But Maria was not deceived, Eloise knew, and she shook her head in sorrow, with worry and anxiety open in her face.
All Eloise could do was wait until the brownies were in the oven, then take Johnny upstairs.
‘But I want to go in the Ferrari!’ he wailed.
‘Vito’s gone, Johnny,’ Eloise said, and the words tolled in her heart.
Desolation filled her. Vito had talked of marriage—but what marriage could there be with him now, filled with anger at her? Only hours earlier she had dreamt of her happily-ever-after ending—of Vito declaring himself to her, and she to him, and then her crowning their happiness, their union, with what she had longed so much to tell him: that they were already blessed with the fruit of that union that was to be for all their lives.
Impossible now! Impossible to contemplate marrying him when his reaction to her pregnancy had been horror!
I can’t—I won’t marry him like that! It would be a disaster—as disastrous as my parents’ marriage was! It would be impossible to do the same!
Round and round the words went in her head, round and round as she somehow got through the rituals of looking after a fretful, fractious Johnny, urged a reluctant Maria to go on her customary visit with her husband to their daughter. For she longed only to have the house to herself, to see Johnny to bed and then head to her own quarters, numb with misery.
As she lay in her bed, sleepless, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, her hand rested on her abdomen. Anguish filled her. Filled every cell in her body. After all her hopes and dreams of Vito to have got it so, so wrong...
Just as I got it wrong in Rome.
She stilled, her eyes distending suddenly. The words had come into her head without volition, without realisation. But now they hung like a burning brand in her consciousness.
She felt her heart leap. She had got it wrong in Rome—got it totally, completely wrong! She had totally misunderstood Vito’s behaviour there.
What if I’m doing it again now? What if I’m making exactly the same mistake? Ruining everything with my own assumptions!
Urgently she tried to replay in her head that hideous scene by the poolside, when all her hopes and dreams of happily-ever-after had come crashing down around her in the bomb blast of Vito’s fury at her. Desperately she tried to remember what he’d said—the words beneath the anger.
‘What kind of woman keeps a child from its father?’
That was what Vito had hurled at her! His final condemnation of her. Never giving her time to answer. Never giving her a chance to explain before storming off.
Because the answer she had been desperate to give then was the one that had haunted her from the moment she had discovered she was pregnant. An answer whose roots went back all her life, to the festering pain of her own rejection by her father.
A woman who fears the same rejection now of the child she carries.
It was that that had silenced her ever since Vito had found her here in America. That had made her so wary, so scared of telling him what their affair had resulted in.
And that’s what I have to tell him—I have to!
She felt her pulse surge again, new emotion filling her overriding the despair and desolation that had consumed her till this moment. Resolution flowed into her. She would not give up on Vito! She would not! She wouldn’t let his anger with her be the final nail in the coffin of her hopes and dreams.
As the sleepless hours passed her resolve and courage strengthened. She had got it wrong with Vito before, misjudging him for his apparent engagement to his step-cousin. And she had got it wrong now...so catastrophically wrong. Bringing down his anger on her head.
But when I went to him before I made it right! So maybe... Oh, maybe...
If she went to him again would he listen to her? She did not know—could not know. Could know only that for the sake of her chance at happiness she had to make the attempt. Far too much was at stake for her not to do so.
* * *
Vito stared out of his hotel room window, looking at the tops of the trees in the green oasis that was Central Park visible. Memory assailed him of how he had stood there by night, so short a time ago, when Eloise had come to him at the hotel to tell him how she had misjudged him, misunderstood him. How they had made their peace after such bitter discord and distrust. How hope had flared within him once again.
But all hope was gone now. Dashed and destroyed. She was not the woman he had thought her to be. She had been hiding from him—day after day after day—the most important thing of all.
How could she do it? How could she talk to me, smile at me, laugh with me—let me kiss her!—and all along know she was carrying our child! She knew it and did not tell me!
Cold ran through him like an icy sluice. How close he’d come to marrying Carla! A hair’s breadth! Right now, at this very moment, had he not found the strength of mind to refuse to do so, to walk away from his devil’s bargain with her and her mother, he might be married to her! In total ignorance that here in America a child had been conceived—a child who would be born while he was still locked in that unholy marriage, waiting for the annulment he had insisted they must seek once Carla’s injured pride and wounded heart had been soothed with their sham marriage.
More memory assailed him—how Eloise had refused to listen to him when he’d found her at the Carldons’—how only a chance word from her employer about how disastrous the loss of Guido’s shares had been had brought her to him to make her peace. His face contorted. And still she had not told him she was pregnant with their child! Still she had kept it secret from him!