by Lucy Monroe
“Angelo?” she croaked.
He was by her side in a second, his big hands gripping her waist and shoulder. “Yes, stellina?”
“I want to go home now.”
She felt like she was being ripped apart. She knew Angelo didn’t love her, but to be nothing more than an instrument of revenge for the man who owned her heart was more than she could bear.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN THEY REACHED the apartment, she went to the bedroom and started packing. She didn’t pay attention to what she grabbed, she just pulled clothes from drawers and dumped them in the big suitcase she’d tossed on the bed.
“You are not leaving me.”
She didn’t acknowledge him with so much as a glance.
Long tanned fingers wrested the top she had just grabbed from her fingers. “No. We are going to talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about.” Remembering saying those same words to Baron made her flinch. “I’m not staying.”
“So, you let him win.”
She spun to face him at that, fury so intense she was shaking with it, filling her to the brim. “No one wins in the sick scenario. Not you. Not him. And certainly not me. You used me, Angelo. You lied to me and you promised me you never would.”
“I did not lie to you.”
“A lie by omission is still a lie.”
“No. It is not. Not unless you ask for the answer and I deny it. You did not ask. Nothing I have said to you has been untrue. Nothing.”
“Justify it however you like. It won’t change what you did to me. Baron is right. You are no better than he is.”
“Like hell. I did nothing to hurt you. I am not rejecting you. I married you!”
“To keep me away from him.”
His silence condemned him.
“Trying not to lie to me again?” she asked sneeringly.
“It does not matter.”
“You’re wrong and you’re wrong about me leaving. I’m going and you cannot stop me.”
“Damn it, Tara, you are pregnant with my child. You cannot just walk away from me.”
“I wouldn’t condemn my worst enemy to a father with your moral poverty.”
It was his turn to flinch. “You would…” He didn’t finish his sentence, but she didn’t care.
She just wanted out of there. She realized she didn’t need her clothes. She didn’t need anything but to be somewhere away from him.
She spun on her heel and marched from the room.
He grabbed her shoulder. “Where are you going?”
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
She yanked her shoulder from his grasp and fell against the wall from the momentum.
His face leached of all color. “Stellina, are you all right?”
“What do you care?”
“I care.” He leaned back against the wall as if his legs wouldn’t quite hold him up. “You don’t have to go. I’ll leave…stay at a hotel. You’re safer here. Please, Tara, let me do at least this much for you.”
“No.” She couldn’t stay where the memories of her doomed happiness with him would haunt her.
He didn’t say another word as she walked out of the apartment. She took a taxi to a hotel, checked in and went up to her room to cry her heart out.
She stayed in the hotel for three days, eating room service for the baby’s sake, ignoring Angelo’s calls on her cell phone and crying until her throat was so raw, she could barely speak to order food over the phone.
On the third day, there was a knock at her door. Her stupid heart leaped, thinking it might be Angelo, but then she told herself it wouldn’t matter if it was. She would just send him away. Her heart returned to being a cold lump in her chest.
She looked through the peephole and recognized Hawk, her husband’s friend from the wedding. His private investigator.
“Go away,” she yelled through the door…more like croaked.
“I can’t do that, Mrs. Gordon.”
She didn’t have the voice to argue. That’s the only reason she opened the door, she told herself.
“What do you want?”
“Are you okay? You sound like you’re sick.”
She shrugged. She was. Sick at heart.
He was carrying a suitcase. It looked like the one she’d been packing when she left Angelo. Because she had no clothes to change into, she’d taken to wearing the terry robe provided by the hotel with her suite. She was wearing it now, her hair hanging down around her face in stringy tangles.
He put the suitcase down. “Angelo looks worse than you.”
Her eyes widened at that. Her husband never looked less than perfectly groomed.
“He’s worried about you.”
She glared, not buying it.
Hawk shook his head, his expression vexed. “You’re both a couple of idiots.”
“I am not…” Her voice refused to function any more.
Hawk shook his head. “Why don’t you let me do the talking?”
Did she have a choice? She shrugged again.
“I know why Angelo came after you initially. Hell, I helped him do it, but he cares about you now. He needs you.”
She shook her head vehemently.
The big man facing her frowned fiercely. “You walked out and I have been with him in that mausoleum of an apartment for three days.”
“Not…mausoleum…”
“It is now, with him mourning your loss like a grief-stricken widower. I haven’t seen him like this since his mother died. It’s always a woman,” the tall man said with disgust and shook his head. “Do you know he has not gone to work since you left him?”
