Except they weren’t Roman’s eyes, or the eyes of a baby lost long ago, they were Eleanor’s eyes.HisEleanor’s eyes. Full of wit and compassion and excitement and honesty. Full of the expressive looks he had got drunk on ever since he’d first spotted her hauling drinks around in that joke costume at the Halloween Ball... And he’d wanted her for himself.
He stared out of the large wood-framed window at the Midtown skyline, bathed in the golden glow of a winter twilight, as his heartbeat began to choke him. And the technician continued to talk while he was too distracted to listen.
He’d slept with his best friend’s kid sister. Not just slept with her, hell, he’d taken her innocence and then fed off her artless desire, the recklessness and sense of adventure that had only made him want her more.
The same girl Roman had been searching for ever since he was a kid himself. The girl he knew Roman had beaten himself up about for years because he’d failed to save her.
Alex probably ought to feel guilty, ashamed, but all he felt was the fierce sense of possession, of need, that had blindsided him months ago and had never faded no matter how many times he took her.
He placed his palm against the cold glass, watched it tremble as the emotions he didn’t want to feel and had no damn clue what to do with rolled around in his gut like a boulder.
He swore viciously.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Costa, is there a problem?’ The technician’s voice broke through the dismal buzzing in his ear.
Yeah, there’s a damn problem. You’ve just given me information that changes everything...
‘No,’ he said, but the rasp of breath didn’t even convince him, let alone the technician.
The guy’s voice was a lot less perky when he spoke again. ‘I... I have Mr Fraser’s cell number on record, should I let him know the good news too?’
‘No,’ he spat out.
Not yet, he needed time. To tell Eleanor. To tell them both. He’d suggested the damn test, believing it was no more than a dumb hunch that would be disproved by the test. Because he’d convinced himself he’d totally overreacted when the idea had first entered his head.
But had he always known, somehow? Had some sixth sense told him Eleanor was really Eloise? Was that why he’d got so hung up on her? Was that why she had come to mean more to him than any other woman ever had or ever should? Was that why he’d been clock-watching every afternoon like a lovesick jerk for weeks? Why he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything but her? Why he’d been unable to stop wanting her when he was with her? And to stop thinking about her when he wasn’t?
Because she was the only living relation of a man he loved like a brother? A man who trusted him. Who mattered to him. The ride-or-die pal who had saved him from the misery of that God-awful school.
But even as the thought came to him, he knew that wasn’t it. This churning in his gut, this weird frantic feeling in his heart, this sense of having lost something important he could never get back felt way too real to be based on anything as hokey as a sixth sense. Or a biological connection that still didn’t seem real to him.
This reaction wasn’t about Eleanor being Eloise, this was much worse than that, this was about feelings he didn’t want to feel, and didn’t want to acknowledge, but couldn’t seem to control. Feelings that had hoodwinked him months ago but had since become much tougher to avoid especially now he’d uncovered a secret which he didn’t want to know.
‘I’ll handle it,’ he said. He got the technician’s reassurance that no one would be given the details, not even the clinic’s clerical staff, before he ended the call.
When the truth got out, it would be headline news. The search for the Fraser Baby had made the papers around the world twenty years ago, even he remembered hearing about it as a kid in the Bronx before he’d ever met Roman. And Roman’s search a decade ago when he’d first come into his inheritance had received a lot of column inches too.
Eleanor and Roman would need time to adjust to this new reality before it became a media circus.
But as he shoved the phone into his pocket, he knew they weren’t the only ones. Because his hands were shaking, his stomach was churning, and nothing made any sense any more. Nothing except the hollow weight in his gut he remembered feeling for the first time when he’d been eight years old, shivering in his pop’s Chevy pickup on a cold Christmas eve obsessing about the second-hand bike at Morty’s garage he was hoping Santa might bring him the next day if he prayed hard enough at midnight Mass. The weight that had appeared from nowhere, then grown to impossible proportions as he’d watched his old man come out at last from the house in a neighbourhood Alex had never been to before... And start making out on the porch with a woman who wasn’t Alex’s mom.
The weight that had twisted and burned in his gut after the brutal box around the ear he’d received when he’d asked Carmine Da Costa who the strange woman was on the drive home.
‘None of your business, Sandro. You keep your mouth shut or there’ll be more where that came from, you hear?’
That was the night he’d stopped being a little kid, stopped caring about Santa and Christmas... And discovered that other people’s secrets could screw up your life, no matter what you did with them.
He hated keeping secrets, hated even knowing them... They were toxic, especially if they weren’t your own.
But how did he tell Roman his kid sister had been alive all this time, that Alex had got it so wrong—along with everyone else—when he’d helped to persuade him she had to be dead?
And how did he tell Eleanor her whole past was a lie, the person she was trying to find had never existed, and the parents she loved had betrayed her? Without making her hate him too?
He gazed at the skyline as night fell over the city. And for the first time in weeks the punch of adrenaline, that desperate desire to race back to the apartment and see the flare of excitement in her eyes when she saw him again, didn’t come.
Because the sick feeling in his stomach he remembered from the day he’d first realised what a phoney his old man was had swallowed it whole.
Ellie arranged the last strip of tinsel on the tree, breathed in the magical scent of fresh pine resin, then switched on the lights. The twinkling glow reflected off the penthouse’s glass wall, shining into the night.