by Penny Jordan
What was going to happen if he did turn out to be Antonio’s child?
Did she really need to ask herself that? Rocco and his brothers would take Josh from her. They would find him a proper, suitable substitute mother; they would surround him with all the care that Leopardi money could buy; they would cherish and protect him.
But she would love him, Julie told herself fiercely. And surely that meant something?
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE sight of the buggy, its wheels solid with mud and grit, abandoned in the hallway, acted on Rocco’s temper like a match to a highly flammable substance, representing as it did everything about the current state of his life—both professional and private—that infuriated and irked him.
He was in the middle of a building project on which every day of work lost cost money and which the heavy rain of Sicily’s always unpredictable pre-spring weather was already threatening to delay; his site manager—a passionate Lombardese whose personal life was more dramatic than anything that had ever been put on at La Scala—had just informed him that he was taking a week’s leave because his wife was threatening to leave him over an affair he had been having with an underwear model and he needed to go home to sort things out; somehow his grandfather had got wind of Josh’s presence at the villa, and according to Maria there had been five telephone calls from the castle since the morning, commanding Rocco’s presence at his father’s bedside, and on top of all that a woman who should have meant nothing whatsoever to him at all was disturbing and disrupting his thoughts and emotions as well as his desires, in a way that made him feel furious at his own inability to control what he was experiencing.
And as if all of that wasn’t enough, that same woman had had the idiocy to put both herself and her child at risk because she had felt that the baby needed some fresh air. Had she no sense of her own vulnerability? Had she really thought she was well enough to push a buggy up a steep incline over thick mud, when only days ago she had hardly been able to climb a flight of steps? If her child was Antonio’s son then she would soon learn that his father wouldn’t tolerate or make allowances for her stubborn foolishness in the way that Rocco had.
Rocco looked at his watch. He had better drive over to the castle before his father brought on his own end with a self- induced heart attack, he acknowledged grimly.
Julie looked longingly towards her bed. Josh—fed, bathed and content—was clearly not suffering any setback from their walk, but she was exhausted, she admitted, and still cold inside right through to her bones, despite her shower and the warm, dry clothes she was now wearing.
It was only half past three—plenty of time for her to have a rest before dinner.
At least she was over her latest bout of whatever alien weirdness it was that was taking her over and somehow convincing her that she needed to experience the full intimacy of raw, passionate sex and with Rocco Leopardi, Julie thought with relief as she lay down on top of the bed, too exhausted to even think of getting undressed. It shocked her not just that she could even feel like that, but also because of the unwanted and upsetting anger she had discovered within herself—especially against James. After all, it wasn’t his fault that he had not wanted her as passionately as she had done him. It would be far safer and make far more sense for her to simply accept that she was not the sort of woman to inspire intense sexual passion in the kind of man she could love.
And that other kind of man? The kind like Rocco Leopardi? That kind of man she did not want to love—the kind of man to whom intense sexual passion came as naturally as breathing and meant nothing other than an appetite to satisfy. It simply wasn’t possible for her to want to have sex with a man she knew despised her. Her pride and her self-respect would not allow it. And anyway, that had all been a silly mistake brought on by the fact that she hadn’t been feeling well. She didn’t really want him at all, Julie told herself firmly, before finally allowing herself the luxury of sliding into sleep.
His interview with his father over, Rocco felt the familiar surge of relief that always accompanied his departure from the castle. His father had tried to pressure him into taking Josh to the castle for him to inspect, claiming that he ‘would know Antonio’s child immediately,’ but Rocco had remained steadfast, pointing out that in law it was the DNA test result that would be accepted as prove of parentage, not his grandfather’s recognition. Naturally the older man hadn’t liked that, and the kind of argument familiar to Rocco from his youth had ensued, during which the Prince had accused all three of his sons from his first marriage of having their own agenda, claiming that they had always resented his second wife and their half-brother.
This had led on to the Prince stating that Rocco and his brothers were deliberately trying to keep his grandson from him, despite having given him their word that they would find him—all of which Rocco had refuted, refusing to allow his father to bully him or, when that failed, use emotional blackmail to force Rocco to bring Josh to the castle.
‘I am not yet the powerless old man you think me,’ the Prince had told Rocco. ‘I still have my friends, and I warn you, Rocco, that no one will keep my Antonio’s child from me.’
‘No one wants to keep him from you, Father,’ Rocco had pointed out. ‘But first we have to ascertain if the child is in fact Antonio’s.’
‘You should let me, his father, be the judge of that. What man does not know his own flesh? No man who dares to call himself a true man,’ the Prince had countered theatrically.
It was a pity that his father had found out about Josh’s presence on the island, Rocco admitted, because it could only complicate matters.
The sudden, unplanned surge of power that came from his foot pressing hard on the accelerator of his car warned him of the danger of his antagonistic feelings over the fact that Julie had been Antonio’s lover. His lover? Rocco’s mouth twisted. Since when had the kind of shallow, meaningless sex Antonio had indulged in ever had anything to do with love? He pitied Josh, knowing as he did himself what it did to the soul to know that your life had been created by an act divorced from any kind of emotional communion.
