The Italian's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  Struggling to hide her dismay, she said, “Just how long have you been watching us?”

  “A minute or two only. I wasn’t at first sure that it was you.”

  “And now that you know your eyes weren’t deceiving you?”

  “Then I take the opportunity to say hello.” With impeccable courtesy, he shook Simon’s hand. “Buon giorno, Signor. I’m Matteo and you, I think, must be Simon. You’re enjoying your visit to Ischia?”

  “No,” Simon said forthrightly.

  Matteo laughed and slid, uninvited, into the empty chair next to Stephanie’s. “I like a boy who knows his own mind. So, what’s brought you here today?”

  “We’re tourists,” she croaked, so agitated by his nearness that she hardly knew what she was saying. “What do you think brought us here? We’ve come to see the sights.”

  Fleetingly, his gaze returned to Simon slumped miserably over his ice cream dish, before it zeroed in on her again. “Yet it appears that neither of you is having a good time.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” she said, desperately trying to wrestle her thoughts into something resembling coherent order. “We’re merely trying to decide where to go next.”

  “Don’t you know that the only way to find the very best places is to turn to a local tour guide?”

  “We have a very good map, thank you. We don’t need a guide.”

  “But of course you do, la mia bella! Shops such as the ones you see here….” He snapped his fingers contemptuously. “They’re impossible to miss and are of the kind found all over Italy. But you need someone who’s familiar with every inch of this special island, to show you where knights used to fight battles and keep prisoners in dungeons.” He slewed a conspiratorial glance at Simon who was now eyeing him with horrifying interest. “You’d like to visit a castle, Signor?”

  “For real?”

  “Sì, Signor! For very real!”

  “Oh, boy!” Simon turned to Stephanie, delight transforming his features. “Can we, Mom?”

  Her stomach rose up and bumped against her heart. Sight-seeing with her son’s biological father? Not likely! “I don’t think so, sweetie. I’m sure Signor De Luca has more important things to do.”

  “Not so,” Matteo said, with maddening good cheer. “Signor De Luca took care of all his errands earlier, and has the rest of the day free.”

  About to refuse the offer again, this time more crushingly, Stephanie caught the changing emotions chasing over Simon’s face—fledgling hope and earnest pleading, warring with tearful disappointment—and hadn’t the heart to go through with it. What harm could it do, after all, to accept Matteo’s offer? Exploring a castle hardly constituted a threat to a secret no one but she knew existed.

  “Well,” she said, blowing out another sigh, this time of defeat, “perhaps for an hour or so, but only if you’re sure we’re not imposing.”

  “I’m very sure,” Matteo said, sounding so annoyingly machismo and, at the same time, looking so utterly, romantically Italian that she could barely stand it. “It’ll be my very great pleasure to make your afternoon memorable in every way.”

  She groaned inwardly, quite certain that he’d succeed far beyond anything he realized, and chanced another look at him. Today he wore navy trousers, tailored to fit him like a glove, and highly polished black shoes. As for his shirt…!

  Swallowing, she dragged her gaze away. Did his shirt have to be so blindingly white that, in contrast, his skin glowed like beaten bronze? Couldn’t he have done something with his hair so that it didn’t gleam black as midnight satin? And by what right did he flaunt lashes so long and thick that it was a miracle he was able to hold his eyelids open? If he was determined to insinuate himself into her afternoon, couldn’t he at least have looked too ordinary to merit notice, instead of standing out in the crowd, a god among men?

  “Well, Stephanie, do we have a deal?”

  Left with little choice but to accept the situation as gracefully as possible, she nodded. “We have a deal.”

  “Buono! I’ll find a taxi while you finish your gelato.”

  “Taxi?” She glanced at the Fiat still parked across the street. “Isn’t that your car?”

  The hint of a smile crossed his face. “No, Stephanie. I didn’t drive here today. I came by boat.”

