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Carlo’s voice came to her through the curtains of saddened-weary years. “You changed your mind?” He asked, though his tone showed his disbelief.
“About staying in this room?” Jane shook her head. “No. I just couldn’t resist seeing it again.” She sighed heavily and turned back to the view displayed from the window. “Morbid curiosity, you could call it.”
She didn’t even know Carlo was crossing the room until his hands came to rest on her back. “And is it as you remember?”
She nodded. “It’s like stepping back into a door to the past.” She shuddered.
“Not a happy past, from your reaction.”
There was no need to answer that. After all, if their past had been happy, she would have stayed married to him. “Did you call Officer Warren?”
He grunted. “The constable was her usual fount of wisdom.”
“I liked her,” Jane contradicted.
“I liked her too. Far more than the sergeant who is her superior. But unless they can find the person who broke into your home, I do not find them to be particularly impressive at their job.” He pressed his lips together, confident that his own investigators would turn up far more information. It was an unfair advantage of course. They had the full picture. His past. His parentage. The truth of the life he’d run from, that was always haunting the peripheries of his life. “And until then, I will make sure no harm comes to you.”
Jane turned around to face him. It had been a totally miscalculated movement, for it brought her into close contact with his body; her head just a breath from his. “Carlo,” she darted her tongue out and licked her lower lip. “What happened this morning…”
His lips were a half smile, “Us making love like no time has past?”
She nodded awkwardly, as her blue eyes sought to understand him. “That was… really stupid.”
“Was it?” He lifted a hand and ran a finger down the side of her face. Despite herself, she sucked in a deep, unsteady breath.
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Why?”
When Jane frowned, a small line formed between her eyes. It creased now, as she knitted her brows together with visible consternation. “Because we’re divorced.”
He shrugged his strong, broad shoulders. “So? This means we cannot be attracted to one another any longer?”
“Yes,” she hissed emphatically. She stepped away from him to underscore the point. “It would be a disaster to open that particular Pandora’s Box again.”
He couldn’t help but acknowledge Jane’s point. Not for the reasons she thought, though. Marriage to him had brought innocent, young Jane into a world of danger. A seedy, criminal element that was unworthy of her. Even his denouncement of all his father stood for had not insulated her from the effects of his parentage.
He’d let her go to protect her, but now? Did he have the strength to resist the tug he felt for her?
“Oh my God!” Jane clasped a hand over her mouth and stared at him as though she were about to pass out.
“Jane?” Immediately, something inside him stirred. A desire to protect and reassure. “What is it?”
“We didn’t use any protection!” Her enormous blue eyes clamped shut and she swayed a little, leaning backwards until she found the strength of the wall for support. “Oh my God!”
Carlo shrugged. “We are both safe. What is the worry?”
“The worry?” Nausea flared inside of her. “I’m not on the pill, Carlo!”
A flare of emotion he couldn’t fathom flashed in his gut. “You aren’t?”
“No.” Her hand was shaking as she lifted it and dragged it through her hair. “I’m not. And we just… we just…”
She blanched visibly, as the apparently unpalatable idea of having conceived his baby sickened her. Carlo knew neither of them had been planning to conceive a child, but the desperation on her face angered him. “Would that be so very bad?” He demanded harshly, his black eyes scornful as they stared down at her.
Jane nodded, her face continuing to drain of all colour before his very eyes. “Are you kidding me? It would be a nightmare. I can’t go through that again.”
In her shock and self-directed anger, she’d admitted to something she’d sworn she’d never tell him. She’d said too much.
