Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 19
ОглавлениеSOMETHING VERY LIKE panic sent chilling tentacles travelling deep to pierce Luciano’s usually rock-solid sense of security. He completed the phone call to his future relative, which had been preceded by one from Agnese. He had made a mistake, a serious mistake, he acknowledged with a sinking heart, and now he had to pray that he had sufficient time and the opportunity to put it right. And if he didn’t?
Santa Madonna, that option could not even be considered!
Why the hell had he valued his pride above every other thing in his life for so many years? How on earth had he allowed a past bad experience to cast such a dangerous shadow over the present and potentially destroy his future?
And you thought you were so cool, so clever, he reasoned in a daze of growing shock at the mess he had created. But the creed of silence as a form of protection had been bred into his very bones at his father’s knee. Never tell, never explain, never apologise. And before he had experienced that one weak moment with Jemima he had never broken that rule. He had kept his secrets. He had kept them from the media too. Indeed he had buried those sleazy secrets deep and had refused even to think about them, for that was the safest, wisest way to hold on to sanity.
He had never dwelt on his mistakes because he was a rational man and it came naturally to him to move on past and not look back at car wrecks. Even so, those mistakes had seriously influenced the choices he had made, he conceded belatedly. Furthermore, Jemima didn’t have his conditioning or his inhibitions and she would not understand...
* * *
The helicopter came in over the bay while Jemima was having breakfast with everyone in the shaded loggia on the ground floor. Nicky dropped his toast as he waved his hands with excitement, straining in his high chair to get a better view of the craft as it dropped down out of sight to land in the castle grounds.
‘Is that Luciano coming back?’ Ellie asked uncertainly.
‘I doubt it. He’s not due until tomorrow,’ Jemima said a little tiredly because she had not slept well. ‘And he’s a stickler for his schedules.’
‘I suspect,’ her father murmured warmly as he stared over her shoulder, ‘that your bridegroom missed you more than you know because here he is now...’
Jemima twisted her head round so fast she risked a whiplash injury and she thrust her chair back and stood up to stare in surprise at the male striding through the gardens towards them. It was, without a doubt, Luciano. Sheathed in a dark business suit teamed with a white shirt and silvery tie, he looked both formal and formidable. His lean, darkly handsome face was taut, the line of his beautiful mouth forbidding. A jolt of dismay ran through Jemima and quite instinctively she found herself wondering if she had done something wrong.
His stunning dark golden eyes immediately sought hers as though he was looking for something and then he quickly turned his attention on to their guests and his first physical meeting with her parents. To a backdrop of Nicky’s squeals of excitement and loud vocal appeals to be noticed, Luciano responded smoothly and pleasantly to the tide of introductions before stooping to detach Nicky from his harness and lift him into his arms.
‘Hush,’ he said softly to his son while ruffling his hair. ‘You can’t always be the centre of attention.’
‘Well, when he isn’t he likes to let us know he doesn’t like it!’ her father quipped cheerfully. ‘He’s a terrific little scene stealer.’
‘Let me take him,’ Jemima’s mother urged, holding out her arms. ‘You and Jemima should have some time together in peace.’
Nicky complained loudly at the transfer, demanded Jemima with pleading arms and then sobbed. Carlotta came out of the house to help while Jemima hovered, her attention anxiously pinned to Luciano, for all her nervous antennae were still telling her that something was badly wrong. His long, lean, powerful body was incredibly tense, his movements less fluid than usual and his lean, strong face taut with self-discipline.
Oh, my goodness, she thought in sudden consternation. Maybe he had returned early because he had changed his mind about marrying her! It was a nightmare scenario with the wedding guests and her family already staying at the castle, but it was perfectly possible that he had got cold feet and come back early to tell her. Jemima was quite convinced that such disasters had occurred to better women than her and it was surely more likely to happen when a man wasn’t in love with the woman he had asked to marry him.
