by Penny Jordan
‘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 f
eel 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 wh
en 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.