Emotion seared through him—as it had done over and over again since that moment when his hand had shaped the swell of her abdomen, revealing her condition.
What kind of woman keeps a child from its father?
That was his condemnation of her and it lashed him over and over again. And that condemnation was like a sword stabbing at him too. For it destroyed all that he had let himself hope for—all that he had dreamt of recovering, renewing, discovering with Eloise. His Eloise.
But she isn’t that woman! She isn’t the woman I thought she was.
All that could ever be between them now was the empty formality of a marriage—as sham, surely, as the one he’d contemplated making with Carla.
The bitterness of it mocked him.
The ringing of the phone penetrated his angry, stricken thoughts. In rapid strides he snatched it up. It would be the front desk, telling him that the hotel limousine was here to take him to the airport. He was flying back to Rome to tell his mother, to bring her here not for a joyous wedding, but for a joyless one—one that would legally unite him to Eloise so that their child would be born within wedlock.
His mind sheered away—it was too painful to contemplate so grim an event.
A moment later he had stilled. It had been the front desk—but not for the reason he’d assumed. Slowly, he replaced the handset. A sense of déjà vu came over him.
Eloise had come to the hotel.
His expression tightened. What could she possibly say to him now?
After what she had done, what could she possibly say?
* * *
Eloise could feel her heart thumping like a sledgehammer inside her as the elevator swept her up to the penthouse floor. Instinctively her hand went to her abdomen, splaying over the swell of her body. The period of nausea had long passed now, and she was
glad of it. But for all that there was a churning in her stomach. Nerves stretched taut as wire at what she was facing.
I have to try—I have to try!
Yet as Vito opened the door to her, stepping back to let her in, she could feel her heart plummet. His face was closed—as shuttered as a locked door.
‘You wanted to see me.’
His voice was unemotional. The statement devoid of anything to give her hope.
She swallowed, nodded. Crossed to the window opposite, then turned. Deliberately—unlike all the other times she’d met with him here in America—she was wearing a tight-fitting stretch top that moulded her body, revealing totally what she had so assiduously sought to keep concealed from him. Now she flaunted it, lifting her chin as she prepared to speak. Seeking the courage she must find.
She saw his eyes go to her body, cling to the rounded contour. Saw a sudden flash in his expressionless eyes. But what had flashed there? Anger? Or something else?
She had to find the words she must say, hard and halting though they would be. So much depended on them. Everything depended on them.
Before I was so cautious—so scared of him finding out before I was ready to tell him! But now—now caution is my enemy.
‘Vito, I have to talk to you—I have to!’ The words blurted from her.
He looked at her. ‘Do you? I see no necessity for that. The only necessity is for us to arrange our immediate marriage. To legitimise the child you carry.’
His voice was cool, with no emotion in it. But when she had walked into his suite emotion had seared within him. Pain like none he had known. A double blow. Not just because his eyes had lit upon her again, seeing her pale hair drawn back, the fine bones of her face needing no make-up to announce her beauty to him, but because now, for the first time, he could see the state of her pregnancy—her thickening figure, the five-month swell of the child she carried.
Our child.
She had paled at his words, a sickly pallor bleaching her skin.
‘Vito—please!’ The words came from her faintly. ‘Please! Hear me out! I beg you! Before...’ Her voice trembled. ‘Before—when it was you coming to me, when you’d found me here in New York—I refused to listen to you! But please don’t do to me what I did to you! Give me a chance—a chance to...to explain...’
Her voice trailed off. She felt herself sway, tension racking her, blood draining from her.