The Italian's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  “I was watching the interaction between the two of you. I saw how the temperature went from scorching to freezing in the blink of an eye. And I know full well the reason you’re wishing you’d never come to Ischia has nothing to do with your father or brother, and everything to do with Matteo De Luca, so don’t try to convince me otherwise. What was it, Stephanie? Did Matteo insult you in some fashion?”

  The silence spun out, as her grandmother waited patiently for her to reply. “No,” Stephanie finally admitted, her voice low and ashamed. “I insulted him.”

  “Did he deserve it?”

  “No. What I said, what I…accused him of, was indefensible.”

  “So what are you going to do to put things right between you?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “No apology? No explanation for behaving as you did?”

  “Matteo made it pretty plain that he wasn’t interested, either in an apology, or an explanation—even if I could come up with one that made any sense.”

  “That may well be the case, and perhaps you don’t deserve to be excused for whatever it was you said. But something provoked you enough to speak out of character, Stephanie, and asking for his understanding might at least enable you to forgive yourself. We’ve all said things we shouldn’t, at times. What counts is being big enough to admit it.”

  She heaved a long sigh. “There’s so much more to this than you realize, Grandmother. It’s…complicated.”

  “Because he was your first love? What’s complicated about that?”

  “You knew?”

  “Well, I’d have had to be blind and decidedly stupid not to, darling!”

  Stephanie’s jaw dropped and she went cold all over. She’d been so careful, waiting until her grandparents’ bedroom was in darkness before sneaking out of the house to meet Matteo, and always made sure she was back in her own bed long before dawn. “And you didn’t try to stop me?”

  Her grandmother laughed. “How do you stop a nineteen-year-old girl from turning pink around the edges, every time a certain handsome young man’s name is mentioned, or he puts in an appearance?”

  “Oh…that!” Another blush chased away the chill.

  “Yes, that. What did you think I meant?”

  The blush turned to fire and spread up her neck to envelop her face in flames. “I…don’t know. I just feel like such a fool.”

  “Because you once fell in love with Matteo De Luca, or because you’re afraid you might do so again?”

  She closed her eyes, knowing Anna was right. Seeing Matteo again had revived all those old, wild feelings, and after years of order and relative tranquility, her life was suddenly spinning out of control again. She remembered how much she’d loved him, and telling herself all that was in the past didn’t amount to a hill of beans beside the jealousy she’d known when she’d seen how close he and Corinna were.

  It wasn’t a question of her falling in love with him again; it was whether she’d ever stopped loving him to begin with.

  “Oh, Grandmother!” she sighed. “Is it so obvious?”

  “I’m afraid it is. Which brings me again to the question of what you plan to do about it.”

  “There’s nothing I can do. It’s clear he doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

  “Perhaps because you’re so busy throwing up barriers that he hasn’t had a chance to get to know the real you.”

  “It’s just as well. He’d find the real me even more detestable than the one he thinks he knows.”

  “Stephanie, for a mature and intelligent woman, you sometimes come out with the most absurd statements! The man has pursued you from the minute you set foot on this island. He’s shown himself willing to take a chance. Why can’t you meet him halfway?”

  Because I’m afraid! “Because it’s too late. I made sure of that this afternoon.”

  “As long as you have life and breath, it’s never too late.” Anna took Stephanie’s face between her hands. “You say you don’t want to disappoint me, that you want this to be a happy, memorable time for your grandfather and me, something that will give him the peace of mind he longs for so desperately. Well, darling child, paying lip service to the idea isn’t enough. You’ve got to do your part in making it happen.”

  “By throwing myself at Matteo when he’s made it clear he wants nothing more to do with me? That’s blackmail, Grandmother!”

  “I prefer to call it sound advice.” Glancing at the gilt carriage clock on the table at her side, she rose from the couch. “Go to him, darling,” she urged. “Talk to him. Sort things out. What do you have to lose?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHAT did she have to lose?

