Читать книгу Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

A LOUD bang from a noisy exhaust somewhere in the street had Julie glancing over her shoulder and then checking automatically to see that her shabby shoulder bag was tucked in against her body. This was a down-at-heel and often unsafe neighbourhood. Only the other day she had been warned by the woman in charge of the nursery never to leave any personal documents in her flat as there had been a spate of robberies, with passports especially being targeted. As a result, she was now carrying their passports with her in her handbag.

‘Ms Simmonds?’

Julie gasped with shock. She had been so busy looking over her shoulder that she hadn’t seen the man who was now standing in front of her, blocking her way to the entrance of the converted house where she rented a small flat.

One look at him, though, told her that this was no thief. Not with that expensive car parked right next to them, which she hadn’t noticed before and which she suspected must be his.

Warily she nodded her head.

‘And this is your child?’

Now she could feel herself tensing, hesitating, as she held on tightly to her orphaned baby nephew whilst she fought off her feeling of apprehension. Josh was her child after all—now. The icy March rain that had started when she had left the local eight-until-ten shop where she worked part-time to walk to the nursery to collect Josh had soaked through her thin coat, turning the fine silver-blonde silkiness of her hair into lank rats’ tails whilst the cold had left her skin blue-white and bloodless, and now she was trapped here on the street with a man who was asking her questions she did not want to answer. The weight of Josh, plus his nappy bag and her handbag, were already making her thin arms ache.

‘If you’re a debt collector…’ she began. Her voice might be thin with disdain and exhaustion, but it was fear that was making her heart thud so painfully. Josh was hers. There was no reason for her to feel that this man—this stranger—somehow threatened her right to call Josh her child, even if she wasn’t actually Josh’s birth mother. That was what living a hand-to-mouth existence and constantly fearing the arrival of another demand for money did for you: it made you feel guilty and on edge even when you had no cause to do so.

If it was money that this man was after then he was wasting his time. Julie’s chin unconsciously lifted with the pride she knew he would believe she no longer had the right to have. There was no point in anyone sending in any more bailiffs as there was nothing left to take. Even Josh’s buggy had been claimed against her dead sister’s debts. There was no point feeling sorry for herself or wishing that her parents had thought to make a proper will. Ultimately, as their now only surviving child, she should inherit something—enough, she hoped, to clear all Judy’s debts and buy a small house for herself and Josh. But according to her solicitor a final settlement of everything could be some time away, given the complications of the situation.

The fact was that her parents, her sister, James—her sister’s fiancé—and his parents had all died, along with twenty other people in the same fatal train crash. It had been such a terrible shock, and had left Julie with the task of supporting herself and her late sister’s child whilst being hounded to pay Judy’s debts. And, of course, cope with James’s death.

The funerals had been in their way even worse than the news of the deaths itself. She, of course, as the only adult living member of her own family, had had to make the arrangements for the burial of her parents and her sister. She had thought that maybe Judy should be buried with James, but Annette, James’s elder sister and only relative, had refused to entertain the idea, insisting that James was buried with their parents.

With the funeral two days after her family’s, Julie had been able to attend—and she had found that Annette was exactly as James had once described his elder sister to her. Polished and expensively dressed—her husband was a banker—and very cold.

‘Keep that child away from me,’ she had said sharply, stepping back from Julie. ‘My coat cost a fortune, it’s pure cashmere.’

James had told Julie that Roger, Annette’s husband, desperately wanted a family but that Annette flatly refused to entertain the idea. They had a smart townhouse in Chelsea, where Annette entertained Roger’s colleagues and clients. She was very much the corporate wife, and according to James was very ambitious for her husband. James. Julie blinked away exhausted tears. Her one and only love. Her one and only lover. It only things had been different. If only she had been the one to conceive his child. If only…

Losing him still hurt so very much. Only with his death had she admitted that somewhere deep inside herself she had been cherishing the foolish hope that one day he would come back to her.

Rocco watched the shadows come and go in the woman’s unusually expressive dark grey eyes. The only part of her that looked anything like alive. He had never seen such a washed-out-looking female.

‘A debt collector?’ He gave her a haughty look, before adding dryly, ‘You could call me that,’ he agreed, answering Julie’s bitter question. ‘Although what I’m here for is more properly a matter of repossession.’

Repossession? There wasn’t anything left in the flat to repossess. The bailiffs had taken it all. She tried to look braver than she felt as she looked at the man.

The harsh street lighting gave his features a Byzantine quality of polished arrogance allied to cruelty, gilding the olive skin drawn tight over the high cheekbones. It was the face of a man without mercy or compassion—the face of a man whose heritage was rooted in the alien and the dangerous, Julie recognised.

It was hard for Rocco to see what could possibly have attracted his young half-brother to this pale plain English girl. She was thin to the point of malnourishment, whey-faced, and so far as he could see without charm or personality—but perhaps he was being unfair. Given enough champagne and the illegal party drugs his late half-brother had favoured, maybe she had sparkled in the tawdry manner in which Antonio had liked his women to sparkle.

