That same unease came again now, as they breakfasted out on the roof terrace of their suite. There was an air of abstraction about Vito, despite his sunny airy smiles and words.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Vito assured her, making his tone as convincing as he could. He would not trouble Eloise with his troubles.
But even as his gaze lingered on her another woman intruded into his vision. Carla, lashing out in the pain of rejection by her lover, who had spurned her in order to marry a woman from his own aristocratic background, driven to make that outrageous ultimatum to save her own stricken pride.
It was the only way to get Guido’s shares back.
Frustration seethed in him—and more than frustration. Grief—tearing, abject grief.
Again he recalled his last memory of his father—begging him with his dying breath to get back the shares that would safeguard Viscari Hotels, protect the legacy that was Vito’s duty to pass on to his own son, to the next generation.
And the memory of his own grief-stricken voice, making that promise to his father—the last words his father would hear him say before sinking into unconsciousness and death...
How can I betray that promise? Betray what he begged me to do in the last moments of his life?
Emotion knifed him like a blade in his heart. How could he betray his father? Break the promise he’d made that nightmare day?
‘Vito?’
Eloise’s voice invaded his consciousness, made him refocus on her. He put a smile on his face, though it was an effort. But for Eloise he would make that effort.
I don’t want her affected by any of this—it’s too grim, too damn awful!
No, he wanted her protected—insulated. Until he was free of this hideous nightmare closing in on him.
When it’s all over—when I’ve got those shares back—then...
Then he would be free to do what he wanted—focus on Eloise, on discovering just what she meant to him.
Discovering whether she’s the one woman for me.
But there was no chance of that yet—not until he’d found a way to smash his way out of the trap that Marlene had sprung on him to fulfil his deathbed promise to his dying father.
‘Sorry,’ he said, trying to hide the effort it cost him, ‘I’m planning my work day already. Speaking of which—I really have to make a move and head to the office.’
He smiled at Eloise apologetically, scrunching up his napkin and getting to his feet, downing his coffee as he did so. Leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do. But he had to get to his desk. Find a way—somehow!—to extricate himself from Marlene’s trap.
As she watched him leave Eloise’s eyes were troubled.
Is he finishing with me? Is that why he’s being like this? Evasive?
The questions were in her head before she could stop them. Bringing with them a painful clench of her stomach. A painful self-knowledge. A painful truth.
I don’t want my time with Vito to end.
* * *
Vito sat at his desk—the desk his father had once sat behind. The pressure in his head tightened. He heard Carla’s shrill, vicious voice—‘Marrying me is the only way you’ll get those shares back!’
Forcibly, he fought down his anger. Maybe in the morning light his step-cousin would realise how impossible—how insane—her demand was. Maybe Cesare di Mondave would rush back to her and ask her to marry him.
The brief flare of hope died instantly. He didn’t know Cesare well, but he knew enough of him to be sure that il Conte would have some aristocratic female lined up somewhere in the background as his eventual bride-to-be, once he’d done playing the field with sultry, voluptuous types like Carla Charteris.
A pang of sympathy for her shot through him, despite the ugliness of the scene last night. If Carla really had fallen hard for Cesare di Mondave, however unwise that had been, he could only pity her. Losing someone you’d fallen in love with would hurt badly...
Not that he’d ever been in love himself.
Without conscious thought, he found Eloise’s beautiful image in his head. Eloise, who had literally fallen at his feet and whom he had lifted up into his arms—his life. Emotion surged within him. Whatever it was he felt about Eloise, one thing he knew with absolute, total certainty. He did not want to part with her—not yet! No way was his romance with her played out.