  Just about everything, that’s what! the cautious, practical side of Stephanie’s personality warned. It isn’t only about you and Matteo, and falling in love, anymore; it’s about Simon. If you rekindle that early passion and find it to be more durable this time around, you’re going to have to choose truth over deceit, or live in fear of discovery for the rest of your life. And truth, my dear, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It could spell disaster and heartbreak for everyone concerned. You’re better off sticking with the lies.

  Yet how much protection did they really offer? she wondered. Drew had taken Simon beachcombing earlier. What if they happened to meet Matteo and, in the course of idle conversation, one or the other let slip something to arouse his suspicion?

  Already, he’d remarked on how big Simon was for his age. What if the thought occurred again, and he came right out and asked when Simon was born? What if, even as she paced the villa’s upper balcony envisioning the worst, it was actually happening, and her son was spilling information which would inadvertently reveal her closely-guarded secret?

  She shivered in the late afternoon heat, and scanned the empty garden. Earlier, she’d felt the blistering sting of Matteo’s anger. How much deadlier it would be, should he ever learn that casting aspersions on his moral integrity was the least of her sins toward him!

  Still, Anna’s advice lingered, ripe with tempting possibilities. Might it not be worth giving him time to cool down, then going to him and apologizing? If he rebuffed her, she’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing she’d done the right thing, and have lost nothing but her pride. But if he welcomed a reconciliation, they both might have much, if not everything, to gain.

  Could she do it? Should she?

  Sighing, she raked another worried glance over the still-deserted garden. In the end, it all came back to Simon, a boy who’d unknowingly adopted his biological father as his new hero. She could make that father a permanent part of his life, if only she dared.

  The trouble was, she had no control over the outcome of such a revelation. It might result in happy-ever-after, and it might not. Did she have the right to gamble on the reality of what she and her son already had, however imperfect that might be, for the sake of a highly improbable fairy-tale ending with the man whose paternal link to Simon had been the result of sheer bad luck? What if all she did was make matters worse?

  Let sleeping dogs lie, some wise person once said, and perhaps she was better off clinging to that. Simon was not, after all, an unhappy boy; he wasn’t insecure. There were male influences in his life, and there could be more, if her grandmother’s hope for closer family ties actually materialized. True, he wished he had a father, but realistically, would he be any better off with one who lived half a world away?

  Voices below jarred her out of her introspection and had her peering expectantly over the veranda railing. Relieved, she saw Drew chasing Simon as he raced through the garden, dodging behind the trees, leaping over flower beds, and doing his utmost to elude his uncle. He was laughing, happy, carefree—all the things a mother wanted to see in her child.

  Forget Matteo, that wise, pragmatic inner voice counseled. What you see right now, what you already have—this is what your life’s really all about.

  But, ironically, no one else in the family was inclined to dismiss him
so easily.

  “Too blasted hot for golf,” Bruce declared toward the end of dinner that evening, when asked how he and Victor had enjoyed their afternoon. “Decent of Corinna, though, to arrange for us to play at her club. We’ll have to reciprocate in some way. Invite her over here for cocktails, or take her out somewhere for a meal. What did you all think of her, by the way?”

  “Perfectly charming,” Stephanie’s grandfather said promptly. “Knows how to entertain. Obviously a woman of class and taste.”

  “But what the devil was De Luca doing there?” Victor drawled, his habitually supercilious tone more pronounced than usual.

  “What he does best, I suspect. Latching onto someone with money.” Bruce eased one finger under the collar of his dress shirt, and nodded for Gaetan, the maggiordomo, to refill his wine glass. “And from the look of him, he’s persuading Corinna to part with plenty of hers. Did you see the watch he was wearing?”

  “No,” Victor snorted. “I kept any sort of contact with him, visual or otherwise, to a minimum. He’s a damn sight too familiar with people beyond his station, if you ask me, kissing my grandmother and mother’s hands, and draping himself all over Corinna.”

