His lean, darkly handsome features clenched. ‘But not enough—’
‘Now, just you hold on there!’ Kerry studied him with angry bright blue eyes. ‘How does a guy who has never once told me that he loved me define ‘‘not enough’’? I’m not perfect and I make mistakes, but you do too. You can’t throw away our marriage just because I went to see Miles in London!’
‘Can’t I?’ Luciano regarded her with chilling cool. ‘I can do whatever I want to do.’
She knew she could not say what she longed to say. There was a little boy inside him who had never been loved enough and she knew that, but she had underestimated just how much it meant to him that he should believe that he was more important than anybody else in her world. That was, after all, what Luciano wanted and needed from her: unconditional love.
‘You can but you won’t shake me off easily. I’m staying,’ Kerry declared.
‘I’ll just leave—’
‘And I’ll follow and it’ll get embarrassing…’ Kerry studied him, chin at a stubborn angle. ‘I mean it. Everywhere you go, I’ll go, and you’ll have to go to court to make me stay away from you!’
Involuntarily, Luciano almost laughed out loud. It was the threat of a fearless extrovert and exhibitionist and she was the shyest and quietest woman he had ever known. But there she was, looking at him with positive fierceness and an amount of possessiveness that warmed him like the flames of a fire on a cold day.
‘I also feel I ought to warn you that if you were to take me to court you’d just end up looking really bad.’ Kerry hoped that she wasn’t imagining that rueful gleam lightening his beautiful gaze.
‘And why would that be?’
Her gaze veiled. ‘I’m not telling you that yet…’
Luciano wondered how long it would have taken him to break through the barrier of his own pride and he strode forward then without hesitation. ‘Santo cielo! You hurt me a great deal!’ he said, startling himself as much as her with that frank admission.
Kerry grabbed him with both hands before he could back off again. ‘I know and I swear I’ll never do it again. I was so set on not being a doormat and I thought you were being unreasonable because I never once suspected that Miles might have been the real thief—’
‘I know. You’re not very good at reading people, cara mia.’ Luciano framed her face with gentle fingers. ‘And I’m not very good at talking about love—’
‘Let’s not push our luck by talking about it, then—’
‘I love you so much it terrifies me,’ Luciano confided gruffly.
‘Truly?’ Kerry blinked.
‘It was always that way and I couldn’t let you see it and I couldn’t even admit it to myself, bella mia,’ Luciano groaned. ‘It placed a barrier between us that should never have been there. I fought needing you, and four days ago I did the exact same thing. I was very bitter that you could put Miles before me…but it was complete madness for me to walk out over that.’
‘Just as well I love you to death,’ Kerry soothed, tugging him in the direction of the stairs with intent.
‘Next time we quarrel I’ll come to you,’ Luciano intoned guiltily.
‘There had better not be a next time…and I don’t think my nerves would stand the wait. Just as well you succumbed before I wheeled out the big guns,’ she teased.
‘What big guns?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ Kerry told him cheerfully.
Luciano looke
d stunned. ‘And you know…already?’
Kerry linked her arms round his neck and smiled sunnily up at him, feeling like a very high achiever and in love with the mystery of her own female body. ‘You remember that very first time that you forgot—?’
‘That far back?’
She could have drowned in his blazing smile of satisfaction. But then he frowned, guilty discomfiture darkening his troubled appraisal. ‘You’re carrying my baby and I’ve put you through hell—’
‘Absolute hell,’ Kerry sighed with dancing eyes of amusement. ‘You will have to be so perfect to keep me happy the next few months—’
‘Stop teasing me…I’m crazy about you and I will be perfect—’