Читать книгу Bella Rosa Marriages: The Bridesmaid's Secret - Фиона Харпер - Страница 7

HIGH in the hills above Monta Correnti was an olive grove that had long since been abandoned. The small stone house that sat on the edge of one of the larger terraces remained unmolested, forgotten by everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

Just as the sun’s heat began to wane, as the white light of noon began to mellow into something closer to gold, a teenage girl appeared, walking along the dirt track that led to the farmhouse, a short distance from the main road into town. She looked over her shoulder every couple of seconds and kept close to the shade of the trees on the other side of the track. When she was sure no one was following her, she moved into the sunlight and started to jog lightly towards the farmhouse, a smile on her face.

She was on the way to being pretty, a bud just beginning to open, with long dark hair that hung almost to her waist and softly tanned skin. When she stopped smiling, there was a fierce intensity to her expression but, as she seemed to be joyfully awaiting something, that didn’t happen very often. She rested in the shade, leaning against the doorway of the cottage, looking down the hill towards the town.

After not more than ten minutes a sound interrupted the soft chirruping of the crickets, the gentle whoosh of the wind in the branches of the olive trees. The girl stood up, ramrod straight, and looked in the direction of the track. After a couple of seconds the faint buzzing that an untrained ear might have interpreted for a bee or a faraway tractor became more distinct. She recognised the two-stroke engine of a Vespa and her smile returned at double the intensity.

Closer and closer it came, until suddenly the engine cut out and the grove returned to sleepy silence. The girl held her breath.

Her patience ran out. Instead of waiting in the doorway, looking cool and unaffected, she jumped off the low step and started running. As she turned the corner of the house she saw him jogging towards her, wearing a smile so bright it could light up the sky if the sun ever decided it wanted a siesta. Her leg muscles lost all tone and energy and she stumbled to a halt, unable to take her eyes from him.

Finally he was standing right in front of her, his dark hair ruffled by the wind and his grey eyes warmed by the residual laughter that always lived there. They stood there for a few seconds, hearts pounding, and then he gently touched her cheek and drew her into a kiss that was soft and sweet and full of remembered promises. She sighed and reached for him, pulling him close. Somehow they ended up back in the doorway of the old, half-fallen-down cottage, with her pressed against the jamb as he tickled her neck with butterfly kisses.

He pulled away and looked at her, his hands on her shoulders, and she gazed back at him, never thinking for a second how awkward it could be to just stare into another person’s eyes, never considering for a second what a brave act it was to see and be seen. She blinked and smiled at him, and his dancing grey eyes became suddenly serious.

‘I love you, Jackie,’ he said, and moved his hands up off her shoulders and onto her neck so he could trace the line of her jawbone with his thumbs.

‘I love you too, Romano,’ she whispered as she buried her face in his shirt and wrapped herself up in him.

Jackie hadn’t actually believed that a person could literally be frozen with surprise. Too late she discovered it was perfectly possible to find one’s feet stuck to the floor just as firmly as if they had actually grown roots, and to find one’s mouth suddenly incapable of speech.

Romano, however, seemed to be experiencing none of the same disquiet. He was just looking back at her in the mirror, his pale eyes full of mischief. ‘Bellissima,’ he said, glancing at the dress, but making it sound much more intimate.

She blinked and coughed, and when her voice returned she found a sudden need to speak in English instead of Italian. ‘What are you doing here?’

Romano just shrugged and made that infuriatingly ambiguous hand gesture he’d always used to make. ‘It is a dress fitting, Jacqueline, so I fit.’

She spun round to face him. ‘You made the dresses? Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

He made a rueful expression. ‘Why should they? As far as anyone else is concerned, we hardly know each other. Your mother and my father are old friends and the rest of your family thinks we’ve only met a handful of times.’

Jackie took a shallow breath and puffed it out again. ‘That’s true.’ She frowned. ‘But how…? Why did you…?’

‘When your mother told my father that Lizzie was getting married, he insisted we take care of the designs. It’s what old friends do for each other.’

Jackie took a step back, regaining some of her usual poise. ‘Old friends? That hardly applies to you and I.’