  “I rather liked having my hand kissed,” Anna said mildly.

  At that, a timid voice spoke up from the other end of the table. “So did I.”

  A stunned silence descended, and all eyes turned on Vivienne. “Well, I did,” she said, staring back defiantly. “It was quite…lovely. Very continental.”

  “Trust you to be taken in by a smooth operator!” her husband sneered.

  “Well, Bruce, at least he showed some manners, which is more than can be said of you or Victor! I thought you both were very rude to him. I was embarrassed.”

  Victor’s mouth dropped open and Stephanie’s father looked thunderstruck. Recovering himself with some difficulty, he inquired coldly, “Are you drunk, Vivienne?”

  “No.” She twisted her opal dinner ring nervously. “I’m speaking my mind, for once.”

  “About time, too,” Anna said approvingly. “And you’re quite right, Vivienne. My son and grandson behaved disgracefully. Thank heavens Andrew and Stephanie were there to balance the scales.”

  But she hadn’t done that, Stephanie thought miserably. She’d merely added insult to injury, and she owed it to herself, let alone Matteo, at least to put that much right.

  She waited until Simon was tucked in for the night before following through on her resolve. By then, her grandparents had coaxed her mother and Drew into a round of bridge, and her father was engaged in a game of chess with Victor.

  “I’m going out for a while,” she told them, pausing in the entrance to the day salon.

  Annoyed by the interruption, her father looked pointedly at the ormolu long-case clock in the corner and gave a disapproving sniff. “At this hour? It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “I’m not asking your permission, Father,” she informed him tartly. “In fact, I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all, if it weren’t that I need someone to keep an ear out for Simon. Grandmother, would you mind—?”

  “I’ll listen for him,” her mother offered. “I’d love to baby-sit. It’s something I’ve never been able to do before, with you both living so far away. Go out and have fun, Stephanie.”

  Catching her grandmother’s conspiratorial glance, Stephanie said, “Well, I’m hardly expecting that from…a stroll in the garden, but thanks anyway, Mother. I won’t be gone long.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Anna said, her attempt to appear artless betrayed by the wicked twinkle in her eye. “We’ll hold down the fort here.”

  The trouble, Stephanie decided, descending the steps from the terrace to the garden, was that her grandmother had been born blessed with more than her fair share of optimism. It was the reason she’d coerced her dysfunctional family into this vacation-cum-reunion, and it was the reason she believed a sincere apology was all it took to repair a relationship, regardless of how badly damaged it might be.

  Stephanie, though, doubted Matteo would respond quite so generously and her courage, which had been in short enough supply to begin with, lessened with every step that took her closer to his cottage. Still, her conscience wouldn’t allow her to turn back. It was already burdened with enough guilt.

  Except for the faraway murmur of the sea, the night air was still, and fragrant with flowers, but the moon had not yet risen above Mount Epomeo. The bulk of the mountain left the pergola swathed in darkness and, as she passed underneath, her foot became tangled in some sort of creeping vine which almost sent her sprawling.

  Ahead, the dense shrubbery cast even thicker black pools of shadow across the path, and she wished she’d thought to carry a flashlight. She’d also have been better off to change into something more practical than the high-heeled sandals and ankle-length dress she’d worn at dinner. But Matteo’s unflattering comments on her outfit at lunch had stung and, truth to tell for once, she wanted to leave behind a more favorable impression this time, since it might well turn out to be the last time they saw each other.

  When she finally arrived at his cottage, her heart was hammering, her palms were damp, and what had seemed like the honorable thing to do, when she’d thought about it earlier, suddenly struck her as foolhardy and pointless—a sop to ease her troubled mind. As if apologizing for a verbal insult in any way compensated for the vastly greater sin of concealing Simon’s paternity! If she were one-tenth as decent as she proclaimed herself to be, she’d tell Matteo everything he had a right to know, and let the chips fall where they may.

