“Yes.” Ellie whispered. She took a step backwards, panic rising inside of her. They knew – they understood what Xavier meant to her. No words were necessary to confirm their suspicions.
“You saw the woman we are with,” the father spoke now, taking a step towards Ellie, but his look was one of sympathy. Urgency, too, but sorrow for Ellie and how she must be feeling.
“Arabella and Xavier have known one another a long time,” the father continued, without waiting for Ellie’s answer. She wasn’t sure she could speak, anyway.
“Their wedding was to take place next month.”
Was? Ellie’s heart speeded up.
“But his injuries might not make that possible,” the mother interjected, the words raspy, loaded with a pain Ellie understood.
“Nonetheless, when he wakes, he will want to marry her. There is no doubt in my mind about that.”
Ellie sucked in a breath as the reality of what she was being told perforated the fog in her mind. He was engaged to another woman. His body was possessed by another, his mind, his heart. All of him.
“But he … said he loves me,” she said with a shake of her head, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “Or that he could love me.” It was all a blur. She swept her eyes shut, trying to recall all the little promises they’d made one another. Some spoken, some implied, all meaningful.
The elegant Spanish couple shared a glance, and Xavier’s mother’s expression bore a look of intense pain.
“He loves Arabella,” the father insisted, with no concept of how those words tore through her.
“He said…”
“Whatever he said was a lie. It’s not unusual for a man to have doubts before his wedding – and the wedding is only weeks away now.”
Ellie’s stomach churned. So what? She’d been a last little bit of fun?
“I can’t believe this,” she said with a shake of her head.
“Arabella is devastated with her worry. She has cried all night with concern for Xavier. The last thing she needs is to find out he’s been in London, messing around with…”
Ellie held a hand up, unable to let him complete that sentence. It would burn her if he did. There was no description of what they’d been to one another that wouldn’t mortally wound her.
“I’m sorry our son has hurt you,” the father continued, softening his tone. “But we’re going to have to ask you to leave now. This is a family matter.”
A silent sob wracked Ellie’s chest. A family matter. The line was there and Ellie would never breach it.
“And I must insist that you don’t contact my son again.”
Ellie’s eyes flashed with fire as she instinctively rejected that idea. Never speak to Xavier again? Never touch him? No. She couldn’t agree to that.
“He loves Arabella,” the father took over, perhaps sensing her opposition. “And she loves him. No good can come to anyone with you interfering.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ellie finally found her voice. “I would never interfere in a marriage.” Her cheeks were whiter than paper. “I had no idea your son was engaged. Believe me, had he told me of… Arabella’s existence in his life, I wouldn’t have looked twice at him.” How it hurt to say the other woman’s name!
The parents exchanged a look, and it was heavy with a crucible of emotions. Sorrow, recrimination and guilt.
Ellie was laced with regret. With foolish, hurt pride and a love that was strangling her organs, for its misplaced existence. How could she possibly have thought she’d fallen in love with him? After only two days?
This was her foolish fantasy, not his. She saw their weekend through his eyes now – the seduction, the laughter. The fun. How easy she’d been for him to take to bed – how easy he’d found it to walk away from her. That wasn’t the act of a man in love. It was the deed of a man who was promised to another, who wanted a last fling and didn’t much care who with.
“You know we have money,” the mother said, desperation in her tone. “We would happily provide you with a financial settlement in exchange for your silence.”
Ellie’s harsh intake of breath rang through the corridors. “How dare you?” She whispered, the words numb, yet carrying the force of a thousand volcanoes.
“Our son is lying there broken,” the mother pleaded. “And when he wakes up, we need his life to be waiting for him. If Arabella found out about you, about this, it would destroy her. And him. If you care about him at all, you won’t go to the press with this –,”
Ellie shook her head harshly. “I would never do that.”
“We cannot simply take your word for it.”
Ellie lifted her chin, anger and poise radiating from every line of her petite frame. “You’re going to have to.”
She was shivering though, and she desperately needed to get away from them.
“I’m sorry he hurt you.”
Ellie shook her head. “I’ll go now,” she said simply. “On one condition.”
The parents looked at each other, mistrust lining their faces. “What is it?”
“You’ll call and tell me how he is. I just… need to know he’s okay.”
The mother’s shoulders sagged. “Yes. Give Roberto your number. Thank you.” She looked at Xavier’s father. “I will go back to Arabella and our son.” She walked away, without a backwards glance at Ellie.
“Xavier has always had … an appetite,” the father began, his tone somewhat apologetic.
“Please don’t.” Ellie swept her eyes shut, her heart in pieces. “I know what this must look like to you. I know how it must seem. But I want to reserve the right to remember this weekend as what it felt like to me. As two people falling in love.” She sobbed then, lifting a hand to her cheek and dashing away the tears. “I know he’s getting married. You won’t hear from me again. I can promise you that. But at least let me hold onto the memory.”
Xavier’s father looked surprised, but he nodded slowly. “As you wish.”
Ellie stayed only so long as it took to leave her number and then she walked with knees that were shaking and a head held high, from the hospital ward, and out of Xavier’s life.