Distaste filled him—for his late half-brother’s way of life, for the morals of the woman standing in front of him, but most of all for the duty that had been imposed upon him by his own birth and his elder brother’s conscience.

He had been against this whole thing right from the start. A child’s place was with its mother. But Alessandro had pointed out that the child would be with its mother, at all times, and would continue to remain with her since Rocco’s task was to bring them both back to Sicily with him. In fact, now that he had seen the circumstances in which the pair of them seemed to be living, Rocco acknowledged that his intervention in their lives could only be of benefit—to them both.

She was so cold, and she must get Josh inside—but he was still standing in front her. Josh still wasn’t over the nasty cough he had caught at the beginning of the winter.

Poor baby, he had had so many problems since her sister had given birth to him three weeks early, in January. First there had been the fact that Judy had never wanted him in the first place. Then there had been his inability to feed properly, followed by the discovery that he was slightly tongue-tied… That had led to a very minor medical procedure, after which—perhaps because Judy had not been careful enough—he had contracted an infection, which in turn had led to further feeding problems. And then with one blow fate had robbed him of his parents and both sets of grandparents.

But somehow Julie would make it up to him. She would love him and look after him. He was, after all, all she had left of James and her family, even if he hadn’t already been precious to her in his own right.

When they had come to tell her about the train accident which had killed so many people, including her own and Josh’s family, she had made a silent vow to the man she loved so much to love and protect the child he had believed was his.

James had been so proud and excited when he had discovered that Judy was pregnant…

Rocco was getting impatient. He was a Leopardi after all. The Leopardis had ruled their lands and dispensed their own form of law in Sicily from the time of the Crusades onwards. Rocco had grown up in an environment where to be a Leopardi meant that one’s word was law.

‘I don’t know what it is you wish to repossess,’ Julie began tiredly, ‘but my…my baby is cold, and I really need to get him inside.’ She didn’t really want to have to open her handbag in front of this stranger, but she needed to get her keys so that she could let herself into the flat. It wasn’t easy, trying to surreptitiously open her handbag and at the same time hold Josh safe, and when she saw the way the man was looking at her, with a mix of male irritation and impatience, she knew that her attempt at discretion had been a waste of time.

‘Let me hold the child for you.’ The cool assurance in the male voice combined with the unexpected offer caused Julie’s eyes to widen in astonishment. He sounded as though he was perfectly at home holding young babies.

‘You’ve got children of your own?’ Julie’s face burned as she realised how personal and inappropriate her question was.

His terse ‘No’ compounded those feelings, which hardly inspired her to hand over Josh. But then her ineffectual scrabbling one-handedly in the bag suddenly caused it to tilt upwards, disgorging some of its contents onto the wet street, including her purse, an assortment of bills that belonged to Judy, her keys and their passports—Josh’s a sad reminder of the honeymoon her sister had been so excited about, their first holiday as a family. Rocco frowned as he looked down at the wet pavement and saw the passports amongst the other detritus that had spilled from the woman’s handbag.

Ignoring Julie’s gasp of protest, he bent down to retrieve her possessions, picking up the now wet bills and the two passports before casually flicking them open. Both passports were in his hand—a providential accident or a potent sign that this task might after all be simpler and easier than he had thought? What kind of woman carried passports around with her? he wondered, and then grimaced as he found the answer to his own question.

Obviously the kind who expected that the opportunity to leave the country might occur at any time and wanted to be prepared for it. He imagined it was the kind of thing that would be quite common where high-class hookers were concerned.

But this pathetic and unappealing-looking woman couldn’t have looked less like anything high-class. Rocco reached for her purse, frowning as he felt its emptiness, and then picked up her keys.

He was handing everything back to her, including her keys. Julie exhaled shakily in relief. She wasn’t sure just what she had been fearing, but now she admitted she did feel a bit more relaxed—or at least she did until he said autocractically, ‘The baby needs to be out of this rain and wind.’ He put his hand on her arm, nodding in the direction of his car as he told her, ‘My car’s over there.’

Had she moved of her own volition, or was it a combination of the wind and his hand on her arm that had somehow brought her so close to his car that she was standing with it on one side of her and him on the other, hemming her in? Julie shivered.

What were his intentions? What did he really want? Not her. Not a man like this one, whose every movement and expression suggested a certain contempt for everything and anything that was not of the very best—including the speed with which his hand had dropped from her arm. All she needed to do was simply ask him to move. She could even push past him. Her hand was beginning to feel numb from clinging on to her possessions, and Josh was an increasingly heavy weight on her arm, despite his slightness. Carefully she tried to adjust Josh’s position to ease her arm.

‘Let me take him.’ He was reaching for Josh, Julie recognised immediately, all maternal anxiety, his hands long- fingered, lean and tanned against the baby’s shabby suit.

‘What is it you want?’ she demanded. ‘Who sent you here?’

