Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  She waited for him to speak. To shout. To do or say something.

  But he was completely silent, and his handsome face was an expressionless mask.

  Everything twisted inside her, and suddenly she could hardly breathe.

  She wasn’t hurting him, she assured herself frantically. He didn’t love her, so how could her words hurt anything except his ego?

  ‘I’m going to fly back to Sicily in the morning and spend some time with my mother. I’ll see a solicitor while I’m there.’

  Speak, Rocco, she urged silently. Say something. Anything.

  He stood for a moment without moving, then drew in a deep breath and walked past her without saying a word.

  Battered by emotions that were entirely unfamiliar, Rocco stood in his study, struggling to make sense of the situation. But for the first time in his life his talent at problem-solving appeared to have eluded him.

  Of all the things he’d anticipated that Chessie might want to tell him, ‘Iwant a divorce’ hadn’t been one of them—and her unexpected declaration had left him without a response.

  She wanted a divorce.

  Hadn’t that been almost the first thing she’d said to him four and a half months ago, when he’d met her from the airport?

  And hadn’t he immediately denied her?

  So what had changed? Why hadn’t he been able to utter the same denial this evening, when she’d looked at him so expectantly, waiting for his response?

  His hand gripped a brimming glass, and then he swore again and put it down on the table. Getting blind drunk, although appealing in the immediate term, wouldn’t change the facts. And the facts were that he cared about her happiness.

  At what point, he wondered with irony and no small amount of surprise, had her happiness become more important than his own? And what exactly did it mean when you were prepared to allow someone do the very thing that was designed to hurt you the most?

  He’d always been arrogantly confident in his ability to understand women, but suddenly he found himself floundering.

  He swore softly and tried to understand. She’d said that she didn’t feel fulfilled, and yet how could that possibly be the case?

  Up until he’d left for New York, she’d been happy. He had absolutely no doubt about that. There had been no talk about needing more freedom. No talk about leaving. And certainly no talk of divorce.

  A frown touched his brows, and he abandoned thoughts of his drink and instead sprawled in the nearest chair, his long legs outstretched and his eyes narrowed as he sifted through the facts at his disposal.

  All the facts suggested that something had happened while he was away.

  But what?

  What could possibly have caused such a catastrophic about turn on her part?

  His mouth set in a grim line, he stood up and picked up the phone.

  He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he knew how to find out.

  Chessie was sitting on the bed, gloomily contemplating her future, when Rocco walked into the bedroom.

  The sun was already high in the sky, but it was obvious from his crumpled shirt and his darkly shadowed jaw that he hadn’t been to bed. She felt something shift inside her, and struggled to control the almost excruciating love she felt for him. Even after a sleepless night he managed to look impossibly handsome, his shoulders broad and strong, his casual attire effortlessly stylish.

  He was the sort of man who made a woman do stupid things.

  But not her, Chessie reminded herself hastily. Not her. Not this time.

  This time she was going to do the right thing—for her child, if not for herself.

  ‘I was just about to start packing,’ she muttered, and he came to a halt directly in front of her.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he responded in a cool tone, ‘because you’re not going anywhere.’

  She closed her eyes. This was the response she’d expected the night before, but he’d been silent. Why now? Was it because he’d had time to think about her request? ‘Rocco—’

  ‘Tell me, tesoro,’ he strolled towards her, his eyes fixed on her face. ‘At what point did you intend to tell me that you are pregnant?’

  She froze. ‘I-’

  ‘Lost for words, Chessie?’ His beautiful mouth was set in a grim line. ‘Finding it hard to tell me that I’m going to be a father?’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘That isn’t important. What is important is the fact that the person I should have heard it from was you. You know how much I want a son,’ he said, his voice raw with pain, ‘and yet even knowing that you were prepared to leave without telling me. You asked me for a divorce. Tell me, Francesca, is the prospect of motherhood really so distasteful to you that you’d keep your pregnancy secret? What were you planning to do? End it?’

  ‘No!’ Her eyes widened in horror and she flinched at the thought. ‘How could you even think that? You know me better than that.’

  ‘Obviously not.’ His tone was hard. ‘You were comfortable enough to seek a divorce without even informing me that you were expecting our child. Why would I not believe that you could be capable of terminating a pregnancy?’

  Chessie placed her hand over her abdomen in an instinctive gesture of protection. ‘Because I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why?’ His eyes were as cold as his voice. ‘Why wouldn’t you? You’ve spent the past four months telling me how much you want your freedom—how much you are enjoying your new life. Well, this really must have spoilt your fun.’

  ‘It isn’t like that.’ She turned her head away, wishing that she’d left the night before. ‘You don’t understand. You have to let me go.’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight, shall we?’ His tone was solid steel. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Up until the moment I discovered that you were pregnant I was willing to sanction a divorce. But that’s in the past. There will be no divorce. I am, however, willing to make some concessions to the fact that you’re extremely unhappy with the situation. I’m willing to employ sufficient staff to ensure that you still have a reasonable amount of leisure time.’

  Staff? Not comprehending, she gave a frown—and then her brow cleared. ‘By “staff”, you mean a nanny? I don’t want that, Rocco. I want to look after the baby myself.’

