“How did you break your arm?” she asked, but he wasn’t looking at her and didn’t see the question. She reached over and in a gesture similar to the one he’d used on her the previous night, gently tilted his jaw so that he was looking at her. She repeated the question and he seemed to shake himself out of his reverie, but when he spoke again, his voice was so horribly empty.“He was very angry,” he said with a shrug.“ Your father broke your arm?” She needed clarity on this point and wasn’t sure she understood. He nodded abruptly before draining his glass.“I’m exhausted,” he muttered gruffly. “I was wondering, would you and Kayla like to go to the beach with me tomorrow? I’ll fix a picnic lunch. Unless you’ve moved your ladies’ get-together to tomorrow? Since you missed it today?”“A couple of the others had other plans this weekend as well, so we decided not to meet until next week. Anyway, the beach sounds nice,” she agreed absently, not really paying attention, her mind on what he

“ I know,” she appeased, kissing his chest and neck lovingly before raising her head to meet his eyes. “It’s okay.”“No,” he whispered quietly. “No, it’s not.” He hovered for a moment before, with a growl of brutal self-denial, he dragged himself out of her arms and off the bed all in one swift movement. He stood at the side of the bed, gloriously naked and painfully aroused, to stare at her for a heartbeat before turning away and heading toward the en suite. Cindy watched the door close gently behind him and an instant later, heard the shower going on. She turned her face into the pillow with an anguished sob and wondered at the amount of self-control it must have taken for him to get up and leave her. She was tempted to join him in the shower, but she knew that he believed he had done the right thing. She could not undermine the sacrifice he had just made by stepping into that shower with him.She dragged herself out of the warm bed and to her own room. Knowing that she would get no

“Don’t call me that,” she said. She just felt tired and defeated. He stood there, hand still outstretched and looking miserable, with alcohol dripping from his hair and into his eyes. For a very brief moment she felt herself softening.“I know that I’ve been an utter bastard,” he admitted.“Yes.”His admission strengthened her resolve.“I’m sorry . . . ?”“Is that a question? Or an actual apology?”He hesitated briefly and she rolled her eyes. “Get back to me when you know for sure.” She swept from the room, and Gerard stared at the door for a long time after she’d left.Now that this whole divorce thing was becoming a palpable fact, he admitted to himself that he wasn’t quite so willing to roll over and give her everything that she asked for. He wanted his wife and child but he was a broken man, both physically and emotionally, and it hardly seemed fair to saddle her with his innumerable problems after everything that he had already put her through. Yet he knew that without her he’d

“I’ll get my assistant to look into viable homes for you. Once we’ve compiled a list of possibilities, you can decide which one suits you best.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Cindy feeling wrung out and deflated by the hollow victory.Gerard waited until he was safely back behind the closed door of his study before bending at the waist and inhaling deeply as the consequences of his promise hit him like a freight train. She was going to leave him and he was going to let her because she deserved her freedom, because it was cruel to saddle a vibrant and affectionate woman like her with an emotionally crippled husband, and most importantly because he still didn’t know how to explain his actions on that long-ago night.A baby, Jesus God, he had thought. He wasn’t ready to be a father! He would be terrible at it. He would be like his own father—abusive, mean, and absent in both heart and soul. He couldn’t have a child yet, not until Cindy healed him some more. Over the last

“You were the most entrancing thing I’d ever seen,” he said, his voice gruff, and she shook her head dismissively.“Hardly.”“You still are, Cindy .” He brushed aside her automatic protest. “You’re not some boring, conventional beauty, true. And yeah, you tend to be a little clumsy at times. But you’re unusual, interesting, and to me you’re just so indescribably gorgeous. I never thought that I deserved you. You were too good for the likes of me.”She didn’t understand that sentiment at all. He was heartbreakingly handsome and she was painfully plain. He came from a background of wealth and privilege while her family had been as poor as church mice. He had been Oxford educated with a master’s degree in business while she had barely made it through high school. It had been a classic Cinderella tale, and Cindy had been the one to feel inadequate when compared to him.“I should have left you alone,” he was saying, his low voice alive with misery and his eyes filled with such profound sad