Romano was prevented from answering by an impatient Lizzie bursting into the room. Still, his eyes twinkled as Lizzie made Jackie do a three-sixty-degree spin. When she found herself back at the starting point he was waiting for her, his gaze hooking hers. Not old friends, it said. But old lovers, certainly.

Jackie wanted to hit him.

‘It’s beautiful!’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘Perfect!’

‘Yes. That is what I said,’ Romano replied, and Jackie had to look away or she’d be tempted to throttle him, dress or no dress.

‘Come and show the others!’ Lizzie grabbed her hand and dragged her outside for Isabella and Scarlett to see. Isabella was just as enthusiastic as Lizzie but Scarlett looked as if she’d just sucked a whole pound of lemons. What was up with her? She just kept glowering at Jackie and sending daggers at Romano. Somebody or something had definitely put her nose out of joint.

The fitting was exhausting for Jackie. Not because her dress needed any alterations—she’d been right about that—but because she kept finding herself watching Romano, his deft fingers pinching at a seam as he discussed how and where he would make alterations, the way his brow creased with intense concentration as he discussed the possibilities with the bride-to-be, and how easily he smiled when the concentration lifted.

She’d spent the last seventeen years studiously avoiding him. It was laughable the lengths she’d gone to in order to make sure they never met face to face. Quite a few junior editors had been overjoyed when she’d sent them on plum assignments so that she wouldn’t have to cross paths with that no-good, womanising charmer.

How could she chit-chat with him at fashion industry parties as if nothing had ever happened? As if he’d never done what he’d done? It was asking too much.

Of course, sometimes over the years she’d had to attend the same functions as him—especially during London fashion week, when she was expected to be seen at everything—but she had enough clout to be able to look at seating plans in advance and position herself accordingly.

However, there was no avoiding Romano now.

At least not for the next twenty minutes or so. After that she needn’t see him again. Her dress was perfect. No more fittings for her, thank goodness.

Her mother chose that moment to sweep into the room. She gave Romano an indulgent smile and kissed him on both cheeks. Jackie couldn’t hear what he said to her mother but Mamma batted her eyelashes and called him a ‘charming young man’.

Hah! She’d changed her tune! Last time Lisa Firenzi had seen her daughter and Romano Puccini within a mile of each other, she’d had no compunctions about warning Jackie off. ‘That boy is trouble,’ she’d said. ‘Just like his father. You are not to have anything to do with him. If I catch you even talking to him, you will be grounded for a month.’

But it had been too late.

Mamma had made Jackie help out at Sorella that summer, to ‘keep her out of trouble’. And, if her mother had actually had some hands-on part in running the restaurant rather than leaving it all to managers, she would have known that Jackie and Romano had met weeks earlier when he’d come in for lunch with his father.

Of course she’d paid him no attention whatsoever. She’d seen him hanging around the piazza that summer, all the girls trailing around after him, and she hadn’t been about to join that pathetic band of creatures, no matter how good-looking the object of their adoration was. But Romano had been rather persistent, had made her believe he was really interested, and, when she’d noticed that he hadn’t had another girl on the back of his Vespa in more than a fortnight, she’d cautiously agreed to go out on it with him.

She should have listened to her mother. ‘Like father, like son,’ Lisa had said at the time. Jackie had always known that her mother and Romano’s father, Rafe Puccini, had known each other in the past, but it wasn’t until she’d moved to London and heard all the industry gossip that she realised how significant that relationship had been. By all accounts they’d had a rather steamy affair.

Look at her mother and Romano now! They were laughing at something. Her mother laid a hand on his upper arm and wiped a tear from under her mascara, calling him an ‘impossible boy’. That was as much as Jackie could take. She strutted off to the dressing room and changed back into her trouser suit, studiously ignoring her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t even want to see herself in his dress at the moment.

Keep a lid on it, Jacqueline. In a few minutes he’ll be gone. You won’t have to see him again for another seventeen years if you don’t want to.

When she emerged, smoothing down her hair with a hand, her mother was just finishing a sentence: ‘…of course you must come with us, Romano. I insist.’

Jackie raised her eyebrows and looked at the other girls. Scarlett stomped off in the direction of the en suite, while Isabella just shrugged, collected up her clothes and headed for the empty dressing room.