‘No one sends me anywhere,’ he told her coldly. ‘And it isn’t who I am from you should be asking, but where.’

‘Where? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

‘No? Try this, then. I’m from the country and the family to whom the boy belongs.’

Julie’s eyes were as grey and drained of warm blue as London’s March sky, and they registered shock and then fear as the meaning of his words slammed into her heart, causing it to thud so heavily that she could hear its beat in her own ears.

‘You’re from Sicily?’ she guessed.

‘I’m from Sicily,’ he agreed.

Of all the possibilities she might have envisaged, this had not even come close to being one of them—and that alone was enough to fling her headlong into mindless panic as she demanded, ‘Who are you?’

Rocco wasn’t used to having his identity questioned. He looked down at her contemptuously from his six-foot-three height, folding his arms across his chest. The fine wool of his handmade Italian suit moved with him as easily as though it was his flesh.

‘My name is Leopardi—Rocco Leopardi. And now that I have answered you perhaps you will be good enough to give me the child—my nephew—and get into the car?’

His nephew. So this was not Antonio—the rich, louche Sicilian playboy with whom her sister had had an affair in the South of France early last May, which may or may not have been responsible for Josh’s conception—a fact which she had forced Julie to promise to keep a secret from James. A feeling akin to relief which there was absolutely no justification for her to feel warmed the icy sting of Julie’s rain-chilled body, temporarily making her drop her guard and momentarily relax her tightly protective hold on the sleeping baby.

Fearing that she was about to drop the child, Rocco immediately reached for him, lifting him bodily out of Julie’s arms before she could stop him and then opening the rear passenger door to the car.

‘What are you doing?’

Fresh panic and fear filled Julie as she watched Rocco place Josh into a baby seat in the back of the car. Everything about the way he handled her nephew was gentle and protective of the small, vulnerable life, but for some reason the fact that he was being so careful, so caring, actually increased Julie’s fear. For herself and her own position in Josh’s life?

‘I’m simply putting the baby out of harm’s way whilst we talk. You almost dropped him.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ Julie denied. ‘You’re trying to take him away from me, aren’t you?’ she guessed. ‘You’re trying to steal him.’

Rocco gave her a tight-lipped look. He might have known she’d be the high-drama hysterical type.

Fear and panic had seized Julie. Did he know that she wasn’t really Josh’s mother? Was he going to try and claim that she had no rights where Josh was concerned? He was the kind of man from the kind of family who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, and if they wanted her nephew… Julie’s heart was thumping frantically. She could see a man and a woman coming towards them on the opposite side of the road. She opened her mouth to call out to them for help, her instinctive need to protect her relationship with Josh overwhelming her normal dislike of any kind of scene.

‘Look—’ Rocco had begun intending to point out that she was overreacting, only to stop when he saw that Julie was looking across the road at a couple who were walking towards them. Instantly guessing what she was going to do, he reacted immediately. She was already standing close to the car, so it was easy to hold her there in his arms, and easier still to silence her planned cry for help with the pressure of his mouth on hers.

Normally the last thing he’d have contemplated doing was kissing a woman like this one. She appealed to him almost as little physically as she repulsed him morally—thin, blonde, pale-skinned, and ready to have sex with any man who asked her just so long as he was rich.

Rocco liked strikingly attractive, intelligent women, who showed their pride in themselves in everything they did and were. His father might be the head of one of Sicily’s oldest aristocratic families, and he himself might have a courtesy title, but Rocco was a billionaire in his own right, through his own endeavours, and he took pride in that achievement. When the time eventually came that he was ready to settle down—which most definitely was not yet—he wanted a partner who was exactly that: a woman who was equal to truly being his partner. Someone who understood the demands that came with his birthright but who at the same time had made her own way in the world and knew the value of having done so—a woman who was equally at home in society as she was in the corporate world; a woman who held herself aloof from the cheap sexual thrills beloved of his half-brother and his cronies, and who disdained them and everything they represented as much as he did himself; but at the same time a woman who understood and shared his own deep-rooted core sensuality.

One thing she must not do, though, was fall in love with him or expect him to fall in love with her. Bitterness gripped its ever- ready fist tight on his emotions. His mother had loved his father and that love had destroyed her. That was never going to happen to him, nor did he want to be responsible for the pain of it in someone else. He had no intention of becoming either the victim his mother had been or the callous enforcer of that victimisation that was his father.

The child’s mother had stiffened in his hold, and he could feel the frightened race of her heartbeat.

Frightened? Of what? Not him? Rocco was outraged. The thought of creating fear within anyone, but especially in someone weaker and vulnerable, was totally abhorrent to him. How could a woman who had given herself to his depraved late half-brother possibly be afraid of him? From what he knew of Antonio, a woman who was frightened of a man’s touch was hardly his style. And from what Falcon’s sources had discovered about her, this one had been very much Antonio’s style—a so-called glamour model. Not that there was anything remotely glamorous about her now…

And yet somehow her lips were unexpectedly soft and full, and her slenderness within his arms disarmed and distracted him, making him want to hold her close, tempting his tongue- tip to explore the shape and tease apart that closed line of denial.

