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“You’re… saying you’re just going to send us back?”
His eyes narrowed. “What were you expecting?”
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut again. That was an excellent question. “Finding out about Jack was…a surprise?”
Darkness churned deep in his eyes. “Yes.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor, the truth so hard to swallow. “I imagine your wife is furious.”
“My wife?”
She nodded, levelling her eyes on him, the hurt of discovering he’d been married the night they slept together one that would never alleviate. “Alison.”
Silence throbbed between them. His wife’s name lay between them like a stone. Elodie stared at the space it occupied in her mind, a frown on her face, the same sense of shock she’d felt at his betrayal filling her heart anew.
Finally, though, Fiero spoke, and his words were clipped, without emotion. “Alison and I divorced some time ago.”
Shock burst through her. “What?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching her like a hawk, so heat burned her flesh in place of the ice that was filling her veins.
Elodie lifted out of the chair, pacing across the room, shaking her head in disbelief. This made no sense. “When?”
“Over a year ago.”
Her eyes swept shut. It wasn’t because of her. She’d seen him six months after that night, and he’d been with his wife: a happy couple, connected, together.
“I can’t say I’m surprised, given your predilection for one night stands,” she murmured. “But if I’d known, I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
His eyes narrowed. “I doubt that.”
She swallowed. Her throat was dry, her tongue thick and uncooperative. “Why?”
“Our son is over two years old. There have been ample opportunities to inform me of his existence.”
Her eyes clouded over as she remembered the day she’d flown to Rome to do exactly that, the hurt she’d felt anew at seeing him – Fiero – with another woman. She hated
that the memory could still wound her, that she couldn’t recall it without a cloying sense of panic and a sharp ache beneath her ribs.
“Just as there were ample opportunities for you to tell me were married,” she pointed out, her chin tilting defiantly as she glared at him. “You lied to me that night, Fiero.” She drew a breath, allowing her accusation to hit its mark. “I would never,” she slashed her hand through the air, “ever have slept with you if I’d known you were someone’s husband.”
His eyes glowed with emotions she couldn’t comprehend. “You’ll forgive me if I find it hard to believe your moralistic outcry, given the depth of your deception.” His words held a darkness that caused her to shiver. “Did you lose my number, Elodie?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. She shook her head.
“You knew who I was. How to contact me. You chose to do neither –,”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I discovered six weeks ago that I am the father to a two year old boy.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Oh, yes, how clearly I recall this. The conversations, the meetings, the lengthy discussions about custody –,”
“Don’t be glib.” She was shaking. She dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, her stomach looping like an out-of-control figure of eight.
“Don’t lie to me then.”
