Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

She spoke again—asked the question she had to ask. ‘Vito, if you’d already made the decision to accept that...that bribe, to marry Carla and get your uncle’s shares, what made you think it was acceptable to start a relationship with me?’

There was harshness in her voice, and she heard it—but it was justified. Above everything, that was the one thing he could not defend.

But he was staring at her. ‘Eloise... Marlene dropped her bombshell the first evening we got to Rome!’

Shock ripped through Eloise. ‘You agreed to marry Carla that night?’

Violently, Vito shook his head. ‘No! I told them it was insanity and walked out!’

Coldness pooled in her stomach. ‘Yet the very next day you were trying to bundle me out of sight to Amalfi! Obviously you’d changed your mind about Carla by then—and decided to keep me as your convenient mistress!’

‘No! Eloise—how can you think that? How can you?’ He took a ragged breath. ‘I just wanted you out of Rome—away from all the...the complications.’

He drained the last of his martini. Agitation possessed him—adrenaline was surging, and yet being reigned in simultaneously. Just having Eloise there, so close—so far—was a torment. And to what purpose?

When she’s asked me all her questions she’ll go. She’ll still go. And I’ll still be on my way to JFK...never to see her again...

‘Out of Rome till when, Vito?’ she was demanding. ‘And what for? You were going to marry Carla!’ There was a lash of anger in her voice now, and derision too. What the hell would the point have been of her staying down in Amalfi?

His eyes were on her. Like lead weights. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I had no intention of marrying her.’

Eloise’s face contorted. She had wanted to be calm, yet emotion was jumping inside her, replaying the nightmare of that scene in Rome. ‘Vito, you said to my face that you were her fiancé!’

The line of his jaw was taut. ‘I said it to get her out of there. To...placate her.’ The memory of that hideous moment was like magma in his head. ‘I needed her to believe I was going to go through with her mother’s scheming.’ He reached for his martini glass, but it was empty. ‘I just needed time.’

‘Why?’ Eloise demanded in a hollow voice. Whatever Machiavellian games Vito had played, they sickened her. First rejecting Marlene Viscari’s bribe, and then appearing to accept it.

And trying to keep me on a string as well...

‘Time for Carla to calm down. She was totally strung out—manic!—you could see that for yourself! Given time, I desperately hoped she’d realise that marrying me would not solve her problems—would only make her more miserable. And once she’d seen that her mother would have had to abandon her ludicrous hopes of our ever marrying. It would resign her either to finally agreeing to my offer to buy the shares from her at a handsome profit—as I have been trying to do—or remaining the sleeping partner she’s been since Guido’s death. Then, finally, I’d have been free to come back to you. Free to—’

He broke off.

How can I tell her here, now, when she is barely being civil to me, that I thought she might be the woman I was falling in love with?

She saw the veiling in his eyes, felt his withdrawal. It hurt like a splash of acid on her skin. There was so much distance between them—so much had parted them.

Including her own impetuous flight, and her refusal to listen to him. She had refused to give him time to explain that ugly scene. Had stormed out instead, denouncing him, judging him unheard. Compunction smote her.

He was speaking again, and she made herself listen.

‘But after you’d left—disappeared—and made it totally clear that you wanted nothing more to do with me... He hesitated, then continued heavily, ‘It seemed...less important to refuse Carla.’ He took a sharp intake of razoring breath. ‘So I agreed to marry her after all.’

His eyes flickered away, his jaw tightening.

‘It seemed the fastest way to get the shares out of Marlene’s clutches. Carla could have her glittering, face-saving wedding, but six months later she’d apply for an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation and we’d go our separate ways. I’d keep Guido’s shares—and pay Carla a premium price for them.’

Eloise looked at him. ‘You told me there was no wedding.’

‘In the end I couldn’t go through with it.’

Eloise’s eyes were piercing. ‘Why not?’

The silence stretched between them. She saw his hand clench on the surface of the bar, then relax forcibly.

‘It would have been dishonourable,’ he said eventually, in a low, strained voice He did not look at her while he spoke. Could not.

There was silence again. Thick, impenetrable. Eloise could feel a vein throbbing at her temple. She looked at Vito, letting her eyes rest on him, trying to see him clearly—not with the haze of heady romance that had bathed him while she was whisked from one European city to another, and not with the bitter anger she’d felt at his betrayal. A betrayal he had not intended, but had committed all the same.