‘Give me a hand?’ Lizzie asked and turned her back on Jackie so she could help with the covered buttons once again. As she worked Jackie kept glancing at her mother and Romano, who eventually left the room, still chatting and laughing.

‘What’s going on?’ she muttered as she got to the last couple of buttons.

Lizzie strained to look over her shoulder at her sister. ‘Oh, Mamma has decided we’re all going to the restaurant for dinner this evening.’

Jackie kept her focus firmly on the last button, even though it was already unlooped. ‘And she’s invited Romano?’

Lizzie nodded. ‘He’s been spending a lot of time at the palazzo in the last few years. He comes into Monta Correnti regularly and eats at both Mamma’s and Uncle Luca’s often.’

Jackie stepped back and Lizzie turned to face her.

‘Why?’ Lizzie said, sliding the dress off her shoulders. ‘Is that a problem? That she’s invited Romano?’

Jackie smiled and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No problem at all.’

She looked at the door that led out to the landing. Would her mother be quite as welcoming, quite as chummy with him, if she’d known that Romano Puccini was the boy who’d got her teenage daughter pregnant and then abandoned her?

She’d always refused to name the father, no matter how much her mother had begged and scolded and threatened, too ashamed for the world to know she’d been rejected so spectacularly by her first love. Even a knocked-up fifteen-year-old had her pride.

Jackie picked up her handbag and headed for the door. It still seemed like a good plan. There was no reason why her mother should ever know that Romano was Kate’s father. No reason at all.

Refusing an invitation to dine with five attractive women would not only be the height of bad manners but also stupidity. And no one had ever accused Romano Puccini of being stupid. Infuriatingly slippery, maybe. Too full of charm for his own good. But never stupid. And he’d been far too curious not to come.

He hadn’t had the chance to get this close to Jackie Patterson in years, which was odd, seeing as they moved in similar circles. But those circles always seemed to be rotating in different directions, the arcs never intersecting. Why was that? Did she still feel guilty about the way their romance had ended?

That summer seemed to be almost a million years ago. He sighed and took a sip of his wine, while the chatter of the elegant restaurant carried on around him.

Jackie Patterson. She’d really been a knockout. Long dark hair with a hint of a wave, tanned legs, smooth skin and eyes that refused to be either green or brown but glittered with fire anyway.

Yes, that had been a really good summer.

He’d foolishly thought himself in love with her but he’d been seventeen. It was easy to mistake hormones for romance at that age. Now he saw his summer with Jackie for what it really had been—a fling. A wonderful, heady, teenage fling that had unfortunately had a sour final act. Sourness that obviously continued to the present day.

She had deliberately placed herself on the same side of the table as him, and had made sure that her mother had taken the seat next to him. With Lisa Firenzi in the way, he had no hope of engaging Jackie in any kind of conversation. And she had known that.

Surely enough time had gone by that he and Jackie could put foolish youthful decisions behind them? Wasn’t the whole I’m-still-ignoring-you thing just a little juvenile? He wouldn’t have thought a polished woman like her would resort to such tactics.

And polished she was. Gone were the little shorts and cotton summer dresses, halter tops and flip-flops, replaced by excellent tailoring, effortless elegance that took a lot of hard work to get just right. And even if her reputation hadn’t preceded her, he’d have been able to tell that this was a woman who pushed herself hard. Every hint of the soft fifteen-year-old curves that had driven him wild had been sculptured into defined muscle. The toffee and caramel lights in her long hair were so well done that most people would have thought it natural. He’d preferred it dark, wavy, and spread out on the grass as he’d leaned in to kiss her.

Where had that thought come from? He’d seen it in his mind’s eye as if it had happened only that morning.

He blinked and returned his attention to his food, an amazing lobster ravioli that the chef here did particularly well. But now he’d thought about Jackie in that way, he couldn’t quite seem to switch the memory off.

The main course was finished and Lizzie’s fiancé appeared and whisked her away. Isabella disappeared off to the restaurant next door and when Lisa was approached by her restaurant manager and scuttled off with him, talking in low, hushed tones, that left him sitting at the table with just Jackie and Scarlett. He made a light-hearted comment, looking towards his right at Jackie, and saw her stiffen.