Rocco wasn’t used to women who denied him.

The reason why Julie had ended up in Rocco’s arms had become buried beneath a surge of other feelings and a very different kind of panic. James was the only man she had ever wanted to hold her like this and kiss her like this, Julie thought painfully, but somehow—either through exhaustion or fear or both—she could feel her will to resist him giving way to the warmth emanating from him. It was as though her weakness was irresistibly drawn to his strength, her woman to his man, the softness of her lips to the hard command of his mouth, until the determined male pressure of his tongue was melting her resistance as easily as the heat of a Sicilian summer sun could melt winter snow. Her starving senses were betrayingly greedy for the sensual pleasure of his kiss.

This was how she had once dreamed of James holding her and kissing her—before they had become lovers, before she had lost him to Judy.

It had been bad enough having to listen to James telling her gently that, whilst he liked her and valued their time together, he had fallen in love with Judy, but it had been even worse having to listen to Judy confessing in a drunken moment that she was not sure who was the father of the unwanted child she had been carrying.

It could, she had admitted, be the wealthy Sicilian playboy with whom she’d had an affair but who had since ditched her and was refusing to answer her letters. But she was going to tell James that it was his—because, as she had told Julie smugly and with open malice, it actually could be, seeing as James had rushed her into bed the minute she had returned from Sicily.

Having to listen to Judy telling her about them making love had been pure torture. Julie clung fiercely to Rocco. It had been her kisses she had wanted James to long for, her touch, her body… Lost in her own emotions, she felt the man holding her become James, and the intensity of her emotions dictated her actions, so that she was kissing him with all the fierce longing and pride of her love for James.

Julie’s sudden passion caught Rocco off guard. She was pressing her body into his, opening her mouth beneath his, and her breathing was altering to become as unsteady as her heartbeat.

Unaware of the reason for it, instinctively he responded to it, shaping her body to his own, taking the sweetness her parted lips were offering, and letting the soft moan of assent she gave at the first thrust of his tongue be the signal that brought his hands sweeping down her body to bring her intimately close to his own flesh.

The sensation of hard male thighs pressing against her jolted Julie back to reality.

This man was not James.

As soon as he felt her struggle Rocco stopped kissing her, sliding his hands back up over her body more out of habit than desire, as distaste for his own actions filled him. Since when had he ever wanted Antonio’s leavings?

It was unthinkable that he should want a woman like this one—a pathetic excuse for a real woman.

He had stopped kissing her, but he was still holding on to her, Julie recognized, shivering in his hold. Why had she kissed him like that? He wasn’t anything like James. The couple she would have called out to for help had now, of course, gone.

As much as he wanted to turn his back and walk away from her, and from his own momentary betrayal of himself and his values, Rocco knew that he could not do so. On this occasion his duty to his family must come before any duty to himself.

‘There are matters we need to discuss,’ he told Julie coldly.

‘I will not let you take my baby away from me,’ Julie warned him fiercely, blinking back the tears caused by the overload on her emotions.

Rocco frowned at her.

‘You are being ridiculous. There is no question of anyone wanting to take your child. This is simply a matter of you both accompanying me to Sicily so that the legal complexities of a certain situation can be dealt with. All that is involved is a stay of a week—ten days at the most—and then you will be free to return here if that is your wish. I give you my word on that.’

Julie looked at him. His giving of ‘his word’ should have sounded theatrical, something for her to question and even mock, but somehow instead she found herself reacting to his words at some deep psychological level—as though a contract had been made, a promise given, a vow, almost. She could feel her breath leaking from her lungs and she knew that the slight inclination of her head was an acknowledgement of that contract—just as powerful a commitment from her as his words had been from him.

She had relaxed slightly, but a woman like this one, who had no conception of honour or what was due to a man’s given word, was all too likely to cause the kind of public display she had already tried to cause once, Rocco decided, making up his mind that the sooner they were on their way to Sicily the better. Since she had their passports with her, he could see no sense in prolonging their departure. His personal jet was on standby, with its flight path filed. There was nothing to be gained by delaying things. Once she was in the car, she could argue with him all she wanted.

‘Now, if we can both get into the car and out of this rain,’ Rocco continued, opening the passenger door of the car for her.

Julie was still hesitating.

‘I assure you that, far from suffering any harm, as you seem to think, ultimately both you and the child stand to benefit financially,’ Rocco told her coolly.

Benefit? Financially? What did that mean? Julie’s heart started to beat too fast.

Ah, now he had found the key to unlock her resistance, Rocco thought cynically.

‘But why? I mean, I know that your brother…’ She could not bring herself to say that she knew that his brother might be Josh’s father, because that meant admitting to herself that Josh might not be James’s son, and she longed so much for it to have been James who had fathered him, even though Judy herself had told her that she was not completely sure about who the father was. It was Josh she must think of now, though, she warned herself, and if the family of the wealthy playboy with whom her sister had had a fling were prepared to make some kind of financial provision for Josh, what right did she have to deny her nephew that benefit?

