AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Because that was none of your business!’ But she walked towards the dress, covered in its voluminous mothproof cover, and gazed down for a few seconds at it.
When she rested her hand on it, she didn’t flinch as he covered it with his own.
Leandro watched her closely.
He’d vaguely been rooting around for a face towel but the truth was that he’d heard her sidle out of the bedroom and had known that she’d been heading down to chat to her parents before they left on their holiday.
They’d slept in her bedroom. There was stuff everywhere, from the pictures in the frames on the dressing table to the old board games in a stack on the shelf above the chest of drawers.
He’d leapt out of bed, slung on some clothes and taken his time looking at the pictures, stories of a happy childhood. He’d only peered into the wardrobe because he’d just happened to be standing in front of it and his curiosity about Celia had been piqued by the mementoes all around him.
And the wedding dress had been impossible to miss because it was the only thing in the cupboard and it took up so much space.
He knew that she didn’t pine for her ex. She might have been hurt but she had never registered any lingering pain when she’d mentioned him.
But that didn’t mean that the experience had killed off all her dreams. She’d planned for the big white wedding and she’d hung onto the dress because it had been a reminder of what she had longed for.
In a flash, Leandro realised just how much she was willing to sacrifice for the sake of a child neither of them had reckoned on.
Not just her hopes of finding Mr Perfect, after she’d almost married Mr Imperfect, but all the other things that went with that. The courtship...the planning for the big day...the confetti and photos and speeches and the driving off to the romantic honeymoon. The way she now rested her small hand on that dress and the wistful look in her eyes said it all and something inside Leandro twisted.
‘I’m not going to force your hand,’ he said roughly. Their eyes met and he nodded at the wedding dress. ‘If you’re still holding onto dreams, then I don’t want to be the one to trample all over them.’
‘That’s not what you said to me a few days ago. A few days ago you made it clear that marriage was the only solution as far as you were concerned.’
‘It still is but I have no intention of getting what I want by using a whip.’
Celia raised her eyebrows at this change in tune, then she sighed, thought of what life would look like without him in it, now that she had reconciled herself to marrying him.
It wasn’t an attractive picture.
Disentangling her parents from the happy-ever-after fairy-tale ending was just the cherry on top. The truth was that she had guiltily found herself painting unrealistic pictures in her head about life with Leandro.
Of coursehe didn’t love her! Good heavens, he no longer even wanted to come near her physically! There were so many problems associated with those two things, but hadn’t there been just a tiny bloom ofpossibilitiescutting a forbidden path through all of that? Hadn’t a little voice carried on saying, however much she’d tried to shut it down, that who knew what lay around the corner...?
‘You’re not,’ she confessed. ‘So I really didn’t think that we would end up...well,here, when I came to tell you about the pregnancy, but I agree that two parents are usually better than one and you’ve met Mum and Dad. That was how I was brought up. So you’re not forcing my hand. If I really and truly didn’t want to go through with it, then I wouldn’t. And for the wedding dress? I hung onto it...’ She paused and glanced down, noting with surprise his hand on hers and quietly slipping hers free ‘...because it was the first one I ever tried my hand at after I finished my course. I...it’s not even properly finished, so it isn’t as though I could sell it...’
Her voice petered out and the silence hung heavily between them for a few seconds.
She didn’t know where this was going and she had no idea what was coming next, so she was shocked when he said, voice low and even, ‘We’ve talked about a lot of things, by which I mean, we’ve gone through all the reasons why we’ve decided on...doing what needs to be done for the sake of this baby. We’ve agreed on where we could live and the money side of things...but on a less...formal level, you’re going to be giving a lot up for this.’
‘As are you.’
‘We also,’ he said neutrally, ‘find ourselves in the unique position of being in the most intimate situation possible without the benefit of really knowing one another.’
‘I...’ Celia was hurt because she’d thought they’d got to know one another well over that short space of time. She’d told him things she’d never told anyone else. Had she been a complete fool in thinking that perhaps it might have been the same for him? Just a little? ‘I...yes, I suppose you’re right...’
‘To make this really work, maybe we should take some time out together.’
‘You think that because I didn’t tell you about the wedding dress you don’t know me?’
‘How much do we know one another?’ His voice was a low, lazy drawl.
In truth, Leandro realised that he had been more unsettled by that wedding dress in the cupboard than he’d thought. Of course it had made him realise what she was giving up, all the intangible things she was saying goodbye to.
He patted himself on the back because that showed a magnanimous side to him of which he was proud, even though the emotional response was unusual enough to floor him.
But now that he considered it in a little more depth, he wondered whether her nostalgia for romance would leave ajar a door through which she would eventually be tempted to enter. Would she want to see what was on the other side?
