Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,117

slid from hers. ‘I really don’t need to know the details.’ That, he reflected grimly, would be more than he could bear. ‘What matters,’ he said, ‘is how you feel now. And I think … I think you love me?’

It was a wary question and not an arrogant pronouncement. This was not the Francesco Erin knew.

‘I do love you, Francesco,’ she admitted huskily.

A hissing sigh of audible relief escaped his clamped lips. ‘Then that is what matters,’ he announced, his mouth firming with determination. ‘Not things that … you may not think so now, Erin, but we have something very special, something which is incredibly rare. And if you are worried that I will throw this up into your face in the future, do not be.’ He moved his hands in a sweep designed to illustrate that a line had been drawn under the subject. ‘I swear on all that is—’

Erin, who had been listening to him with an air of bewilderment, cut across him. ‘I might be more relieved if I knew what you were talking about.’

He looked pained. ‘I understand, Erin—there is no need for you to lie to me.’

She could only assume that this understanding he claimed was responsible for the rigidity in his lean body and the nerve ticking like a time bomb in his hollow cheek.

‘I’m not lying, Francesco. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please tell me what my mother told you.’

‘While you were in hospital she rang me and implied that after you left me … that you, that you met someone else.’

‘You think I had an affair?’ The sheer absurdity of the suggestion drew a laugh from her throat.

‘You don’t have to pretend, Erin …’

As her thoughts raced Erin’s eyes started to fill.

Seeing the sheen in the luminous depths, Francesco, misreading their cause, groaned. ‘We will work through this,’

‘Work through it?’ she echoed.

He had been thinking that she was suffering from a guilty conscience.

And he was prepared to forgive her!

If she had ever doubted the depth of his love she didn’t now. She could only imagine how hard forgiving such a lapse would be for someone with his pride.

It represented nobility of epic proportions!

‘You think I had an affair and you’re willing to take me back. You must love me very much?’ she said in rapturous wonder.

‘More than life,’ he confirmed, causing more tears to leak from her eyes.

‘That is so … oh, my God, Francesco, I don’t deserve you,’ she said in a choked voice. She took the tissue he handed her and blotted her face, smiling through the tears up at him. ‘My mother was stirring …'It would be a long time, she reflected, her expression momentarily hardening as she thought of her mother, before she would forgive her for this malicious meddling.

His dark glance sharpened and flickered questioningly across her face. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘I’m telling you she was lying. I had no affair.’ Please let him believe me. ‘I couldn’t,’ she told him simply.

‘You’re the only man I have ever been with. The only man I’ve wanted to be with. The idea of another man touching me the way you do makes my skin crawl,’ she revealed with a shudder. ‘Before you I even thought I was not very highly sexed … frigid, I suppose.’

There was a long silence while he searched her face. Erin returned his gaze, her eyes glowing with her love for him, a faint smile making her soft lips quiver.

‘My God … can this be true?’ He sighed, a feverish shudder running through his lean body. ‘I have been through such agonies,’ he revealed, dragging a shaking hand through his hair. To think of another man’s hands on her had made him sick to the stomach and filled him with a murderous rage the like of which he had never imagined he was capable of.

‘Oh, I think I do.’ Erin pulled herself into a sitting position and tucked her feet under her. ‘I’m fine now,’ she said quickly as Francesco opened his mouth to reproach her. ‘An imagination can be a terrible thing, can’t it?’ she added softly.

He nodded. ‘It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Thinking of you with … I wanted to kill him, but the worst part was the knowledge that it was my own stupid fault if you had turned to someone else. I knew how insecure your parents’ relationship had made you. I should have made allowances. My God,’ he breathed, coming