Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: April 2018 Books 1 – 4 - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 18

CHAPTER NINE

‘BUT IF THIS belonged to your grandmother that means it’s royal, so how can I wear it?’ Jazz protested as she held the delicate diamond tiara that shone like a circlet of stars between her reverent fingers.

‘You’re my wife and my grandmother bestowed her jewellery on me in her will for my wife’s use,’ Vitale explained. ‘And if that is still not sufficient reason for you, think of how it will enrage my mother to see you draped in her mother’s fabulous diamond suite.’

Her green eyes glinted with amused appreciation of that sally and she sat down by the dressing table to allow Vitale to anchor the tiara in her thick hair. With careful hands, she donned the earrings and the necklace from the same box and forced a smile, refusing, absolutely refusing to think about what she had read in that ghastly file that very afternoon. She needed to be confident for the ball, was determined to look as though she belonged at such a glittering event purely for Vitale’s sake. The prospect of doing anything socially wrong in his mother’s radius literally made her stomach clench with sick horror.

‘You look wonderful,’ Vitale husked as she rose again, a slim silhouette sheathed in a green gown that glistened with thousands of beads. Cut high at the front, it bared her slender back, skimming down over her narrow hips to froth out in sparkling volume round her stiletto-clad feet.

‘Wonderful enough to win your bet?’

Vitale, designer chic in a beautifully tailored evening jacket and narrow black trousers, groaned out loud. ‘I couldn’t care less about that bet now and you know it. Accepting that bet was a foolish impulse I now regret.’

Jazz smiled, the generous curve of her lush mouth enhanced by soft pink, and Vitale shifted forward, dark golden eyes flaring. ‘No,’ she said succinctly. ‘If you knew how long it took the stylist to do my make-up, you wouldn’t dare even think of kissing me.’

Vitale laughed, startling himself, it seemed, almost as much as he startled her, amusement lightening the forbidding tension that had still tautened his strong features. ‘You’re good for me,’ he quipped.

But nowhere near as good in the royal wife stakes as Carlotta, Elena or Luciana or their equivalents would have been, a rebellious little voice remarked somewhere down deep inside her where the file had done the most damage by lowering her self-esteem and making her feel almost ashamed of her humble background. Shutting off that humiliating inner voice, Jazz drank in a deep steadying breath and informed him that she was ready to leave.

The female staff had assembled to see her ball gown and Jazz smiled, pleased by their approbation, secure in her belief that she had chosen well when she’d decided not to pick the plain and boring black dress that Vitale would have selected. With diamonds sparkling at her every step, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a tall hall mirror and barely recognised that glitzy figure.

Vitale’s arm at her back, they entered a vast reception room on the ground floor where pre-dinner drinks were being served. Glorious landscape paintings of Lerovia lined the walls. Waiters in white jackets served drinks below the diamond-bright light of the gleaming crystal chandeliers twinkling above them. Angel and Merry headed straight for them and relief washed through Jazz the minute she saw their familiar faces.

‘Super, super dress,’ Merry whispered warmly.

‘And yours,’ Jazz responded, admiring the elaborate embroidery that covered her sister-in-law’s pale gown. ‘Vitale didn’t tell me you’d both be here.’

‘Vitale’s on another planet when the Queen Bee is around,’ Angel remarked very drily. ‘One thing you will learn about Charles’s sons, Jazz. He didn’t pick our mothers very well.’

‘But Charles is so lovely that he makes up for that,’ Merry chipped in soothingly into the rather awkward silence that had fallen, because Jazz would not risk uttering a single critical word about the Queen, lest she be overheard and embarrass Vitale.

‘Yes,’ Jazz agreed as Angel roamed off to speak to his brother.

Place cards were carelessly swapped at the dining table to ensure that they sat with Angel and Merry and Jazz tucked into the first course with appetite, striving not to look in the direction of the Queen at the top of the exceedingly long table.

‘Why’s Zac not here?’ Jazz asked curiously. ‘I was hoping to meet him.’

‘He’ll be at the ball. He’s not a fan of formal dinners,’ Angel explained. ‘He hates restrictions of any kind.’

‘Very different from Vitale then... Interesting,’ Jazz mused, incredibly curious about the third brother and already conscious that although Vitale hadn’t actually admitted it, he didn’t seem to like his Brazilian sibling much.

