Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child. Julia James

taken in the sudden paling of her face, the flash of burning emotion in her violet eyes.

      Slowly, words had fallen from him as realisation had dawned. ‘So that’s it—he’s finished with you, hasn’t he?’

      The two spots of colour in her cheeks had flared again. ‘You are not the only one, Vito, who considers it “demeaning and distasteful” to marry me,’ she said tightly.

      Immediately his expression had changed. ‘Oh, Carla, I’m sorry.’ His voice had been sympathetic—genuinely so. ‘Sorry because...well, to speak frankly, it was always going to end that way. The Conte di Mantegna can trace his bloodline back to the ancient Romans! He’s going to marry a woman who can do the same! He might have affairs beforehand, but he’ll never marry a woman who—’

      Carla’s voice had sliced across his. ‘A woman, Vito, who is about to announce her engagement to another man!’

      There had been viciousness in her tone—clear and knifing.

      ‘And marrying me is the only way you’re going to get those shares back!’

      She’d stormed off, leaving him to feel the pitiless jaws of Marlene’s steel trap biting around his guts. Jaws he still felt now as he stood looking down at Eloise.

      Eloise! She could blot out for him the trap that had been sprung.

      He lowered himself down upon the bed, sweeping her up into his arms. Her soft, slender body was like swansdown in his embrace, her hair like silk, her skin as soft as velvet. He crushed her to him and she murmured to him. Words that were like balm to his stormy soul.

      This was where he wanted to be! Here, with Eloise.

      He hugged her again, and as he did so he could feel her breasts peaking against the fine lawn of his dress shirt, feel their crests grazing him...arousing him. His mouth nuzzled into the silken hair, seeking the satin skin beneath, and he glided his lips over her throat, her jaw, soon reaching their goal—the soft, parting lips that sought him, too, clinging to him.

      He heard her give the soft little moan that he knew so well was a presage of her growing response to him. He gloried in it...revelled in it. He deepened the kiss, his hands going to his shirt buttons to free him from all this unnecessary clothing. Free him from the jaws of the trap that had been sprung on him. Free him to find what he sought most.

      Eloise in his arms and he in hers, her body welcoming his, her mouth clinging to his, her breasts swelling against him, her thighs parting for him, taking him into her, taking him to the only place he wanted to be—the place only she could take him.

      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.