‘You think I was acting out some part?’
‘Haven’t you done that before?’ she asked tersely ‘You were a certainJose Riverowhen we met, or have you forgotten that?’
‘I thought we’d put that one to rest. Ella, I’ll admit that I wasn’t going to give up on the notion of marrying you so that our child could get the very best life had to offer. And I don’t mean all of this—’ he waved a hand at their surroundings ‘—althoughall of thisis substantial. I mean I was, and remain, convinced that becoming husband and wife is the right thing to do and always will be. Whether I informed my parents that this would be the case earlier than you thought doesn’t change that fact.’
‘It does for me.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I want out. I can’t go through with this.’
‘What…?’
Ella steeled herself against the urgency in his voice which struck to the very core of her. Should she tell him honestly how she felt? Yes, she would do that and take the consequences. There had already been far too much deceit, concealment and dishonesty.
‘It took a lot for me to trust you, Rocco. I was devastated when I discovered that you had lied to me about who you really were and I was even more shocked when you turned up out of the blue and admitted that you were the guy who was going to buy the department store.’
‘I know that. You’ve already told me that.’
She swept past his interruption, ‘I understood the reasoning behind the takeover, of course I did, but you still lied to me and it still left a sour taste in my mouth.’
‘I had no choice. I thought we’d gone over all this.’
‘Well, here we are, going over it again. After you showed back up, after you took the pregnancy so well, after you set out to prove to me that you were marriageable material even if marrying for the sake of a child had never been my life’s ambition… Well, Rocco, I really began to believe you. More than that.’
‘Yes?’
‘I began to hope that what you felt might be more than just a sense of duty and obligation.’ Hope, optimism and time would give her the outcome she’d wanted… How naïve she’d been.
‘Love, Ella—it’s not in my repertoire. I never led you to believe that it was. Did I?’
‘No. No, I can see now that it was just me reading all sorts of stuff into some of the things you said and the confidences you shared with me.’
‘Of course we shared things, Ella,’ he said roughly, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘It would have been unnatural, given the circumstances, if we hadn’t.’
Ella could sense his discomfort. How tempting it would be to pull herself away from the brink. She knew that if she mumbled something,anything, about hormones, exhaustion or not being quite herself, if she laughed this earnest conversation off, he would happily sweep it all under the carpet and continue as though nothing had changed. He would be able to do that because on an emotional level he wasn’t involved.
‘Rocco, I didn’t want to, but I fell in love with you. And I hoped that, in time, you would see that you’d fallen in love with me as well. But that’s not going to happen. I thought you had emotions that were just never there. You knew you were going to marry me, you knew that was what you wanted, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. You did what it took but I can’t marry a guy like you. I can’t marry you and have my heartbroken over and over again, every single day, because I would never stop wanting more than you could ever give me.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Could you do that, Rocco? Give me what I want?’
Rocco felt the world come to a grinding halt.
In his fiercely controlled life, there was no room for the heady romanticism of love, and he had always projected the sort of demeanour that repelled women from going there. When the time came, he would take a wife, and it would be a sensible arrangement.
Hadn’t he made it clear from day one that love with all its complications wasn’t for him? She could hardly say that he had encouraged her to think that he would suddenly, against everything in his nature, fall in love with her. Hand over all his self-control into the safekeeping of someone else.
Because that was what love entailed, wasn’t it? Yes, the pregnancy had generated a marriage proposal, and it was a proposal that made perfect sense. She, herself, had come round to that conclusion so why was she now braking to a halt because of the small issue of timing? The enormity of her decision rammed into him with brutal force.
‘You want me to promise you something you know I can’t do?’ He thought of her walking away from him with wrenching pain. This was about the child they shared. He felt dizzy and panicked. All of this, simply because he had happened to tell his parents about the pregnancy and had naturally assured them that they would marry. He hadn’t thought twice. He’d been confident because that was just the way he was.
And now… It was all slipping away but the thought of promising love, of her asking that of him…
‘I thought you’d say that. It’s going to be very difficult for me to remain here with this happening, Rocco.’
‘I can’t believe this.’
‘I wanted to be completely honest with you, Rocco. I love you and you…you broke my heart, not once but twice. But I’ll get over it because I know I deserve more than a man who breaks hearts. Nothing will change when it comes to the baby.’
