The Italian's One-Night Baby(10)

Only innate courage persuaded Ellie out of the sanctuary of the cloakroom because in reality she wanted to curl up and die somewhere well out of Rio’s sight and reach. She didn’t want to see him again; she didn’t want to have to speak to him again either. She simply wanted to forget what had happened and continue her holiday.

‘Please drive me back to my hotel,’ she said woodenly, refusing to look directly at him.

‘Are you on the pill? Or any other form of contraception?’ Rio asked her with startling abruptness.

Ellie almost flinched. She had spent a year taking contraceptive pills after her sobering experience with Rio at her sister’s wedding. She had feared meeting that level of temptation again and as a result had taken sensible precautions to protect herself in the future. Sadly, however, she had suffered side effects from the medication and had stopped taking the pills.

‘No. I’m not.’ Ellie shook her head slowly and walked back into the reception room to sit down again, because she felt literally weak with shock and anxiety. ‘How could we both be so stupid?’

‘There are still...options,’ Rio selected in a grim undertone.

Ellie’s head reared up, fiery corkscrew curls tumbling back from her white forehead, accentuating her bright green eyes. ‘Don’t you dare suggest options to me! I’m a doctor, sworn to protect life,’ she shot back at him.

‘I didn’t say that that was what I wanted. Accidenti! We are not reckless teenagers but we behaved as though we were,’ Rio intoned in open exasperation. ‘When we get together it is as though we are cursed. Let us hope there are no consequences...’





CHAPTER FIVE

ELLIE BREATHED IN deeply and slowly released her breath in the hope of chasing away the brain fog afflicting her ability to think. She was struggling to perform little mental calculations around her menstrual cycle, very quickly realising that their timing had been little short of catastrophic. She had chosen the worst possible moment to abandon her usual caution, she recognised in steadily deepening dismay.

What if Rio made her pregnant? The consequences of unprotected sex were not something she wanted to contemplate, particularly when she had a very poor relationship with the potential father. She suppressed a fearful shudder and told herself to be strong. Whatever happened, it would happen and she couldn’t change that. In the meantime it would be best to go on as though nothing had changed.

‘Please take me back to my hotel or call me a taxi or something,’ Ellie muttered in desperation.

‘You still haven’t told me what you’ve done to Beppe—’

‘I haven’t done anything to him!’ Ellie proclaimed in a sudden fury roused by the stabbing of her conscience. After all, if Beppe Sorrentino was troubled, it was her fault because she had told him something that had upset him. She had been selfish and thoughtless, dwelling only on her right to know who her father was without ever considering the cost that that information might inflict on anyone else. Even worse, Rio was Beppe’s godson and Beppe had no idea that Ellie had already met Rio and was currently involved with the younger man. But was she involved with him?

Ellie grimaced at the concept because that word, involved, lent a gravitas to their entanglement that it didn’t deserve. They had engaged in a foolish and irresponsible sexual encounter, nothing more. They weren’t in a relationship, nor were they likely to be. And how did she feel about that reality? And the answer was that that reality saddened and wounded her heart and her pride. With Rio, she was slowly and painfully learning that she was more vulnerable than she had ever appreciated. She had made a mistake with him two years earlier and almost unbelievably had made an even bigger mistake this time around. Sex might be a field that Rio played in but Ellie didn’t play at anything she did. She didn’t do casual either.

‘Ellie...’ Rio breathed impatiently.

Ellie rose from her seat to move back out to the hall. ‘I can’t discuss Beppe with you. I’m sorry but that’s how it is—’

‘What are you hiding from me?’ Glittering dark eyes full of suspicion locked to the pale triangle of Ellie’s face.

Ellie lifted her chin. ‘People have secrets, Rio. Secrets they don’t want to share. Dragging them out into the light of day isn’t always the right thing to do,’ she reasoned uneasily.

‘Beppe has no secrets... He’s not that kind of man,’ Rio argued with sublime assurance. ‘So, if you’re not judging, you’re preaching. Are you so perfect?’