  There was a tight, tense silence while he raked her with an incredulous gaze. ‘You are making absolutely no sense,’ he growled, jabbing his fingers through his hair in a gesture of extreme frustration. ‘You tell me that you want a divorce, but now you tell me you want to look after the baby.’

  Chessie stared at the floor. ‘You’re right when you said that I didn’t want a baby initially. I didn’t. But when I discovered I was pregnant …’ She rubbed her hand over her abdomen. ‘I wasn’t unhappy. I was thrilled.’

  ‘Thrilled?’ He hesitated over the word, as if he were translating it in his head and checking the meaning. Then he let out a long breath. ‘Perhaps we should switch to Italian, because my understanding of this conversation is severely limited. If you were thrilled then why did you ask me for a divorce? Why are you leaving?’

  She struggled to find her voice. ‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’

  Although how doing the right thing could feel so wrong, she didn’t understand. She was torn between her love for Rocco and her love for her unborn baby.

  ‘How can leaving be the right thing to do?’ His voice was hoarse and his eyes glittered with an almost feverish intensity. ‘Why would you even consider leaving when you’re having my son?’

  ‘Because I’m not having your son, Rocco.’ Chessie swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold his gaze. ‘I’m having your daughter.’

  The words fell into the tense silence and Rocco just stared at her.

  For a moment he didn’t speak, and then she saw his eyes cloud with a variety of different emotions, none of which made any sense to her. ‘My daughter?’

  ‘Yes, your daughter.’ The stunned look on his face said it all, and she
turned away so that her sick disappointment wouldn’t show on her face. ‘A little girl.’ She couldn’t help smiling through the building tears. ‘So now you understand why I’m leaving.’

  ‘I understand nothing.’ He caught her arm and turned her back to face him, his eyes burning into hers. ‘Why does the fact that you are having a daughter change anything at all about this situation?’

  ‘Do you really have to ask me that question?’ The words almost choked her, and he studied her face for a long moment, as if trying to find the answers to his questions.

  ‘This is about your father, isn’t it?’

  ‘It isn’t about my father, no.’ She pulled away from his grip, ignoring the dangerous edge to his tone. ‘It’s about us, Rocco. About you. About what you want and need.’

  ‘You clearly know nothing about what I want and need.’

  ‘You’re a traditional Sicilian male. You want a son. You’ve been telling me that for the past four months.’

  ‘Of course.’ He dismissed her statement with an angry wave of a bronzed hand. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not equally happy with a daughter. You’re making assumptions about me.’

  ‘You always talk about having a son. You’ve never once mentioned a daughter.’

  ‘It was just a figure of speech. An expression.’ He sucked in a deep breath, obviously fighting for control. ‘You really thought I wouldn’t want the child because it’s a girl?’

  ‘You’ve never given me any cause to think differently.’

  His anger bubbled over. ‘I’ve spent four months trying to show you I’m nothing like your father,’ he said in a driven tone, ‘and you know that family is important to me. I’ve always made that clear.’

  ‘But I don’t know why,’ she said quietly. ‘You never tell me anything about yourself. I talk all the time, but you don’t. I know nothing about your background or where you come from. I know nothing about why you feel the way you do about family. I know nothing about your own family.’

  ‘That’s because I have no family.’ He spoke the words in a flat, emotionless voice, and then turned and muttered something under his breath. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘How can you have no family? Do you mean you’re not in touch with them?’

  ‘No, that isn’t what I mean.’ He lifted a hand and rubbed the tips of his fingers over his forehead, as if to ease a nagging pain. ‘This isn’t something I ever discuss. It isn’t relevant to my life.’ His hand dropped to his side and he paced over to the window, keeping his back to her.

  ‘Don’t walk away from me, Rocco!’ She slid off the bed and stared at his rigid shoulders. ‘Don’t walk away from this conversation.’

  He turned, and the sunlight glinted on his dark hair. ‘You want to hear about my family? All right, I’ll tell you. But it isn’t a happy story, so I hope you’re not in a sensitive mood.’ His mouth tightened. ‘My father shot my mother. She was twenty-five years old and having an affair with someone. He was so beside himself that he’d killed the love of his life he turned the gun on himself. I was two years old at the time.’

  For a moment Chessie was so stunned she couldn’t move. ‘Rocco—’

  ‘I don’t need sympathy.’ He delivered the words as a warning. ‘I’m prepared to give you the facts because you seem to think that hearing about my past is essential to the survival of our marriage, but I have no desire to dissect my feelings.’

  ‘But you were so little—’ Just imagining it made her heart twist.

  ‘I survived.’ His voice was flat. ‘Isn’t that what happens, Chessie? You of all people should understand that, because your life has clearly been no picnic up until this point. I’m even starting to understand why you left on our wedding day. People survive. They do whatever has to be done, and they rebuild their lives in the best way they can.’

  ‘But you were two years old—’ She choked on the words. ‘Tell me what happened to you?’

