at him. Her face was thinner, emphasising the delicate bone structure and making her eyes appear even bigger, and there was a haunted quality in their bright jewellike depths. Her skin still had that fabulous translucent quality, but there were fine lines of strain around her wide mouth.
Were these visible signs of strain the results of a difficult pregnancy? He had to clamp his teeth over the angry demands for information that hovered on his tongue.
Her lips twisted and Erin shook her head in weary disbelief. There wasn’t even a hint of apology in his manner. And you’re surprised? she taunted herself.
‘No alternative but to lie and cheat—now why aren’t I surprised?’ she drawled.
A flash of anger ignited the gold highlights deep in his dark eyes. ‘You would not take my calls, Erin.’
The way he said her name always had caused her stomach muscles to flutter. It still did, though as there was a lot of quivering going on it was hard to separate out the disturbing sensation from all the others.
‘You refused my request for a face-to-face meeting.’ The steel in his manner was more pronounced as his dark eyes narrowed in recollection.
‘Call singular,’ Erin countered coldly.
‘You can relax, Francesco I don’t want your money, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
Erin permitted herself a bitter smile as she wondered what her mother would say if she had heard this statement.
Far from responding to her scornful rejection of his fortune with any sign of visible relief, Francesco merely dismissed her.
‘Money? I have no interest in money. I have not been calling you every day to talk about money.’ His hands clenched at his sides as he struggled to contain his sense of outrage.
‘Every day! Now I know that’s not true,’ she told him, appalled at this outright and not terribly imaginative lie.
For the first week after she had returned to England she had fully expected him to turn up. She had pretty much lived in dread … well, about half the time had been dread. The shameful fact was the other fifty per cent of the time her feelings had more accurately fallen under the heading of eager, impatient even, sweaty-palmed, heart-thudding anticipation of opening the door and finding him standing there.
But as it turned out there had been no occasion for her to use her specially prepared speech, the one that made allowances for his feelings. It had been humiliating, but in the long run she had told herself a very important lesson.
She had made the mistake of assuming that he wanted their marriage to continue. That he wanted her. And he hadn’t even picked up a phone to ask her to come back, to say that he missed her.
The answer was simple, of course, though it had taken her long enough to work it out: he didn’t miss her. He had simply written off their marriage, put it down to experience and picked up the threads of his life.carried on being important and dynamic and stopping conversations when he walked into a room.
‘When I rang, your mobile was switched off.’
‘I lost the old phone, I think. I don’t know where it is.’ The days immediately following her return to England two months earlier were still something of a blur to her.
Before she could put a name to the flare of emotion that spilled from his dark eyes, Francesco’s heavy lids lowered concealing his expression under the thick mesh of his lashes. ‘That was careless of you.’
Erin gave a wistful little smile and placed a hand lightly to her belly. ‘Even when you’re careful, accidents happen.’
‘Did you have any accident in particular in mind?’
The edge in his deep accented voice brought her wary glance upwards. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded shrilly.
One dark brow lifted to a sardonic angle. ‘Defensive, Erin?’
The suggestion brought a guilty flush to her cheeks. ‘No … I just meant accidents, accidents in general.’ The retort sounded pathetically lame even to her own ears so she was surprised and relieved when Francesco didn’t comment on it.
Instead he explained tautly, ‘I have been ringing your home number several times a day for the past four days—your mother told me you did not wish to speak to me.’
‘My mother!’ she echoed, an audible thread of uncertainty entering her voice. ‘But she.’ She stopped and bit her lip.
It was entirely possible he spoke the truth. Her mother’s antagonism for the man her daughter had married had been instant and the feeling had been mutual. The overnight visit they