Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

Hot, stinging tears burned in her eyes. Fool, fool that she had been!

The words that had been hurled at her forced themselves into her head.

‘Don’t think you’re anyone special!’

She closed her eyes in misery. That was exactly what she’d been thinking—hoping...

But all I was to him was one more blonde...filling in the time until he got married.

A wave of nausea rose again. No, it was even worse than that. Not just until he married.

‘You won’t keep her as your mistress!’

A sob broke from her. Misery and humiliation and pain. With another sob, she straightened, made herself open her eyes, made herself look at her stricken, tear-stained reflection.

I can’t stay here.

That was for certain. Vito had said he would return to ‘explain’ everything to her, hoping she would ‘understand’. Her face hardened, eyes like stone now. Well, his hopes would be in vain. That woman had been right—his fiancée—Vito wouldn’t make a fool of her. Not any longer. Not one moment longer.

Stiffly, she turned away, walked back into the bedroom. At least she was already packed. Another sob threatened to break, but she refused to let it. Refused to let any more emotion break through, break her.

Numbly, she picked up her suitcase, fetched her handbag. Then she turned and went out of the bedroom, out of the suite, out of the hotel. Out of Vito’s life. The life she could no longer be part of. Could never be part of—whatever she might once so stupidly have thought.

As she climbed into the taxi that the doorman had hailed for her she said only one word to the driver.

‘L’aeroporto.’

* * *

A wolf was tearing at Vito’s throat as, yet again, he punched ‘send’ on his phone while his car was log-jammed in the infamous Roman traffic. Eloise wasn’t taking his calls, wasn’t acknowledging his texts. He’d been inundating her with both non-stop since he’d finally despatched Carla back to her harpy of a mother with a massive diamond on her finger, its glitter echoing the manic glitter still in Carla’s eyes.

He was beyond caring—Carla could flaunt the diamond all she wanted. Flaunt it in front of the man who was refusing to marry her, flaunt it in defiance and bitter fury, until she finally came back to earth and accepted the absurdity of what she was doing, the outrageous way she was behaving, and refused to be a pawn for her mother’s ambitions.

But all Vito wanted—wanted with all his being—was to get back to Eloise. To explain the trap that he was caught in, and how desperately he needed time to force it open and free himself so that he could focus on the one thing in his life he wanted to focus on. El

oise.

On being with her, living with her, having her at his side. Here, in Rome, making a journey together to discover what they meant to each other.

I’ve got to make it right with her! I can’t endanger what we have! She’s too important to me!

Even as the words formed in his mind he realised the truth of them. He had realised it from the moment he’d seen Eloise recoil from him and he still felt the stab in his guts that recoil had inflicted.

When I explain everything to her she will understand—I know she will! She always understands...

But he had to get to her first. Had to make sure she was there, waiting for him. Urgently he texted yet again, telling her he was on his way back, that he would be there as soon as he could, telling to wait for him.

But as he drew up at the hotel the doorman stepped forward. And what he told him stopped Vito dead.

* * *

The transatlantic flight went on and on. The steady drone of the engines in Eloise’s ears was endless. As endless as the bleak bitterness filling her. Over and over again, like a ghastly video loop, the nightmare scene with Vito’s fiancée played on in her head, forcing her to see the ugly truth about the man she’d so recklessly, blindly taken on trust. The man who’d swept her off in a whirlwind romantic haze, a wish-fulfilment dream, with a heady intoxication of the senses that had blinded her to his true nature.

All that passion, all that romance, all that devotion—and it had been nothing, nothing at all!

Because all along Vito had known perfectly well that back in Rome was the woman he was going to make his future with, the woman he was going to marry.

No wonder he didn’t take me to his apartment! No wonder he didn’t take me to that family function that first evening—his fiancée would have been there as well!