Luciano shot another veiled glance at Jemima. She was pale and there were shadows below her beautiful pale eyes and he could see that she looked nothing like a happy bride on the brink of her wedding. Inwardly he cursed himself again and he reached for her hand.
‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ he intoned in a roughened undertone. ‘We have a visit to make.’
Her brow furrowed as he deftly walked her away from the breakfast table. ‘A visit?’
‘I believe you had tea with Sancia yesterday—’
‘My goodness, the grapevine around here is positively supersonic!’ Jemima countered while she thought fast.
‘I like to keep an eye on events when I’m unable to be present in person,’ Luciano assured her with a perfectly straight face.
Controlling...much? But Jemima said nothing because she knew that he was upset and she couldn’t bear that. Glancing up at him, she could see the haunted look she had seen before was back in his eyes and she could see that, for all that he looked spectacular, he must have been travelling all night and lines of strain were etched between his classic nose and even more perfect mouth. Of course, if he wanted to cancel the wedding, he would be feeling awfully guilty about it, she thought painfully.
‘What did you think of Sancia?’
‘We don’t have much in common,’ Jemima replied mildly.
‘She was a bitch to you, wasn’t she?’ Luciano growled within sight of the guest cottage above the beach.
Taken aback, Jemima came to a halt and stared up at him. ‘I—’
‘I can be selfish but I’m not stupid...most of the time,’ Luciano tacked on, compressing his hard mouth. ‘I’ve been foolish—’
‘It’s all right...whatever you decide to do, it’s all right. Just don’t be upset about it,’ Jemima mumbled helplessly, resisting the urge to wrap both arms around him and offer him comfort. Even in the overly emotional mood she was in, she knew that was not the normal way to behave when a man dumped you and that the very last thing she should be worrying about was how he felt. And yet that urge was engrained in her when he was around, she thought painfully as he closed his hand firmly round hers and urged her on towards the cottage.
‘Why are we going to see Sancia?’ she prompted uncomprehendingly. ‘I admit she wasn’t the kindest hostess but I have nothing more to say to her.’
‘But I have plenty to say,’ Luciano incised, banging on the door with his fist.
Sancia opened the door little more than three seconds later. It was barely nine in the morning but she was wearing a pristine white sundress and had a full face of make-up on, so she had evidently been expecting visitors. ‘Luciano...’ she said, wreathed with welcoming smiles.
‘Sancia...’ he grated, moving past her to stare in shock at the array of photographs and paintings decorating the cottage living room. ‘What is all this?’ he breathed.
‘Well, you should know,’ the blonde said archly. ‘You insisted on giving it to me.’
‘You asked me for it—you wanted it for your book,’ Luciano reminded her.
Only moments into their visit and Jemima was already feeling better, for she could already see that Luciano had had no part in creating the shrine in the room to his late wife. That, it seemed, had been solely Sancia’s doing.
‘It’s been like this ever since the year she died,’ the blonde fielded, playing it for all she was worth.
‘You’re the only person who has ever used this place.’ Luciano released Jemima’s hand and swept up a book from the coffee table. ‘Wasn’t the book enough for you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘Sancia, I was married to Gigi for five years. This isn’t a biography, it’s a work of fiction. You gave her fans what they wanted to read, not the truth. The truth would have been too ugly,’ he breathed, his deep, dark drawl roughening along the edges.
Sancia switched to Italian and spoke at length.
‘No, we will discuss this in English so that Jemima understands,’ Luciano decreed grimly. ‘I want to know what Sancia told you yesterday.’
‘Nothing that was untrue,’ Sancia trilled, sweetly saccharine. ‘That you don’t like to talk about Gigi and that you said you’d never love a woman again.’
Luciano grimaced. ‘Sancia! Where is your compassion? Your sister almost destroyed me!’
‘There is no need for you to tell—’ Sancia began urgently.
‘A couple who are about to marry should have no secrets from each other,’ Luciano declared, and as Jemima stiffened in surprise he smiled ruefully. ‘A very wise woman once told me that but I wasn’t listening.’
