Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“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?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. She shook her head.
“You knew who I was. How to contact me. You chose to do neither –,”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I discovered six weeks ago that I am the father to a two year old boy.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Oh, yes, how clearly I recall this. The conversations, the meetings, the lengthy discussions about custody –,”
“Don’t be glib.” She was shaking. She dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, her stomach looping like an out-of-control figure of eight.
“Don’t lie to me then.”
“I’m not lying!” The words came out louder than she’d intended but she didn’t apologise, nor did she make any effort to soften her voice.
She had the feeling that she’d been pushed from the safety and sanctuary of the hospital into a wild and untamed jungle, and that Fiero was a lion hunting her track, toying with her for a reason she couldn’t make sense of.
“Then tell me of your attempts to contact me,” he encouraged sarcastically. “Was there perhaps a dead battery on your mobile phone? A poor connection? Did the dog eat your homework?”
“Wow,” she shook her head angrily. “Fine. Have it your way. And you’re right.
Kind of. I didn’t want to tell you. Not at first. Not when I saw who you were and I googled you and learned that you were married.
” Her eyes flashed with silent rage. “Can you blame me, Fiero? I was furious. I hated you that morning, I hated you so much. To have woken up and found you gone after what we’d shared,” her voice wobbled and she shook her head to break the threads of those memories, memories that warmed her even when the aftermath was chilling.
“That was bad enough, but to see photos of you and your wife all over the internet?”
His chest moved with the rapid rise and fall of his breath, but his face maintained a terse mask of disgust. “So you thought you’d keep him from me as what? A punishment?”
“NO!” She roared the response. “When I found out, my first instinct was to not tell you. It was a one-night stand and you’d disappeared into thin air, forgetting all about me. Why bother involving you? You were married, for God’s sake.”
“As you’ve said.”
“But then I had his twenty week scan,” she spun away from Fiero, focussing her gaze on the view of the roses growing beneath her window.
“And I saw his little face and his nose and heard his heart so loud and strong, and I knew that you had a right to know. I could hate you for what you did to me, but that didn’t change the fact that you were his father.
” She swallowed, that day burned into her memory.
“I flew to Rome, and came to your house. I waited there, screwing up my courage to tell you about Jack.”
“So? Then what? Go on, I’m intrigued.”
His scepticism was obvious.
“Right as I was preparing to cross the road and knock on the door, it opened. You walked out. With her. Alison.” She felt that it was a betrayal to the sisterhood that she spoke the other woman’s name with disdain.
The other woman had, after all, done nothing immoral.
It was she, Elodie, who’d been in the wrong.
His features briefly shifted to show a greater level of cynicism. “I see.”
“I’m telling the truth. I saw the two of you together and I realised that you were happy.
No, it was more than that.” Tears cloyed at her throat.
“You were a family, and I had no right to come into your life and destroy that. I wanted our baby to bring happiness and love, and if I told you, it would likely have destroyed your marriage and I couldn’t do that.
I didn’t want that to be Jack’s legacy.”
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes scanning her face. “That’s a very convenient story, except for one salient detail.”
“Oh?”
“My wife and I had separated six months before I met you. She moved out of my home; we stopped living together. We were as good as divorced the night I met you.”
Elodie had suffered a traumatic accident a month and a half ago, but the pain in her head now was blinding. It was like being slammed with a mallet. “I don’t believe you.”
“So here we are, man and woman, both determined not to believe the other. Unfortunately for you, only one of us has to bear the proof of a lie.”
Elodie frowned.
“Whatever you thought, whatever you felt, you chose to keep my son from me. There is no excuse – none – niente – that you can offer to make that okay.”
“You were married,” she responded softly, the words swallowed up by her confusion.
He had been. There were thousands of photographs on the web, Alison and Fiero at charity balls, concerts, dinner, walking hand in hand in Cannes.
Bile rose through her. She ground her teeth and tried to grab onto her anger again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t magically intuit the situation, that I didn’t somehow know you were separated. If I had, believe me, Fiero I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
“You should have told me anyway.” The words, though spoken quietly enough, slammed into her as though he’d shouted them through the room.
She spun around to face him, and whatever she’d been about to say slipped from her mind. The look on his features stilled her.
He was devastated. Her heart kerthunked.
“I have missed two years of his life.” The observation was heavy with accusation.
“And these past six weeks, I have got to know our son. I have seen him laugh and cry and talk and eat, run and walk. I have kicked a ball with him and for every moment that is so perfect, I feel an equal sense of disbelief and anger, because I should have known him from infancy. I should have held him as a newborn in my arms, I should have wiped his brow if he were fevered, held his hand as he took his first steps. I should have been there.” His eyes glittered when they locked to hers.
“You kept him from me, and there is no excuse for that.”