Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

‘This is how. Maria saw it and got in touch with me.’

He held the page out to her. She wouldn’t approach. Her head went up. Emotions pounded inside her, but there was only one that she could allow. Anger. Only anger.

‘However you did it, you’ve wasted your time! If you’re here to tell me you’d like me to come back with you and be your adulterous little bit on the side, your convenient mistress, your poodle, you can forget it! Go back to your wife, Vito! Go back to her. Because I didn’t want to know then, and I don’t want to know now—I’ll never want to know!’

She could see a tic working in his cheek. ‘Please look at this, Eloise.’ He pushed the piece of paper towards her, across the table, rotating it so that it was facing her.

She could see the photo on it even from this distance. It was Vito—and her.

She was in evening dress, and Vito was standing beside her—it must have been at one of the endless round of cocktail parties during his hotel tour, when she’d followed him around like a trusting little poodle...

But there was another photo, too, on the facing page—just of Vito by himself. It was his head and torso, face-on, looking at her directly off the page.

And beneath it was a headline that blazed in huge letters—words in Italian. She knew the type of magazine it was—one of those ritzy, glossy weeklies that focused on celebrities and high society.

‘It says,’ Vito intoned, and there was something strange about his voice, ‘“Help me find her, my most beautiful Eloise!” I had to find you, Eloise. I had to. Because I have something to tell you—and something to beg of you.’

He walked towards her, his stride purposeful. His eyes were on her, never moving, not for a second, fixed on hers like a laser beam as he came up to her. There was only a metre between them. His closeness was unbearable. He was out of reach. Barred from her by marriage...by betrayal.

‘I don’t want to know! I don’t know want to hear!’ she cried, shaking her head as if to block out his voice. Trying to defend herself by going on the attack.

Emotions warred within her—the blaze of overwhelming reaction at seeing him again burning through her like a forest fire. Doused by the cold, fierce fury at what he had done to her.

She forced words through her narrowed throat. ‘I won’t go back to you, Vito! I told you that you were despicable—’

‘Yes,’ he said tightly, ‘I behaved despicably to you. But...’ He took a scissoring breath. ‘I didn’t intend to. I was...trapped.’

A bitter laugh broke from Eloise. ‘Yes, that’s what married men always say! Oh, don’t tell me, Vito—your wife doesn’t understand you, does she?’

There was vicious mockery in her voice. Fuelling her anger. Anger she had to keep fuelled, filled to the brim, spilling over into the hostile venom she was hurling at him.

Because if she didn’t feel anger at Vito, then...

No, I can’t allow myself to feel anything else! I can’t... I can’t!

His face had tightened even more. His cheekbones were exposed like carved marble, his mouth like a whip. She could see the steeled tension

in the set of his shoulders, how he was holding his body rigid.

‘I have no wife.’ The words fell like stones from him. ‘The wedding never went ahead.’

The expression in his eyes made her breath stop. There was a starkness in them that was like bleached bone.

‘That’s why I am here, Eloise. To tell you that.’

Her face convulsed. For a moment—just a moment—emotion flared in her like phosphorus. A longing so intense it burned within her. She felt her hand flutter to her abdomen, felt the longing burn again. Longing to clutch at the dream that hovered, soaring now at what he’d just told her.

No wife—he has no wife! So could we—oh, could we...?

But then the flare was extinguished. What difference did it make? What difference could it make? After what he’d done to her.

‘And do you expect me to throw myself into your arms?’ she cried. ‘Tell you I forgive you for what you did to me? Is that what you expect?’

Vito’s mouth tightened. He shook his head. ‘I expect nothing, Eloise.’ He drew a heavy, leaden breath audibly into his lungs. ‘I have come here only to explain to you why I did what I did.’

He paused, not letting his eyes drop from hers.

‘I ask only that you listen to me now.’ He swallowed. ‘I know you refused to let me talk to you, refused to let me try and explain, and I can understand why—but now that...that I have no wife after all, I beg only one favour from you. To hear me out.’