‘But you have never wanted the truth to come out!’ Sancia was still arguing. ‘You were happy for me to write a whitewash!’
‘I’ve matured.’ Luciano tossed the book back down on the table and looked at Jemima. ‘Gigi was not the glowing star and wonderful woman described in this book. I married her because she told me I was the father of the child she carried. She was repeatedly unfaithful to me with the leading men in her movies, and the day she died she was leaving me for another man.’
‘Oh, no...’ Jemima mumbled, pained by the look in his eyes.
‘That man, Alessio di Campo, is a famous producer and he was the love of Gigi’s life—well, as much as she could love anyone, she loved him,’ Luciano revealed doggedly. ‘He was a married man with a wife and only when his wife died were the two of them willing to go public about their relationship. Their affair had, however, apparently continued throughout our marriage. I told her that she was welcome to leave but that I would not let her take our daughter, Melita, with her.’
‘How can you trust her? She could go to the press with all this!’ Sancia screeched accusingly.
‘Jemima won’t and even if the story was to get out, so what?’ Luciano shrugged a broad shoulder with fluid fatalism. ‘It’s all done and dusted now. To finish the story, Gigi told me that Melita was not my daughter but Alessio’s,’ he revealed heavily. ‘I had stayed in a bad marriage for years for my daughter’s sake and suddenly she wasn’t my child any more. That truth was more devastating than Gigi’s departure with Melita that day.’
‘It was a cruel lie,’ Sancia swore, desperate to be heard again. ‘I never believed that!’
‘Testing was carried out after the crash,’ Luciano cut in flatly, his lean, masculine face unrelentingly grim. ‘Melita was not my child but I loved her as though she was and had she survived I would have kept her with me had I had the choice. As it was, both mother and child died instantly when the helicopter Alessio had sent to pick them up crashed on the flight to Monaco.’
Jemima’s eyes were stinging. Only Sancia’s sullen, resentful presence prevented her from saying what she really felt because her heart was bleeding for him. He had been hiding the truth from her all along and she was deeply shaken by the true version of what his marriage had entailed. It had not occurred to her that Gigi could have been anything less than perfect. In reality, though, Gigi had been a horribly disloyal and dishonest partner and Jemima was no longer surprised that Luciano had required DNA testing before he had been prepared to accept Nicky as his son.
‘Let’s go...’ Luciano breathed, curving a protective arm to Jemima’s spine.
‘I could sell Gigi’s true story for a fortune,’ Sancia remarked quietly.
‘Go ahead. I no longer care,’ Luciano responded almost cheerfully. ‘But if you go naming names you will probably make a lot of dangerous enemies amongst the very people whom you still want to employ you. But that’s your business now that I will no longer be settling your bills. My pilot’s waiting for you at the helipad. I’m sure I don’t need to add that you’re no longer welcome here.’
And with that final withering speech they were both back out in the fresh air and sunshine again. Shell-shocked, Jemima leant against Luciano for a few seconds, revelling in the strength of his tall, powerful body and the gloriously familiar scent of him. All she could think about was that Gigi had been a dreadful liar and then Julie had lied to him and cheated him and then Jemima had lied to him as well! How could he ever fully forgive her for having lied to him after what he had had to endure in his first, unhappy marriage?
‘You know... I thought you’d got cold feet about the wedding,’ she told him dizzily. ‘I believed you were back early to dump me—’
‘No, I was too scared I was losing you. I didn’t know what Sancia had done but I always suspected she could be poisonous.’
‘But how could you even find out that I was seeing her yesterday? The bodyguards?’
‘No, Agnese. She’s like a bloodhound. She phoned me to tell me that Sancia had invited you and informed me that that was suspicious because Sancia is not friendly towards other women.’
‘Why were you paying Sancia’s bills?’
