‘Eloise, thank you—thank you for what you said to me. You’ve made it possible for me to look ahead instead of looking back.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t undo what my uncle did...’ He eyed her with mixed emotion. ‘And I do still feel conflicted about the promise I made my father and the circumstances of it. But I also know that there is enough of my grandfather and my great-grandfather who founded Viscari Hotels in me to mean that I can, with patience and determination, get things back to what they were. Falcone won’t get the better of me! I won’t let him!’
His voice changed, lightened.
‘And if your boss is happy for me to talk investment with him and his contacts, I’d be delighted to accept any social invitation he names!’ His eyes rested on her, wariness in them. ‘Would that be all right with you, though, Eloise? I wouldn’t want to impose my company on you.’ Vito was frowning. ‘I don’t want to cause any awkwardness,’ he said.
‘You won’t,’ she assured him, realising what he meant. ‘The Carldons are very easy-going. And I guess Johnny might be allowed to mingle for a short time—just to check out all the guests’ cars, you understand!’ she said humorously. Then, daringly, in the same humorous voice, she went on. ‘While all the female guests check you out, Vito!’ she said mischievously. ‘Laura Carldon is already sighing over you!’
He laughed, but there was a questioning look in his face now. ‘And what about you, Eloise?’
His eyes, so deep, so dark, searched hers, and she felt their power, felt a wash of weakness go through her—a wash of longing.
She felt the colour flush her cheeks and she tore her eyes away. But she could not tear her ears away.
‘You know I have eyes only for you—and all my sighing will be for you, Eloise.’
Her gaze flew back to his, met it and mingled. She seemed to feel her heart stop in her chest. ‘Vito—please, I—I...’
‘I’ve missed you so much—’
There was a hollowness in his voice now. He moved to reach for her hand. He could not help himself.
Would she have let him take it? He did not find out—waiters were gliding up to them, serving their first course. Maybe it was good that they were—maybe it was good that it meant she did not have to answer him.
Instead, as they were left to themselves again, Vito made himself start another innocuous line of conversation—something anodyne about New York and all its frenetic busyness.
I promised her no pressure—just an easy evening, easy dining. Nothing more than that.
But even as he made himself remember that he could feel emotion coursing through him. Feel hope flaring. Desire kindling.
But was desire enough?
What is she to me? Be careful, Vito, he warned himself. You came here to discover that, and when she rejected you again you were about to part with her for ever. So just because now she has softened towards you, don’t just tumble down into being blinded by her beauty! You can’t afford to get this wrong again.
They were words he had to keep reminding himself of as the meal progressed. With deliberate effort he kept the conversation away from anything that might be heavy. And as the time went by he felt the tension ebbing away from him, little by little. Felt himself relax and slip back into the kind of easy companionship that they had always had.
At one point he even found himself leaning back, lifting his wine glass and saying, ‘Do you remember, in Barcelona, when—?’
Whatever the recollection was, it seemed to come naturally, and she answered just as readily, capping it with another from a different city—one of so many they had visited in their weeks together as they’d toured the Viscari Hotels of Europe. He laughed at what she’d said, and felt a kind of gladness washing through him.
She was relaxing before his eyes, her gaze mingling easily with his, her smile ready, her c
onversation eager, enthusiastic. As if the time separating them had never been...
‘Coffee?’ Vito’s enquiry came with the lazy lift of an eyebrow.
Eloise gave a replete sigh, glancing at her watch. Did she have time for coffee? Her eyes went back to Vito. She didn’t want to leave now.
It feels good to be with him—so good!
Emotion caught in her throat but she suppressed it—and the memories that went with it.
‘Do you have to go?’
Vito’s voice brought her back to the present, and with a little start, a flush in her cheeks, she shook her head. ‘Not quite yet,’ she said.
They ordered coffee, and Eloise was conscious that she was lingering over it. Conscious, too, of Vito sitting opposite her, his gaze on her. Their conversation was desultory now as, little by little, breath by breath, she felt the atmosphere change between them. Charge and thicken.
He signed the bill, thanked the staff for their meal, then brought his gaze back to Eloise. She was sitting there, poised, two lines of colour running across her cheeks, flushed—and not just with the half-glass of wine she’d drunk. Her beauty overwhelmed her, drowned his senses.