But then it was all a blur. She could remember certain things. The ambulance ride. The smell of the hospital. Then nothing. Wait, there was something pushing at her memory, but it was like trying to catch a fish with her bare hands. She could feel an experience or memory but not bring it to the front of her mind.
Her head felt so groggy. Nothing made sense.
She closed her eyes, not intending to sleep, but the next thing she knew, she was being woken by the sound of the door swinging open. She blinked her eyes open right as Jack ran into the room, and he was so handsome, so beautifully dressed, that tears filled her eyes – tears of utter relief to see that he was so well cared for, so happy.
“Oh, darling.” She reached her good hand out, but he ignored it, hurtling himself up and onto the bed with his formidable strength and bigger-than-average frame. His body collided with ribs which must surely be broken because she cried out instinctively.
“Careful, Jack. Your mother is not recovered yet.”
That voice! She’d have known it anywhere. So quickly that her head spun and her eyes hurt, she looked towards the door to see Fiero Montebello standing in the frame, arms crossed over his broad chest, eyes staring at her in a way that was impossible to interpret but which, nonetheless, sent an ice-cold shiver down her spine. It had been three years yet she felt as though she’d seen him the day before, so familiar was his face to her. He was so like Jack, but it was more than that.
Everything about this man was burned into her brain. She remembered him as he’d held her body to his, as he’d kissed her and tasted her, whispering Italian words into her ears that made her pulse hum. Those were happy memories. Delicious ones that seemed to fill her brain whether she wanted them to or not.
Then, there were the other recollections. The note she’d found the morning after. And six months later, when she’d gone to his house to tell him about the baby they’d made and seen him with his wife, arm in arm, so beautiful, so untouchable, so in love, and she’d known she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ruin their marriage because she’d been stupid enough to fall for his lies, hook, line and sinker. He’d been married. He’d turned her into the ‘other woman’, and she’d always hate him for that.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t form words nor breath. She could only stare.
And he knew! He dropped his hands to his side and walked across the room, his stride long and rangy, like a predator in the desert. His hands curved around Jack and right as she was going to tell him to leave Jack where he was, that she needed the hugs, he simply repositioned the boy higher up her body, so she wasn’t in as much pain.
Reality pounded against her – the knowledge that this was a very, very bad sign. There was no way Fiero would be there unless he knew exactly who Jack was to him. How the hell…
“My name was on the paperwork at the hospital.”
She made a tortured gasping sound. Of course. When she’d delivered Jack, she’d put Fiero’s details down, just in case anything happened to her. It was a high-risk pregnancy that had resulted in an emergency C-section; adding an extra parent had seemed wise, given that she was completely alone. No parents she could enlist, no friends in England, and even those back home, in Australia, so far away and long-forgotten. She had been completely alone, until there was Jack, and then she’d found her heart’s breath. She’d lived again with his birth.
She’d completely forgotten she’d given the hospital Fiero’s details in all the overwhelming madness of becoming a single mother.
“I can’t…I…”
But Fiero shook his head. “Don’t.” His eyes though held a silent warning. “Later, we will discuss this.” He looked meaningfully towards Jack. “When you are well, and we are alone.”
She was so tired, her brain thick and uncooperative, so she nodded gingerly. “Fine.”
“How do you feel?” The question was clipped. Asked as a courtesy, she got the strongest impression he didn’t particularly care what the answer was.
So she lifted her shoulders. “Like I’ve been hit by a truck.” It was a joke, but she felt Jack flinch beside her.
“I’m sorry, mama.”
Her heart broke. “I know, baby.” She dropped a kiss to his head, the effort costing her as she had to bend her torso and her ribs were in no fit shape to do any such thing.
“You have broken your leg, sprained your ankle, broken your arm, cracked four ribs, but the main concern was your head, which was hit hard.” He spoke with clinical detachment but there was something in his voice that had her eyes going to his face. Shock seared her – being here with Fiero Montebello after all this time was surreal and exhausting. She felt…everything.
“I can tell,” she muttered, lifting a hand and wincing at the outward sensitivity. Her hair was matted too; she didn’t even want to contemplate what she must look like.
“There was some swelling in your brain, but it’s gone down. The doctor has been pleased with your progress. You’ve had periods of wakefulness, but not for long.”
“I don’t remember anything,” she frowned.
“Some confusion is to be expected,” he said. “The doctor suspects it will take three or four weeks before you are more or less back to normal. The leg will take longest, but this hospital offers an excellent rehabilitation programme.”
“Which hospital?” She honed in on that. “Where am I?”
“In Italy. Rome.”
The words flashed inside her. “What?”
“I have a villa not far from here. It made sense.”
“How…when?”
“Two days ago.” His eyes dropped to Jack and she felt a welling of concern, and a rush of fear all at once.
“My God.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why?”
“The facilities here are world-class. It seemed prudent.”
She swallowed.
“And as I have a son to care for, I didn’t want to be too far from you. For the duration of your recovery.”
Everything about that sounded reasonable but lit greater fires of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. “So he’s been staying with you?”
