Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 18

CHAPTER NINE

‘COME FOR TEA, said the spider to the fly,’ Ellie mocked with a grimace. ‘I don’t like Sancia.’

Jemima wrinkled her nose. Her best friend, Ellie, was very quick in her judgements but Jemima tried to give everyone a fair hearing. And that included Sancia Abate, the gorgeous blonde who had stepped unannounced and unforeseen out of Luciano’s past. After all, Jemima would have been the first to admit that the main source of her unease about Sancia was the other woman’s close blood tie to Luciano’s celebrated first wife. Luciano, however, had been so casual about the continuing friendship that only an extremely jealous and possessive woman could have been suspicious of the relationship. Sancia was evidently still accepted as family and Jemima was happy to respect that.

In any case, she had to admit that Sancia had proved to be an almost invisible guest over the past two weeks while Luciano had been abroad. For the past three days, Jemima had been entertaining Ellie and her parents’ friends and relatives, all of whom Luciano had had flown out for the wedding that was scheduled to take place in forty-eight hours’ time. Her parents and their closest friends had already settled into a comfortable routine of strolls on the beach and visits to the village café, while Jemima had whiled away many a happy hour trying on wedding dresses and relaxing with Ellie.

‘I mean, what’s a blonde that looks like that doing hanging round here on a very quiet island without even a boyfriend in tow?’ Ellie remarked suspiciously.

Jemima had learned that Sancia was not only gorgeous to look at but also multitalented. Sancia had written a bestselling biography on her much-loved sister’s life and currently seemed to drift between stints as a well-known fashion model and a less-well-known actress. The guest house was situated beyond the castle gardens above the beach, a former boathouse that had been renovated to offer extra accommodation. Bearing in mind the sheer size of the castle, the cottage was virtually never used.

Jemima was wryly amused that she had found it necessary to dress up to visit Sancia. More and more she was making use of the wardrobe Luciano had bought for her, recognising that the garments might be more fashionable and form-fitting than she was accustomed to wearing but were also more flattering in style and shape. To enjoy tea with the glamorous Sancia, she was wearing a lilac skirt and top with an unmistakeable designer edge.

‘Oh, you haven’t brought Nicky.’ Sancia sighed in disappointment as soon as she opened the door. ‘Come in.’

‘He always has a nap straight after lunch.’

‘Porca miseria! You sound like one of those rigid English nannies people joke about!’ the blonde commented with a teasing smile.

‘I hope not...’ Jemima stilled on the threshold of a spacious reception room that was dominated by photos and portraits of Gigi Nocella.

‘Oh, didn’t you know that the guest house is where Luciano keeps his stash of memorabilia?’ Sancia remarked in apparent surprise. ‘I thought you would have guessed. I mean, there’s nothing at all to be seen up at the castle.’

‘No, nothing,’ Jemima agreed, having naturally noticed that, surprisingly, Luciano had not a single photograph on display anywhere of his late first wife or their little daughter.

‘I know. He had the place stripped...the poor guy.’ Sancia sighed. ‘Once Gigi was gone, he just couldn’t live with even the smallest reminder of her. It was too painful for him. Haven’t you noticed that he never ever mentions her?’

Jemima was not very practised at female games of one-upmanship but she knew enough to know when she was being targeted and she murmured quietly, ‘Are we having tea?’

‘I’m not very domesticated but I do have the tray ready for us.’ Sancia gave her a wide grin, unperturbed by Jemima’s cool intonation, and stepped out into the room that Jemima assumed held a kitchen.

Jemima hovered by the window overlooking the fabulous view of the beach before succumbing to a curiosity that she simply couldn’t suppress. The room she stood in was ironically both her worst nightmare and her most precious discovery. All around her sat the means to satisfy her curiosity about Luciano’s first wife. Giving way to temptation, Jemima wandered around peering at the photos and the paintings.

There was no denying that Gigi Nocella had been superbly photogenic and immensely gifted in the genes department. The brown-eyed blonde, of whom Sancia was but a pale, more youthful copy, was exquisite to a degree very few women were and had reputedly been mesmerising on-screen. And here she was represented in all her earthly glory in various attitudes that ran from young and naïve to sexy and smouldering to pensive and mysterious. But the photos that Jemima paid most heed to were the ones that also contained Luciano.

The first she noted was their wedding photograph, in which he looked ridiculously youthful, reminding her that he had been very young when he married and that Gigi had been several years older.

‘He worshipped the ground she walked on,’ Sancia murmured from behind Jemima, making her flinch.

‘Oh, my goodness, you gave me a fright!’ Jemima spun and fanned the air, refusing to react to the blonde’s provocative statement.

In any case, she didn’t need the verbal commentary when she could see the adoration etched in Luciano’s lean dark face as he looked intently at the mother of his daughter. It hurt Jemima to see that light in his eyes. She knew that he would never look at her with that depth of caring and concern. She would never be that important to him or that perfect in looks and figure that every head would turn to watch her walk by. No, she conceded sadly, she was in a totally different category from Gigi and, whether she liked it or not, Luciano would probably not have looked twice at her had his son not looked at Jemima with love first.

But she would have to learn to live with that reality, wouldn’t she?

‘After the crash, Luciano said he would never ever love a woman again,’ Sancia delivered.

‘Ah, well, life moves on and now he’s getting married and he’s starting another family,’ Jemima responded with deliberate insensitivity before adding, ‘It’s different for you, though, as her sister. You’ll never be able to replace her and you must miss her terribly.’

Red coins of colour accentuated the blonde’s cheekbones. ‘You have no idea.’