  ‘You insist on hearing the details?’ His expression was cold. Hard. ‘There was a massive scandal. That’s what happened. I went to relatives, and then friends, but none of them wanted me because I was a constant reminder of my father’s sins.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘And I had a fierce temper. I think they were a little afraid of me.’

  She was surprised. ‘But you’re always in control of your temper.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘I learned two things from my father. The first was that allowing emotion to cloud your judgement is an extremely bad thing, and the second was that falling in love makes a man behave in dangerous ways.’ His eyes held hers and she felt her stomach flip.

  ‘So you had short-term relationships with air-heads who couldn’t possibly match your intellect, or interest you in any way other than physically, and you married a safe, uncomplicated girl who seemed perfectly suited to give you the family you wanted? The family you’d never had.’

  ‘Amateur psychology, Chessie?’ There was a gleam of humour in his eyes. ‘I would never describe you as uncomplicated but, yes, in a way I suppose you’re right. That was the plan.’

  ‘And the olive oil business? Why did you want that?’

  ‘Because, although my business is now spread all over the world, I’ve never forgotten my Sicilian roots. I suppose the olive oil business is a small part of who I am. My tribute to a family I never knew.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me this a long time ago.’

  ‘Why?’ His voice was rough. ‘What difference would it have made?’

  ‘I don’t know. At least I would have understood more about you. I thought your womanising made you like my father, but I can see that you were driven by something entirely different.’ She gave a sigh and sank back down onto the bed. ‘Families. They have so much to answer for, don’t they? And the scars they leave are never on the surface, which makes them so much harder to heal.’

  ‘I’m completely healed,’ he drawled. ‘You were the one who insisted on exploring my pedigree, and that, if I may say so, is a typically female trait. As far as I’m concerned the past doesn’t need to have an impact on the future.’

  Chessie stared at the floor for a moment, struggling to speak the words that had to be said. ‘You married the wrong girl, didn’t you?’ She lifted her head and gave a wan smile. ‘You wanted a safe, uncomplicated wife, and that’s what you should have had. When I first asked you for a divorce I told you then that you knew nothing about me, but you still refused to concede that our relationship was over. But last night was different, wasn’t it? Last night when I told you it was over you didn’t argue with me. Obviously you’ve finally realised that it’s never going to work between us.’

  She sensed the building emotion in his powerful frame.

  ‘That isn’t true.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you’ve discovered I’m pregnant,’ she said softly. ‘But a baby isn’t glue, Rocco. Boy or girl, a baby can’t hold together a marriage that was never meant to stick.’

  ‘It’s true that I started out wanting a quiet, uncomplicated wife who would give me lots of children,’ he answered in a raw tone. ‘But that isn’t what I want now.’

  ‘What do you want now?’ Hope struggled to the surface, but was instantly smothered by doubts and fears.

  ‘You.’ He closed his eyes briefly and muttered something under his breath. ‘I want you, Chessie.’

  Heart hammering, she dug her nails into her palms to stop herself from reaching for him. ‘I’m not the person you thought I was. I’m not that safe, uncomplicated girl.’

  ‘I don’t want the safe, uncomplicated girl,’ he said. ‘I want the person you really are. That’s the woman I want as my wife and the mother of my children.’ He hesitated, and then gave a weary smile. ‘That’s the woman I love.’

  ‘Rocco—’ She couldn’t finish her sentence, and he watched her for a long moment before he let out a long breath.

  ‘I know that you don’t love me, and I can’t change that, but I’m p
repared to bend over backwards to ensure that you can live the life you’ve always wanted to live.’

  ‘But last night—’ She shook her head slightly as she recalled his icy control. ‘You didn’t even argue with me when I said I wanted a divorce. Why would you do that if you love me?’

  ‘Because I finally discovered that if you love someone enough you want them to be happy. And I finally discovered the true meaning of the word vulnerable.’

  Chessie looked at him. Rocco? Vulnerable? He was the strongest man she’d ever met. ‘You were willing to let me walk away?’

  ‘Your happiness means everything to me, but now I know you’re pregnant we have to find another way of giving you what you want while staying as a family.’ He reached down and drew her gently to her feet, his movements lacking his usual self-assurance. ‘I can’t let you leave me. And I can’t let you take my daughter.’

  Struggling to speak, Chessie discovered the lump in her throat. ‘My father never forgave my mother for giving him a daughter. I grew up knowing that he hated me.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’ve been wanting to ask you.’ His voice was soft. ‘At lunch that day in Florence, you mentioned a time when you stood up to your father. I want to know what happened.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The school was having an art competition and I wanted to enter.’ Her voice shook slightly as she recounted the incident. ‘I painted at night, when he thought I was asleep.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘My father destroyed it.’ Even now the memory was painful. ‘I was devastated. I’d worked so hard on that painting, and I was really proud of it. I lost my temper with him and I shouted. Told him he was a tyrant and a bully. He was incandescent with rage. I’d never seen him so angry.’

  ‘He shouted?’

  ‘He hit me. And then he turned on my mother, blaming her for not doing a better job with my upbringing. Blaming her for not producing a son. After that I never stood up to him again. At first it just wasn’t worth it, and over time it just became normal not to speak up.’