An hour later, Jazz was busily identifying the women in the ball room from their photographs in Queen Sofia’s file, the ‘suitable wives’ file as she thought of it. And not a plain face or a redhead amongst the six candidates, all of them terrifyingly well-born, several titled, all possessed of the ability to speak more than one language, a high-flying education and a solid background of charitable good works. None of them would have required lessons on how to use cutlery or how to address an ambassador or curtsy to a reigning monarch. By the time she had finished perusing that damning file Jazz had felt horrendously inadequate. She had also felt ashamed that she had instinctively resented Vitale’s certainty that theirs could only be a temporary marriage.

Of course, he didn’t want to keep her when she was so ill-qualified for the position of a royal wife. Obviously, he would want a bride with all the accomplishments that he himself took for granted. Like with like worked best even in nature. It didn’t mean that she was something lesser than the male she had married, she reasoned painfully, it only meant that they were too different.

‘Zac’s around here somewhere but I keep on missing him,’ Vitale breathed impatiently, a lean bronzed hand settling to her slender spine as he walked out to the grand foyer where guests stood in clusters served by another army of waiters bearing drinks trays.

An older man intercepted them and urged Vitale to introduce him to his fiancée. ‘Jazz.’

‘Short for?’

‘Jazmine,’ she slotted in with a smile, because it was the first time she had been asked. ‘My father registered my birth and he spelt it with a z rather than an s, which is how I became Jazz.’

‘And a very good friend in the media told me that you’ve known each other since you were children,’ the older man filled in with amusement. ‘That’s one in the eye for your mother,’ he pronounced with satisfaction before passing on.

‘Who was that?’

‘My mother’s younger half-brother, Prince Eduardo.’

‘Your uncle?’ Jazz repeated in surprise.

‘My mother wouldn’t even let him live here after she was crowned. She has always behaved as though she were an only child refusing to share the limelight...’

Jazz’s attention had strayed to the male exiting from a room further down the hall, smoothing down his jacket, running careless fingers through his long black hair, his light eyes bright beneath the lights. ‘Is that Zac?’ she asked abruptly, recognising the resemblance.

Two giggling women, one blonde, one brunette in rather creased ball gowns emerged from the same room only one telling step in the man’s wake.

‘Sì...that’s Zac,’ Vitale confirmed with audible distaste. ‘I wonder what he did with his partner while he was in there.’

A moment later, Zac answered that question for himself. ‘Well, obviously you win. Jazz is amazing and I came alone,’ he spelt out with a surprisingly charismatic grin of acknowledgement. ‘My car is already in transit.’

While the brothers chatted, Jazz wandered off. Her mother-in-law was talking to a bunch of people at the far end of the hall and Jazz tactfully avoided that area.

Vitale rejoined her by sliding his arm round her back and she smiled. ‘So, you won,’ she commented.

‘I set Zac up to fail. I feel a little guilty about doing that now,’ Vitale confided in an undertone. ‘But even so, this evening you have been a triumph of cool and control and I’m proud to be with you.’

Jazz gazed up at him in shock.

Vitale sighed. ‘It needed to be said and I’m sorry that it took my kid brother to say it first,’ he admitted.

‘Who were those women Zac was with?’

‘Willing ladies?’ Vitale suggested.

‘Don’t be so judgemental!’ Jazz urged. ‘Nothing may have happened between them and Zac.’

‘They’re both on my mother’s staff. I’m not in a charitable mood,’ he admitted wryly. ‘In any case, Zac is a player with the morals of an alley cat.’

Recognising that Vitale’s judgemental streak ran to both sexes, Jazz almost laughed. She wondered if he had ever resented his inability to behave the same way. Of course, he had, she decided, of course he must have envied his brothers’ freedom. Zac and Angel had freely chosen their lifestyles but birth had forced a rigid framework of dos and don’ts on Vitale and choice had had nothing to do with it.

‘Did you ever just want to walk away from being royal?’ Jazz asked him as he whirled her onto the dance floor for the opening dance beneath his mother’s freezing gimlet gaze. But the ballroom was so colourful that Jazz was entranced as more and more couples joined them on the floor, the ladies clad in every colour of the rainbow, their dresses swirling gracefully around them, the men elegant in black or white dinner jackets.

‘Frequently when I was a child, more often as an adult,’ Vitale confided, surprising her with that frankness. ‘But a sense of duty to our name must be stamped into my DNA. Although I consider the idea, I know I won’t actually do it.’