He’d been in a coma for a month.
On the day he’d come back to the living world, thin and disoriented, his mother had called Ellie. “It’s Maria. Salbatore.” And then, at Ellie’s silence. “Xavier’s mother.”
Ellie nodded, then made a strangled noise of acknowledgement, her breath held, her heart twisting, bracing for bad news.
“He’s awake.”
She’d been walking through Regents Park, and she’d sunk to the grass, uncaring that it was wet beneath her bottom. Tears sparkled on her lashes. “How is he?” The question was hoarse.
“He’s… He will have a long recovery,” Maria said slowly. “But Arabella is by his side constantly. She vows he will be standing at their wedding day.”
Ellie sobbed, fresh hurts lashing pains that were already so tender. “I’m… glad he has her.”
Silence fell, and then, “He hasn’t contacted you?”
“No.” Ellie bit the word out, her heart breaking.
His mother sighed. “He made a mistake, and I am sorry for that. Arabella is the only person who makes him happy, now. He loves her, Elizabeth. I know that if he could take back what happened with you, he would. I need you to promise me you’ll never contact him, or me, ever again.”
Ellie’s chest was shredded by the request. It burned her alive. But she nodded, and then cleared her throat. “It’s over,” she said stiffly, her soul withering with the acknowledgement of such finality. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“Good. You’re right. How could it have meant anything when he’s so happy with Bella? Already talking about the family they’ll have and where they’ll settle…”
And Ellie had disconnected the call as swiftly as she could. That was the end of it.
He was marrying Arabella, and planning to start a family with her. But at least he was alive – and that was som
e comfort for her miserable heart.
Two months later, she discovered her pregnancy.
Two awful months and then her world had fallen further apart, when her parents – conservative to a fault – had refused to support her.
Had refused to allow her to live with them when she was carrying an illegitimate baby.
“Who is the father?” They’d railed at her, again and again, and she’d said nothing.
Because she couldn’t.
How would she ever tell anyone that she’d been foolish enough to be drawn into a man like Xavier Salbatore’s seductions?
What a stupid, naïve child she’d been! Time had given her some clarity and she’d been able to see how he’d used her. How he’d seen her as an easy target and seduced her for sport. How she’d meant nothing to him, just as Maria had said. No one would judge her more harshly than she did herself.
“If you won’t tell us, so that we can make him marry you and raise this baby properly, then you will leave our house at once!”
Marry her? She laughed. Not a sound of humour. A deranged sound of pain. She’d refused to tell them his name, and they’d stuck to their threat, giving her ten minutes to pack a bag and then telling her to take her shame far away from them.
She had
And yet she’d agonized over the pregnancy. She’d agonized over whether or not she could keep a baby from someone. On the one hand, he had a whole life that was completely distinct to her. She’d been an aberration for him – a guilty secret he’d never planned to share with another soul. The consequences of that weekend would be unwelcome for him.
He wouldn’t be grateful to her for sweeping in and threatening his relationship, and his life, with this bombshell of a revelation.
And yet…
He was this child’s father. Didn’t he at least have a right to know? Couldn’t he then decide what he wanted to do? If she made it very clear she wanted nothing from him, except to be left alone as much as possible?
Yes, she had to tell him.
And so she’d called his mother, one last time, hating that she had to go through a third party in order to communicate with Xavier.
Maria must have recognized the number, because she answered with a suspicious tone in her voice.
“It’s me. Elizabeth,” Ellie said, just to be sure.
“Yes?” Maria could not be colder nor more unwelcoming if she tried.
“I…” I’m pregnant. Your son’s the father. It shouldn’t be so hard to say.
“I’m glad you called,” Maria rushed to speak first. “It gives me a chance to tell you that I spoke to my son about you.”
Ellie’s heart slammed into her ribcage and a foolish ray of hope slipped into her breast. “Oh?”
“Yes. I was angry at him for cheating – we raised a better man than that! - and so I asked him about you.”
Ellie’s stomach twisted painfully; she gasped and had to sit down. “What did he say?”
“That he was ashamed. Mortified. He said that weekend was just a bit of fun before the wedding; that it was meaningless. Had it not been for the accident he would have made sure you understood that yourself – that you knew it had just been …” Maria cleared her throat. “Sexual.”
The words danced like pinpricks of pain on Ellie’s eyelids.
“He said he regretted it, that he wished he’d never met you. He said if he could have his time again, he would never do anything to hurt Arabella. She means the world to him, as he does to her, so you can see why my husband and I sought to protect him from…”
Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, pain lancing her. “From me,” she finished the sentence, the very idea that she would ever do anything to hurt Xavier. Even now, she couldn’t imagine wishing him ill.
“So whatever fantasies you’re harbouring towards my son, I’m telling you this to save you the embarrassment. It was a foolish indiscretion but now it’s over. Done with. You truly are better to forget he ever existed.” And then, with a slightly softer tone. “I know he’s forgotten all about you.”