A fresh fear struck her. What if Antonio Leopardi wanted to claim Josh and take him from her? What if that was what this was all about?

The car, long, shiny and expensive, was parked beneath a streetlight, and she could see quite plainly the contemptuous look in the slightly hooded golden-amber eyes as he turned towards her. The eyes of a predatory hunter. Leopard’s eyes.

‘Antonio was my half-brother, not my brother. He was Sicilian, therefore this child—his child—is also Sicilian, and as such is entitled to his inheritance. That is the law of our blood and our family.’

The whole sentence was seamed with warnings as dark and ancient as Sicily’s own history, but initially it was the first three words he had spoken that Julie focused on.

‘Antonio was Sicilian?’ she repeated. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means exactly what it always means when one speaks of a person’s life in the past tense,’ Rocco told her curtly. ‘My half-brother—your lover, the child’s father—is dead. However, whilst the Leopardi family does not have another Antonio, and most certainly will not supply you with a replacement lover—’ another even more derisory look, designed to strip whatever pride she might have left from her much in the same manner that one of his ancestors might have ordered that a criminal be flayed alive, followed the first one ‘—it does take its responsibilities towards those of its blood very seriously.’

She was almost mentally and emotionally numb now, as well as numb with cold, and the hardship of these last months was abruptly taking its toll on her. It was hard to remember now that she had ever been a confident, successful young woman, with a promising career in local government in front of her—never mind that it was less than six months since she had been smartly turned out, well fed, a stone heavier, with glossy hair and a growing circle of new acquaintances, sharing a comfortable apartment with three other young female graduates who, like her, had jobs in local government.

The thought of sharing the responsibility for the safe upbringing of the child she loved so much with a proper family, with a man with shoulders broad enough to carry that weight easily and safely, filled her with unexpected relief. How much easier all those decisions that would need to be made down through the years would be if there were others to share them with her, for her to turn to, others who—unlike James’s sister—would not reject her nephew.

Rocco Leopardi might not reject Josh, but he was making it plain what he thought of her, and instinctively Julie wanted to defend herself and refute his accusations. She began to say indignantly,

‘But I am not—’ and then wondered if it would be wise to tell him that she was not Josh’s mother. He might have given her his word that she and Josh would not be separated, but that word had been given to her as Josh’s mother, not his aunt—even if, as his aunt, she was also his legal guardian. Julie had no idea why she felt the need to conceal her true relationship to Josh, only that instinctively somehow she did.

‘You’re not what? Distraught at the thought of Antonio’s death? No, I can see that,’ Rocco observed as he held open the car door for her to get in. ‘But then it was hardly a long-standing relationship that you had with him, was it?’

As she sank into the luxury of the blissfully comfortable seat Julie dipped her head, knowing that she now had to either accept his insults or confess that she wasn’t Josh’s mother.

‘What happened to…to Antonio?’ Julie had no idea why she was asking. She had not even known the man, after all, even if the news of his death had come as a shock.

‘He died as he lived,’ Rocco told her curtly. ‘Believing that nothing and no one mattered apart from himself.’

Now Julie looked at him, taken aback by the contempt she could see in his gaze.

‘He was showing off, driving a car he did not have the skill to control far too fast.’

Judy had said that she and Antonio were two of a kind, and from what Rocco had just told her it sounded as if she had been right, Julie acknowledged.

‘However, if the child is of our blood,’ Rocco continued curtly, ‘then no matter how carelessly he was conceived he is of us—a part of us, Leopardi.’

Instinctively Julie wanted to tell him that there was no way Josh could be a Leopardi, and that it was James who was his father. She had been so determined to believe that Josh was James’s son that she was still in shock from the sudden appearance of Rocco Leopardi, with his unwanted reminder that not even her sister had known just who Josh’s father was.

The look in the leopard eyes whilst he had been speaking had been all fiercely proud severity and intent. He really meant what he was saying, Julie recognised. His words revealed to her the centuries-old proud belief of a family who prized their blood and honoured their responsibility towards it above everything and everyone else.

It was slowly beginning to sink in for her just what it would mean if Josh was Antonio Leopardi’s son. A part of her wanted to state that she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Antonio could not be Josh’s father—but, even if Rocco Leopardi would accept that claim, how much damage might she be doing to Josh if she were to deny him his right to a heritage that might be his?

It was his need and his well-being that she must put first from now on, until the day came when he was old enough to make such a decision for himself. After all, she loved him for himself equally as much as she loved the thought of him being James’s son.

Just as she could not and must not refuse to go to Sicily and reject whatever financial advantage for Josh that visit might bring about, so equally she must not deny the fact that he could be, as Rocco Leopardi has so emotively put it, ‘of Leopardi blood’.