And it finally dawned on her that the unhappiness she had sensed in Vitale even as a child had been genuine and that acknowledgement saddened her. Shortly after midnight, soon after the Queen’s regal exit from the ball, Vitale accompanied her up to the door of their apartment and she knew he intended to go and tell the older woman that he was a married man.

‘If you’re going to confront your mother,’ she had argued all the way up the winding staircase. ‘I should come with you.’

‘There’s no reason for you to be subjected to hours of her ranting and raving. For a start, she will initially insist that my having married without her permission makes the ceremony illegal,’ Vitale retorted crisply. ‘I’m used to her hysterics and she won’t even listen until she calms down. Don’t wait up for me.’

Thinking about Vitale poised like a soldier, icily controlled in the face of his Queen’s wrath, made Jazz’s hands clench into angry fists of frustration. She had arrived in Lerovia with an open mind concerning Queen Sofia but that single scene in their bedroom had convinced her that Vitale’s mother was a despotic monster. And she cared, of course she cared, she reflected as she got ready for bed and finally climbed into that bed alone.

She loved Vitale. Oh, she hadn’t matched the word to the feelings before in an effort to protect herself from hurt, but the hurt would come whether she labelled her emotions or not. She loved the male who had lit her candles round her bath, who had held her close all night before they travelled to Lerovia. He was amazingly affectionate when he thought she was safely asleep, she conceded with tender amusement, but wary of demonstrating anything softer during the hours of daylight.

Angel had deemed his younger brother ‘emotionally stunted’, but he had been wrong in that assessment. Vitale bore all the hallmarks of someone damaged in childhood. He had taught himself to hide his emotions, had learned to suppress his pain and his anger to the extent that he barely knew what he felt any more. Yet he was working so hard at protecting her from his horrible mother, she thought fondly before she drifted off to sleep.

Breakfast was served to her in bed late the next morning and her phone already carried a text from Vitale, letting her know that he was attending a board meeting at the bank and would be out most of the day. She ate sparsely, awaiting the nausea that often took hold of her but evidently it was to be one of her good days and she could go for a shower and dress, feeling healthy and normal for once instead of simply pregnant.

Clad in an unpretentious white sundress, she went down the stone steps into the gardens to explore and enjoy the early summer sunshine. She was slightly unnerved to be closely followed by the housekeeper, Adelheid, and introduced to the very large plain-clothed man with her as her bodyguard. Striving to forget that she had company, Jazz went for a walk and then phoned her mum to catch up. She was sitting on a bench beside an ornamental stone fountain when a young woman approached her with a folded note on a silver salver.

‘It is an invitation to lunch from the Queen, Your Highness,’ the woman informed her with a bright smile.

Shock both at the form of address and the explanation of the note engulfed Jazz. Obviously, Vitale had spoken to his mother after the ball and the royal household were now aware that she was a wife rather than a fiancée. Even so, Jazz had expected the Queen to react with rage to the news that her son was married to his red-headed whore rather than a luncheon invite, and she was perplexed, lifting the note from the ludicrous salver and opening it while struggling to control her face.

Yes, she had also noted that the young woman delivering the note had been one of the women who had been in that room the night before with her brother-in-law, Zac. She concentrated, however, on the single sheet of notepaper and its gracious copperplate written summons and gave her consent to lunching with Vitale’s mother even though she would much have preferred to say no. Vitale would probably want her to say no, but then Jazz was made of much tougher stuff than the man she had married seemed willing to appreciate. Sticks and stones would not break her bones, indeed they only made her stronger. In fact, if she could for once take a little heat off Vitale, Jazz was delighted to take the opportunity.

‘My dear,’ Queen Sofia purred, rising to greet Jazz as if she were a well-loved friend as soon as she entered the imposing dining room with a gleaming table that rejoiced in only two place settings set directly opposite each other. ‘Vitale shared your wonderful news with me.’

And the wonderful news, Jazz learned in disbelief, was that she was pregnant with twins. The Queen also trotted out that old chestnut about the heir and a spare with a straight face. In fact, she seemed to be, at that point, an entirely different woman from the one Jazz had met so unforgettably the day before. Sadly, though, that impression was to be a transitory one.

‘Of course, Vitale has left me to organise the royal wedding,’ the older woman continued smoothly.

