Unwrapping The Innocent's Secret / Bound By Their Nine-Month Scandal

“I’m no longer a foolish girl easily taken advantage of by traveling soldiers, if that’s what you mean.”

His head canted to one side, and his black eyes gleamed. “Did I take advantage of you, Cecilia? That’s not how I recall it.”

She eyed him. “Whether you recall it that way or not, that’s how it was.”

“Tell me, then, how precisely did I take advantage of you? Was it when you crawled into my hospital bed, threw your leg over me and then rode us both to a mad finish?”

She remembered it as he said it. She remembered everything. The wonder of taking him inside her. The madness, the dizzy whirl. His big hands wrapped around her hips and his intent, ferociously greedy gaze.

No one had ever explained to her that the trouble with temptation was that it felt like coming home, wreathed in light and glory.

That melting sensation grew worse, but she refused to let herself squirm the way she wanted to do.

Because this wasn’t about her.

“I always wondered what it would be like to have a conversation like this with you,” Cecilia said when she was sure she could manage to sound calm. Faintly bored. And it was not untrue, though as the years passed, the content of the conversation had changed in her head. She’d asked fewer questions. At some point she’d even become magnanimous. She’d practiced it enough in mirrors. “I find it’s less productive than I might have imagined. I don’t understand why you’re here. I am not haunted.”

Only furious, still and always, but she didn’t tell him that. He didn’t deserve to know.

“Can it be as simple as catching up with an old friend?” he asked as if he was…reasonable in any way. Palatable.

She made a scoffing sound. “Please. We were never friends.”

To her surprise, his mouth curved. “Cecilia. Of course we were.”

Something in her chest seemed to stutter to a halt then. Something different from the panic, the heat.

Because she remembered other things, too. Long afternoons when she would sit by his bedside, holding his hand or mopping his brow with a cool cloth. In those early days, when no one had known if he would make it, she’d sung to him. Songs of praise and joy interspersed with silly nursery rhymes and the like, all calculated to soothe.

When he grew stronger, he would tell her stories. He couldn’t believe that she had never been to Rome. That she had never been more than a couple of hours out of this valley, for that matter. Or not that she could recall. He painted pictures for her with his words, of ancient ruins interspersed with traffic charging this way and that, sidewalk cafés, beautiful fountains. Later, when she was no longer a novitiate and often found herself up in the middle of the night—either because she was worried about her future, or because sleep was a rarity for a woman in her position—she’d looked up pictures online and found the city he described. In bright detail.

He’d made her feel as if she knew it personally. Sometimes she thought she hated him for that.

“Either way,” she said resolutely, “we’re not friends now. Do you wish to know how I know we’re not? Because friends do not disappear like smoke in the middle of the night, without a word.”

She regretted that the moment she said it. This was not about her, not anymore, and if she wanted to tell herself a harsh truth or two, it was possible it never had been. She could have been the field outside his window. The mountains looming about in every direction. She was simply here. He was the one who crashed the car, tore himself to pieces and got the luxury of telling dramatic stories about what the experience had taught him in televised interviews.

Not that she planned to admit she’d ever watched them.

Meanwhile, Cecilia was the one who could remember nothing but this valley. This village. The comfort of the abbey walls and the counsel of the women she’d believed would be her sisters one day.

It was true that he had taken all of that away from her. But another truth was that she’d given it to him. And she knew she shouldn’t have mentioned that night.

Something she was in no doubt about when his expression changed. His eyes were too hot suddenly. His mouth was too stern and yet remained entirely too sensual.

Now that she was standing up, she could better appreciate what the years had done for his form. He had always been beautiful, like something carved from soft stone and twisted into that flesh that had healed so slowly. Now he seemed made of granite. His shoulders were so wide. And the excellent tailoring of the suit he wore did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that his torso was thick with hard, solid muscle.

