He sat now, a bleak, brooding expression on his face.
Only one prospect could lessen that grievous loss.
Finding Eloise.
I will not give up on her! I cannot!
He had to find her, to discover whether he could salvage anything from the hideous mess he’d made of things, something that was worth fighting for.
The long, grim months without her had only shown him what he had lost when she’d left him. So he’d renewed his efforts to discover where she’d gone, reactivating all his lines of enquiry. But all had drawn a blank. Only one—a wild, maverick attempt—remained. Would it work? Could it work? To this point it had not.
His sense of desolation deepened. His expression sombre.
The sound of his phone ringing hardly made him stir. Until the caller started to leave a message. Then, as if an electric current had suddenly galvanised him, Vito snatched up the phone. Heard out the caller.
When the call ended, he promptly summoned his PA. ‘I need you to book a flight for me tonight,’ he told her.
And then, and only then, did his eyes light with animation. With relief. With an emotion that had not been there for long, deadened weeks.
With hope.
* * *
‘Wowee! Wowee! Come and see!’
Johnny’s exuberant call drew Eloise to the nursery window, where her charge was gazing out onto the carriage sweep. The long, low scarlet automobile drawing up with a throaty growl of its powerful engine made her start.
Vito had driven a car just like that...
Instantly memory bit. Her and Vito, cruising along the autostrada, her eyes on him. He’d looked so impossibly glamorous and gorgeous, with his designer dark glasses, his hands curved around the wheel, revelling in the power of the steering...
She forced the memory from her head. Vito was an ocean away from her and she had to get on with her life without him—make the future that awaited her now without him. What was the point of thinking about their time together?
She stared bleakly down as the car door opened. As the driver got out.
Faintness drummed at her, and a disbelieving gasp was wrenched from her throat.
It was Vito.
Vito here—now—outside the house. Walking up to the house, disappearing from view under the porch she could not see from the angle of the nursery window. She felt numb with shock.
Johnny raced to the nursery door. ‘I want to go down and see the car!’ he exclaimed.
The next moment the house phone was ringing, and Johnny dashed to snatch it up.
He turned excitedly to Eloise. ‘The car man wants to see you! Come on, come on, come on!’ He tu
gged her towards the door.
His little hand made no impact on her total immobility. Her total inability to think, to pull one shred of rational usage from her brain.
Only one phrase existed in it.
It’s Vito—it’s Vito—it’s Vito...
But it couldn’t be. It was impossible. Completely impossible. Vito was in Italy. In Rome. With his wife. It could not be him because he did not know where she was. So how had found her? And why—?
Raggedly, her mind zig-zagged incoherently, her thoughts flying everywhere, borne on emotions that were tumbling about crazily inside her, like rocks in a washing machine. Urgently she sought to get a grip on herself, to fight through the shock smashing through her.