Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

The rest of the world melted away like honey on a heated spoon—melted and flowed and became only and entirely what he was feeling now, what he was doing now. Because there was nothing else. Nothing else mattered and nothing else existed—only this, only now...

Only Eloise.

And when the fire had consumed him, consumed them both, and after a long, long burning died away, leaving only the warm, sweet glow that was their tangled limbs, their clinging bodies, only then did the words form in his head.

I’m not losing this!

* * *

‘Is everything all right?’

Eloise’s voice was rich with concern. She’d asked Vito that question last night but he hadn’t answered, only swept her away to the sensual paradise he always took her to, blotting everything out except the bliss of his possession. Blotting out the unease and disquiet that had nipped at her when he’d come into their bedroom, gazing almost sightlessly down at her with his tense stance, his closed face...shutting her out.

That same unease came again now, as they breakfasted out on the roof terrace of their suite. There was an air of abstraction about Vito, despite his sunny airy smiles and words.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Vito assured her, making his tone as convincing as he could. He would not trouble Eloise with his troubles.

But even as his gaze lingered on her another woman intruded into his vision. Carla, lashing out in the pain of rejection by her lover, who had spurned her in order to marry a woman from his own aristocratic background, driven to make that outrageous ultimatum to save her own stricken pride.

It was the only way to get Guido’s shares back.

Frustration seethed in him—and more than frustration. Grief—tearing, abject grief.

Again he recalled his last memory of his father—begging him with his dying breath to get back the shares that would safeguard Viscari Hotels, protect the legacy that was Vito’s duty to pass on to his own son, to the next generation.

And the memory of his own grief-stricken voice, making that promise to his father—the last words his father would hear him say before sinking into unconsciousness and death...

How can I betray that promise? Betray what he begged me to do in the last moments of his life?

Emotion knifed him like a blade in his heart. How could he betray his father? Break the promise he’d made that nightmare day?

‘Vito?’

Eloise’s voice invaded his consciousness, made him refocus on her. He put a smile on his face, though it was an effort. But for Eloise he would make that effort.

I don’t want her affected by any of this—it’s too grim, too damn awful!

No, he wanted her protected—insulated. Until he was free of this hideous nightmare closing in on him.

When it’s all over—when I’ve got those shares back—then...

Then he would be free to do what he wanted—focus on Eloise, on discovering just what she meant to him.

Discovering whether she’s the one woman for me.

But there was no chance of that yet—not until he’d found a way to smash his way out of the trap that Marlene had sprung on him to fulfil his deathbed promise to his dying father.

‘Sorry,’ he said, trying to hide the effort it cost him, ‘I’m planning my work day already. Speaking of which—I really have to make a move and head to the office.’

He smiled at Eloise apologetically, scrunching up his napkin and getting to his feet, downing his coffee as he did so. Leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do. But he had to get to his desk. Find a way—somehow!—to extricate himself from Marlene’s trap.

As she watched him leave Eloise’s eyes were troubled.

Is he finishing with me? Is that why he’s being like this? Evasive?

The questions were in her head before she could stop them. Bringing with them a painful clench of her stomach. A painful self-knowledge. A painful truth.

I don’t want my time with Vito to end.

* * *

Vito sat at his desk—the desk his father had once sat behind. The pressure in his head tightened. He heard Carla’s shrill, vicious voice—‘Marrying me is the only way you’ll get those shares back!’

Forcibly, he fought down his anger. Maybe in the morning light his step-cousin would realise how impossible—how insane—her demand was. Maybe Cesare di Mondave would rush back to her and ask her to marry him.

The brief flare of hope died instantly. He didn’t know Cesare well, but he knew enough of him to be sure that il Conte would have some aristocratic female lined up somewhere in the background as his eventual bride-to-be, once he’d done playing the field with sultry, voluptuous types like Carla Charteris.

A pang of sympathy for her shot through him, despite the ugliness of the scene last night. If Carla really had fallen hard for Cesare di Mondave, however unwise that had been, he could only pity her. Losing someone you’d fallen in love with would hurt badly...

Not that he’d ever been in love himself.

Without conscious thought, he found Eloise’s beautiful image in his head. Eloise, who had literally fallen at his feet and whom he had lifted up into his arms—his life. Emotion surged within him. Whatever it was he felt about Eloise, one thing he knew with absolute, total certainty. He did not want to part with her—not yet! No way was his romance with her played out.

But until he had sorted out the unholy mess of Guido’s shares he was not free to think of Eloise. He felt his teeth grinding. Here he was, one day back in Rome, and Marlene thought she could corral him with her ludicrously offensive scheming. His expression sharpened. She had made no such move while he’d been making his tour of the European hotels.

So why don’t I just take off again? If I’m not in Rome, she and Carla will be stymied.

So where to go? Somewhere far away... The Caribbean would be ideal! The latest addition to the Viscari Hotels portfolio was taking shape on the exclusive island of Ste Cecile—he could combine a site visit with whisking Eloise away from this impossible situation here in Rome!

Mood lifting, Vito reached for the phone, wanting to tell her immediately. It rang as he touched it and he snatched it up impatiently, eager to get rid of whoever was phoning him.

It was his director of finance.

‘What is it?’ he asked, trying to hide his impatience.

‘I’ve just had a phone call,’ came the reply, and Vito could immediately hear the note of clear alarm in his voice. ‘A financial journalist I know—asking for a comment on a rumour that’s just hitting the wires that Falcone is in discussion with Guido’s widow about her shareholding. What do you want me to say?’

Vito froze. The new hotel in the Caribbean, and his trip there with Eloise, went totally out of the window.

Fifteen minutes later, his face stark with anger, he was confronting his step-cousin in her apartment in the Centro Storico.

‘Carla, you can’t go on with this! It’s madness and you know it!’

Marlene was obviously flirting with Falcone to hasten her nephew’s consent to marry her daughter. Surely to God Carla could see how insane the idea was? They’d always got on well enough, and he’d kept an eye out for her when she’d arrived in Rome as an awkward teenager while she found her feet socially. And she was not responsible, after all, for her mother’s unpopular marriage to his uncle.

‘You haven’t the slightest interest in marrying me!’ he bit out.

‘Actually,’ she snapped back, her stony gaze flashing into bitter animation, ‘I do! I want everyone to see me marry Vito Viscari!’