Unwrapping The Innocent's Secret

And she would have to spend some time questioning herself later. She would have to try to figure out why, when she’d dreamed of landing blow after blow, each harder than the last, the doing of it made her feel shaken.

“But that is something you can sort out on your own,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as off balance as she felt. “It doesn’t involve me.”

Because if she stood here any longer, she would forget herself. And she already knew what happened when she allowed herself to forget, particularly when she was around Pascal. More to the point, her life was different now. She had no desire to change it completely. Not anymore. Not again.

She stepped around him, yanking her bucket off the floor as she went. She headed for the door at the side of the altar that led into the vestry, thinking she could bar herself in the church if necessary. There were hours yet before she was due to pick up Dante and she very much doubted that a man like Pascal would lounge around, waiting. Whatever whim had brought him here would have him bored silly and heading for home before long.

“Cecilia.”

And she hated herself, because his voice, her name, stopped her. He still had that power over her. She had the despairing notion he always would.

“I’m going now,” she said, glaring at the window up above her. “Whatever you wanted out of this sudden return is your business. But I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of it.”

“You said I couldn’t have him,” he said. “Tell me who he is.”

She was staring up at the stained glass before her. And this was the moment of truth, wasn’t it? She had tried to call, of course. Once he had started appearing on the news, and in the magazines. She tried to do her duty by him. But she’d never made it past the main switchboard of his company. No matter who she spoke to, and no matter how they promised that someone would get back to her if her claim was found to be worthy, no one ever did.

Three years in, she’d stopped trying.

Since then she’d been certain that given the chance, she would, of course, come clean at the first opportunity.

But she hadn’t.

She’d excused the fact she hadn’t made the situation clear to his board members. She’d told herself that they didn’t deserve to know something Pascal didn’t already know himself. But deep down she’d believed that she would never see him again. That this moment would never come.

Now he was here. She had foolishly thrown Dante in his face straight off. Now he’d asked directly.

It was another opportunity to discover who she was, and once more Cecilia was faced with the lowering notion that it was not who she’d thought. Not at all. Because she wanted—more than anything—to lie. To say whatever was necessary to make him let her go. Forget about her. And never, ever, get anywhere near Dante.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She was too aware of her own pulse, pounding in places it normally didn’t. She swallowed, not surprised to find her throat was dry.

And then she made herself turn, because she had done harder things than this. Like sit up in a bed in the clinic, without a stitch of clothing on her body, and face Mother Superior directly. Then explain what on earth she was doing there. Or like when she’d started to show, and had been forced to leave the abbey—the only home she’d ever known—and find her own cottage to live in, just her and her growing belly and her eternal shame.

And neither of those things was all that difficult stood next to childbirth.

So she faced him. The man she had loved, hated and lost either way.

And she had no optimism whatsoever that what she was about to tell him would change that.

In fact, she suspected she was about to make it all much worse.

“He is your son,” she said, her voice echoing in the otherwise empty church. “His name is Dante. He doesn’t know you exist. And no, before you ask, I have absolutely no intention of changing that.”

CHAPTER THREE (#u4faa019e-8e0d-55f7-a4f0-3deaa3dd4fd1)

HER WORDS WERE IMPOSSIBLE.

They made no sense, no matter how loudly they echoed in his head.

Pascal thought perhaps he staggered back beneath the weight of all that impossibility, possibly even crumpled to the floor—but of course, he did no such thing. He was frozen into place as surely as if the stones beneath him had made him a statue, staring back at her.

In horror. In confusion.

There must be some mistake,a sliver of rationality deep inside him insisted.

“What did you say?” he managed to ask through a mouth that no longer felt like his own.

Because while he was certain he had heard her perfectly well, no matter how he tried to rearrange those words in his head, they still didn’t make sense. They couldn’t make sense.

“This isn’t something I want to tell you,” Cecilia said, tilting her chin up in a belligerent sort of way that was one more thing that didn’t make sense.

Because the sweet almost-nun he’d known hadn’t had the faintest hint of belligerence in her entire body. Though her body was obviously the last thing in the world he needed to be thinking about just now.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she was saying. “So. Now you know.”

And then, astonishingly, nodded in punctuation. As if the subject was now closed.

“I cannot be understanding you.” His voice sounded as little like his own as the words felt in his mouth, and he still couldn’t seem to move the way he wanted to. Or at all.

Cecilia sighed as if he was testing her patience, another affront to add to the list. “You have a son, Pascal. And you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that. If memory serves, you never spared the slightest thought for any kind of birth control. What did you think would happen?”

It was the sheer insult of that—and the unfairness—that seared through him, hot enough to loosen his paralysis.

“I was recovering from a car accident in a hospital,” he gritted out. “When do you imagine I might have nipped out to the shops and found appropriate protection? I assumed you had taken care of it.”

“Taken care of it?” She actually laughed, which nearly let Pascal’s temper get the better of him. But she didn’t seem to notice. Or care if she did. “I was raised in a convent. With real-life, actual nuns. It might surprise you to learn that the finer details of condom use during premarital sex didn’t come up much during morning prayers.”

Pascal dragged his hands through his hair, though it was cut almost too short to allow it. Unless he was very much mistaken, his hands were actually shaking, something that might have horrified him unto his soul at any other moment. But right now he could hardly do more than note it and move on. It was that or succumb to the high tide swamping him, drowning him, tugging him violently out to sea.

“I cannot have a son,” he snapped out, not caring that his words were far too angry for a place like this. Holy and quiet, with the watchful eyes of too many saints upon him—and none of them as sharp as Cecilia’s gaze. “I cannot.”

Cecilia sniffed. And her remarkable eyes sparked with what he thought was temper, however little that made sense to him.

“And yet you do. But don’t worry. He’s perfect, and he doesn’t need you.” The gleam in her eyes intensified, and he felt it like a blow to the center of his chest. “Feel free to run back to your glossy magazines. Your lingerie models. Whatever makes you happy, Pascal. You can pretend we don’t exist. The way you’ve been doing for six years.”

“How dare you take that tone with me.” His voice was soft, because his fury was so intense he thought it might have singed his vocal cords. The rage and grief in him so hot and blistering he wasn’t sure he’d ever speak in a normal voice again. “You never told me you were pregnant.”

“How would I have done that?” She fired the question at him, plunking her bucket back down on the stone floor with a loud crash. She even took a step toward him as if she wanted this confrontation to get physical. “The first time I saw you mentioned in the papers, two years had gone by. Before that? You’d just disappeared overnight. The army had discharged you, and even if they hadn’t, they weren’t about to hand out a forwarding address. What was I supposed to have done?”

“You knew I was from Rome. You knew—”

If he hadn’t been close enough to see the pulse in her neck go wild, he might have believed the cold smile she aimed at him meant she wasn’t affected by this interaction. But Pascal wasn’t sure that knowledge was helpful.