And what did it matter? She relived the teasing sting of his teeth on her lip and a forbidden little quiver snaked through her. With a groan she rolled over and pressed her offending mouth into the pillow. Rio was as potent as poison and equally toxic and Beppe was right, she needed to keep her distance. To do anything else would be to court disaster because Rio had no off switch, no respect for boundaries...and probably even less respect for her, she conceded unhappily.
CHAPTER SIX
BEPPE CALLED ELLIE bright and early and asked her to come to his home. Ellie surmised that he had bad news and she took her time over her breakfast in the hotel courtyard, trying not to stress over what could not be changed. Beppe had been wonderfully approachable and kind and helpful and she wanted to thank him for that. He could’ve denied any knowledge of her late mother but instead he had told her the unvarnished truth, even though doing so had raked up guilty memories and regrets.
Ellie drove over to the palazzo and Adriano showed her out to the shaded loggia, quickly reappearing with a tray of coffee and biscuits. Beppe appeared then, rather flushed in appearance and with eyes that were a little shiny.
He studied her and he then smiled widely, a smile brimming with happiness and appreciation. ‘Ellie,’ he began emotively as he handed her a sheet of paper to study. ‘You are my daughter and I cannot begin to describe how much that discovery means to me.’
Lively with excitement, Beppe could hardly be persuaded to drink his coffee as he ignored her medical training to explain rather unnecessarily the 99.99 recurring percentage of accuracy established by the successful DNA test. ‘I would’ve been delighted to discover that you were my niece but to discover a daughter, a first child after all these years, is an unimaginable joy!’
Ellie reached across the small circular table and grasped his hand to squeeze it. ‘Thank you for saying that.’
‘It comes from the centre of my heart,’ Beppe told her warmly. ‘Amalia give birth to a stillborn son just weeks before she suffered her stroke. We were devastated. I don’t believe, though, that I could have told her about you were she still alive. It would have hurt her too much and my affair had already caused her enormous grief.’
‘How do you think Rio will take this news?’ Ellie asked, dry-mouthed.
Beppe emitted a heavy sigh. ‘He will be here for lunch and I will tell him then. He will be happy that I am happy but very disappointed to hear that I once betrayed Amalia. If only we had adopted him as I wished, he would have been more certain of his place in the family.’
Ellie sat forward, brow furrowed, her curiosity engaged. ‘You wanted to adopt Rio?’
‘Sì. I will respect his privacy by not giving you details but he had neither parents nor a home and I wanted to take him in, but Amalia refused to set another child in what she always viewed as our stillborn son’s place,’ he confided heavily. ‘There were also elements of Rio’s background which disturbed her and she could not be persuaded to change her mind. He never knew that I wanted to adopt him though. Our contribution to his life became less direct as he grew up. We advised him, ensured he got a good education and supported him when he needed us but we could have protected him a great deal more had we adopted him and brought him up here.’
‘That’s unfortunate but Rio has still done very well for himself, hasn’t he?’
‘If you measure success by prosperity, his wealth reached stratospheric proportions after he won the oil contracts in Dharia. He is very much a self-made man,’ Beppe declared with pride. ‘But he is also a man damaged by a traumatic childhood and a tough adolescence. I should’ve done more for him.’
‘By the sound of it, you did the best you could in the circumstances,’ Ellie remarked soothingly, troubled more than she liked by the reference to Rio’s traumatic childhood and troubled adolescence. Yes, she could imagine how such experiences would have hardened him and what a difference a loving, supportive home background could have made. After all, she knew that she too was marked by the lack of love in her childhood. Her grandmother hadn’t wanted to raise her daughter’s two illegitimate children and had only done so because Annabel had paid her handsomely to take on that responsibility. When that flow of money had stopped, presumably because Annabel had suffered bankruptcy and ill health, her grandmother had complained bitterly about how much of a burden her granddaughters were. Polly’s affection had provided the only love Ellie had experienced during those years.