She thought about telling Maria anyway. Or forcing her way into Xavier’s life. But to do so would have killed Ellie.
To see him and know that he wished they’d never met, to know that she’d always be a mistake to him. Would he view their son as a mistake? Would he loathe her for ruining his marriage? And wouldn’t she loathe herself anyway?
The wedding photos had cemented it.
She’d googled him and the pictures had popped up, taken from a Spanish street, the sun shining, the woman Ellie recognized from the hospital at his side.
And Ellie had cried, because Xavier looked so different, and so familiar.
His face was in profile, because he was looking at his bride, a smile on his face.
His body was thinner, but it was still, unmistakably, him.
He was married – but he might as well have been dead to her.
She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell in the past.
That weekend had been a mistake, for both of them. But only one of them had to live with the consequences.
CHAPTER THREE
Present Day
“STOP.” HE SPOKE WITH natural authority, but she kept going, her legs carrying her towards the door. She needed to escape; she needed to breathe air that wasn’t his.
She needed not to hear him, to see him, to have him within reaching distance.
“Tell me your name.”
The words were a command but she heard something deep within them. A plea. She ignored him.
They had a son together and he couldn’t even remember who she was!
He was a pig. A disgusting, dishonest, cheating pig of a man. “ I can’t believe you don’t remember!” She snapped, shaking her head at her own stupidity.
“A few years ago, I was in a car accident,” he said gruffly. “You might have heard about it. I was in a coma for a little over a month. When I came to, I had no idea who I was.”
Ellie bit down on her lip, tears stinging her eyes, surprise and pain etching in her heart.
“For days,” the words rumbled through the room, hitting her square in the chest. “I couldn’t have told you my name, or my age. Then, things started to come back. Gradually. Too gradually for me.” The words were said with self-deprecation, but she understood the ache beneath them.
“And then more things, so that I remembered much of my life. But not all of it.”
Ellie turned around slowly, to face him, to read the truth in his expression, and she knew he wasn’t lying. He looked… lost. A surge of something like confusion was flooding her body. He’d had amnesia?
He lifted a hand, running a finger over his scarred cheek. “I was left physically scarred, but my brain was broken too.”
She swallowed, his confession melting her heart, when it shouldn’t have. His mother’s words were lodged in her brain like a sharp object she couldn’t ignore. She’d insisted that they’d spoken about Ellie. That he’d regretted sleeping with her.
Was it possible the older woman had lied? And when Ellie had been phoning to tell them news of her pregnancy?
Maria had lied. Hadn’t she heard something like panic in Maria’s voice? She’d wanted the wedding to go ahead and she’d said whatever she’d needed to in order to get rid of the other woman. And Ellie had believed her.
Did it matter? The man before her had lied too. He had been engaged. He’d married his fiancé. Nothing altered those facts, and so she focused on them rather than the sympathy that was threatening to soften her towards him.
“We were together before your accident,” she said stiffly. “You were very much engaged, with your memory intact, when you slept with me.”
Something glittered in the depths of his eyes. Emotions she couldn’t comprehend. “I don’t remember.” He took a step towards her, and she instinctively moved backwards. He expelled an angry sigh of impatience. “I’m not going to hurt you. God, what happened between us that you’re afraid of me?”
/> She arched a brow but he could see her pulse hammering, the fine flesh at the base of her throat utterly captivating. She wasn’t afraid of him, though. She was afraid of what she felt when he stood so close to her. “You basically dragged me to your hotel room just now,” she reminded him stiffly.
“Because I remembered you!” He said urgently and then shook his head. “I mean, not exactly. I just know that you meant something to me.”
She angled her head away.
“I have all these black holes in my mind – times and days and events that are foggy. I can’t catch hold of memories, no matter how hard I focus. I look at photos, I talk to friends. They’re gone – probably forever. I’ve come to accept that. But sometimes I have a feeling, almost like a premonition, and I know that a part of my past is before me. That’s what I felt tonight, when I saw you. A sense of recognition so powerful that I had to listen to it.”
His words hammered inside of her, pushing at her certainties, making her doubt everything and know nothing. She looked around, eyeing off the scotch he’d poured her earlier. On instinct, she moved towards it, lifting it to her lips and sipping a small amount. It went down easier, second time around, and warmth spread through her body.
Joshua.
Their son.
A son she’d kept secret from this man because she’d felt she had no other choice. Because she’d had to. And now he was standing before her, asking her to tell him about their time together and she wanted to – she wanted to tell him that they’d fallen in love! Except it was a lie.
He hadn’t loved her.
He’d been using her. Having fun with her. Toying with her. A last indiscretion before he married the love of his life.
And he still was toying with her.
His wife was out there, and he was whisking women up to his hotel room on a hunch. Once a cheater, always a cheater.
“We met at the theatre and you asked me back to your hotel room. We slept together. The end.”
“No, not the end,” he contradicted, moving closer to her. “What was I seeing? Who was I with?”
Her exhalation was impatient. “Les Miserables. You were alone.”
Claiming his Secret Baby_One night and a lifetime of consequences... Page 3
