Free The Proud Wife by Kate Walker Page A

months without her in his bed had been like starving in the desert with no food to eat, no water to slake his thirst.
    He still wanted this woman more than any other woman in the world and he was damned if he was going to let her go without having her at least one more time. Without working out this hunger that she awoke in him simply by existing, driving him to distraction. He wanted her to the point of madness and somehow, come hell or high water—and probably hell—he was going to have her again before he let her walk out of his life.
    But that meant somehow he had to persuade her to stay and, knowing Marina, that wasn’t going to be easy. If he said push, he knew very well that she would pull—right in the opposite direction.
    But he was not going to let her get away from him. He’d work with opposites if he had to.
    â€˜Fine. You’ve made your point.’
    Marina stared at Pietro in blank confusion as he shrugged his shoulders and turned away from her. Had he really just conceded, even as she was nerving herself and strengthening her spine to face further attacks? It seemed that he had as he turned away, strolled— strolled! —to the other side of the room.
    â€˜Have you read all of these?’
    As he spoke he was picking up the sheaf of papers she had flung at him in a fury of rejection, smoothing, straightening, arranging them in the right order. With the documents in his hands, he turned slightly, looking her straight in the eye.
    â€˜No.’
    What was this, some sort of test? Was he holding out temptation to her, waiting to see if she wavered, if she hesitated at all? If she thought again about the divorce, or about the settlement she could get from it? A cruel knife seemed to slash across her soul at his apparent conviction that money was what mattered here. That money would be what motivated her, nothing else.
    â€˜There was no point in doing that, was there? There’s nothing you could offer me to make me want to stay.’
    Pietro had collected up all the papers and returned them to the file, tapping it against the edge of the table in order to make everything neat, tidy, perfect. And that brutal knife twisted in the wound it had inflicted on her as he did so. What was the point in having everything neat and tidy, carefully aligned, when it was recording the death of something that had once been so wonderful? Or at least that she had thought had been so special. Her disillusionment had been bitter when she had realised that Pietro had never felt the same.
    When he had learned she was pregnant he hadn’t hesitated. No D’Inzeo child was going to be born illegitimate, he’d declared and at the time she’d simply been so grateful that he wasn’t furious with her for the mistake she’d made, that he wasn’t going to walk out on her, that she hadn’t cared that his proposal hadn’t come with ardent declarations of love and happy ever afters. He wanted to marry her and that was enough. The rest would come in time. Orso she’d told herself. She had enough love for both of them and the baby would bring them even closer together.
    She hadn’t reckoned on the tragedy that had overtaken her. The way that the wedding flowers had barely had time to fade and wilt before she had woken in the night with terrifying cramps tearing at her body. By the time the next day had dawned, she had lost her baby. Miscarried his precious heir.
    â€˜You can destroy them completely as far as I’m concerned. Toss them into Mount Etna or throw them out into the sea. Anything. Get rid of them once and for all.’
    If only she could do the same with her memories. Wipe from her mind the very different way that Pietro had reacted to the loss of their child.
    Where she had been devastated, shattered, lost in mourning, he had been calm, distant, controlled to the point of coldness. And his attitude had driven home to her the way that she had failed.
    She