilously close to summoning every doctor on the island.
Every doctor except the idiot who had assured him that it was common for a woman to have abdominal cramps and that it was unlikely she’d lose the baby.
Anger shafted through him, but the strongest emotion was one of guilt as he acknowledged the damage he’d done by choosing to prioritise a critical work issue over her well-being. The fact that he’d grossly underestimated the seriousness of the situation didn’t excuse him. The fact that the advice of another had proved ill-founded didn’t excuse him either.
His mind was full of questions, the answers to which should have been of no interest or relevance at this stage of their relationship. He wanted to know since when her asthma had been that bad. Whether she’d been having attacks in the time they had been apart. He knew she’d suffered since childhood. It was one of the few things she’d told him about herself when they’d first met.
He knew that, for her, stress was the trigger.
If last night was anything to go by, she was under monumental stress.
Acknowledging the part his own behaviour had played in the onset of her attack, Cristiano ran his hand over his face. He couldn’t believe his own lack of control. From the moment he’d met her at the airport, his temper had been simmering dangerously. The relationship was over. It had been over for the past two years and yet the moment he’d seen her again the only thought in his mind had been, She’s my wife. Mine.
Until he’d met Laurel he’d considered himself to be a modern male—well, as modern as a Sicilian man could be. The past twenty-four hours had forced a stark rethink of that overly generous self-analysis. Every dark primitive thought that had haunted his brain had taken him right back to his caveman ancestors. Jealous? Yes, he was jealous. Jealous as hell and the knowledge sat in his gut like some thick, sickening poison slowly seeping through his body, contaminating every thought.
He didn’t want her moving on.
He didn’t want her making a new life that didn’t feature him as a central character.
His lawyer cleared his throat and pushed a file across the table to him. ‘I emailed you a document. The fact that you refused to declare a separation of assets on your marriage or a pre-nuptial agreement theoretically leaves you exposed.’ ‘I don’t care about the money.’
‘Well, you’re lucky. Apparently neither does she.’ Carlo pulled another set of documents out of his briefcase. ‘Her lawyer has said that if we can expedite the divorce proceedings, she is happy to walk away with nothing.’
The evidence that she was prepared to sacrifice anything and everything to get away from him exposed another layer of his base masculine instincts. Did she hate him that much? ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Her.’ Carlo flicked through the pages until he found the one he wanted. ‘Her lawyer is a woman. And I told her that in Sicily a couple have to have been separated for three years. Today is really just a formality. An opportunity to talk in person, given that you haven’t seen each other for two years.’
Talk?
When had they talked? Cristiano rubbed his fingers over his forehead but nothing relieved the ugly throb in his head. He’d hurled recriminations at her and she’d reacted in her usual way—erecting more walls and barriers between them. She deflected everything he threw at her.
Her passionate accusation that he’d demanded that she open up and trust him, only to abandon her when she needed him still echoed in his brain.
He had let her down. But did that excuse her decision to walk out on their marriage? Not in his book.
Trying to escape from the uncomfortable throb of his own thoughts, Cristiano strode over to the window. Why, when there were millions of women who couldn’t stop talking about themselves and their feelings, had he picked the one woman who refused to do either?
