The Unwanted Wife (Unwanted #1)(28)
Author: Natasha Anders

“It’s a bit more complicated than that. I think your father knew that we would both eventually want out of this ‘sham’,” he spat out the word almost distastefully. “So he added a little clause into the contract.”
This was it... Theresa braced herself for what she knew was coming.
“Clause?” She repeated the word faintly and Sandro cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Your father...” the waiter swooped in with great flair and began to offload a tray of food onto their table. Sandro muffled a curse beneath his breath, while he waited with barely concealed impatience for the younger man to finish.
“Will there be anything else?”
“No!” he barked, keeping his voice low and menacing. The poor man gulped and beat a hasty retreat. Theresa barely registered the interaction between the two men, her horrified gaze pinned onto the gastronomical feast Sandro had ordered. Pastas, pies, fish, meat, vegetables all laid out in front of her revolting senses.
“Theresa?” Sandro’s voice seemed to come from miles away. “What’s wrong?”
“So much food,” she said sickly, feeling in danger of losing the precious little she already had in her stomach.
“I thought we could share,” he admitted.
“I told you I wasn’t hungry,” she flared weakly, angry that he expected her to fall victim to yet another one of his manipulations.
“It doesn’t tempt you? Not even a little?” he lifted his fork and stuck it into the closest dish, some kind of cheese bake and lifted it toward her lips. Theresa could feel her gorge rise and jerked her head back abruptly.
“No!” He lowered the fork and glared at her in outraged bewilderment.
“What the hell is going on with you? Are you on some insane hunger strike?” She laughed unsteadily.
“That’s what prisoners do, isn’t it? When they want to make a statement about the unjustness of their imprisonment, they go on a hunger strike,” she laughed again, immediately aware of the edge of hysteria in her voice.
“You’re not serious?” He seemed to think she was though and for some reason that both saddened and amused her.
“I’m not hungry,” she maintained wearily. “It’s really as simple as that… please finish what you were saying about that clause.” He looked frustrated but seemed to recognise that she would not budge on the issue.
“Basically, we have an out…” he began slowly. “We give him a grandson and we can divorce without any repercussions.” She’d thought she was ready for it but hearing him put it so bluntly took the wind clear out of her sails and it took her a couple of moments to recover from it.
“An out,” she repeated hoarsely. “Every single time you touched me, every time that’s all you ever thought about, wasn’t it? Getting out?” She laughed bitterly. “And how diligently you worked towards your goal… so often and so very thoroughly.”
“Theresa,” he whispered his voice alive with misery. Nothing more, just that, just her name. It was as if he recognised that nothing he could possibly say at that moment would make any difference to the pain she was feeling.
“My God,” she swiped at a few errant tears, furious with herself for allowing him to see them. “Every time you came you practically prayed for me to give you a son. That was the only thought in your mind, every single time… escape! At a time when most people can’t even remember their own names, you were begging me to give you a son because life with me was so incredibly unbearable for you.”
“It wasn’t you,” he interrupted lamely. “It was the situation.”
“So this son you so desperately wanted,” tried to keep her voice level, even while it cracked with strain. “You don’t really want him, I take it? He’s just a means to an end?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” he admitted uncomfortably.
“I mean, surely you wouldn’t want anything to do with a child spawned with a woman you despise and carrying the blood of a man you consider your enemy?”
“The child has never seemed real to me,” he murmured with brutal honesty. “I had some vague idea that you would have him and I’d move back to Italy afterwards. I never thought beyond that.”
“With a father who felt nothing for him, a mother who didn’t want to get pregnant and a megalomaniacal grandfather waiting in the wings, it’s probably best that the last one didn’t make it,” she concluded heartbrokenly.
“Don’t you ever say that,” Sandro suddenly snapped, one of his hands reaching out to enfold her tightly furled fists on the tabletop. “He would have been loved.”
“What makes you so sure of that? When you admit that you don’t know how you would have felt about him?”
“I know you,” he murmured huskily. “And you have a capacity for love that boggles the mind. Of course you would have loved that baby; it’s the only way you know how to be.”
“How am I supposed to keep living with you now, Sandro?” She asked him helplessly. “It was bad enough before but the thought of going home with you now is almost completely unbearable.” His hand loosened its grip around hers and he reached up to stroke the side of her cheek tenderly.
“We’ll get through this,” he whispered and she flinched away from his touch. His eyes flickered with some strange emotion before his hand dropped back down to the table.
“I’m tired,” she said quietly. “Take me back to the house.” He nodded and summoned the waiter over to ask for the check. Theresa’s eyes dropped to the full table regretfully.