  “All the way from Saint Angelo by ferry, you mean? I wish I’d thought of that. The people who own our villa very kindly left their Porsche for us to use, but it seats only four, so Simon and I have been taking the bus every day, and he’s becoming a bit tired of it.”

  Matteo pressed his lips together more firmly, as if trying to prevent the smile from erupting into a full-blown grin.

  Immediately suspicious, she said, “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Not a thing,” he murmured lightly. “You make me smile, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because while others might look at you and see a woman of great beauty and sophistication, I’m reminded of a long-ago summer and a girl full of innocence and laughter.”

  Laughter for a little while, perhaps, she thought bitterly, but for me, it was followed by an endless winter of tears! “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m still that girl fresh out of high school, too dim-witted to find her way out of a brown paper bag without help, Matteo.”

  His amusement abruptly vanished. “I never envisioned you as such. And if you believe that I did,” he finished cryptically, “then you have even more to learn about me that I originally thought.”

  If that wasn’t warning enough that she’d taken on more than she could handle, what followed soon after certainly brought the message home. Not that Matteo forced himself on her in any way. If anything, he treated her with casual courtesy much of the time, and chose instead to direct most of his interest, not to mention his considerable charm, on her son. And she, contrary fool that she was, smarted at being relegated to second billing.

  “I will help you to speak Italian,” he told Simon, when they were all three jammed in the back seat of a small taxi like so many incestuous sardines, and proceeded to devote the entire journey to teaching him simple phrases, so that he could practice them on the pretty waitress who took their pizza order when they stopped for lunch at a small waterfront trattoria in Ischia Ponte.

  Simon proved to be an excellent student. “Grazie,” he said, when she set a tall glass of fruit juice before him.

  She flashed him a wide smile. “Prego, le mio piccolo signor!”

  “I think she knew what I said!” he whispered proudly, after she left to wait on another table.

  “I think she’s fallen in love with your handsome blue eyes, Signor Simon,” Matteo teased.

  But it seemed glaringly obvious to Stephanie that if the woman was smitten with anything, it was Matteo’s dark, sultry gaze. It was enough to give a person indigestion, she thought sourly, eyeing the anchovies on her slice of pizza with acute disfavor.

  Then, suddenly, he directed his thousand watt smile her way, and her irritation melted in its warmth. At twenty-five he’d been beautiful enough, but in the way that young men of that age are, before life has left its defining mark on them. At thirty-five, he was so much more than merely handsome, and she found herself fascinated beyond reason by him…left with no sense of survival…drawn by an indefinable magnetism—all that hooey she thought she’d outgrown years before.

  She’d been such an awkward, love-struck adolescent! If he’d told her then to go jump into the frigid waters of Bramley Lake in winter, she would have done so without regard for the fact that she’d have been taking her life in her hands. Instead, he’d crooked his little finger, and she’d tumbled into bed—and into love—with him, in the middle of summer, and the results had been almost as disastrous.

  Surely she wasn’t about to make the same mistake again?

  “You’re looking very somber, Stephanie,” Matteo remarked, studying her as she sipped her iced caffe latte. “Aren’t you the smallest bit pleased
to see me again?”

  Simon had left the table and wandered down to the quayside where fishermen were hauling ashore the day’s catch. “I’m keeping an eye on Simon,” she said, glad of an excuse to avoid answering his question directly. “I don’t want him wandering too close to the edge of the dock.”

  But mentioning her son was a mistake. Following her gaze, Matteo studied Simon long and hard, and Stephanie felt the fear pushing against her ribs, crowding her lungs.

  What did he see? What was he thinking? Had something about Simon triggered suspicion in his mind, so that he’d begun to connect the dots?

  “He’s a fine looking boy, Stephanie.” The observation cut across her line of thought like a hot knife through butter. “Big for his age, too. He can’t be more than…what, eight?”

  “He takes after his father,” she said, averting her gaze and shamelessly opting for distorted truth. “Charles was a big man.”

  “Was?”

  “He died not long after we divorced.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea. That must be very hard on Simon.”