And somehow she’d expected that because he’d filled out he would be less tall. But he wasn’t. She still had to look up at him. And for some reason, even though she was no longer on her knees, it made her feel a little too close to powerless for comfort.

“By all means,” he said in that dark, silken way of his. “Let us discuss that night.”

And she’d already started down this road. She might as well say all the things she’d been carrying around inside her all these years, or at least the highlights, because she had no intention of having this discussion again.

“What is there to discuss?” she asked. “I fell asleep in your arms. It was the first time I had done something like that, as every other moment we’d had together had been so furtive. Stolen. But not that night. You asked me to stay and I stayed. And when I woke up in the morning, you had left the valley for good.” She made a noise that no one could mistake for a laugh. “In case you’re wondering, I woke up the way you left me. Naked. With the sun beaming in the windows and Mother Superior standing at the foot of the bed.”

Back then she could have read every expression that moved over his face. Every glint in his eye. But though she could see something shift there today, she couldn’t twist it into any kind of sense. And it was stunning, the things that could wallop a person. The ways that grief could sneak into the most surprising crevices and well up there, like tears.

“Is that why you’re not a nun?” he asked.

She wondered if he knew what a loaded question that was.

It is not for me to tell you what to do, child, Mother Superior had said when Cecilia’s condition became clear. That is between you and God. But I will tell you this. I have known you since you were delivered to our door. I watched you grow up. And I greeted, with joy, the notion that you might join the sisters here. But the truth is, the order is the only family you’ve known. I have to ask myself if you truly wish to dedicate yourself to this life, or if what you want most of all is family. And now you will have your own. Do you truly wish to give that up?

“In the end,” Cecilia said now to the man who was a catalyst for both her greatest shame and deepest joy in life, damn him, “I was not a good fit for the order.”

“Not a good fit? You’d already been living in that abbey for most of your life. How could you not be perfect for them? Why would they let you walk away?”

She glared at him. “These are all interesting questions. But not from someone who ran off in the middle of the night. If you had questions to ask me, Pascal, you could have asked them then.”

“I did not run off,” he bit out. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was something like temper in his voice then. Sparking in that black gaze of his. “You must always have known, cara, that my destiny was never here.”

Her palms stung and she realized she’d curled her hands into fists. She forced herself to unclench her fingers, one by one.

“That became clear once you left. And then failed to return for six years.”

“I’m here now.”

“And I’m sure that any moment, the heavens will open up and hosannas will rain down upon us all,” Cecilia retorted. Archly. “But until that moment, you will forgive me if I am somewhat less enthused.”

“The Cecilia I remember would never have spoken to me this way.” One of his brows rose. Imperiously. “I remember soft, cool hands. A pretty singing voice. And cheeks that were forever pinkening.”

“That girl was an idiot.” Cecilia sniffed. “And she died six years ago, when she woke to find herself not at all the person she’d imagined herself to be.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Don’t you? I thought that I was a moral, upstanding, pure and wholesome individual. A woman who truly wished to dedicate herself to a life of service. But it turned out that I was wicked straight through, shameless enough to flaunt it in the very abbey that raised me, and so foolish that I actually believed that the man who had engineered my fall might stick around to help with a rough landing. Alas. He did not.”

His stern mouth looked starker somehow. “I was told that all sins would be forgiven if I were to do what was inevitable, what I would do anyway, and leave.”

Cecilia opened her mouth to argue that, but something about the way he said it tugged at her. “What do you mean, you were told?”

But he didn’t answer the question. He studied her for a moment, then another, his hand on his jaw.

“You have yet to explain to me what my board members were doing here. Let me guess who it was. An older gentleman, perhaps? Silver hair and beard, a theatrical cane and a penchant for dressing like an uptight Victorian? And his trusty sidekick, the younger man, round and possessed of an overly glossy mustache?”

He had described the two men exactly.

She shrugged. “They didn’t leave their names.”

“But I can see from your expression that they were the ones who came here. Why?”

