“You should have told me anyway.” The words, though spoken quietly enough, slammed into her as though he’d shouted them through the room.
She spun around to face him, and whatever she’d been about to say slipped from her mind. The look on his features stilled her.
He was devastated. Her heart kerthunked.
“I have missed two years of his life.” The observation was heavy with accusation. “And these past six weeks, I have got to know our son. I have seen him laugh and cry and talk and eat, run and walk. I have kicked a ball with him and for every moment that is so perfect, I feel an equal sense of disbelief and anger, because I should have known him from infancy. I should have held him as a newborn in my arms, I should have wiped his brow if he were fevered, held his hand as he took his first steps. I should have been there.” His eyes glittered when they locked to hers. “You kept him from me, and there is no excuse for that.”
She felt wobbly on her feet. She reached behind her for the wall, pressing her palm to it as an aid to balance. Was he right?
She blinked, slowly, and then closed her eyes, needing to shut him out for a second. She tried to put herself back in her shoes as they’d been then. The sting of his betrayal, the man she’d believed him to be. He hadn’t made her any promises during their night together, not with words at least, but his body had been devoted to hers, his kisses had seared her soul. And then he’d disappeared into thin air, back to his marriage. At least, that’s what she’d believed.
Unable to find the words to defend herself, she shook her head. “Do you think I wanted to do this alone? Do you have any idea how hard it’s been?”
“No. I have no idea what it’s been like because you didn’t involve me.” She opened her eyes to find him looking at her as though she were a piece of metal, one he was keen to send to the scrap heap. “You didn’t have to do this alone…”
“So what? I should have told you, even believing it would destroy your marriage?”
“My marriage was my business, not yours.”
“Yes, but I’d seen the respect you held for it – or lack of respect, I should say.” She lifted a hand up to forestall him. “IthoughtI’m seen that. And you can’t blame me for believing what was right in front of me. The photographs, the articles, everywhere I looked there was incontrovertible proof that you were another woman’s husband.” She swallowed; her throat felt coarse. “And when I came here to Italy and saw you together – God, Fiero, my stomach was round with your baby and I stood on the opposite side of the street, and watched you walk out of your house, hand in hand with yourwife, and I felt like the worst kind of person in the world. You weremarried.And she didn’t deserve this. You made a decision that night. You lied to me –,”
“I told you. My marriage was over.”
“Not so over that I didn’t deserve to know about it,” she snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing his face flash with something like acceptance. “None of this was her fault. None of it wasmyfault. You were the only one who knew the situation. It was hard enough formeto accept and I’d known you for one night; I wasn’t going to ruin her life because of your mistake.”
“We were separated. As a point of fact, we’d signed the divorce papers. It was almost official. I had every right to do as I wished. Meeting you, going home with you…I didn’t plan that, but nor did I break my vows, Elodie.”
“Except it wasn’t really that simple, was it? You might have known it was just a one night stand but I didn’t.” Damn it, her words shook with the shock she’d felt that morning. “I woke up so happy because for me, that night had been…I was stupid enough to think it meant something.” She glared at him to erase the impression of sadness; she was stronger than that, better than that. It had been three years ago.
“It did mean something.” His expression was like stone but his words robbed her of breath. “It was a one night stand but you were…” he paused, searching for words. “I cannot reconcile the woman I met that night to this woman, to someone who would actively hide a child from his father.”
“I did no such thing!” She swore, shaking her head.
“Did you mean to punish me, Elodie? Was that it? I hurt your feelings because I didn’t stay to make you breakfast…”
“No!” She shook her head vehemently, interrupting him. “If I wanted to punish you, don’t you think I would have delighted in storming into your life and breaking up your perfect marriage? Don’t you think I would have relished making things difficult for you?”
“So you hid my son from me as, what? A favour?”
“Don’t be so facile. I didn’t hide him from you.” She jutted her chin out defiantly, even when her ribs felt as though they were cracking all over again from the sheer strength of her heart’s beating. “It wasalwaysmy intention that he would know the truth about you one day, and yes, later, when the sting of your betrayal was watered down by time, I thought you and your wife could learn about our son, and that it might not destroy her in the way it otherwise might have.” As it had destroyed Elodie, for a long time.
His eyes narrowed. “How compassionate you are. To raise a child on your own merely to spare another woman’s feelings? A woman you didn’t know, and didn’t owe anything to?”
She gasped. “Only a cold-hearted bitch wouldn’t feel some kind of responsibility to her. I slept with herhusband! True, I had no way of knowing that at the time, but are you kidding me? Never in my life would I have chosen to be ‘the other woman’.”
“You weren’t.” He compressed his lips, his features like stone. “As you would have discovered at the time, if you’d given me even a hint of the consideration you gave Alison, I was all but divorced.”
“So why not tell me that? Why put it off?” She demanded, crossing her arms over her chest, goading him. “Why sign the papers and not file them?”
His skin paled momentarily and she thought, for a second, she’d caught him out in a lie. “My grandfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer, a week after we agreed to split. He was very old-fashioned – mired in a bygone era. Neither Alison nor I wanted to put him through the additional pain of our divorce. Not when we knew he didn’t have long. Not when he’d already endured so much.” He swallowed, angling his face away and sucking in a deep breath of air so his broad chest shifted and her eyes dropped of their own accord to the action. “Yaya was another consideration.”
“Yaya?”
“Grandma. She’s Greek.” His expression tightened. “She’s good and kind and she was facing the imminent death of the man she married when she was fifteen years old. The last thing I wanted was to add to her worries with a divorce.”
Her heart, soft to a fault, ached for him and his loss, but she was defensive too. Hurting for herself and for the years she’d spent blaming herself for that night, wondering if she missed some clue as to his state of matrimony.
“I thought you were married.” She bit down on her lower lip. “In hindsight, I wish now – obviously – that I’d found a way to talk to you. But I didn’t know then what I do now. I’m sorry.”