  “He was too young at the time for it to have much effect on him.” Not bothering to add how often Simon wished aloud that he had a father like other children his age, she pushed away from the table. “I think we should tour that castle now, before Simon grows restless.”

  “Sono pronto—I’m ready when you are.” He called to Simon and led them to the causeway connecting the village to the rocky island from which the forbidding walls of the Castello Aragonese rose up. “So, which of us can run faster?” he asked, the laughter in his voice a direct challenge Simon couldn’t resist, and in seconds they were off, racing each other along the narrow path.

  Her disquiet increasing with every step, Stephanie followed, helpless to halt events set in motion by her own stupidity. She heard Simon’s gales of laughter floating on the breeze, watched him gaze worshipfully at this new and exciting male presence who’d suddenly come into his life.

  Shading her eyes from the sun, she saw the silhouette of their two figures etched against the cloudless sky: the man, so broad and tall, holding her son’s—his son’s!—hand, worming his way into the child’s trusting heart, and it was as if she were imprisoned in a soundproof bubble from which there was no escape.

  Be on your guard, Simon! she wanted to call out. Don’t let yourself adore him. He can’t be a part of your life, no matter how badly you want him to be! But the words bounced around in her head, sounding an urgent warning only she could hear.

  “Mom?” Simon came dashing back to her, cheeks rosy with excitement, dark blond hair tousled by the breeze. “Hurry up! We’re waiting to go in the castle. Matteo says they used to keep people chained up in the dungeons for years. He says there’s secret passages—”

  “There are secret passages, Simon.”

  The point of her comment sailed blithely over his head. “How did you know? Oh, I guess Matteo told you, right? He knows everything!”

  Hardly! she thought, rolling her eyes in despair.

  “Hey, and guess what else! Matteo says there’s a room where they used to put dead people on chairs and just leave them there to rot. Gross, huh?” He tugged at her hand, forcing her to pick up the pace. “Come on, Mom! This is going to be so cool!”

  “Why the solemn face, Stephanie?” Matteo inquired, as she drew level with him, and Simon, bursting with impatience, went charging ahead. “You’re not looking forward to touring the Castello?”

  “If you must know, I’m not looking forward to being woken by my son’s bad dreams tonight, when the horror stories you’ve been filling his head with come back to haunt him. What are you thinking of, frightening a child his age with stories of dead people left sitting in chairs?”

  For several seconds, he subjected her to such a direct stare that she squirmed inside. Finally, he said, “If anyone is afraid, Stephanie, it’s you. Your boy is having the time of his life, and the more he shows his enjoyment, the more you show your fear—of me! Care to tell me why I disturb you so deeply?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Ah, Stephanie! Many things about you might have changed. The lovely girl I once knew has grown up. Her clothes, her jewelry, her haircut, her cool reserve, all attest to a level of sophistication that young creature couldn’t begin to emulate. But one thing about you remains the same. You still haven’t learned how to tell a lie.”

  Much he knew! “And you’re as shallow now as you were then. You know nothing about me except for what you see.”

  “Precisely.” He wound a strand of her hair around his finger, just firmly enough to hold her prisoner. “Less than half an hour ago, I sat across from a woman who ought to have been perfectly at ease in that unpretentious little trattoria where we stopped for lunch. Yet she was nervous as a cat dancing on broken glass. She could barely force a sliver of pizza down her throat. Her eyes darted frantically from her son to me, as if she thought I might abduct him right from under her very elegant nose. The pulse at her throat beat more furiously than a hummingbird’s wings. She clutched her coffee cup as if it were all that stood between her and death. Every time her son’s face came alive with laughter, she winced as if he’d struck her. Those were the things I saw, cara, and I see them still.”

  Perspiration beaded her forehead; trickled between her breasts. “You have a very vivid imagination, I’ll grant you that.”

  “Not imagination. I speak the truth, just as I always have with you. You don’t trust me, and I’m at a loss to understand why.” He cupped her jaw, his touch warm and firm. “Surely, after all these years, it could not be because I ended our affair?”