‘At first I felt sorry for her because she was always overshadowed by Gigi. Of course, she knew all her sister’s dark secrets because she worked as Gigi’s assistant on the Palermo estate we lived on in those days.’ He hesitated. ‘With the timing involved, nobody guessed that Gigi had been in the act of leaving me when she died and I told myself that it was my private business. But, more honestly, I chose to save face rather than tell the truth. The paparazzi had dogged us obsessively throughout our marriage because, of course, there were always rumours about Gigi’s behaviour but she was never caught out.’
‘I can understand you not wanting people to know that she had affairs,’ Jemima murmured ruefully. ‘It hurt your pride and Sancia played along with that because it suited her to do so.’
‘She made a killing on the book because she wrote what Gigi’s fans wanted to read. They didn’t want to hear about the man-eater with the monstrous ego who seduced me when I was twenty-two and too rich and naïve to smell a rat. Of course, she was already pregnant when she first slept with me.’
‘And you didn’t even suspect?’
‘I was infatuated with her. It was probably a little like the way you reacted to your unknown twin when she first turned up. I only saw what I wanted to see in Gigi and I was flattered by her interest.’
‘But the marriage only lasted because of Melita?’
Luciano could not hide his sadness. ‘The marriage died within months of Melita’s birth. I loved that little girl and she loved me. Gigi had no interest in her daughter but she wouldn’t have given up custody of her because she said that would damage her reputation as a mother.’
‘And did you say that you would never love a woman again after her?’
‘Yes,’ Luciano admitted freely. ‘Because loving Gigi was a horrendous experience and I couldn’t forgive myself for being such a fool. I sincerely believed that it would only be safe to love a child, which is why I planned the surrogacy arrangement.’
‘You do think in some seriously screwy ways sometimes,’ Jemima told him gently.
His nostrils flared as he thrust open a side door into the castle. ‘It seemed perfectly logical to me at the time. Gigi did a lot of damage and I didn’t want to be burned again.’
‘It was still a little over the top,’ Jemima criticised. ‘You may have decided to live without love but most children want two parents.’
Luciano shot her an impatient look. ‘All right, I’m selfish...and maybe I didn’t think it all through the way I should have done. But look how it turned out,’ he said with a sudden grin. ‘I got you... Have I still got you?’
‘It would take more than Sancia to scare me off.’
‘Yet you actually thought I could be about to dump you?’ An ebony brow quirked in wonderment. ‘What makes you so modest? I cut my trip short a day and travelled all night to get to you because I heard that you were upset.’
Jemima stiffened. ‘Who said I was upset?’
‘I promised not to name names,’ Luciano revealed.
‘I wasn’t upset yesterday,’ Jemima insisted out of pride. ‘I was just working through some stuff and thinking a lot. Getting married is a big challenge.’
‘Especially when the groom is someone like me,’ Luciano slotted in without hesitation. ‘Someone too proud and private to admit that his first marriage was a disaster and that his first child wasn’t his child.’
Jemima wrinkled her nose as he walked her up the rear staircase she had never used before. ‘But I sort of understand you keeping quiet about that, although that doesn’t mean I approve of you being that secretive.’
‘And the prospect of marriage must become even more challenging for a woman when the bridegroom refuses to admit that he loves you,’ Luciano told her in a rush shorn of the smallest eloquence. ‘That wasn’t just secretive, that was stupid, because if you’d known how much I love you yesterday you would have laughed in Sancia’s face and I wouldn’t have been panicked into rushing halfway across the world to assure myself that you weren’t going to desert me.’
‘I wouldn’t desert you...or Nicky,’ Jemima added, still working very slowly through what he had said. ‘You love me?’
‘Insanely.’ A flood of dark colour accentuated his high cheekbones. ‘The thought of life without you downright terrifies me. A couple of weeks being without you has proved a chastening experience. I’ve never missed anyone or anything so much in my life...’
Jemima suddenly realised that they were having a very private conversation in the corridor and she walked on a few steps and thrust open his bedroom door. ‘Never missed anyone...’
