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.”
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