It was obvious that Rocco Leopardi did not know about her sister’s death and thought that she was Judy. Julie’s lips twisted in a small sad smile. If he had known her sister he would never have mistaken them. Both of them had disliked the fact that their parents had chosen such similar names for them, but it had been Judy who had complained about it most frequently when they had been growing up, stating that it was silly when they were so different and she was so much prettier and more popular than Julie.

‘What will happen when we reach Sicily?’

‘Our family doctor will do a DNA test.’

‘But that could have been done here,’ Julie protested.

Ignoring her outburst, Rocco continued, ‘It will be at least five days before it is possible to have the results of this test. If it should prove that the child was fathered by Antonio then naturally that will mean that your son is part of our family.’

‘And if they do not prove that?’ Julie asked huskily, unable to bring herself to look at him as she made what she knew in Rocco Leopardi’s eyes would be an admission of her lack of morals.

Rocco frowned. Her behaviour was not what he had ex¬ pected. He had anticipated that her manner would be more coy—cloyingly so—with many protestations of love for Antonio and her conviction that her child must be his half-brother’s. It seemed out of character that she should talk so openly about the possibility of the child not being Antonio’s.

‘Then you will be financially recompensed for agreeing to travel to Sicily and given a substantial sum of money in return for your discretion.’

Julie’s eyes widened.

‘You mean that you will buy my silence?’ she guessed shrewdly, watching as Rocco inclined his head in agreement.

How unpalatable and sleazy the whole situation was, Julie thought uncomfortably. She wished desperately that she and Josh did not have to be part of the whole unpleasant situation, but for Josh’s sake she had to ignore her own distaste.

‘Of course if you already know the father is not Antonio…?’

‘No, I can’t be sure,’ Julie had to admit.

She was telling the truth, Rocco recognised.

The interior or the car smelled of expensive leather mixed with a hint of equally expensive male cologne. Julie turned to look at her sleeping nephew, thankful that she had taken the time to feed and change him before she had left the nursery.

Josh was such a quiet baby. Too quiet, Julie often worried, and the lovely new doctor at their busy local practice had agreed when Julie had raised her concerns with her.

Initially Julie hadn’t wanted to betray her dead sister by telling the doctor that she had often worried that Judy neglected her baby, but Josh’s health was her responsibility now, and more important to her than any loyalty she might owe a sister whose attitude to life had been opposite to her own and who had often treated her so unkindly.

The sad truth was—as Julie had feared and the doctor had gently confirmed—that poor little Josh had been neglected and malnourished by his mother during the first weeks of his life. Because the infection he had picked up had been left untreated it had compromised his immune system, which had then struggled to combat the winter viruses other babies could throw off. Emotionally too he had suffered—from maternal neglect. Julie had sworn to herself that she would make up for the sad early weeks of his life, and ideally she would have liked to be with him herself twenty-four-seven. But that, of course, was not possible since they were dependent on her income until her parents’ estate was settled.

Slowly Josh had started to recognise her and respond, and earlier in the week for the very first time he had smiled at her and held out his arms to be picked up. Just thinking about that precious, wonderful moment now as she looked at him brought a lump of emotion to Julie’s throat.

Everything about this car was expensive and new and clean, including the baby seat, and so very different from the shabby second-hand things that were all she had been able to afford once she had realised that many of those to whom her sister had owed money expected her to pay off her sister’s debts.

Rocco started the car’s engine and eased away from the pavement, causing Julie to look at him and demand, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m driving us to the airport,’ he told her with exaggerated patience, ‘where we shall board a plane to take us home to Sicily.’

Sicily? Now? When she didn’t have so much as a change of clothes for Josh, never mind herself, and she hadn’t even agreed that they would go—at least not properly.

‘We can’t do that,’ Julie protested wildly.

‘Why not?’ Rocco asked her.

‘There are things I need to do, people I need to tell—my landlord, and the crèche, and where I work. And we…Josh needs…we both need clothes and…and his…’

‘You can telephone everyone you need to speak with here from the car. As for everything that the child might need, you may leave that to me.’

Quite plainly he was a man who did not like wasting time, Julie thought weakly, her eyes widening as Rocco pressed a button on the steering wheel of his car and a mobile phone slid out from the dashboard.

It gave Julie a feeling rather like deliberately swimming out of her depth to make the phone calls which were in effect committing her to accompanying Rocco to Sicily.

She was just finishing leaving a halting explanation on the message service at the crèche when a small whimper from the back of the car had her concluding her message quickly, so that she could turn to look at Josh, who was now awake and grizzling.

‘Could you stop the car, please?’ she asked Rocco, elaborating when he frowned, ‘I want to sit in the back with Josh.’

Rocco had pulled over almost before she had stopped speaking, getting out of his own seat whilst she was still unfastening her seat belt to come round to her door and open it for her. He placed his hand beneath her elbow as he helped her out.

His manners certainly could not be faulted, Julie admitted, along with his kissing technique. They were in a class of their own.