‘Wedding?’ Jazz echoed in astonishment.

‘You may legally be married now but for the benefit of our country and the dignity of the family there must be a religious ceremony in which you are seen to get married,’ Queen Sofia clarified. ‘Didn’t my son explain that to you?’

‘No,’ Jazz admitted, thoroughly intimidated by the prospect of a royal wedding.

‘Of course, you probably think it is a great deal of fuss over nothing when you and Vitale will not be together very long,’ the older woman continued in a measured tone of false regret that told Jazz all she needed to know about why she was currently receiving a welcome. ‘But our people expect a wedding and a public holiday in which to celebrate the longevity of the Castiglione family’s rule.’

Jazz was holding her breath after that stabbing little reminder that as a wife she would not be enjoying family longevity. ‘Of course,’ she said flatly, because clearly her private wants and wishes were not to be considered in the balance of royal necessities.

‘We are so fortunate that Vitale married you quickly and that your condition is not obvious yet,’ the Queen carolled in cheerful addition.

My goodness, the prospect of a couple of babies truly transformed Vitale’s mother, Jazz thought limply.

‘Obviously we will announce that a civil ceremony took place in London some weeks ago,’ the older woman assured her. ‘Not that I think these days people will be counting the months of your pregnancy, but it will add to what my PR team regard as the romantic nature of this whole affair.’

‘Romantic?’ Jazz exclaimed, wondering if she would ever work up the nerve to say more than one word back to the Queen.

The Queen waved a dismissive hand. ‘Your low birth. Your having known my son from childhood. His apparent decision to marry out of his class,’ she pronounced with unconcealed distaste. ‘We know that is not the true story. We know he had to marry you but our people will prefer the romantic version—the totally ridiculous idea that he could have fallen madly in love with you!’

Jazz was now pale as death with perspiration beading her short upper lip. She could no more have touched the plate of food in front of her than she could have spread wings and flown out of the window to escape the spite of the woman opposite her. She swallowed hard on her rising nausea, determined not to show weakness or vulnerability. She pushed her food around the plate while the Queen chattered about how very quickly the wedding could be staged and about how she would have Jazz’s measurements taken immediately for her dress. After the meal, she was shown into another room where a dressmaker did exactly that and then she escaped back up to the apartment feeling as battered and bruised as though she had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer.

Jazz now understood exactly why the Queen of Lerovia was willing to make her the reluctant star of a royal wedding. The twins would be Vitale’s heirs and that was seemingly important enough to the Castiglione dynasty to counteract his bride’s notoriously humble beginnings. Jazz tried to comprehend her mother-in-law’s unreservedly practical viewpoint. Vitale could have married a woman who did not conceive or a woman who had other difficulties in that field. Instead his heir and a spare were already on the way. The Queen despised her lowborn daughter-in-law but would tolerate her because Jazz was not in Lerovia to stay. Evidently, Vitale had told his mother the whole truth about his marriage and Jazz could not work out why she felt so wounded and betrayed by that reality when she had urged him to do exactly that.

There were no more secrets now and it was better that way, she told herself over a lonely dinner. The Queen would throw no more tantrums and would play along for the sake of appearances until Vitale and Jazz broke up. Everyone could now relax—everyone could be happy.

* * *

‘You’re having a bad dream... Wake up!’ Vitale shook her shoulder.

In the darkness, Jazz blinked rapidly, extracted from a nightmare in which she was fleeing from some menace in a haunted castle remarkably similar to Vitale’s home. ‘I’m fine,’ she whispered shakily. ‘When did you get back?’

‘Midnight.’ His lean, powerful body perfectly aligned to hers. ‘I let you down by not being here. I didn’t expect my mother to invite you for lunch. I told her to stay out of my life. What the hell is she playing at?’ he demanded in furious frustration.

‘She’s crowing about the twins.’ Jazz sighed, drowsily stretching back into the reassuring heat of him. ‘And organising a royal wedding.’

‘You should never have joined her for lunch,’ Vitale declared rawly. ‘You should’ve said you were ill and left me to deal with her.’

‘I managed. It was OK,’ Jazz lied.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Vitale admitted, flipping her over onto her back and leaning over her, his lean, darkly beautiful face shadowed by moonlight into intriguing hard edges and hollows. ‘She would’ve been poisonous. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid!’

