Modern Romance February 2020 Books 5-8. Natalie Anderson

you.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      He breathed heavily through his nose. ‘As soon as you reached Finn you took control and pushed everyone out. Including me.’

      ‘No, I didn’t,’ she denied, confused.

      He tipped a third of his drink down his throat and angrily brushed away the residue on his mouth with his thumb. ‘You did.’

      ‘If I insulted or hurt you, then I’m sorry.’ She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘When Finn has these fits, I go into automatic pilot.’

      There was the slightest softening in his stance. He ran a hand over his bowed head. ‘Does it get easier?’

      She shook her head sadly. ‘No. You just get better at dealing with it while it’s happening. It happens rarely now that he’s on the new medication but the first time it happened in front of me, I practically ran around the room banging into the walls in panic.’

      He lifted his head to meet her stare. ‘When you say the first time it happened in front of you…?’

      She sighed and took another tiny sip. ‘When the convulsions started, I was still in the rehab centre. Aislin was the one to deal with it. She had to deal with everything about his condition until I was well enough to play my part.’

      His dark brown eyes stayed on hers thoughtfully. She thought he was going to say something but he didn’t.

      With the warmth from the liquor making her feel calmer inside, she decided now was the time to tell him.

      ‘I’ve been thinking about your suggestion of Finn and I moving in with you,’ she said tentatively.

      He raised a brow.

      ‘And I think you’re right. It would be better for Finn to live here.’

      He continued staring at her expressionlessly.

      ‘We’ll move in with you…if the offer still stands,’ she added when the lack of emotion on his face injected a jolt of ice up her spine.

      He took a much larger drink of his liquor. ‘Are you prepared to marry me?’

      ‘You already know the answer to that.’

      ‘You still refuse my proposal?’

      ‘Come on, Tonino, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t want us to marry.’

      ‘Then I decline.’

      She uncurled her legs and sat upright. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I have been thinking too and I have decided it has to be marriage or nothing.’

      ‘What? But why?’

      ‘Because it’s the only way I can trust that you’re committed to us.’

      ‘Living with you would show that commitment.’

      He shook his head violently and downed the last of his drink. ‘No, dolcezza, all it would show is that you’re committed for the next five minutes.’

      ‘You still don’t trust me?’

      His burst of laughter was loud and bitter. ‘Unfortunately I have the opposite problem. I do trust you. I know you well enough now that I believe you always intended to tell me about Finn. I know you well enough to say with confidence that your reasons for keeping the pregnancy secret from me were justified—I still think they were wrong, but I believe you believed you were doing the right thing.’

      ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

      He unscrewed the bottle and poured himself another full glass. ‘I’m saying that you always do what you think is best for Finn. He is your priority.’

      ‘As he should be.’

      ‘Agreed. But not at the cost of tying yourself to a man you don’t love or trust. If you loved or trusted me, you would marry me. But you don’t so all you’re prepared to give is a half-hearted commitment that you can walk away from any time you like.’

      ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

      ‘No? You say that when you don’t deny you neither love nor trust me?’

      ‘Well, it’s hardly as if you love me.’

      ‘Don’t I?’

      She blinked. ‘Do you?’

      His gaze held hers before he shook his head grimly and had another drink. ‘When we were on the beach last week, you accused me of treating you like a joke four years ago. The truth is, you were the one who treated me like a joke. You treated me like I was nothing.’

      Indignant, she snapped, ‘I did not…’

      ‘Then why did you not give me a chance to defend myself against Sophia’s lies? You have never explained that to me.’

      She opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out.

      Why hadn’t she confronted him?

      ‘Why did you run?’ he asked roughly. ‘Why block my number? If you’d cared for me in any way, you would have given me that chance.’

      ‘I ran because I was already an emotional wreck,’ she blurted out.

      He stared at her grimly. His mouth clamped shut, forcing her to fill the silence.

      ‘The day you went to Tuscany, I went to see my father. I knew he was due back in Sicily that day and I was desperate to finally meet him.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. The last thing she needed right then was to cry but the memory had surfaced with painful vividness. She wished it would lock itself back in its box. ‘He wouldn’t see me. He refused. The dirty little secret had to remain a dirty little secret. And then I got to the hotel and found Sophia waiting for me with evidence that the man I’d been sleeping with was engaged to another woman and I felt sick with myself and so ashamed.’

      Not a flicker of emotion crossed his stony face. ‘Even if Sophia had been telling the truth it wouldn’t have been your fault.’

      ‘Maybe not but that’s not how it felt. In the space of two hours I’d been rejected by my father and learned the man I was falling in love with was a cheat and a liar. All I could think of was getting out of Sicily and away from the Sicilian men who’d lied and hurt me.’

      ‘So because your father was a womanising coward, you decided I was of the same mould? Without giving me the right to reply, you grabbed the chance to run away, and when you found you were pregnant and discovered the family I come from is powerful, it gave you another excuse to keep your distance for that bit longer, didn’t it? You don’t trust anyone.’

      ‘I trust you…’

      ‘Do not lie to me,’ he snarled with such force she jumped. ‘The only person you trust is your sister. If you trusted me even a little you wouldn’t go to such great lengths to hide from me. You share your body with me every night, you sleep in my arms, yet you think me a shallow misogynist who runs at the first sight of a blemish on a woman’s skin.’

      ‘I don’t think that about you.’

      ‘Then explain yourself. Tell me why I am not good enough to look at you.’

      ‘It isn’t like that,’ she beseeched, fighting even harder to stop the tears from falling. ‘My scars will disgust you.’

      ‘Your opinion of me is even worse than I thought.’

      ‘No, that is not what I’m saying. My scars…’ She tugged at her hair and tried to verbalise everything racing through her burning brain. ‘I remember the woman I was—the woman you remember—and then I look in the mirror and see the woman I’ve become, and I’m reminded of everything I’ve lost and everything Finn’s lost. That seizure he had today…that was mild compared