Luciano leant back against the door to close it fast behind him. ‘Jemima, does it take a hammer to knock an idea into your head?’ He groaned. ‘I phone you every hour on the hour and you think that’s normal? I invite your whole family here to keep you company so that you can’t even look at another man while I’m away. Don’t you ever get suspicious, piccolo mia? You think I don’t realise that wet blanket, Steven, is sitting out there waiting for you, hoping like hell that I’ll screw up and lose you?’
‘But I don’t fancy Steven...and even when you upset me or I get annoyed with you, I still fancy you,’ Jemima confided a little desperately, because he was smiling that wicked smile of his that made her heart beat crazily fast.
‘Is that a fact?’ Luciano teased, shifting off the door to shed his jacket and jerk loose his tie. ‘I had this unrealistic fantasy where I came home and everything would be all right and we would go straight to bed... Don’t know what I thought we’d do with all our guests.’
‘Everything is all right. Our guests are also remarkably good at entertaining themselves,’ she opined. ‘Oh, by the way, I love you...loads and loads...and it’s got nothing to do with your money like Steven thinks.’
‘Honestly...you love me?’ Luciano growled. ‘But why?’
‘That’s the weird bit... I truly don’t know. One minute I was fancying you like mad and the next I was wanting to make your life perfect for you,’ Jemima confided with an embarrassed wince.
‘Equally weird for me from the very first moment. Took me a long time to realise that not wanting to love again was basically a fear of being hurt again, which is cowardly,’ he declared with disdain. ‘And then you were there and I liked just about everything about you and it wasn’t only sex. I should’ve told you the truth about Gigi sooner but I suppose I didn’t want you to think less of me.’
‘How could I think less of you for her bad behaviour?’
Luciano shrugged. ‘I love the way you are with Nicky because she was so cold with Melita. Comparisons are tasteless but...’
‘So, don’t make them.’ Jemima unzipped her dress and shimmied out of it while he watched.
‘Your parents...’ Luciano began, slightly shocked.
‘I think everyone will mind their own business rather than ours,’ Jemima whispered sagely. ‘But you do realise that you still haven’t told me who told you that I was upset?’
Luciano expelled his breath on a slow hiss. ‘Your father.’
Taken aback, Jemima blinked. ‘Say that again?’
‘He thinks I make you happy and he likes the fact that I’m honest with him,’ Luciano told her guiltily, as if he had been consorting with the enemy. ‘I was grateful that he called me.’
Jemima was secretly pleased that the father she loved so much clearly liked and trusted the man she was about to marry. ‘I’ve got no complaints either. We love each other and that’s special.’
‘Simply finding you was special, piccolo mia,’ Luciano told her as she unbuttoned his shirt, undid his waistband, sent her fingers roaming over the prominent bulge at his groin with a daring new to both of them and even more thrilling. ‘Dio mio, I love you...’
‘Me too...so much,’ she managed to say just before his mouth came crashing down on hers with all the passion she adored.
* * *
Jemima walked down the aisle of the little village church in her lace wedding dress and with her hand on her father’s arm. Off the shoulder and styled with tight sleeves and a fitted bodice, her wedding gown made the most of her hourglass figure and the exquisite lace fell to the floor, showing only the toes of the extravagant shoes she wore.
Luciano was so entranced by the sight of her that he couldn’t look away and play it cool. His son, Nicky, sat on his grandmother’s lap near the front of the church and began to bounce and hold out his arms when he laid eyes on Jemima, the closest thing to a mother he would ever know. Luciano smiled, the happiest he had ever been in his chequered life and far happier than he had ever even hoped to be.
Jemima focused on the man she loved and her heart jumped behind her breastbone. All hers at last, officially, finally, permanently hers. As if a wedding ring were the equivalent of a padlock, she scolded herself. It was the love she saw in his beautiful dark eyes that would hold him and she rejoiced in the thought of the future that awaited them and their son.