‘No, I know I’m far from perfect and I wasn’t preaching. I was just speaking my thoughts out loud. I’m a little confused right now,’ Ellie admitted tightly, her eyes suddenly stinging while she wondered if her entire trip to Italy had been an outsize blunder. Maybe she should have left the past buried, maybe she should’ve tried harder to suppress her curiosity. All she knew was that she felt very guilty at the knowledge that Beppe had been distressed by her visit. He had dealt with her kindly but perhaps she hadn’t deserved that kindness.

‘I’ll take you back to the hotel,’ Rio murmured without any expression at all. He had reached the conclusion that it would take a hacksaw to extract anything from Ellie that she did not want to share. What secrets was she concealing? What he had read in that investigative report? Or was there more?

‘Yes, thank you. I have a da—’ Ellie bit off the word before it could reach the tip of her tongue but she saw Rio’s dark gaze switch fast to her face and she felt her cheeks burn.

‘You have a date?’ Rio pressed in growling disbelief, staring at her as she stood there in the comparative dimness of the hall, a glowing beauty with a sexily tousled mane of vibrant coppery curls, translucent skin and a mouth that would’ve tempted a saint. And he had never been a saint. Even less was he known as a possessive lover, because he didn’t allow himself to become attached: once bitten, twice shy. So why did the very thought of Ellie becoming intimate with another man infuriate him? Disconcerted by that rush of anger, he tamped it down hard and gritted his teeth.

‘A guy I met in the village invited me out to dinner tonight,’ Ellie confided in a rush.

‘His name?’ Rio demanded.

‘Bruno Nigrelli.’

Rio’s nostrils flared. ‘I think he did some work for Beppe once. Lawyer?’

Ellie nodded uncomfortably.

Rio gritted his teeth even harder in the smouldering silence. Was she expecting him to object? Even waiting for him to do so? Wasn’t that how women sucked a man in, by assigning strings and conditions and making him want and demand more?

‘I’m not much in the mood for dinner now, but I don’t like letting people down—’

Rio’s dark eyes flared golden as the sunset. ‘Then cancel him and spend the night here with me instead.’

Ellie froze in bewilderment, green eyes flying over his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Spend the night?’ she repeated shakily.

‘It would make more sense—’

Ellie dropped her gaze defensively. ‘Nothing about us makes sense—’

‘We make perfect sense. You decided I was a bastardo two years ago and even if I saved the world you wouldn’t budge an inch from that conviction,’ Rio derided.

‘I think a lot of women would think the same after that night at the wedding, but let’s not get into that,’ Ellie counselled heavily as she yanked open the hefty front door. ‘We have enough differences without raking up the past. I can’t stay, Rio—’

‘Ellie... When will you know?’

Ellie dropped her head as she settled into the passenger seat of his sports car. ‘In ten days to two weeks,’ she framed jaggedly. ‘I’ll do a test as soon as I can.’

In the sunlight, Rio stood very still. What would he do if Ellie conceived his child? He recalled his own sordid origins with an inner shudder of recoil, knowing in that instant that there would be no sacrifice too great were it to mean that his child could look back with pride and contentment on his or her early years. Only when Beppe and Amalia took an interest in him had Rio learned what it was to have self-respect. Being cleverer than everyone around him had only attracted the bullies. Being prettier as a boy had also drawn the abusers. His lean, strong face was stamped by the grim lines and hollows of bitter recollection and experience. As an adult, Rio Benedetti might be as rich as the fabled Croesus but he had never forgotten his humble beginnings in that dumpster.

Ellie glanced up to see what was preventing Rio from joining her in the car and ended up staring, because it was a revelation to see that Rio, all lean, mean and magnificent six-foot-plus of him, could look haunted and almost vulnerable. She scolded herself for that imaginative flight as soon as he started up the car but his rebuke about her tendency to judge was still nagging at the back of her mind. Sometimes she was kind of black-and-white about situations, she acknowledged uneasily, but just as she had learned all her life to follow rules she had learned to compromise and understand what motivated people to do the things they did, as well. She supposed she was still holding the events of two years earlier against Rio because his colourful sex life had shocked her. As someone who had never pushed against conventional boundaries, possibly she was a little too conservative for a passionate free spirit like Rio.