Fiero nodded, his eyes flashing with something dark and incomprehensible. She turned away, looking down at Jack, the lump in her throat so big it hurt. “Are you okay, baby?”
Jack nodded. “Fiero got a pool.”
“Fiero has a pool.” Elodie’s smile was tight as she made the gentle correction. “Does he?” She could imagine what else Fiero had. When she’d woken up that morning three years earlier to find him gone – disappeared completely into thin air – she’d googled him, and seen exactly who she’d invited back to her tiny little flat, who she’d welcomed to her bed.
One of the richest men in the world, a man with yachts and planes and hotels and mansions all over the world. Most importantly though, a man with a wife.
Her anger surged like a blade, but she didn’t know how to wield it. She couldn’t object. Who else was there to look after Jack?
“Do you even know how to care for a child?” She asked, the words clearly dubious.
“Does it look like it?”
She wasn’t up to this kind of mental sparing. “He’s well-dressed, but is he eating? Bathing? Being read to?”
“Relax, Elodie.”
She startled to hear her name on his lips. It brought back far too many memories of the musical way he’d whispered it against her flesh, bringing her to climax with his lips alone.
“I have hired a nanny to help. Jack will be fine.”
The reassurance did nothing to ease her concerns. “I don’t want to stay here.” She looked around. The movement hurt. “Not for longer than is absolutely necessary.” Fear wrapped around her. “I want to go home.”
A muscle throbbed in his jaw, as though he were gritting his teeth. He didn’t answer her plaintive demand. “Come on, Jack. We should allow your mother to rest.”
But she didn’t want to rest. It felt like all she’d been doing for days. And yet, she was
unbelievably exhausted, struggling to keep her eyes open.
“Will you bring him back later?”
“Tomorrow.” Fiero reached for the little boy who didn’t object in the slightest. Her heart stammered, mostly because she realised she was completely at Fiero’s whim. Despair filled her lungs.
“Please do.” The words were quivery with the threat of tears. She didn’t care.
“You have my word.” His eyes though were ice, and she felt the full force of all the things he wasn’t saying, the strength of his fury was emanating from him like an ice-cold tsunami. An answering tremble ran the length of her spine.
Four sets of eyes followed Jack’s progress around the swimming pool, under the watchful care of his nanny Emilia. The little boy splashed his hands, so droplets of water lifted in the sky, catching flashes of sunlight and shining them around the terrace.
One face in particular watched intently. Yaya, in the shade of a huge olive tree sat in a recliner. Despite the heat of the day, a blanket covered her slim legs. Her face was lined by every one of her ninety two years, but there was a smile on her lips none of them had seen before.
Fiero saw it, and guilt throbbed inside of him – guilt at what he hadn’t been able to give her sooner, guilt at the baby he’d lost who had meant so much to her, to all of them – the next generation of Montebellos. And now there was Jack, but Jack was two years old and Yaya had missed as much of his life as the rest of them. But it was worse for her, worse because her time was so valuable, so precious.
“You are a better man than I,” Massimo – Max – the oldest of the three brothers growled. “I would have left her in England and had that be the end of it.”
Fiero dragged his eyes from Yaya, watching as his son began to kick his legs, propelling his body forward. Emilia was ever-watchful and cautious by nature, so that behind her smile he saw her intense concentration and was gratified by it.
“You don’t think perhaps she deserves to lose him?” Luca, the middle brother of three, chimed in.
“She is his mother,” Fiero spoke simply.
“So? She saw fit to keep him from you. From us.” The words were hard, loaded with an anger Fiero understood.
“I know that.” Fiero compressed his lips. “There can be no forgiveness. No forgetting. But until she has recovered, she is here in Italy. I owe that much to Jack.”
“And you take him to see her every day?” Luca stubbed his toe on the marble tiles with obvious disbelief.
“No.” Fiero rejected the idea instantly. “Emilia does, most of the time. I don’t wish to see her more than I need to.” His gut tightened forcibly at the very idea.
“I can’t say I blame you. I hope I never have to meet the woman.”
Fiero angled his face towards Max. “She is my son’s mother.” The words were wrenched from him. “I’d say it’s inevitable.”
“You can’t seriously mean to bring her here? To keep her in your life?”
“No.” Fiero rejected that from deep within his gut. “Of course not. How can I? She bore me a child – a son – and kept him from me.” He swallowed past the sharp edge of betrayal. In the three weeks since bringing Jack home, since bringing Elodie to Italy, he had grappled with this again and again, and nothing had erased the sharp sense of disbelief. He’d already missed so much.
He’d tried to imagine any circumstance that could justify this – any reason Elodie could have had for keeping Jack a secret. But what could there be? What reason on earth could excuse a woman for keeping a father out of his child’s life? They’d had one night together, three years ago, but that night had been… there were no words. Perhaps it had been the emotional mine-field he was navigating – the imminent death of Gianfelice and his own disastrous personal life – but Elodie had been like a beacon in the midst of all of that. He’d known it couldn’t be more than one night and yet that night had meant something to him. She had meant something to him. He’d thought their connection was mutual. He’d thought… hell. It didn’t matter what he’d thought. He’d been wrong. If she’d felt for him how he’d felt for her then it would have been impossible to keep their child away from him.
