‘I haven’t been behaving like a child and I don’t want you around all the time, getting under my feet!’
Was that what he thought? That she was like a kid who needed to be told which road to follow because she was too simple to choose the right one? She hated the thought that she had gone from being the woman he wanted to someone he felt he had to look after. All his consideration for her over the past few months, she thought, had removed her sexuality.
‘Too bad.’ Sergio’s voice hardened. ‘Needs must.’
They drove the remainder of the way in silence. It was a quick drive, because at this hour the roads were clear. She knew that he would see her into the house, as indeed he did, and all the while she thought about him being there with her, living with her, sharing space with her, sitting in the little snug with her watching television.
She thought about the way they had been with one another before her pregnancy had forced him to put things into perspective. And then immediately her thoughts turned to when she had been lying on that narrow, uncomfortable bed in that room, being scanned, her stomach exposed to his gaze.
What had been going on in his mind then? Relief that they were no longer lovers? Impatience that he had had to come to the rescue because she was not independent enough to look after herself? Frustration that he had embarked on a light-hearted fling with someone out of his comfort zone just because he had liked her novelty value, only to find himself trapped with her for ever? Was he being forced to have her as an ongoing concern because of a child he hadn’t wanted in the first place?
‘So what time shall I expect you in the morning? Perhaps you could let me know how this arrangement is going to pan out?’
She contemplated him lurking in the house, materialising from dark corners, turning her on and distracting her, treating her like someone who couldn’t look after herself. Treating her the way her parents and her sister treated her. When she thought like that she felt sick.
‘Here’s how it’s going to pan out.’ Sergio looked at her evenly. ‘I’m going to set up camp in the downstairs den. There’s a desk there already. It’ll do for when I want to use it. I’ll transfer over my desktop computer so that I have both my desktop and my laptop handy, and I’ll arrange for a dedicated line to be put in so that you won’t be plagued with calls coming through for me on your landline—although I can use my mobile well enough. How’s it sounding so far?’
‘Constricting,’ Susie said with utter dejection.
He frowned at her. ‘You have the night to get used to the prospect.’
‘I’ve become accustomed to peace and quiet.’
‘I’ll make sure not to play my trumpet too loudly. You’ll thank me when this baby is delivered fat and healthy.’
And then? she thought. What happens then? She would have become accustomed to having him around. She knew that because she was already accustomed to having him around now and he wasn’t even living with her.
‘And shall I...er...? Well, I feel I ought to ask this...what about sleeping arrangements?’ she asked in a rush.
They found themselves in the kitchen and she sank into a chair and looked at him.
‘What about them?’
Just like that his mind swung back to the sight of her on that bed, the bigness of her stomach, her belly button slightly protruding—the essence of the rounded, fertile woman. His woman.
Except she wasn’t, was she?
Currently she was a woman who was trying to have a conversation about the boundaries she could put into place to spare herself the discomfort of having him under her feet. His mouth tightened, but he wasn’t going to get involved in a row with her. Stress came in different guises, and he wasn’t going to stress her by arguing with her—especially not now.
Marriage was no longer a subject under discussion. It had been efficiently and silently removed from the menu. Should he have pressed home his point in the beginning? Left her with no wriggle room? Because if they had got married he would have been able to keep an eye on her...they wouldn’t have ended up racing to the hospital in a state of flat-out panic.
But a reluctant, bitter and resentful wife...? No, the answer did not lie there.