Given her obvious determination to do exactly the opposite of whatever he said to her, even when that meant risking Josh’s life, Rocco suspected that he would be wasting his time, having decided he ought to warn Julie that his father might seek to trick her into taking Josh to see him. Nevertheless, his own conscience was insisting that it was something he must do, he acknowledged, as he tapped on her half-open bedroom door before pushing it fully open and going in.
The sight of Julie lying fast asleep and fully dressed on top of the bed checked him, causing him to frown in a renewal of the fury he had felt when he had first seen her pushing the buggy uphill along the muddy track, looking so frail that she’d seemed almost on the point of collapse.
He had used the Leopardi authority he rarely needed to resort to with Dr Vittorio after the doctor had examined Julie, to find out if he genuinely thought that Julie was merely suffering from a lack of iron or if he suspected that something more serious might be wrong.
At first Luca Vittorio had refused to answer him. But Luca and Rocco had played together as boys. When Rocco had pointed out that he simply wanted to know so that he could ensure Julie received the treatment she needed, Luca had relented and shaken his head, saying that he was fairly sure her symptoms were caused by an iron deficiency, but that that did not mean that it wasn’t serious—dependent upon the extent of the deficiency and its cause. The iron tablets Luca had prescribed were a stop-gap solution, designed only to boost her energy levels pending the results of the tests.
Julie knew the situation as well as Rocco did, and yet she had still risked potentially causing more damage to her health. She infuriated him in ways he had not known existed until she came into his life, Rocco admitted grimly. Just as she—Just as she what? Aroused him in exactly the same intense and extraordinarily all-encompassing way?
She did not arouse him. He was a man. A man who had been livin
g the life of a monk for the better part of a year. And since that was more by accident than design, because of the amount of work he had taken on, it was only natural that when a woman threw herself at him as she had done he was going to respond. The fact that he had even momentarily been tempted by her filled him with self-derision.
The door between the bedroom and the nursery was open, drawing Rocco towards it. How could his father expect anyone to believe that it was possible to ‘know’ an unknown child’s bloodlines? Rocco looked down into the cot, where Josh lay fast asleep. Being here was doing Josh good. He had put on weight, and his skin looked less sallow, warmer.
Rocco leaned closer and studied the sleeping baby. His fluff of dark hair had a slight curl to it. All the Leopardi men had thick dark hair with a curl, even if in adulthood Rocco had chosen to have his own hair cut so short that its curl couldn’t be seen. Josh’s eyelashes fanned out across his cheeks. His eyes were growing darker in colour. But what, after all, did that mean? Rocco could see nothing in Josh that reminded him of Antonio, but that would not stop his father from doing so if he was so minded. His father might now be bedridden, and living in the shadow of his own death, but he was still a very powerful and autocratic man—a man who was used to making sure that his will prevailed, no matter what the cost to others.
Rocco could see a difficult future ahead for this child lying so peacefully asleep in his cot if he did turn out to be Antonio’s son—and an even harder one for his mother. For all that he would welcome Josh into the family, Rocco knew his father would feel very differently about Josh’s mother. The Prince had indulged and spoiled Antonio from the moment he had been born, turning a blind eye to all his excesses as he grew to adulthood. How much had that indulgence been responsible for Antonio’s lifestyle and ultimately for his death?
Rocco smoothed the cover over Josh’s sleeping body, smiling at the small star-shaped little hand and watching Josh’s fingers curl round his own index finger, as though even in sleep the baby instinctively reached for the security of an adult touch.
The first thing Julie saw when she woke up was Rocco, bending over Josh’s cot, with one hand on the side of the cot and the other inside it. Her heart lurched into her chest wall. Rocco might deny it, but neither he nor his brothers had any reason to love Josh. They certainly hadn’t loved their own half-brother. Maria had gossiped to her, saying that all three brothers were independently wealthy, and there was certainly no question of any child of Antonio’s usurping their right to inherit their father’s titles. But if their father chose to leave his grandson money they had assumed would be theirs…
Immediately her protective instincts had her on her feet and hurrying into the nursery, demanding sharply, ‘What are you doing?’
Rocco turned his head to look at her, but didn’t remove his hand.
Protectively, Julie went round to the other side of the cot to look anxiously at Josh, only able to relax when she recognised that he was breathing safely and easily. That should have been enough to steady her, but the sight of Josh’s small hand curled tightly round Rocco’s finger caused a fresh lurch of her heart—this time from angry pain rather than fear for the little boy.
Rocco had no right to enter the nursery and watch over the child in a way that should have belonged only to Josh’s father. Julie had to fight not to snatch Josh up and hold him tightly, but she had to satisfy herself with demanding, ‘Why are you in here?’
‘Because I choose to be. This is after all my home, and Josh could be my nephew. It’s only natural that I should want to check that he hasn’t taken any harm from the reckless behaviour of his mother.’
