She snuggled closer to him, reveling in the physical contact, needing the affirmation of her place in his life. He’d been desperate for her, but did that mean anything more than he hadn’t tired of her physically yet? She could not believe he could touch her so gently and take such care to insure her pleasure and still hate her.
The absence of hatred did not guarantee love, however. And she needed his love, now more than ever. She took the masculine hand resting on her hip and pulled it over her to press against her flat stomach. Her menses had not come. She wanted to take a pregnancy test, but she was sure deep inside that she carried Dash’s baby.
Would he be happy? She wondered. His mother would be ecstatic, but it wasn’t her mother-in-law that Tess wanted to please. It was the man who had made such beautiful love to her, the man now holding her as if she meant something to him, as if he had missed having her in his bed as much as she had missed his presence in the night.
The past few days had been horrible and she had vacillated between certainty that marrying Dash had been the biggest mistake of her life to an irrepressible hope that things could get better, that he would come to care more deeply for her. After that first phone call, he had called every day. She didn’t know if it was because he wanted to put a good front on for his family, or if he’d discovered he needed the connection as much as she did. Did it really matter?
Those phone calls had been her lifeline.
They hadn’t talked about personal issues, but he hadn’t been curt with her either. He always asked how she was doing and showed interest in how she had spent her day. He’d answered her questions about his business, sharing his frustrations and satisfactions depending on how his day had gone.
Would a man who hated being married to her share that kind of meaningful communication with her?
It was a question she’d asked herself at least fifty times a day since he’d gone.
No satisfactory answer was forthcoming.
Still, after their recent lovemaking, she had more peace than she’d experienced in days.
The next day, Dash was gone before she woke up, but since he had woken her to make love around dawn, she wasn’t too upset by that fact. The renewal of their physical relationship had gone a long way toward increasing her sense of security in their relationship. So, that evening when Dash called and said he would not be home for dinner, she took the news with equanimity.
At least he had called.
She ate with his mother and Elena and spent the rest of the evening teaching her mother-in-law how to play gin rummy after Elena had gone out with friends.
When Tess went to climb into bed, she was in a fairly good mood even though Dash had still not returned to the villa. Amy had had assured Tess that this was not unusual for her son and had hinted heavily that he would work less when the babies started coming.
She was dozing lightly when she sensed his presence in the bed and woke up. They made love again and just like the night before, Dash fell asleep without giving her an opportunity to talk about anything important. To be fair, she hadn’t tried very hard. She didn’t know if she wanted to tell him about her suspicion that she was pregnant. Having proof one way or the other would be better.
That day set the pattern for the ones to follow. If Dash did return in time for dinner, the hours before sleep would be spent making love. Yet, no matter how many times they made love the night before, he always woke her around dawn to make love again. And just like the first day back, he was always gone to the office before she came awake for the day.
They didn’t talk and sometimes she caught him looking at her with a bitterness that shocked her. The look never lasted long and the one time she’d brought it up, he had changed the subject very effectively by seducing her.
She stopped telling him she loved him, even in the throes of passion. Because although he had clearly not rejected her completely as his wife, she felt an important element of their relationship had been lost. His respect for her.
The longer she played the role of lover, but not true wife, the more she felt like nothing more than a body in his bed.
Even his exquisite lovemaking was taking on a bitter aftertaste when he refused to discuss the stalemate their marriage had become.
She couldn’t quite get how he could blame her for her father’s matchmaking. It didn’t jibe with the man she knew Dash to be. He was ruthless in business, but fair. Taking out his anger over her father’s actions on her was anything but. Not to mention that those actions hardly warranted the fury they had sparked in her husband.
If she didn’t talk it out soon, she was going to lose respect for herself. She’d been afraid to make waves, to risk another all-out rejection from her husband, but being a body in his bed and nonentity in his life was taking its toll on her sense of self-worth.
She wanted to find out if she really was pregnant before they talked. Perhaps knowledge that she carried his child would give her a better chance of getting through to him.
Using the excuse that she did not want the first time she met her doctor to be during a health crisis, Tess asked Amy to make an appointment for her with the family doctor. She felt shy about sharing her suspicions with anyone before she talked about it with Dash.
Her mother-in-law appeared to accept Tess’s excuse and made an appointment for her early that afternoon. A couple of hours later, Tess left the doctor’s surgery in a daze of emotions.
She was pregnant.
Thinking it was a possibility was very different from knowing it to be a reality, she discovered. She felt both terrified and elated at the prospect of motherhood. She knew she would love her baby with every fiber of her being, but she had never even held a toddler in her arms.
The prospect of living with Dash’s mother had never bothered her, but now Tess saw it as an absolute blessing. She wasn’t alone. Amy would help her learn the ropes of motherhood and Dash would be there as well. Family was important to him.