“Your story of narrowly escaping death in the Dolomites, and the recovery that allowed you ample time to shore up your scheme to take over the world, is practically a fairy tale told to small children at this point. Everyone has heard it.”

“I’m delighted that you have paid such close attention.”

“But that’s my point,” Cecilia said coolly. “No attention was required. The story was everywhere. You’re fairly ubiquitous these days, aren’t you?”

“If by ubiquitous you mean wealthy and powerful, I accept the description proudly.”

“Because that’s what matters to you.” She couldn’t seem to help herself. Because she had to keep poking and poking to make sure that he really was this stranger he’d turned into. That the man she’d thought he was had never been anything but a figment of her own imagination. She had to be certain. “Money at all costs. No matter who it hurts.”

“Who does it hurt?” His gaze was far too bright. Particularly with his mouth set in that harsh line. “There will always be rich men, Cecilia. Why shouldn’t I be one of them?”

“I think the real question is why you’re here,” she said past the lump in her throat for the man she’d nursed all those weeks. The man she’d believed was different. The man who had never existed, not really. “Because I want to be clear about something, Pascal. We like this valley quiet. Remote. The sisters spend their lives here engaged in quiet contemplation. If they want the bustle of the city, they know how to drive themselves down to Verona. What none of us need or want, villager and nun alike, is whatever scheming Roman nonsense you or your minions brought with you.”

“I told you.” And his voice was harsher then. “I came here to face a ghost, nothing more.”

“I know that ghost is not me. Perhaps the ghost is the man you were, when you were here before. Because if we’re being honest, you left him that night, too.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t reel away from her as if she’d hit him. And yet, somehow, Cecilia had the distinct impression that she’d landed a blow. Possibly with a very sharp knife.

And she would have to spend some time questioning herself later. She would have to try to figure out why, when she’d dreamed of landing blow after blow, each harder than the last, the doing of it made her feel shaken.

“But that is something you can sort out on your own,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as off balance as she felt. “It doesn’t involve me.”

Because if she stood here any longer, she would forget herself. And she already knew what happened when she allowed herself to forget, particularly when she was around Pascal. More to the point, her life was different now. She had no desire to change it completely. Not anymore. Not again.

She stepped around him, yanking her bucket off the floor as she went. She headed for the door at the side of the altar that led into the vestry, thinking she could bar herself in the church if necessary. There were hours yet before she was due to pick up Dante and she very much doubted that a man like Pascal would lounge around, waiting. Whatever whim had brought him here would have him bored silly and heading for home before long.

“Cecilia.”

And she hated herself, because his voice, her name, stopped her. He still had that power over her. She had the despairing notion he always would.

“I’m going now,” she said, glaring at the window up above her. “Whatever you wanted out of this sudden return is your business. But I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of it.”

“You said I couldn’t have him,” he said. “Tell me who he is.”

She was staring up at the stained glass before her. And this was the moment of truth, wasn’t it? She had tried to call, of course. Once he had started appearing on the news, and in the magazines. She tried to do her duty by him. But she’d never made it past the main switchboard of his company. No matter who she spoke to, and no matter how they promised that someone would get back to her if her claim was found to be worthy, no one ever did.

Three years in, she’d stopped trying.

Since then she’d been certain that given the chance, she would, of course, come clean at the first opportunity.

But she hadn’t.

She’d excused the fact she hadn’t made the situation clear to his board members. She’d told herself that they didn’t deserve to know something Pascal didn’t already know himself. But deep down she’d believed that she would never see him again. That this moment would never come.

Now he was here. She had foolishly thrown Dante in his face straight off. Now he’d asked directly.

It was another opportunity to discover who she was, and once more Cecilia was faced with the lowering notion that it was not who she’d thought. Not at all. Because she wanted—more than anything—to lie. To say whatever was necessary to make him let her go. Forget about her. And never, ever, get anywhere near Dante.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She was too aware of her own pulse, pounding in places it normally didn’t. She swallowed, not surprised to find her throat was dry.

