Sold #2 - A Desperate Love

Chapter 19

Michael was still thinking about the significance of Darcy's gift and the very fact that she had gone to the trouble of finding a picture of his mother, when they arrived back at their hotel room. It must have been quite difficult for her to find as they had spent the last two days together for almost every moment, and he hadn't been surprised when, after giving him the gift and his friends laughing that they had been right about the effect spending time with Keiko had taken on her, she confessed to having threatened Tai with another shopping trip if he didn't get her exactly what she asked him for, blushing when she admitted to even sending him to their father for the photographs. No matter how sweet and thoughtful her gift had been though, it didn't explain the strange and out-of-character silence that filled their hotel room as he quietly watched her change. He had witnessed many of her moods throughout their relationship so far, some of which he never wanted to encounter again, but none seemed equal to that which she displayed there in their room. Something was amiss and he couldn't decide if perhaps, now that there was no-one but himself to see her cry, she was allowing herself to feel hurt and disappointed by the way the girls had treated her or whether she was simply slipping into a silent weariness from their flight and the nights events. Whichever it was, Michael desperately wanted to make her feel better.

He couldn't help but smile as she slipped beneath the covers and waited patiently for him to join her. It wasn't the sweet yet mischievous smile she had that amused him, nor the delicate red silk nightdress she wore, taunting him with a tasteful glimpse of the woman he loved so much. Darcy was unaware that as she reached across to the bedside table for her moisturiser, flaunting her beautiful long legs before him as she stretched her legs and began to lotion them, her teddy gently slid up her thigh. And yet Michael was unsurprised that what caught his attention with a smile and caused him to lean across the bed to his fiancée and treat her to a lingering kiss, was the silver pendant still elegantly hanging around her neck.

"What are you up to?" Darcy asked suspiciously, finding it strangely comforting to see him there beside him, keeping his secrets as he sat propped up against the headboard in nothing other than his satin pyjamas bottoms. But as he sat there flicking through the pages of the wedding album she had newly given him, having known from the first moment they met that there was nothing he had wanted more throughout his life than to fall in love, get married and have a family of his own, he could feel her eyes on him. Whatever had upset her seemed to make it necessary for her to keep him in her sights, even if it was only out the corner of her eye. Michael was beginning to worry about her when she suddenly sidled up next to him and revealed the unexpected and unsettling truth of the situation. "I'm afraid Michael. I'm afraid of so many things, so many things that I don't need to be afraid of...at least not yet and I don't know what to do." She confessed finally, feeling such a heavy burden on her shoulders that although the last thing she wanted to do was force it onto his, she couldn't carry it alone any longer. "I need you to tell me that everything is going to be alright, that I'm just being a stupid little girl."

"You're not a stupid little girl." Michael protested with a sigh, unsure what to make of the situation as he placed the album to the side and urged Darcy closer, sliding down in the bed until she was snuggled up in his arms, looking too afraid to ever come back out. "Why don't you tell me what it is that you're afraid of..." He only wanted to help her, to take away her fears and it seemed almost impossible.

"It's utterly ridiculous and I don't know what made me think it..." She giggled to herself, finding it all the more frightening to think that her disheartening thoughts had come about without any warning and had seemed to come to her out of the blue. "But I suppose what I'm most afraid of...apart from disappointing you and failing as a wife and daughter-in-law...is never having any children. Never knowing what it's like to carry a child of my own, to bring a human being into the world and know that we did it together." Michael wasn't sure what else to do but to let her words anger him just a little bit, knowing that although she was scared, her fears were unfounded and more than a little worrying. He wasn't angry with her, but at the fact that the thoughts had obviously been festering inside her head for a while and she hadn't thought to come to him about it before. It would have been easier to accept if it had only been her proximity to Keiko that made her think such awful thoughts but if it hadn't been, then he didn't know what else to feel but angry. Wasn't it part of his life too? Wasn't it his baby they were talking about too?