‘For goodness’ sake...’ Jazz faltered as he stretched over and switched on the light to stare down at her accusingly. ‘She was a bit bitchy, little jibes...you know...’

‘Of course I know,’ Vitale asserted grimly, his strong jaw clenching hard. ‘I’ve seen her in action many times when she wants to punish those who have crossed her. What did she say to you?’

‘Nothing that wasn’t the truth,’ Jazz dismissed. ‘That you had to marry me. Well, can’t argue with that.’

Vitale swore long and low in Italian. ‘Don’t you understand that that is why I want you to stay away from her at all costs? I refuse to have you exposed to her malice.’

‘It really doesn’t matter to me,’ Jazz fibbed with pride. ‘It’s not as if I’m going to be living here under her roof for ever, so I don’t care what she thinks of me or what she says to me.’

‘I care,’ Vitale ground out fiercely, thinking of what he had learned about himself after he had forced out the admission to his mother that his marriage was not to be of the permanent variety. ‘I care a great deal.’

‘Why are you in such a mood?’ Jazz asked, running a teasing pale hand down over his bare bronzed chest, feeling him tense against her, watching his eyes flare with luminous revealing gold.

‘I’m convinced you’re a witch, moglie mia,’ Vitale growled, his passionate mouth crashing down hungrily on hers.

Smiling inside herself, Jazz slid like a temptress along the long, taut and fully aroused length of him and, returning that kiss with equal heat, concluded the awkward conversation.

* * *

Three weeks later, Queen Sofia had the last laugh, after all, Jazz conceded as she watched her six bridesmaids fuss over her train and her veil, both of which demanded considerable attention due to their length and ornate decoration. Less was not more in the Queen’s parlance, but Jazz had picked her favourite of the options presented to her. The pressure of starring as the leading light in a royal wedding sat heavily on her shoulders and it was several days since she had enjoyed a decent night of sleep.

It was a fairy-tale wedding gown and very sophisticated. It was composed of tulle and glitter net with a strapless dropped-waist bodice adorned with metallic embroidered lace. The neckline and waistline were richly beaded with pearls, crystals and rhinestones. Exquisite and stylish, the draped full skirt glittered with delicately beaded lace appliques. The veil was full length and fashioned of intricate handmade lace.

The bridesmaids, however, were a cruel plunge of a knife into Jazz’s still beating heart. The file of bridal candidates she had hidden in the bottom of her lingerie drawer were all fully present and correct in the bridesmaids. So, naturally, Jazz was studying them, listening to their chatter, struggling to work out which one Vitale would eventually marry for real. Would it be Elena, who never ever shut up? Carlotta, who out of envy could barely bring herself to look at Jazz? Or Luciana, who either didn’t speak any English or who didn’t want to be forced to speak to the bride? Or one of the other three young women, all bright and beautiful and perfect?

The organ music in the cathedral swelled and Jazz walked down the aisle on the arm of Vitale’s uncle, Prince Eduardo. Her family were present but her mother had shrunk from such public exposure when her daughter had asked her to walk her down the aisle, so the Queen had, once again, got her wish and had co-opted her brother into the role of giving away the bride.

Jazz was troubled by having to go through a religious service when her marriage was already destined to end in divorce but nobody had asked Jazz how she felt about taking such vows in church and she suspected that nobody would be the least interested in her moral objections. There was no fakery in her heart, nothing false about her feelings, she reminded herself resolutely as she knelt down before the Cardinal in his imposing scarlet robes.

Disconcertingly, Vitale chose that same moment to cover her hand with his and she turned her head to look at his lean, darkly handsome face, her heart jumping behind her breastbone, her tummy fluttering with butterflies while she marvelled at the compelling power of that sidewise glance of his and the curling lashes darker and more lush than her own false ones. His wide sensual mouth curled into a faint smile and she thought, Why is he smiling? and only then did she remember that there were cameras on them both and quite deliberately Jazz beamed back at him, doing what was expected of her, fearful of the misery inside her showing on the outside and equally fearful of doing the wrong thing.

Once again a wedding ring slid onto her finger and once again there was no kissing of the bride, Vitale being no fan of public demonstrations of affection. They left the cathedral to a barrage of whirring, clicking cameras and the roar of the irritatingly happy crowds assembled behind the crash barriers in the square beyond. It was lovely that people were happy for them, Jazz reflected, trying to find something positive in the event, but sad that those same people would be disappointed when their marriage ended again.

