GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 58

'I'm not upset.' Edward swung round and left the room, walked down the corridor and settled in the waiting room. He wasn't just upset, he was furious. She was his wife and she was shutting him out, dismissing him as a husband as if he were of no account.

Did he really deserve a wife who had such a low opinion of him? Did she think he had been faking it with her for the whole of the past month? Faking the passion, the laughter, the enjoyment? Without warning, he badly wanted a drink and he wanted to punch something hard. He leapt upright again and paced. Bella was stubborn and rigid in her views. That wedding ring jibe? How could she be so petty?

Unfortunately, her prejudice against her father for the way she believed he had treated her late mother had ensured that Bella had not had a very high opinion of men even to begin with. And how much had Edward's own behaviour since their first meeting contributed to her continuing distrust? The casual one-night stand? The engagement he had neglected to mention? The blackmail he had used to persuade her to marry him? His conduct had been less than stellar.

But Edward had always had a can-do approach to problems. Bella wanted him to love her? He could lie and tell her he loved her. Was he willing to do anything to keep her? Edward winced, shocked by the concept. What had she done to his brain? His brain clearly wasn't working properly. Shock and sorrow had temporarily deranged his wits because for the first time since childhood he felt helpless and almost panicky.

It felt wrong not being with Bella although maybe she genuinely needed time alone to deal with what had happened. He couldn't help wishing she had turned to him, leant on him. He spoke to the nurse in charge, asking her to contact him if Bella's condition changed, and then he breathed in deep and fought his reluctance to leave the hospital. Perhaps if Bella slept a while, she would be more normal in the morning, a little less worked up and fatalistic, although it was hard to see how confirmation of the miscarriage would do anything to improve her outlook.

Edward helped himself to a whiskey in his limousine. He would get stinking drunk and stop agonising over a situation he couldn't fix, he decided despondently. He checked his phone to see if Bella had texted him; she had not. He embarked on a second whiskey while wondering if a wedding ring could really mean that much to a woman and he thought about texting Bella to ask to have that mystery explained. But there was a yawning hole stretching ever wider somewhere inside his He thought about the baby, the baby that wasn't going to be, and his eyes burned and prickled, deep regret engulfing him.

He lifted his phone again, needing to talk to Bella, wanting to share his thoughts with a woman for the first time ever. He'd probably wake her up or upset her by saying the wrong thing, he conceded heavily. And the last thing she needed was a series of drunken maudlin texts asking silly questions. But the phone, the only link he had with the woman he so badly wanted to be with, was a terrible temptation. After a moment's reflection, Edward extracted his SIM card, buzzed down the window and flung his phone out of the car. There, now he couldn't be tempted to do or say anything stupid.

* * *

Bella tossed and turned restively in the bed, tears trickling from below her lowered eyelids. She wanted Edward, she wanted him back so badly, but he had never really belonged to her in the way a real husband would have done and now she needed to learn not to look for him and not to rely on him. She had to accept that this phase of her life was over. There would not be a baby with Edward. He had been so angry when he'd left her and she knew she had provoked him. He had tried to be there for her and she had rejected him, needing him to see that honesty was now the best policy. Their shotgun marriage no longer had a reason to exist and she had recognised that reality long before he did. Wasn't that better than Edward waking up some day about a year from now and questioning why he was still married to a woman so far removed from his ideal of a wife?

Yet the prospect of life without Edward, life after Edward was unbearable to Bella. She couldn't sleep and it was mid-morning before she was taken to be scanned. This time the scanner was a bigger, more complex machine and the doctor was present. Bella lay still, all hope of good news crushed by a wretched sleepless night and an irredeemable tendency to expect only bad things to happen to her. So, when the doctor urged her in heavily accented English to look at the screen, she was reluctant and glanced up, startled to see that the small medical team surrounding her were all smiling.