Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,60
she had no time in her life for emotional entanglements. So it had come as some surprise to Francesco to hear her say, ‘Nothing personal, Francesco, I’ve actually never had better sex, but with my body clock ticking I can’t afford to waste my time with a man—even one as lovely as you—who is commitment-phobic.’
Francesco had not been offended by her comments or lost any sleep over them, but they had made him wonder …'Do you think I’m commitment-phobic?’ he later asked his twin.
Rafe’s response was tactful. ‘Of course not, but maybe if you put as much effort into your personal relationships as you do work?’
‘That’s the problem. I don’t have to put that much effort into work … some days,’ he admitted. ‘I find myself hoping that there will be a disaster just so that I can fix it … there’s just no buzz. My life is totally predictable. There are no real challenges—nothing to get the adrenaline pumping.’
‘Maybe there’s a life-changing surprise around the corner, Francesco,’ his brother suggested, looking amused.
‘Dio mio, I hope so.’
What did they say? You should be careful what you wish for because it might come true!
Maybe, Francesco speculated darkly, life-changing scenarios were like buses—after a long drought when they did come they came thick and fast!
And they rarely took the guise you anticipated.
In his case in the space of a few months he had suffered the devastating loss of his twin brother in tragic circumstances and, while still coming to terms with that loss, had discovered love at first sight was not merely confined to the pages of romantic fiction.
Though maybe marrying the person you fell in love with within five days should be!
As Francesco looked down at the brown finger on his left hand that was encircled by the heavy gold band his grip tightened on the steering wheel. His upper lip curled contemptuously: love! It hadn’t been love, he told himself grimly. It had been a combination of lust and blind infatuation.
Some people might have suggested that his reaction to the letter that had arrived a week earlier from Erin suggested something more than infatuation or lust. But they didn’t understand the extent of his problem with failure, and wasn’t that essentially what divorce was?
Admittedly, walking out of the office two minutes before an important meeting without telling anyone where he was going, getting onto a plane and heading for England with the intention of explaining to his wife in person that he would never give her her freedom was a pretty strong reaction to the suggestion of failure.
But he would have explained to these doubters that failure was a word that had never been in his vocabulary. Failure was something that happened to other people. His premise in life had always been that if you wanted something badly enough you made it happen, you fought for what you wanted.
The plane had been landing when the thought had hit him. Why should he even try and fight for her? He didn’t want her.
What would I want with a woman who doesn’t trust me?
Francesco knew that Erin might even construe his arrival as the first move to reconciling their relationship, and that just wasn’t going to happen. She was the one in the wrong.
The one he had expected to come crawling back.
His gaze shifted back to the empty passenger seat. When the phone had surfaced the information it contained had changed everything.
Who made the first move was suddenly no longer important. There was no decision to make; divorce was quite simply no longer an option. If Erin had been halfway adult she would have realised this, too.
The situation required immediate action. Cool, clearheaded action.
Francesco’s dark glance slewed once more towards the phone.a muscle along the angle of his jaw clenched as he wrenched his straying attention back onto the road ahead. At this moment he felt neither cool nor clear-headed.
But he did feel grimly determined.
It was sobering to acknowledge how close he had been to throwing the phone away. Fortunately something had made him switch it on before he had done so.
Erin had one message.
His steelily determined eyes fixed on the road ahead, Francesco recalled the moment when he had heard the polite voice on the machine apologise, and explain that the date of Mrs Romanelli’s next antenatal appointment had been brought forward a week.
His normally sharp, analytic mind numb, he had replayed the message three times before it had finally clicked.