‘I do actually. I didn’t know my sister for very long before I lost her but there was a special bond there...at least on my side,’ Jemima confided.

With hindsight she had begun to accept that her twin had not had the capacity to care for others in the same way as she did. She could not argue with the evidence and it was surely better for her to remember her sibling as she had been rather than idealise her memory.

‘Gigi was irreplaceable,’ Sancia told her a tad sharply.

‘But I’m not trying to replace her,’ Jemima responded quietly. ‘How could I? And why would I even want to? Luciano and I have a completely different relationship.’

As Jemima walked back from the beach through the castle gardens her pale blue eyes were overbright with tears. She didn’t want to let the tears fall, not with her usual bodyguards bare yards from her, silent and watchful of her every move. Furthermore she had not the slightest doubt that anything unusual she did would be reported straight back to Luciano, who seemed to worry a great deal about her while he was away from her. He phoned her several times a day and questioned her right down to asking what she ate at mealtimes. And when she had asked him why he bothered when she had so little news to relate, he had told her teasingly that he liked the sound of her voice and could listen to her reciting an old phone book just as happily. The minutiae of Nicky’s day were of equal interest to him and it was obvious to Jemima that Luciano really did miss seeing his son. His conversations with her, however, were just polite and sort of flirty, she reasoned ruefully. He wasn’t a teenager, after all, he was a man of almost thirty-one with sufficient experience to know exactly how to charm a woman.

Especially if that woman wasn’t Gigi Nocella, Jemima thought, her throat closing over convulsively on a sob. He wouldn’t have had to make a special effort to say the right thing to a woman as perfect as Gigi had been. So, how often did he go down to visit that personal shrine in the guest house? If Jemima hadn’t existed and Luciano hadn’t been away on business, would he have been with Sancia right now happily reminiscing about the old days when his first wife and child had still been alive? It was hardly any wonder that Sancia resented Jemima and clearly felt threatened by her appearance on scene. Nothing could put Gigi more effectively back into the past than her once-besotted widower having another child and taking a second wife to put in Gigi’s place.

Well, it wasn’t Gigi’s place any longer, Jemima told herself urgently. In less than two days Jemima would be Luciano’s wife and she could hardly wait! She wasn’t so silly as to allow Sancia’s mean outlook to affect her personally, was she?

As her mobile phone rang she dug it out, grateful for an interruption that would hopefully give her thoughts a new and more positive direction. When she heard Steven’s familiar badgering tones she almost groaned, however, for she had thought she had heard the last from her ex-boyfriend when he had phoned her to say he wouldn’t be attending the wedding—he hadn’t been invited!—because he knew she was making a dreadful mistake.

‘Luciano has turned your head with his wealth,’ Steven told her, merely starting a new angle of attack.

‘His wealth doesn’t matter to me. His kindness does,’ Jemima parried, thinking of the generosity of Luciano’s invitation to her parents and their friends, who were all enjoying a wonderful holiday in the run-up to their wedding. And by bringing her family and Ellie out to join her, he had ensured that she wasn’t lonely and without support.

‘You may not see it but I see very clearly that you are paying me back for what happened with Julie.’ Steven sighed. ‘You weren’t able to forgive me.’

‘I did forgive you, Steven. I simply didn’t want to take back up again where we’d left off and I think that’s fair enough,’ Jemima fielded. ‘I saw you in a different light when you were with my sister.’

‘I made a dreadful mistake, Jemima,’ Steven groaned. ‘But I do love you.’

‘Not the way you loved her,’ Jemima told him without heat.

‘That wasn’t genuine love and you don’t love Luciano either. You’re marrying him to keep Nicky,’ Steven protested.

Jemima sat down on a stone bench surrounded by glorious rose beds and stared out blindly at the magnificent view of the bay. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Marriage is a sacrament and it shouldn’t be used.’

‘But I do love him,’ Jemima heard herself say and her whole mental view of the world lurched as she made that belated discovery. She was thinking about the male who had chilled her at first meeting and travelling at supersonic speed through the whole history of their relationship, ranging from his laughter in bed with her to the brutal background that he had triumphed over.

And there at the very heart of all her turmoil was the love she had neither acknowledged nor understood. She loved Luciano with all her being and easily zeroed in on every kind and caring thing he did for her from his hesitant tendering of his mother’s ring for their engagement to his patient, undemanding love for Nicky in which he was willing to wait and earn his son’s trust and affection. In the same moment she recognised why her encounter with Sancia and Gigi’s shrine in the guest house had distressed her so much. It had hurt to see Luciano’s love for her predecessor. It had hurt even more to frankly admit that she could never emulate such a woman to win that level of appreciation. With Luciano, she would always be Nicky’s loving stepmother first and his wife second. Second best, second best for all time...

Could she truly live with that?

‘Sorry, Steven. I have to go,’ she said, cutting the call on Steven’s expostulations with relief.

Her face was wet with tears. She had been crying without knowing it and she mopped her face, praying her mascara hadn’t run. There could be no pleasure in appreciating that she would always be inferior in her future husband’s eyes and heart to his first wife, but she was a practical, realistic woman and there really wasn’t much she could do about that hurt. Was there?

She wouldn’t even consider abandoning Nicky, for he felt as much her child as if he had been born to her rather than her sister. She saw no advantage to refusing to marry Luciano either. What would that achieve? She didn’t want to be Nicky’s nanny for the rest of her days or merely Luciano’s lover. And if she didn’t choose to marry him and give him more children, some other woman eventually would.

Not on my watch, Jemima conceded fierily.