His suave response, with its reminder of things she’d rather forget, increased Julie’s anxiety—but that was nothing to the sudden downward plunge of her heart when Rocco gently eased his finger free of Josh’s grip and urged Julie back into her own room with a calm, ‘I have news.
‘Unfortunately my father is aware that you and Josh are on the island,’ he began, ‘and even more unfortunately he has decided that he will know Antonio’s son, without recourse to a DNA test, the minute he sets eyes on him. I realize, of course, that you will probably be delighted by the thought that my father in his desperation to find his grandson may well decide that Josh is Antonio’s child.’
‘Well, that is where you are wrong,’ Julie denied immediately. ‘Surprising though you might find it, the truth is that I do not want Josh to be Antonio’s son. I’d much rather that James is his father—after all, James was prepared to marry… me, and bring Josh up as his own.’
The minute the hot words were out Julie wished desperately that she had not said them. But it was too late for those regrets now. Rocco was giving her a very grim look indeed, and as she watched he strode over to her bedroom door and closed it, turning round to confront her.
‘So there is another man whom you know could be Josh’s father?’ he demanded coldly.
‘Not is—was,’ Julie was forced to admit. ‘He’s dead now. Killed in a rail accident.’
‘Why have you not said anything of this before?’
‘You hardly gave me the chance. All you cared about was proving whether or not your half-brother was Josh’s father.’
‘You say you do not want Josh to be Antonio’s, and yet you contacted Antonio to tell him that you were having his child. He gave you money to buy you off.’
Rocco was angry—furiously, savagely angry—at the thought of all the time that had been wasted when with a few simple words she could have said right from the start that Antonio was not Josh’s father.
‘Was there ever any chance that Josh might be Antonio’s? Or was it all a scam cooked up between you and your lover to get money out of Antonio for a child that you knew all along was not his? Answer me,’ he demanded harshly, ‘unless you want me to shake the answer out of you.’
‘I don’t know,’ Julie admitted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROCCO stared at her.
‘You don’t know what?’ he demanded caustically.
‘I don’t know who Josh’s father was,’ she told him truthfully. ‘But I do know that I want it to be James and not Antonio.’
‘You loved him? This James?’
What was he doing? What possible difference did it make what she had felt, and why should he care?
‘Yes.’ The tears Julie didn’t want to shed blurred her vision and her voice.
‘But you still had sex with my brother.’
His voice might be flat, but there was no mistaking the contempt it held.
‘James and I had quarrelled. I thought it was over. I went on holiday and…and it just happened…’
‘It just happened?’ Rocco mimicked her. ‘Just like that? A moment of weakness when you were missing the man you really loved. Is that what you mean?’
Julie swallowed. That was what had happened to her when she had for those awful, dreadful minutes actually wanted him, Rocco, wasn’t it? The betrayal of her long-standing love for James had merely been a shameful moment of madness and weakness.
‘Yes,’ she agreed woodenly.
Rocco strode towards her, his hands gripping her shoulders so tightly that his fingers dug painfully into her tender flesh. He half shook her as he told her bitingly, ‘Liar. What “just happened”, as you call it, was that Antonio hired you—along with another girl—to indulge him in his sexual fantasies. We know that because we found the receipt amongst his papers—although of course you and the other girl who put on that shabby little show for him weren’t the only entertainment he paid for during his visit to Cannes. At least the madam he used ensured that her girls had regular health checks—the cost of those was on the bill as well. I must say, though, that I’m surprised you used your real name instead of a fictional name of some kind.’
Rocco made a sound of disgust, and released her with so much force that Julie fell back against the bed. She was trembling so much that she had to sit down. This was awful—dreadful—worse than anything she
had ever imagined having to face. She had known that Judy was sexually promiscuous, of course, but not this. Poor James. He had loved her so very much. Thank goodness he had never known what she was really like. It also answered the riddle of why Rocco had never questioned the discrepancy in their names. Judy had used Julie’s name while in Cannes, betraying her yet again. Hot tears seared the backs of Julie’s eyes.
‘Did you tell James how you spent your time in Cannes?’ Rocco demanded, as though he had somehow guessed the direction of her own thoughts.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Julie told him, almost spitting the words at him in her determination to protect the man she had loved.
‘That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve made it my business by being here. Did you plan the whole thing between you? You and this James? Did he procure you for Antonio, setting him up so that the pair of you could blackmail him with the threat of a child? That would certainly make you two of a kind.’
Julie sprang up off the bed, her face burning with the heat of her anger.
‘James was a decent, kind and gentle man. He was worth a thousand men like you and your half-brother—arrogant, selfish, emotionally barren men, who think they can buy whatever they want.’
‘What? You dare to put me in the same category as Antonio?’
‘Why not?’ Julie shot back. ‘You both carry the same blood in your veins, after all.’
‘Why, you—’
He was bending over her, dragging her to her feet. Frantically Julie fought to break free of his manacling grip on her wrists.