  She felt the heat rising to her face and tried to twist free of his hold, but he refused to let her go. “That’s it!” he exclaimed softly, his gaze probing the depths of her soul. “Because I hurt you once, you think I might do so again.”

  “Rubbish! You did me a favor, and if I didn’t see that at the time, I certainly came to appreciate it later. You freed me to go on and make something of my life. So at the risk of denting your colossal ego, I’m neither afraid nor distrustful of you, Matteo. I’m simply grateful. In hindsight, you turned out to be more a friend than I gave you credit for.”

  “Then prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Allow this friend to take you out to dinner tonight. Give me the chance to redeem myself for the cavalier way I treated you then, by showing you the kind of man I am today. Let me try to explain why I acted as I did.”

  His voice, sort of velvet, sort of not, stroked past her ear and created havoc in her midsection. Smothered her in nostalgia. Made her want to recapture all the fire and passion that once had flared between them.

  But she was no longer nineteen. She knew that such intense heat soon burned itself out. “Who you are today is scarcely relevant, Matteo,” she said, pushing his hand away and putting some distance between them. “Nor do I see any point in rehashing the past.”

  “Even if doing so clears the way for better understanding in the future?”

  “We have no future,” she said flatly, and that much, at least, was true. Because of him, she’d built the present on lies from her past; she wouldn’t allow him to compromise her future in the same way.

  “Perhaps not in the long term, but you’re here for the rest of the month. Even if we weren’t living next door to one another, the odds are high that, on an island as small as this, we’d meet time and again. Do you really want every chance encounter to be filled with such tension that you spend half your days looking over your shoulder in an effort to avoid me?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “Then let us hammer out a truce in a neutral setting. Come on, Stephanie,” he coaxed, when still she hesitated. “What do you have to lose? I’m not asking for your first-born, just a quiet dinner between friends, with no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive.”

  His off-hand remark about laying claim to her firstborn was but one of many reasons to turn down his invitation
. Yet refusing such a reasonable request merely gave credence to his allegation that she was afraid of him. Wouldn’t it be better to defuse such a claim by accepting? After all, she was a lifetime older and wiser than she’d been when first they met. Harder to impress, tougher to fool. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes with him again. Would she?

  “Since you put it like that, why not?” she said, with what she prayed was a carelessly indifferent shrug. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Eccellente! I’ll pick you up at the villa at eight.”

  “It’s better if I meet you outside the gates.”

  “As you wish, Stephanie,” he said, his smile at once ironic and amused. “You may count on me to be very discreet.”

  Candlelight became her, shifting over her face and shading her eyes with mystery at the same time that it showcased her smile. Glad he’d chosen to wine and dine her in the subdued opulence of Circolo Alongi, a private supper club housed in a nineteenth century villa tucked high on the slopes of Mount Epomeo, he leaned back in his chair and examined her at leisure.

  The setting might have been created just for her. Even as a teenager in shorts or blue jeans, she’d possessed the bearing of a princess. Here, in a dress the color of sunrise and with her blond hair swept up in a shining coil on top of her head and sparkling crystal prisms dangling from her ears, she could have been a queen. The backdrop of rich cream walls hung with fine paintings, jewel-toned silk rugs on pale marble floors, and exquisite floral arrangements on linen-covered tables, simply enhanced her loveliness.

  Regarding him over the rim of her wineglass, she said, “You’re staring, Matteo.”

  “I can’t help myself. You draw the eye of every man in the room.”

  “Why? Have I committed some dreadful faux pas?”

  “Not you,” he replied. “I’m the only one prone to such behavior.”

  “By inviting me to dinner?”

  He shook his head, momentarily overcome with a surge of regret so intense that it took his breath away. “I’m at a loss, Stephanie. I don’t know whether to apologize to you for the way I behaved ten years ago, or thank you for making that summer the most pleasurable of my life.”