Page 27 (1/1)

He had known his lack of outward affection had hurt Flavia, but he had told his inside hirew until he was desperate to find a way to deny therief both for what he had lost and the state of his current e, he had betrayed his promise of fidelity Flavia had found out and while she had been willing to suffer a e with love on only one side, she had refused to tolerate infidelity

Proving she had not been raised to put duty above all, she had taken all three boys to her parents’ ho Vincente Scorsolini had done nothing to prevent his wife divorcing him He’d made up the fiction of the Scorsolini Curse to soothe his aching conscience and lacerated pride shortly after the divorce

He had even believed it until he woke up to reality at To the beach with the children afterward Vincente had taken a long look at the woiven birth to his third son as she chatted aith their grandchildren

For some reason he still did not understand, but had confided to Claudio that he thought ithad fallen into place after more than two decades of idiocy Or so he had labeled it

Claudio did not knohat to make of his father’s revelations, or why the older man had made them to him But he knew that his father had finally accepted his love for Flavia and was prepared to act on that love If Claudio knew his father as well as he thought he did, his step Vincente survived surgery

CHAPTER SIX

WHEN they reached the palace, Therese et out of the car and walk side by side with Claudio all the way to their private apart a second’s eye contact or allowing her hand to brush against his It bothered hinored by his wife and she still was his wife, no matter if she wanted to pretend otherwise

He followed her slender for hi of the Melbourne Cup

She looked so dah and it infuriated him that even amidst his own turmoil, he cared “You should have coie”

“I didn’t want to,” she said in that soft voice that even now i he had ever wanted in a woman…except faithful

But had she been unfaithful? Was she only thinking about it? Was her request for a divorce in preparation to entering another relationship? The questions blindsided hiht have strayed, her body round out, frustrated by her on more than one level and several he did not want to exa else happened,” she said with a sigh as she slipped her shoes off and padded across the sitting roo at him, the more irritated he beca her like a puppy dog did not i there could have made no difference”

“That isn’t what you said ere in New York”

“I was angry”

“And taking it out on me I noticed”

And who did she think he should have taken his anger, spawned by her request for a divorce, out on? Rather than ask a question for which he did not want an answer, he said, “I do not like the idea of you sleeping on a sofa in the waiting roo into the roo his name as she did so and he’d felt like sout How could she still seek his coht when she wanted someone else?

They were in the bedrooown “Security was on duty the entire tied out of the suit jacket that carried her scentlove He did not like re that For reasons he could not fathousted by the thought of touching her But far fro the alternative that she was still his alone in a physical sense, the need to stareith every breath he drew in “That is not the point”

“There is no point…not to arguing about it now” She headed for the bathroo in there when only days ago, she would have undressed in front of him quite naturally “What is done is done”