Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

His expression was changing. If he had done that—if Eloise had said to him in Rome what she had said to him now...

If she had shown me that it was not up to my father, or to me, to sort out what Guido had done! Not at the price I had to pay for it!

And though it haunted him still—not going through with the promise he’d made his father in order to set his mind at rest—he knew that Eloise had set him free from the guilt that had consumed him since he had walked away from Carla. His eyes rested on Eloise. There was gratitude in his face, and wonder, too, that it was the woman he had wronged who had given him this gift now.

Instinctively, without thinking, only knowing it was an imperative he could not halt, he turned her fingers in his, lifted them to his mouth, brushed them with his lips after a dip of his head towards her.

‘Thank you,’ he said. Softly. Gratefully.

He felt her hand tremble in his, felt her slip her fingers free, saw her clutch at her glass, busy herself with taking a gulp.

‘I’m sorry—I should not have—’ He broke off, contrite.

Her eyes flared back to his, her head shaking. ‘No—I’m sorry—’ She took a breath. ‘Vito—’

She couldn’t say any more. The brush of his lips on her hand was quivering in her head, and she could feel her heart-rate quicken. She swallowed, looked away, set down her glass.

Vito was speaking again, saying her name.

‘Eloise—’ He stopped abruptly. His brow furrowed, uncertainty flickering in his eyes.

She saw him take a breath. Her quickened heart-rate was not slowing down. The room seemed hot suddenly, despite the cooling chill of the air-conditioning.

‘Eloise—’ He said her name again. ‘Tell me—if you want me to go, leave you alone now, for me to go back to Italy, then I’ll do so. I’ll take the first flight out and I won’t trouble you again.’ He paused, and it was as if his eyes were pouring into hers now. ‘But if...if you think that maybe there’s something left...something of what we had...something that can become—’

‘Become what, Vito?’

She found her throat dry suddenly—so, so dry. Emotions were scissoring inside her. It had been so easy to hate Vito—so easy to condemn him for what he’d done to her, to write him out of her life, her future.

But now... Seeing him this afternoon, for the first time in so long, she had been in a state of absolute turmoil, shredded inside with conflicting emotions that seemed to contradict each other, override each other, cancel each other out. But she had found no resolution. None.

I’ve forgiven him for what he did, and yet—

A sense of wariness possessed her. Once, in a different lifetime, she had given herself to Vito, rushed off with him to whirl her way through a haze of carefree weeks, soaring in new-found ecstasy with him. But then she had crashed and burned. And her life now was totally different—changed completely for ever. A new future awaited her—one that she must bend all her powers to in order to get it right, bringing responsibilities she could never abandon. She could no longer afford to be impulsive...

I have to be careful this time—I have to be!

She felt wariness claw at her again, but even as it did she felt her heart beating faster as she gazed at him, drinking in everything about him the way she always had...from the feathered sable of his hair, to his long, ink-dark eyelashes, the beautiful line of his mouth, the elegant length of his hands, the superb cut of the bespoke designer suit sheathing the lean, muscled body that she knew so intimately...

She felt the rush of her blood, felt heat curl in her body. Her heart cried out to him.

Vito—oh, Vito—how much I’ve missed you!

But she had to fight it down—she had to! She couldn’t just succumb, as she had at that first fateful moment of falling at his feet.

I can’t do that again. I can’t. I mustn’t. Too much is at stake—far too much.

He was speaking, and she made herself listen, dragged herself out of the swirling confusion in her head.

‘I don’t know, Eloise,’ Vito said. ‘I don’t know—but I want to find out. That’s why I came—why I had to find you.’ He swallowed. ‘At the very least you had to know why I’d done what I had. I owed you the truth, even if it changes nothing.’

She shook her head, negating his fear. ‘But the truth—the real truth—does change things, Vito. It changes so much—’

His eyes were holding hers, intent, questioning. ‘But does it change enough?’

She slid her gaze away. ‘I don’t know.’

They were his own words, echoed back.