  The upper floor of the house lay in darkness. However, his front door and the windows to either side of it stood open to the warm night, and flung golden prisms of lamplight into the water spilling from the courtyard fountain. At that, the faint hope that he might not be home died and, gritting her teeth, Stephanie approached the little gate set in the low wall surrounding the place. It opened with the merest click but, to her heightened awareness, the sound carried the weight of a thunderclap, and she froze with her hand on the latch, waiting for him to appear and demand an explanation for her showing up uninvited.

  Instead, the night remained silent, leaving her wondering if perhaps he was already in bed. But surely, if that were the case, he’d have turned out the downstairs lights…unless he wasn’t alone, and was so engrossed in entertaining a guest that he wouldn’t have noticed if Mount Epomeo’s dead volcanic peak had suddenly erupted.

  The prospect filled Stephanie with such a wave of dismay that she tiptoed across the courtyard and, holding her breath, peeped through the uncurtained window to the right of the front door. Relief washed over her at what she discovered. The room beyond was deserted.

  Of course, she had no business spying. Should either have announced herself or left, as anyone with a speck of self-respect would have. But somehow, even in absentia, Matteo brought out the worst in her. And so she lingered, at the mercy of insatiable curiosity.

  A handsome rug, Savonnerie from the looks of it, covered most of the floor. Framed antique maps hung on the walls. A leather sofa flanked a small marble fireplace filled with an arrangement of dried flowers. Against the far wall, a desk held a lamp, and three decanters on a silver tray. On a coffee table, half-burned candles in marble holders shared space with an empty brandy snifter and a book. All very cozy, and so harmlessly reassuring that she stole past the front door to the other window.

  It, though, had louvered shutters angled so that no one from the outside could see in—and heaven knew, she tried hard enough, pressing her face to the glass and squinting upward like the relentless voyeur she’d suddenly become.

  Horrified at what her obsession with Matteo had reduced her to, she straightened and edged toward the front door, determined to put an end to all the nonsense. “Fish or cut bait, you idiot!” she scolded, reaching for the wrought iron bell chain hanging on the wall.

  But before she could pull it, she found herself pinned from behin
d in the beam of a powerful flashlight. A second later, Matteo’s disembodied voice floated through the garden. “If you’re thinking of stealing the silver, Signora, you ought to know that the polizia on this island take a very dim view of pilfering tourists, especially women. I’ve heard that, as a warning to other like-minded foreigners, such thieves are imprisoned in chairs in a certain room in the Castello Aragonese, and left there to die.”

  She should have been embarrassed, shocked, even frightened. And perhaps she was. Perhaps it was the volatile combination of all three that caused her to respond by wheeling around and, in a burst of fury as irrational as it was inappropriate, yell, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Matteo? Turn off that light!”

  “Don’t shout at me,” he replied, unmoved, and aimed the lamp directly at her face. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the one owing anybody explanations.”

  Throwing up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare, she said heatedly, “I wasn’t planning to steal anything, you fool! What kind of person do you think I am?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said, playing the beam slowly down her body. “Why don’t you enlighten me, Stephanie?”

  His voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion—anger, regret, sorrow? She couldn’t tell. He was doing too good a job of masking his true feelings from her. Feeling utterly naked, utterly defenseless, and knowing she had no one to blame but herself, she said, “I will. Please, just turn that thing off, first.”

  She heard a click, and promptly found herself blinded by darkness. “I’m waiting,” he said.

  “Well…um….”

  “Yes?”

  She drew in a frustrated breath. “It’s not easy talking to someone I can’t see, you know!”

  The flashlight clicked on again, this time to reveal him lounging in a hammock slung between two sturdy flowering trees, and from where she stood, he looked to be half-naked. “Here I am in the flesh,” he said, unaware of the irony of his reply, “and you’ve now run out of excuses. So, once again, I ask: why are you here?”