When she didn’t reply, Hawk sighed with frustration. “Whether he’s too stubborn to admit it, or you are too angry to accept it, he needs you. The real question is whether or not you care enough about him to give him the chance to prove it to you?”
“I’m not too stubborn.” The voice came from the doorway and she turned to look, gasping at what she saw.
Hawk hadn’t been lying. Angelo looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week, not a mere three days. His cheeks were hollow and lined with strain. His jaw line was shadowed with three days of stubble…it was almost a beard and his jeans and sweater looked slept in. But it was his eyes that were the worst.
They reflected the tortures of the damned in their indigo depths. “I do need you, Tara. More than I can ever say with simple words.”
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Hawk said, as if Angelo hadn’t just made an impossible declaration.
“I couldn’t stay away. I had to see her.” Angelo’s gaze was glued to her face.
“Well, it looks like she’s not faring any better than you.”
“My fault.” Angelo turned away, his proud shoulders slumped. “I should go.”
Hawk said something ugly under his breath. “Don’t be an idiot, Angelo. Does she look like she’ll be better off if you go?”
Angelo turned back. “I had Hawk bring your clothes. If you need anything else…” His voice trailed off, his throat working like he was trying to hold in some intolerable emotion.
“You,” she croaked, unable to let him walk away.
He’d used her and that hurt. So much. But she’d spent three days grieving that pain and there was more here than a man who had callously used a woman to exact revenge. This man was hurting and vulnerable in a way a man like Baron never could be.
“Me?” Angelo asked.
“Stay.”
“Very good.” That was all Hawk said before walking toward the door. When he got there, he looked back at Angelo. “Don’t screw this up. I’m not baby-sitting you through another day of mourning. Men in love give me a stomachache.”
Men in love?
Angelo heard the door click shut, but his attention was fully on his wife. She looked like hell and it was all his fault. He’d hurt the woman he loved and hadn’t even known he loved her until he did it.
How could it have taken Baron�
��s revelations and their painful impact on Tara for him to realize he loved her?
If he lost her over his own stupidity, his heart would turn to stone. For the last three days, he’d thought it had. He’d hoped she would call, but when she didn’t…when she ignored his calls to her cell phone, he’d known what he’d done had been too heinous for her to forgive.
He didn’t know why he’d come, except that like he’d told Hawk, he couldn’t stay away.
He needed her.
And she did not know it.
She thought he had married her as an act of revenge and he would give anything to be able to deny that claim, but since he had hidden his own feelings from himself with the excuse, it now stood between them like an uncrossable chasm.
Only he had to cross it. Somehow.
He had to reach her and convince her of his love because the alternative was unthinkable.
He’d lived three days in hell and he knew he couldn’t stand one more.
Tara stumbled to a chair and sank into it as she considered the possibility Hawk had been right. That her husband was actually in love with her.
He looked like a man who had loved and lost.
He came forward as if drawn by an invisible string and knelt beside her, but did not touch her. “I’m sorry.”
“You used me, just like he did.” It hurt to talk, her throat was so dry.
She’d left a glass of juice on the small table beside the chair earlier. She lifted it now and drank it down, desperate for the ability to talk this out with her husband.
“Not like him.”
She glared at Angelo, not willing to accept anything less than total honesty. “Yes, like him.”
“He doesn’t feel. I do.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. You married me to keep me away from him.”
“I thought so, yes.” His voice was low, full of anguish. “I wanted him to lose everything he valued.”
“It worked.”
“But I lost more. You never would have gone back to him. I know that now. You are too strong…too smart. Because my motives were wrong, you left me and I don’t know how to get you back.”
“You want me back?”
“Yes.” She’d never heard a single word spoken with so much fervency, filled with such desperation and yearning.
“Because of the baby?”
“Because I love you.” Even now, she could tell the words were hard for him to say.
“You don’t love me,” she whispered in denial, unable to accept that after all the pain and betrayal, he could actually feel what she so desperately wanted him to feel.
“I do. I love you more than my own life, Tara, and I would take back everything I have done that has caused you pain if I could.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I have never lied to you.”
“You would undo our marriage if you could?”
“If it would take the expression of pain from your beautiful brown eyes, yes.”
He really meant it…he would give her up if he could undo the past and save her pain.
“The baby, would you undo that?” she pressed.
If he had looked like the damned being tortured before, he looked worse now. “I thought you might…”
“What?”