This was stupid. Although he didn’t do serious conversations and relationship-type stuff, there was obviously bad air between them that needed to be cleared. He was just going to have to do his best to show Jackie that there were no hard feelings, that he could behave like a grown-up in the here and now, whatever had happened in the past. Hopefully she would follow his lead.

He turned to face her, waited, all the time looking intently at her until she could bear it no longer and met his gaze.

He smiled at her. ‘It has been a long time, Jackie.’

Jackie’s mouth didn’t move; her eyes gave her reply: Not long enough.

He ignored the leaden vibes heading his way and persevered. ‘I thought the March issue of Gloss! was particularly good. The shoot at the botanical gardens was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.’

Jackie folded her arms. ‘It’s been seventeen years since we’ve had a conversation and you want to talk to me about work?’

He shrugged and pulled the corners of his mouth down. It had seemed like a safe starting point.

‘You don’t think that maybe there are other, more important issues to enquire after?’

Nothing floated into his head. He rested his arm across the back of Lisa’s empty chair and turned his body to face Jackie, ready to engage a little more fully in whatever was going on between them. ‘Communication is communication, Jackie. We have to start somewhere.’

‘Do we?’

‘It seemed like a good idea to me,’ he said, refusing to be cowed by the look she was giving him, a look that probably made her employees perspire so much they were in danger of dehydration.

Now she turned to face him too, forgetting her earlier stiff posture, her eyes smouldering. A familiar prickle of awareness crept up the back of his neck.

‘Don’t you dare take the high ground, Romano! You have no right. No right at all.’

He opened his mouth and shut it again. This conversation had too much high drama in it for him and, unfortunately, he and Jackie seemed to be, not only on different pages, but reading from totally different scripts. He looked across the table at Scarlett, to see if she was making sense of any of this, but her expression was just as puzzling as her sister’s. She looked pale and shaky, as if she was about to be sick, and then she suddenly shot to her feet and dashed out of the restaurant door. Romano just stared after her.

‘What was that all about?’ he said.

Jackie, who was obviously too surprised to remember she was steaming angry with him, just frowned after her disappearing sister. ‘I have no idea.’

He took the opportunity to climb through the chink in her defences. He reached over and placed his hand over hers on the table top. ‘Can’t we let the past be the past?’

Jackie removed her hand from under his so fast he thought he might have a friction burn.

‘It’s too late. We can’t go back, not after all that has happened.’ Instead of looking fierce and untouchable, she looked very, very sad as she said this, and he saw just a glimpse of the young, stubborn, vulnerable girl he’d once lost his heart to.

‘Why not?’

Suddenly he really wanted to know. And it wasn’t just about putting the past to rest.

She looked down at his hand on the tablecloth, still waiting in the same spot from where she’d snatched hers away. For a long time she didn’t move, didn’t speak.

‘You know why, Romano,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t push this, just…don’t.’

‘I don’t want to push this. I just want us to be able to be around each other without spitting and hissing or creating an atmosphere. That’s not what you want for Lizzie’s wedding, is it?’

She frowned and stared at him. ‘What on earth has this got to do with Lizzie’s wedding?’

Didn’t she know? Hadn’t Lizzie or Lisa told her yet?

‘The reception…Lizzie wanted to have it at the palazzo. She thought the lake would be so—’

‘No. That can’t be.’ She spoke quietly, with no hint of anger in her voice, and then she just stood up and walked away, her chin high and her eyes dull, leaving him alone at the table, drawing the glances of some of the other diners.

This was not how most of his evenings out ended—alone, with all the pretty women having left without him. Most definitely not.

Back at the villa, Jackie ignored the warm glow of lights spilling from the drawing-room windows and took the path round the side of the house that led into the terraced garden. She kept walking, past the fountains and clipped lawns, past the immaculately groomed shrubs, to the lowest part of the garden, an area slightly wilder and shadier than the rest.

Right near the boundary, overlooking Monta Correnti and the valley below, was an old, spreading fir tree. Many parts of its lower branches had been worn smooth by the seats and shoes of a couple of generations of climbers.

Without thinking about the consequences for her white linen trousers, Jackie put one foot on the stump of a branch at the base of the trunk and hoisted herself up onto one of the boughs. Her mind was elsewhere but her body remembered a series of movements—a hand here, a foot there—and within seconds she was sitting down, her toes dangling three feet above the ground as she stared out across the darkening valley.

