MELANIE MILBURNE - Innocent Wife, Baby Of Shame

‘Keira?’

She opened her eyes at the gruff urgency of his tone but had to close them again as the black abyss inexorably beckoned…

KEIRA woke to find herself lying in Patrizio’s bed, the covers lightly over her, the bedside lamp casting an incandescent glow over the room.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked from the chair beside the bed.

She turned her head on the pillow and met his dark concerned gaze. ‘I…I’m fine…I think…’

‘You fainted,’ he said somewhat unnecessarily.

‘Yes…’

‘Has that happened before?’ he asked.

‘A couple of times…’ she answered, putting a hand up to brush her hair out of her face. ‘I had the flu a few weeks ago…I haven’t fully recovered.’

‘When did you last eat?’

‘I don’t remember…last night, I think.’

He swore and got to his feet. ‘How long has this being going on?’ he asked.

‘I don’t see why you should be concerned,’ she said with a glittering look. ‘You hate me, remember? Why should you care whether I eat or not?’

‘I am concerned, as anyone would be, when the person one is speaking with suddenly drops in a dead faint before them,’ he responded. ‘It is disconcerting, to say the least.’

‘Then maybe you shouldn’t speak to them so aggressively,’ she countered.

He frowned down at her. ‘I suppose this is how you handle difficult conversations now, is it?’ he asked. ‘When things get a bit hot to handle, you block it out by bringing on a fainting episode.’

Keira jerked upright in the bed, her eyes flashing at him in fury. ‘I did not bring on anything! I told you, I’ve been sick recently. I haven’t felt well for a month, if you must know.’

There was a taut little silence.

‘Are you pregnant?’ he asked.

She stared at him in shock. ‘What sort of question is that?’ she asked. ‘Of course I’m not pregnant.’

‘I would have thought it was a reasonable one to ask,’ he said. ‘You are a young sexually active woman.’

‘I am not sexually active. I haven’t had sex since…’ she paused as she bit her lip ‘…since that night…’

His expression communicated his disbelief. ‘You positively ooze sex, Keira. As soon as you walked into my office, I could feel it coming off you like an invisible force.’

She moistened her mouth as his dark gaze slid over her in indolent appraisal. Her breasts tightened and her stomach hollowed and clenched simultaneously.

‘You are a very sensual woman, Keira,’ he continued. ‘There are few men who could resist what you have to offer.’

‘I’m not offering anything.’

His lip curled. ‘I bet if I got into that bed beside you I could have you underneath me screaming out in ecstasy within minutes. You just cannot help yourself. You are built for pleasure, cara. I am getting hard just thinking about it.’

Keira couldn’t stop her eyes going to his pelvis. A tremor of desire rumbled through her belly and her heart began to step up its pace.

He came to sit on the edge of her bed, right next to her thighs, one of his hands capturing hers and laying it against his throbbing heat. ‘Can you feel what you do to me, Keira?’

She could and it terrified her. Her fingers itched to explore and the barrier of his clothes became a torment. She wanted to feel that satin-covered steel against her fingertips. She wanted to taste that sexy combination of salt and musk on his skin, to feel his explosive release in every intimate place.

‘B-but you hate me,’ she said, trying to pull her hand away without success.

‘Yes, but it does not interfere with my desire for you; in fact, I believe it might even enhance it.’

‘That’s barbaric,’ she said, giving her hand another vicious tug. ‘Besides, I thought you said you didn’t intend to share your body with me. You told me you no longer felt any attraction towards me.’

He brought her hand up to his mouth, his tongue tasting each of her fingertips in turn, his smouldering dark gaze locked with hers. ‘Let us say I am considering the fors and againsts,’ he said.

‘What you need to be considering is my consent,’ she put in archly.

His mouth tilted in a mocking smile. ‘You have already given me your consent,’ he said. ‘We are still legally married, remember?’

‘We’re officially separated.’

‘Not any more.’

‘This isn’t a real reconciliation,’ she said, panic beating like a drum in her chest. ‘You told me it wasn’t.’

‘In the eyes of the law, it is. We have resumed cohabiting as man and wife.’

‘I don’t want to be your wife, either for real or pretend,’ she said with stiff force. ‘I don’t want to live with a man who hates me with every breath he takes. I can think of nothing worse.’

‘I do not know why you are so upset. You were the one to destroy our marriage.’

‘I didn’t do it alone!’ she cried.

‘No, indeed you did not,’ he said coolly, although his dark gaze burned with anger. ‘You did it with Garth Merrick.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said, blowing out a breath of frustration. ‘I meant I wouldn’t have even gone to Garth in the first place if I hadn’t thought you were having an affair.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with another mocking curl of his lip. ‘My alleged affair.’

Keira felt perilously close to tears. She hated being reminded of her stupidity back then. She had been insanely jealous but too proud to admit to it, and instead had allowed a vindictive woman to systematically poison her against the man she loved with all her heart.

At the time their barely twelve-month-old marriage had been going through a particularly rocky patch, which with hindsight she realised was entirely normal. Two strong-willed people living together were sure to send sparks flying at times, especially when he had been busy with a big housing deal interstate, and she was snowed under with her studies. And with her propensity to fly off the handle so easily, not to mention her deep-seated insecurity stemming from her childhood, it had been a ripe field for the seeds of suspicion to be sown.

Rita Favore had deliberately fed her suspicions, leaving suggestive messages on the land line answering service and even producing photographs which had later been proven to be digitally adjusted to make them appear more intimate than they really were. Keira had been so devastated, seeing her husband in such a compromising embrace, she hadn’t stopped to think of an alternative explanation.

Patrizio had been in Sydney on business when she’d called him and accused him of being unfaithful. He had denied it vehemently but she hadn’t believed him. She had hung up on him and taken the phone off the hook and switched her mobile off for several hours.

When he’d returned that evening she had already packed her things and was waiting for him in the lounge.

‘You are surely not serious about this, cara?’ he asked as soon as she told him she was leaving. ‘I hardly know the woman. She works for me—yes, but only as a part-time assistant.’

Keira sent him a livid blue glare. ‘Assisting you part-time with what?’ She shoved the photos at him. ‘With enhancing your sex life?’

His frown increased as he leafed through each of the incriminating photographs. He tossed them to the nearest surface and faced her, his expression incredulous. ‘Keira, this is ridiculous. This is obviously some sort of attempt to discredit me, but I can assure you I have never slept with that woman.’

‘She left several messages for you. Why don’t you listen to them?’

He brushed past her to pick up the phone and, punching in the message retrieval code, frowned as he listened.