Julie froze, hardly daring to breathe, the blood suddenly flooding her face in a rich tide of guilty colour. What on earth had made her think that? She felt shocked and mortified, reduced by her own confusion to stammering slightly as Rocco opened the rear passenger door of the car for her, allowing her to get inside.

She couldn’t—dared not—look at him, so she busied herself instead with removing her coat and fussing over Josh, who had stopped crying now but was still awake, whilst from the front of the car she could hear Rocco speaking in what she assumed must be Italian, using the hands-free phone she herself had just used.

As he explained to an exclusive concierge service exactly what he wanted, Rocco watched Julie discreetly in his rearview mirror, and then frowned. He hadn’t expected her to be as devoted to her child as she obviously was. That, like the fear of him she had displayed earlier, sat uncomfortably with his pre-assessment of her.

Only now that the decision was made, and its execution taken out of her hands, could she admit to herself how exhausted she felt, Julie admitted. The debilitating and often frightening feeling that it would be easier to crawl than walk, easier to lie down than do either, had been growing steadily these last few months, inexorably stalking her until at times she came face to face with it and realised how much stronger and more powerful it was than her.

The peace and comfort of the car, along with its steady movement, were lulling her to sleep, but she must not give in to her aching need to close her eyes. She must think of Josh. She must put his needs first….

Rocco glanced in his driving mirror to see if Julie was still asleep. It was nearly an hour now since he had seen her eyes close, and she had fallen asleep with the speed of a child. But even in sleep her hand rested protectively on the side of the baby carrier. No one else could touch it or the child in it without waking her, Rocco suspected.

The smell of cheap wet wool being warmed by the car’s heating system reached his nostrils. His fastidious eldest brother would quickly have shown his displeasure, Rocco re¬ flected, but he was more down to earth. In the construction industry one had to be.

His father had been furious when he had learned what Rocco planned to do with the land left to him by his mother’s uncle. A resort with its own private airfield on what should have been Leopardi land—it was unthinkable, an abomination, a betrayal of everything that the name Leopardi stood for: tradition, continuation of the male line, pride and secrecy.

‘On my mother’s land,’ Falcon had corrected his father, stepping in to shield his younger sibling from their father’s wrath, just as he had done so many times during their childhood.

They said that blood was thicker than water, but it was the Leopardi blood he shared with his brothers to which Rocco was loyal—not the Leopardi blood of his father.

The lights of the airport, gleaming on the wet tarmac, shone up ahead of them through the winter night, and as Rocco brought the car’s speed down Julie woke up, not knowing just where she was for a few seconds, and then—when she did—looking anxiously at Josh, relieved to see that he was still asleep before glancing self-consciously towards the front of the car. She could see Rocco’s hands resting on the steering wheel, and for some reason the sight of them made her heart jerk against her ribs. It was an effort to drag her gaze away from him to look out of the car window instead.

They were turning off the main access road, swinging round down a smooth road and up to a checkpoint, where Rocco produced a plastic card for the security guard—who saluted him before raising the barrier.

The car picked up speed, and Julie’s eyes widened in disbelief as she realised that, no, she wasn’t seeing things. Rocco was driving right up to the sleek silver jet parked on the tarmac in front of them.

* * *

‘Good evening, sir.’

Rocco smiled at Nigel Rowlins, the first officer of his private jet, as he opened the door of the Mercedes.

‘Good evening, Nigel. All set to go, are we?’

‘Yes, indeed, sir. Flight plan’s logged and approved, the deliveries have arrived and have been loaded. Passport control’s on alert.’

Rocco nodded his head.

They were flying to Sicily in a private jet? Why hadn’t she realised that that might be the case? Because she wasn’t used to people whose lifestyle included private jets, that was why, Julie answered her own question wryly.

She had been banking on them going through the departure area so that she could at least buy some necessities for Josh—luckily his bottles and heater were in the nappy bag, along with a couple of changes of clothes. And she needed a change of clothes for herself—the cheaper the better, since she only had a tiny bit of cash on her. Now what was she going to do? She realised that Rocco Leopardi had said that he would deal with things, but she neither expected nor wanted to him to buy anything for them. There was no way she wanted to feel beholden to him. No way at all.

Perhaps he had forgotten what he had said? Perhaps she should remind him?

She took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘I was hoping we’d have some time to buy clothes.’

The soft, quiet voice was at odds with the intent behind her words—which said quite plainly that she’d been expecting him to take her on a shopping spree.

‘You will find everything you are likely to need is already on board,’ Rocco told her dismissively.

‘Everything?’ Julie queried uncertainly. How could that be? He hadn’t so much as asked her what Josh might need.

‘Everything.’ Rocco confirmed grimly. What was she expecting? Carte blanche at Heathrow’s duty-free designer shops? Tough, he decided unsympathetically as he got out of the car, effectively putting an end to their conversation, and going to open the door nearest to Josh. He reached in to lift him out of the baby seat, leaving Julie to gather together her coat, the baby bag and her own handbag, and follow him out onto the tarmac.