The sun had set long ago, leaving the sky a shade of such a deep, rich blue that she could almost believe it possible to reach out and sink her hand into the thick colour. The sight brought back a rush of homesickness, which was odd, because surely people were only supposed to get homesick when they were away, not when they came back. It didn’t make any sense. But not much about this evening had made sense.

She’d expected Romano to be a grown-up version of the boy she’d known: confident, intelligent, incorrigible. But she hadn’t expected such blatant insensitivity.

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the sensation of the cool night breeze on her neck and cheeks.

Thank goodness she hadn’t given into Kate’s pleading and let her daughter come on this trip. If Romano could be so blithe about their failed relationship all those years ago, she’d hate to think how he might have reacted to their daughter.

If only things had been different…

No. It was no good thinking that way. Time had proved her right. Romano Puccini was not cut out to be a husband and father. The string of girlfriends he’d paraded through the tabloids and celebrity magazines had only confirmed her worst fears. Maybe, if he’d settled down, there would have been some hope of him regretting his decision to disown his firstborn. Maybe a second child might have melted his heart, caused him to realise what he’d been missing.

A huge sigh shuddered through her. Jackie kicked off her shoes and looked at her toes.

And Romano had made her miss all of those moments too. Without his support she’d had no choice but to go along with her mother’s wishes. How stupid she’d been to believe all those whispered promises, all those hushed plans to make their parents see sense, the plotting to elope one day. He’d said he’d wait for ever for her. The truth was, he hadn’t even waited a month before moving on to Francesca Gambardi. One silly spat was all it’d taken to drive him away.

For ever? What a joke.

But she’d been so in love with him it had taken right up until the day she’d handed her newborn daughter over to stop hoping that it was all a bad dream, that Romano would change his mind and come bursting through the door to tell her he was so sorry, that it was her that he wanted and they were going to be a proper family, no matter what his father and her mother said.

Well, she’d purged all those silly ideas from herself about the same time she’d tightened up her saggy pregnancy belly. It had taken just as much iron will and focus to kill them all off.

‘Jackie?’

It was Scarlett’s voice, coming from maybe twenty feet away. Jackie smiled. She’d never quite got used to the Aussie twang that both her sisters had developed since moving away. It seemed more prominent here in the dark.

‘Up here.’

‘What on earth are you doing up there?’

Scarlett walked closer and peered up at her, or at least in her general direction. She’d only just left the bright lights of the house behind and her eyes wouldn’t be accustomed to the dark yet.

‘Come up and join me. The view’s lovely,’ she said.

‘I know what the view looks like.’ Scarlett stared up at the tree. ‘You’re being silly.’

That was altogether possible, Jackie conceded silently, but she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone. Scarlett folded her arms and stared off into the distance.

‘What? You’re not going to tell me I had too much wine at dinner?’ Jackie said.

Scarlett just shook her head, the movement so small Jackie guessed it was more an unconscious gesture than an attempt at communication. She had that same can’t-quite-look-at-you expression on her face that she always wore in Jackie’s presence. It made Jackie want to be twice as prickly back. But it became obvious as she continued to observe her sister that Scarlett hadn’t taken into account that Jackie had been out here long enough to get her night vision and could see her sister’s features quite clearly. After a few seconds the hardness slid out of her expression, leaving something much younger, much truer behind.

‘No. I’m not going to tell you that.’ Her voice was husky but cold.

Jackie stopped swinging her legs. She knew that look. It was the one Scarlett had always worn when she’d heard Mamma’s footsteps coming up the stairs after she’d done something naughty. Was Scarlett…was she hiding something?

Just as she tried to examine Scarlett’s face a little more closely, her sister turned away.

‘Mamma wants us all in the drawing room for a nightcap. She says she’s got some family news, something about Cristiano not being able to come to the wedding.’

Jackie swung herself down off the branch in one fluid motion and landed beside her sister. She supposed they’d better go and make peace with their mother. Mamma hadn’t been best pleased when she’d returned from her powwow with the restaurant manager to find that all her illustrious dinner guests had deserted her.