And then she made herself turn, because she had done harder things than this. Like sit up in a bed in the clinic, without a stitch of clothing on her body, and face Mother Superior directly. Then explain what on earth she was doing there. Or like when she’d started to show, and had been forced to leave the abbey—the only home she’d ever known—and find her own cottage to live in, just her and her growing belly and her eternal shame.

And neither of those things was all that difficult stood next to childbirth.

So she faced him. The man she had loved, hated and lost either way.

And she had no optimism whatsoever that what she was about to tell him would change that.

In fact, she suspected she was about to make it all much worse.

“He is your son,” she said, her voice echoing in the otherwise empty church. “His name is Dante. He doesn’t know you exist. And no, before you ask, I have absolutely no intention of changing that.”

CHAPTER THREE

HER WORDS WERE IMPOSSIBLE.

They made no sense, no matter how loudly they echoed in his head.

Pascal thought perhaps he staggered back beneath the weight of all that impossibility, possibly even crumpled to the floor—but of course, he did no such thing. He was frozen into place as surely as if the stones beneath him had made him a statue, staring back at her.

In horror. In confusion.

There must be some mistake, a sliver of rationality deep inside him insisted.

“What did you say?” he managed to ask through a mouth that no longer felt like his own.

Because while he was certain he had heard her perfectly well, no matter how he tried to rearrange those words in his head, they still didn’t make sense. They couldn’t make sense.

“This isn’t something I want to tell you,” Cecilia said, tilting her chin up in a belligerent sort of way that was one more thing that didn’t make sense.

Because the sweet almost-nun he’d known hadn’t had the faintest hint of belligerence in her entire body. Though her body was obviously the last thing in the world he needed to be thinking about just now.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she was saying. “So. Now you know.”

And then, astonishingly, nodded in punctuation. As if the subject was now closed.

“I cannot be understanding you.” His voice sounded as little like his own as the words felt in his mouth, and he still couldn’t seem to move the way he wanted to. Or at all.

Cecilia sighed as if he was testing her patience, another affront to add to the list. “You have a son, Pascal. And you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that. If memory serves, you never spared the slightest thought for any kind of birth control. What did you think would happen?”

It was the sheer insult of that—and the unfairness—that seared through him, hot enough to loosen his paralysis.

“I was recovering from a car accident in a hospital,” he gritted out. “When do you imagine I might have nipped out to the shops and found appropriate protection? I assumed you had taken care of it.”

“Taken care of it?” She actually laughed, which nearly let Pascal’s temper get the better of him. But she didn’t seem to notice. Or care if she did. “I was raised in a convent. With real-life, actual nuns. It might surprise you to learn that the finer details of condom use during premarital sex didn’t come up much during morning prayers.”

Pascal dragged his hands through his hair, though it was cut almost too short to allow it. Unless he was very much mistaken, his hands were actually shaking, something that might have horrified him unto his soul at any other moment. But right now he could hardly do more than note it and move on. It was that or succumb to the high tide swamping him, drowning him, tugging him violently out to sea.

“I cannot have a son,” he snapped out, not caring that his words were far too angry for a place like this. Holy and quiet, with the watchful eyes of too many saints upon him—and none of them as sharp as Cecilia’s gaze. “I cannot.”

Cecilia sniffed. And her remarkable eyes sparked with what he thought was temper, however little that made sense to him.

“And yet you do. But don’t worry. He’s perfect, and he doesn’t need you.” The gleam in her eyes intensified, and he felt it like a blow to the center of his chest. “Feel free to run back to your glossy magazines. Your lingerie models. Whatever makes you happy, Pascal. You can pretend we don’t exist. The way you’ve been doing for six years.”