His son had lived a small lifetime and he’d missed everything. His birth, his first steps, foods, laughs, all of his baby-life had been stolen and Fiero would never get to re-live those experiences. His family had missed everything. They’d all been robbed, and he would never fathom her reasons for that.
“Has she told you why?” Luca’s question was quiet – it was just like Luca to hone in on this point, pushing past the more emotional considerations.
It sobered Fiero. “No.” He stood up, restless suddenly, moving to a patch of sunshine a few feet away. “Does it matter?” The question landed with a thud. The brothers looked from one to the other, an answering expression of hard determination on their faces.
Max spoke first. “So what next?”
That Fiero could answer with certainty. “She gets better.”
“That could take a long time,” Max pointed out.
“True. But until she is well, I cannot act as I would wish.” Fiero’s eyes, a dark brown, glittered with the force of his resentment. “She is hurt and weak. It wouldn’t be a fair fight.”
Luca lifted his brows. “What do you plan to do?”
“What do you think?” He spun away from his brothers, giving the full force of his attention to the little boy who was swimming, blissfully unaware of the emotional undercurrents surrounding him. Fiero’s eyes glittered with the ruthless determination the Montebellos were renowned for. “I’m going to take my son back.”
In the middle of that summer’s afternoon, a dark cloud drifted out of nowhere and covered the sun, casting them in shadow. Fiero didn’t notice. All of his mind was occupied by what was to come – and the necessity of doing this once, and doing it right.
3
“WHERE’S JACK?”
She ignored the way her pulse was hammering through her blood, and the way her eyes seemed determined to chase every detail of his body, to consume him from where she sat across the hospital room. No longer bed-ridden, she was grateful for this beautiful facility, the stretches of garden that were enchanting and fragrant, and the little sitting room that formed part of her accommodation.
It was beautiful, but she was finally well, her body healed, her bruises completely faded, her skin now a caramel tan from afternoons spent reading outside.
She ached to go home, to be back with Jack. She ached for life to return to normal, as though this had never happened.
Except it would never be normal again. Fiero knew about his son, and that would change everything.
“He is at home.”
“Oh.” Her crestfallen expression gave way to hope. “Can I go to him?”
“Not now.”
She couldn’t say why but something like ice trickled down her spine. “Then you should have brought him here.” The words were a little uneasy. “I want to see him. Besides, I need to start preparing for the trip home.”
“There is nothing to prepare,” Fiero moved deeper into the room, propping his hips against the small kitchen bench, crossing his long, tapered legs at the ankles. “The doctor will likely discharge you today. My jet can take you to England.”
She stared at him, disbelief filling her. “And that’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re… saying you’re just going to send us back?”
His eyes narrowed. “What were you expecting?”
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut again. That was an excellent question. “Finding out about Jack was…a surprise?”
Darkness churned deep in his eyes. “Yes.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor, the truth so hard to swallow. “I imagine your wife is furious.”
“My wife?”
She nodded, levelling her eyes on him, the hurt of discovering he’d been married the night they slept together one that would never alleviate. “Alison.
”
Silence throbbed between them. His wife’s name lay between them like a stone. Elodie stared at the space it occupied in her mind, a frown on her face, the same sense of shock she’d felt at his betrayal filling her heart anew.
Finally, though, Fiero spoke, and his words were clipped, without emotion. “Alison and I divorced some time ago.”
Shock burst through her. “What?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching her like a hawk, so heat burned her flesh in place of the ice that was filling her veins.
Elodie lifted out of the chair, pacing across the room, shaking her head in disbelief. This made no sense. “When?”
“Over a year ago.”
Her eyes swept shut. It wasn’t because of her. She’d seen him six months after that night, and he’d been with his wife: a happy couple, connected, together.
“I can’t say I’m surprised, given your predilection for one night stands,” she murmured. “But if I’d known, I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
His eyes narrowed. “I doubt that.”
She swallowed. Her throat was dry, her tongue thick and uncooperative. “Why?”
“Our son is over two years old. There have been ample opportunities to inform me of his existence.”
Her eyes clouded over as she remembered the day she’d flown to Rome to do exactly that, the hurt she’d felt anew at seeing him – Fiero – with another woman. She hated that the memory could still wound her, that she couldn’t recall it without a cloying sense of panic and a sharp ache beneath her ribs.
“Just as there were ample opportunities for you to tell me were married,” she pointed out, her chin tilting defiantly as she glared at him. “You lied to me that night, Fiero.” She drew a breath, allowing her accusation to hit its mark. “I would never,” she slashed her hand through the air, “ever have slept with you if I’d known you were someone’s husband.”
His eyes glowed with emotions she couldn’t comprehend. “You’ll forgive me if I find it hard to believe your moralistic outcry, given the depth of your deception.” His words held a darkness that caused her to shiver. “Did you lose my number, Elodie?”