She would not miss being royal, she told herself as they stepped into the waiting horse-drawn carriage and Vitale complained bitterly about how rocky and uncomfortable it was to travel in such a way. Then without any warning whatsoever he gripped her hand, almost crushing her poor fingers, and shot something at her in driven Italian. ‘Cosa c’e di sbagliato? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong!’ she snapped, trailing her hand back in a trice.

‘That is so patently a lie that my teeth are gritting,’ Vitale told her roundly.

Well, that was tough but he would just have to live with it. She had been forced into a second very public wedding with the future replacement-wife candidates trailing her down the aisle as bridesmaids. Hadn’t he even recognised them? Of course, he would have looked at the ladies in that file at some stage because his mother was too pushy to have let him sidestep it. Jazz felt very married and very cross with her two wedding rings and her husband who didn’t love her. Not that that meant that he kept his hands off her though, she reflected hotly. Of course, she was in a bad mood. Yes, she was doing this for her children, but deciding to do it had been considerably easier than actually living the experience.

Vitale flipped mentally through every possible sin or omission he could have committed and acknowledged that he had made more mistakes than he could count. It made him uncomfortable when Jazz went quiet because she was never naturally quiet. ‘Did the doctor say something that worried you?’ he asked.

‘Will you stop reminding me that I’m pregnant?’ Jazz launched at him. ‘Can’t I just forget about being an incubator in a wedding gown for five minutes?’

Vitale clamped his mouth firmly shut because even he could take a hint that landed with the crushing weight of a boot. Maybe it was hormones, something like that, he reasoned uneasily. Or maybe she was feeling sick again. He parted his lips to enquire and then breathed in deep to restrain the urge, relieved that the palace was already in view. An incubator in a wedding gown? Where had that bizarre image come from? He would have a word with his father at the reception. Charles Russell had impregnated three women. He had to know something about pregnancy. Jazz sounded really upset and she didn’t get upset, at least not in his experience. He stole a covert glance at her rigid profile and watched in absolute horror as a tear slid down her cheek.

‘Jazz...?’ Vitale stroked a soothing forefinger down over her tightly clenched hands. ‘What can I do?’

‘I just wish...’ she began in a wobbly voice, ‘that we were already divorced. Then it would all be done and dusted and in the past and I could get my life back.’

Vitale froze, his shrewd banker’s mind going utterly blank at that aspiration. ‘I don’t want to discuss that,’ he finally replied flatly. ‘I don’t want to discuss that at all.’

‘Tough,’ Jazz pronounced grittily.

Vitale decided at that point that talking was sometimes a vastly overrated pursuit, particularly when it was heading towards what promised to be a multiple-car crash of a conclusion. It was definitely the wrong moment. In a few minutes, they would be the centre of attention again at a reception attended by the crowned heads of Europe. What he said to Jazz needed to be said in private. It would have to be measured, calm and sincere even though it wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear, even though he would be breaking his word. That acknowledgement silenced Vitale because he was appalled at that truth.

The reception was endless. Jazz shook hands and smiled and posed for photos, feeling like a professional greeter at a very upmarket restaurant. Charles Russell warmed her by giving her a hug and saying, ‘Well, when I sent Vitale in your direction I wasn’t expecting a wedding but I’m delighted for you both, Jazz.’

The older man greeted her mother with equal friendliness while Vitale bored the hind legs off her aunt by telling her all about Lerovia. At least he was trying, she conceded, striving to be more generous in her outlook. But that she was in a bad mood was really all his fault. They had supposedly only married to give the twins legitimacy, so why was he still sharing a bed with her? Why was he draping her in his grandmother’s fabulous jewellery? She had more diamonds than she knew what to do with and he kept on buying gifts for her as well.

She thought about the tiger pendant with the emerald eyes that she cherished. She thought about the ever-expanding snow globe collection she now possessed. Vitale had given her the wrong signals from the outset and it was hardly surprising that she had fallen for him hard or that she had foolishly continued having sex with him, hoping to ignite emotions that he wasn’t capable of feeling. He had as much emotion as a granite pillar! Didn’t she have any pride or sense of self-preservation? Lashing herself with such thoughts, Jazz held her head high and continued to smile while deciding that things were about to change...