“How dare you take that tone with me.” His voice was soft, because his fury was so intense he thought it might have singed his vocal cords. The rage and grief in him so hot and blistering he wasn’t sure he’d ever speak in a normal voice again. “You never told me you were pregnant.”

“How would I have done that?” She fired the question at him, plunking her bucket back down on the stone floor with a loud crash. She even took a step toward him as if she wanted this confrontation to get physical. “The first time I saw you mentioned in the papers, two years had gone by. Before that? You’d just disappeared overnight. The army had discharged you, and even if they hadn’t, they weren’t about to hand out a forwarding address. What was I supposed to have done?”

“You knew I was from Rome. You knew—”

If he hadn’t been close enough to see the pulse in her neck go wild, he might have believed the cold smile she aimed at him meant she wasn’t affected by this interaction. But Pascal wasn’t sure that knowledge was helpful.

“Right. So you think I should have…what? Wandered up and down the Spanish Steps while heavily pregnant?” she demanded. “Calling out your name? Or better still, climbed atop the Trevi Fountain with a newborn in my arms, demanding that someone in the crowd take me to you? How do think that would have worked?”

That she had a point only made his anguish worse.

How could this have happened? He couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to tear down this godforsaken church with his hands as if that would change the way she was looking at him. As if it could turn back time.

As if that could save him from the nasty reality that he’d become exactly what he most loathed without knowing it.

“You keep mentioning magazines, which means you clearly saw me in one,” he found himself saying as if he could argue the conviction from her face. As if he could make this her fault and make it better, or different, by shrugging off the blame. “You must have known the company existed. That must mean you could have contacted me. You obviously chose not to do so.”

Her laugh sliced into him. “I called your company repeatedly. Oddly enough, no one took me seriously. Or I assume they didn’t, because it took you all this time to turn up here.”

“Whoever else might have turned you away will be dealt with.” Though even as he said that, he already knew what had likely happened. Any reports of pregnancies would have been dismissed by Guglielmo as opportunists attempting to cash in on Pascal’s success. He would never have dreamed of wasting Pascal’s time with empty claims. “But if you had actually turned up on my doorstep, Cecilia, I would not have denied you entry.”

She actually dared roll her eyes. At him. “That’s good to know. Should you impregnate me and leave me behind like so much trash again, I’ll be sure to take that tack. I’ll gather up whatever children you’ve abandoned, camp out in your lobby and hope for the best. What could possibly go wrong?”

“What kind of person has a man’s child and fails to tell him?” Something cracked wide open inside him, and it was harder and harder to pretend he was angry when it went far deeper than that. When it felt like a catastrophic fissure, deep within. “It has been six years. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I know exactly what I’ve done, because I’ve been here the whole time, doing it,” she fired back at him, and he had the uneasy notion that she could see that yawning expanse inside him and was aiming straight for it. For him. “You knew where I was. You knew that I was unpardonably naive. You weren’t without experience as you made a point of mentioning more than once. Surely you must have known that anytime people have sex, especially without any protection, there’s the possibility of exactly this occurring. You never inquired.”

“How dare you put this responsibility on me.”

“I will not stand here and listen to lectures from the likes of you on responsibility, thank you,” she bit out. She moved even closer then, and went so far as to jab a finger toward him—very much as if she’d have liked to put out his eye. “You try being a single parent. All the feedings and diaper changes, the crying for no reason and sudden, scary illnesses. Where were you? Not here, handling them.”

“I could hardly handle something I didn’t know was happening.”

She jabbed that finger again, and it occurred to Pascal that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by him. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d encountered such a thing. And certainly not from a woman he’d thought was a ghost a few hours ago—and who he remembered as nothing but sweet.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” she was saying with more than a little ferocity. “There’s more joy in it than ought to be possible, or the species would have died out. But what I’m talking about is keeping a tiny human alive. What you’re talking about is your own hurt feelings because you chose to disappear into the ether and it turns out, there are consequences for that. One of them is the child you helped make.”