It was dark now, and cold, causing Julie to shiver.

The shock of the cold air after the warmth of the car woke Josh, and his thin, fretful cry jerked on Julie’s heartstrings. It was too cold for him out here, and he needed feeding.

Rocco Leopardi was still holding Josh. Turning away from her, he strode towards the plane, taking the steps two at a time with easy, relaxed energy, leaving her no option other than to hurry after him.

If the uniformed steward waiting in the luxuriously furnished cabin was surprised by her appearance, or the fact that his boss was holding a shabbily dressed crying baby, he was too well trained to show it, simply offering to take Julie’s coat from her and asking her what she would like to drink.

‘Something hot rather than something alcoholic, Russell,’ Rocco Leopardi was answering on her behalf, and the fact that he was not allowing her to make her own decision filled Julie with an unfamiliar and foolish desire to insist that actually she wanted champagne, even though in reality she rarely touched alcohol.

Instead she gave the steward a diffident smile and asked uncertainly, ‘If there is somewhere to heat Josh’s bottle?’

‘Of course. I’ve got a choice of formula in the galley for when you want it, and the cot and everything else has been set up in the sleeping cabin.’

‘It’s no wonder he looks so whey-faced and undersized, since you obviously aren’t feeding him yourself.’

Rocco’s criticism, voiced the moment the steward had disappeared with the bottle Julie had removed from the shabby nappy bag, caused her to stare at him. The colour came and went in her face as she searched and failed to find a response that would have the effect of putting him in his place and ensuring that he knew just how seriously she took her responsibilities towards Josh.

‘I have to go out to work,’ was all she could think of to say, and she prayed that he wouldn’t make any comment about expressed breast milk being better than formula.

Ignoring her response, he continued, ‘As Russell just said, you’ll find everything you need in the inner cabin. It will be a three-hour flight, so feel free to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep yourself, if you wish.’ He frowned when he saw the wariness in her eyes, demanding, ‘What’s that look for? You are perfectly safe. I can assure you that I’m not desperate enough to lower myself to make use of Antonio’s leavings.’

Dangerously, the repugnance in his voice actually hurt her. Why? There had only ever been one man she had wanted to desire her, and that had been James. He had desired her—until Judy had bewitched him and taken him from her. She certainly didn’t desire Rocco Leopardi, and she never would.

The steward had reappeared.

‘We’ll be taking off soon,’ he told her. ‘If you’d like to come with me, we’ve got a sky cot set up for the baby in the sleeping compartment.’

Obediently, Julie turned towards the door he was indicating. That was the trouble with her, James had once told her. She was far too responsible and law-abiding, What he had meant, of course, was that compared to Judy—who had been spectacu¬ larly good at taking risks and getting away with taking them—she was dull and boring.

But she was also alive, Julie reminded herself sadly, whilst Judy, James and two sets of loving parents were all dead. And all because Judy had wanted a big candyfloss wedding in a fairy-tale castle. The same castle where a well-known glamour model celebrity had married.

As the steward opened the door into the sleeping compartment, Julie saw that Rocco Leopardi was busy working on a computer which had appeared almost magically at the touch of a button on the desk in front of him.

What the steward had referred to as a sleeping ‘compartment’ was far from being the utilitarian and small space Julie had imagined. It was, in fact, the most luxurious bedroom she had ever seen.

Thick pale-coloured carpet covered the floor, merging with equally pale walls. The bed—surely the widest Julie had ever seen, and equally surely, she decided, with distaste, intended for the sort of sex games and romps her sister had freely and boastfully indulged in rather than merely for a good night’s sleep—barely filled a third of the floor space.

‘The controls for the bed are here,’ the steward was telling her. ‘You can raise it to read or watch TV.’ He pressed several buttons on the remote he was holding in demonstration, causing one half of the bed to tilt up as though it were a chair, whilst almost magically a huge TV screen appeared from a narrow cupboard on the opposite wall.

‘We’ve set up the sky cot here,’ he added. ‘Right next to the seat you’ll need to strap yourself into for take-off and landing. It pulls down out of the wall, like so. The bathroom and dressing room are through that door next to the bed. I’ve unpacked a few things for you and the baby, and hung them up. I’ll be serving dinner in about half an hour. If Rocco follows his normal form he’ll want to work as soon as he’s had dinner, so you might want to think about getting a few hours’ sleep. We’ll be landing shortly before one in the morning. I don’t know what the baby’s exact routine is, but I shall be on standby if you need me for anything. I’ll bring the heated milk as soon as we’re airborne.’

Julie would have liked to tell him that she’d rather eat her food on her own, and as far away from Rocco Leopardi as possible, but she didn’t—because she didn’t want to cause the steward any extra work.

A light above the door started to flash.

‘Take-off,’ the steward told her briskly.

Two minutes later Josh was strapped into his sky cot and Julie into her seat.