“Then I realized you never could. Not you and I was glad and I’m ashamed that I was so relieved not just for the sake of our baby, but for my own sake. As your baby’s father, I would always have a role in your life. And yet, if I could save you this pain, yes…I would make it so we never met, so you never married me and let me into your body.”
If he meant those words then he had to really love her. “How can I believe you?”
His face twisted in sorrow and he averted his gaze, strain coming off of him in tangible waves. They remained like that, her on the couch, him kneeling before her, for several silent minutes and then he turned to face her.
“I loved you when I married you even though I did not admit it to you or to myself.”
“I wish that were true.” It would make the pain so much more bearable.
“Do you remember our prenuptial contract?”
“We don’t have one.”
“Wouldn’t we, if I only married you to spite Randall? I’m a very rich man. If I didn’t love you, if I had the least intention of ever letting you go, wouldn’t I have done something to protect my empire? I’m not a stupid man…in the normal course of things anyway.”
“You said you wanted the marriage to last. You weren’t planning on divorce.”
“No, but only love would make me trust you enough to leave something so vital to a man in my position undone.”
She bit her lip remembering the prenuptial contract her mom and Darren had signed. The man had been top over tails in love, but businessman first last and always, he’d had one drawn up. It had protected her mom, too, in a way, but still the implication had been the marriage had a chance of ending.
Considering the number of relationships her mom had had between her dad and Darren, his subtle concern had been justified, but Angelo had shown no such concern. And he had a lot more to protect than Darren had.
“You married me to keep me away from Baron.”
“I married you to keep you near myself.” The urgency in his voice rang true.
“But—”
“Tara, I met you and I wanted you. I got to know you and I knew having your body would not be enough. I’ve spent ten years spurning emotion, staying apart from my family, never letting anyone as close to me as I allowed you within a week of meeting.”
It had been the same for her. “But the revenge…”
“What revenge? Did I do a single thing to Baron Randall that he did not bring on himself?”
Tara considered her husband’s words and his need for revenge and realized that he was right. He might have brought the pieces together, but Baron had put them all on the game board. “No.”
“If I had met you under any other circumstance, I would have wanted you for mine for all time.”
“How can I be sure?”
But even as she asked the question memories bombarded her. Angelo was capable of utter ruthlessness, but he had not seduced her when it was obvious he could. In fact, the whole time he had known her, he had done nothing to hurt her.
He had given and given and given and that kind of behavior from an alpha guy like him denoted she had a very special place in his life.
A place that could not begin to be defined by his need for revenge.
“It is a matter of trust, stellina. If you love me, then you can trust me…your heart will beat with mine and know the truth despite what logic might say.” The vulnerable expression in his indigo eyes said more eloquently than any words how unsure he was of her feelings, how much she could hurt him right now if she rejected him.
His mom had done that. She hadn’t loved him enough to stay and face her own demons, but Tara was stronger than that. If they had a chance at happiness, she couldn’t bear to let him go.
“I do love you, Angelo. So much.”
His throat convulsed. “Enough to stay with me even though I am not the perfect man you deserve?”
“None of us is perfect, my darling, but I couldn’t leave you without ripping my own heart out.”
The kiss was a mutual melding of their mouths and their lovemaking afterward was beautiful and tender enough to make even a stone heart cry. Her heart was not made of stone, so tears seeped from her eyelids and Angelo rubbed a wet cheek against her own.
“I have been alone so long.”
She held him to her as he loved her with tender, pleasure filled strokes. “You aren’t anymore.”
“No, I am not.” The joy and satisfaction in his voice was unmistakable.
As the pleasure spiraled out of control she cried out, “Angelo, I love you.”
His hands cupped her face and he met her eyes, his burning with emotion she’d never thought to see there. “And I lo
ve you, Tara. My wife. My life.”
Their son was born on a spring morning. As the doctor laid the superbly healthy infant onto her chest, Angelo placed one hand on her head and the other on their baby’s back.
“Thank you.” He mouthed the words, his voice so low it could not be heard.
She smiled at him, this man who loved her so completely. “We are a family.”
“Not alone.”
“Never alone.”
“I love you, Tara.”
“I love you, Angelo.”
And their baby made a snuffling sound as if agreeing to the preciousness of the circle of their family.
They belonged together, the three of them and God willing, one day there would be more children. Her tycoon would never again have to live in a world void of love and tenderness.
Men like Baron Randall would never understand that gift, but Angelo did.
Because her ruthless tycoon had something the other man did not. A heart.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5806-2
WEDDING VOW OF REVENGE
First North American Publication 2006.
Copyright © 2005 by Lucy Monroe.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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