‘I think I’ll go back to the hotel now,’ Ellie announced, hardening herself to Beppe’s look of disappointment. ‘Rio will be arriving soon and we both need some time to think. This is a lot to take on board and so much more than I ever expected to learn.’
‘I hope you will pack and come here to stay with me for what remains of your holiday,’ Beppe admitted. ‘And perhaps someday you will feel comfortable enough to call me Papà.’
Ellie’s eyes prickled with tears as she left. She felt ridiculously emotional and when Beppe gave her a small, almost daring hug on the doorstep it almost made the pent-up tears spill down her cheeks. He was willing to be her father and she was in a daze of shock and happiness. It bothered her to appreciate that Rio was unlikely to celebrate the same news. Rio didn’t like her and didn’t trust her and the revelation that she was his precious godfather’s daughter would hit him hard. Would it hurt him that she had the blood tie with Beppe that he had been denied? She flinched from the thought, marvelling at how oversensitive she was to any thought of Rio being hurt.
It was so ridiculous, she thought ruefully. Big, tough, angry, hostile Rio would not be so easily hurt. Why was she even considering how he would feel about her parentage? What business was it of his? After all, the scene had been set before she was even born by Beppe’s affair with her unhappy mother. By the sound of it that extramarital affair had caused tremendous unhappiness for all the parties involved, but surely after so many years Beppe could begin to forgive himself and both of them could now concentrate on forming a relationship? That conviction at the forefront of her mind, Ellie packed her case and then walked down to the village to kill some time and allow Beppe to speak to Rio in peace.
* * *
Rio departed from Beppe’s home reeling from what his godfather had dropped on him. An adulterous affair and a daughter? No, he had certainly not seen that possibility on the horizon and it changed everything, his own position most of all. Ellie had played a blinder of a game by concealing her true motivation for being in Italy right to the very end, Rio acknowledged bitterly. In fact, she had trussed him up like a chicken ready for the roasting pot. Beppe had openly voiced his concern that Rio nourished dishonourable intentions towards his newfound daughter. Beppe had no idea that Rio had already gone much further than that and if he found out it would destroy his relationship with Rio. Worse still, if she was pregnant, Beppe would be digging out a shotgun.
It was time to take the initiative, not a time to sit back and vacillate over what-ifs and maybes, Rio reflected sardonically. Left in ignorance, he had dug himself into a deep hole and he had to dig himself out of it again and to do that he needed Ellie’s help whether he liked it or not. Raging resentment surged up through the cracks inside him and there was no healing balm of acceptance to soothe it. Beppe was, after all, the only true family Rio had ever had, the only adult who had ever shown him love, consideration and understanding while he was still a child. And now Beppe had a daughter, whom Rio had wronged. That she could well be a money-grabbing young woman keen to feather her own nest scarcely counted now that she was about to become Beppe’s heir. Furthermore, Beppe would never believe the allegations made against Ellie for there was virtually no proof of misconduct on her part.
Rio had hired a second agency to check and update the evidence he had originally been given. The hospice enquiry had cleared Ellie of any wrongdoing and she had refused the inheritance left to her by one of her patients. The only dirt left in the first investigative report relied heavily on her embittered uncle’s tale about the diamond brooch and, as the police had refused to prosecute, the whole story could easily be written off as being more rumour and backstabbing than actual fact. And furthermore, if Ellie was a gold-digger, Rio was about to make her feel as if she’d won the lottery.
When he learned that she had checked out of the hotel he was taken aback until he noticed that her hire car was still parked outside. The receptionist told him that Ellie had walked down into the village. He found her in the cool of the ancient stone church, studying a much-admired triptych of the Madonna and Child.
When he spoke her name, she whirled round, a figure of light and movement in the dim, dark interior. Her dress was the ice blue of diamonds and the sunlight cascading through a stained-glass window high up the wall showered her in a dancing rainbow of colour that only emphasised the vibrant copper of her tumbling hair. She wasn’t quick enough to hide the dismay and anxiety that crossed her face when she saw him and the tense expression and attitude that took over to stiffen her into stillness was no more welcoming.