The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Fiona Harper

  She tried to keep the memories, and the man she was here with, even her own desires, at bay with her next words. It was time to stop getting carried away and ground herself in reality, in the sticky, complicated present, not some half-remembered adolescent fantasy.

  ‘I… I wanted to ask you if you were free tomorrow,’ she said, without looking him in the eye. That would be far too dangerous. ‘There’s something important I need to discuss with you.’

  She heard—no, felt—Romano move closer.

  ‘Look at me, Jacqueline,’ he said in a low, husky voice.

  She licked her lips. She didn’t want to look at him, but not looking at him would be an admission that she was feeling weak, that he was getting to her, and she needed to give at least a semblance of control. She inhaled and met his gaze.

  He was wearing that lopsided smile he’d always had for her. The one that had turned her heart to butter.

  ‘We both know that we have talked the idea of the Puccini shoot for Gloss! to death over the last few days.’ His fingers made contact with her wrist, ran lightly up her forearm. ‘We’re both adults now.’

  Jackie decided she had need of a fire extinguisher. She didn’t trust herself to say anything helpful, so she just kept looking at him. Had she blinked recently? She really didn’t know.

  ‘So…’he continued, ‘let’s not play games as we did when we were younger. If we want to spend time together, we should just say it is so. There is no shame in it.’

  Jackie tried hard to deny it, but he shook his head.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I can see it in your eyes.’ He dipped his head closer, until she could almost taste him in the air around her. ‘I know we both want this.’

  Heaven help her, she did.

  She didn’t push him away when he dragged his lips across hers, so gently it was as if they were barely touching. Too gently, teasing, so her nerve endings went up in flames. More so than if he’d started off as hot and hungry as she’d half-wished he would.

  Boy, Romano could kiss.

  He’d always been able to kiss. But he was right. There was new skill here too. Enough to make her forget her own name.

  Romano had disposed of his champagne glass—she hadn’t noticed when or how—and now his hands were round her waist, pulling her closer to him. She needed to touch him, hold him, but her own glass was still dangling by its stem from her right hand. They were right beside one of the water features and she felt with the base of the glass for a flattish patch on the knobbly surface of the pool’s edge. She hardly registered the plop a second or two later, too busy running her hands up Romano’s chest, relishing the feel of him.

  She kept going all the way up his body until she could weave her fingers through the deliciously short hairs at the back of his head. Still kissing her, he let out a gruff moan from the back of his throat. She smiled almost imperceptibly against his lips.

  This was the wonder of Romano Puccini. He made her feel beautiful and feminine and alive. Not by wading in and taking control, dominating, but by acknowledging her power, meeting her as an equal, making her feel sexy and confident.

  Romano’s lips moved from hers. He kissed a line from her chin down to the base of her neck, then along her collarbone to her shoulder, nipping the bare skin there gently with his teeth.

  Jackie just clung to him. She hadn’t known how much she’d missed this. Missed him. Hadn’t realised that subconsciously she’d been waiting to feel his lips on her skin again for almost two decades. How could she have denied herself so long? Why had she thrown this away?

  ‘Jackie…’ His breath was warm in her ear. ‘I want you. I need you.’

  He was whispering her name in that way that had always made her melt, but it was another name that suddenly crystallised in her consciousness, freezing out all other thoughts and sensations.

  Kate.

  In a split second what had been hot and tingly and wonderful between them seemed nothing more than an undignified grope in the bushes. And it was selfish. So selfish.

  She pushed Romano away. Or maybe she pulled herself out of his arms—she wasn’t quite sure. He blinked and looked at her, his eyes hooded and clouded with confusion.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ she said in a shaky voice.

  He reached for her and she was too numb to react fast enough. He breathed in her ear, knowing just what he was doing, before whispering, ‘What’s to stop us?’

  Jackie prayed for strength, prayed for a clear head. She couldn’t lose herself like that again. She needed to focus on the reason she needed to get close to Romano, and it certainly wasn’t this reason. It was about Kate. It was all about Kate. But then his lips found hers again and she almost went under.

  ‘No,’ she said softly, firmly, and she grabbed his chin with her hand, doing whatever she had to do to stop him.

  He sighed and gave her a wistful look. ‘I thought we said we weren’t going to play games.’

  Part of her softened, found his cheeky confidence charming. Another part of her took umbrage. He was too sure of himself. Too sure he could have her if he wanted her.

  ‘I’m not playing games,’ she said, looking him in the eye, refusing to waver.

  ‘Good,’ he said, wilfully misunderstanding her.

  Jackie felt like wilting. They could do this all day, go back and forth, back and forth. Romano was as persistent as she was contrary, and she feared she might eventually weaken. That would do lasting damage to her plan to build a solid relationship with him, the kind of relationship that would give Kate stability and confidence in them as parents. Unfortunately, there was only one way she could think of to shock Romano out of seducing her amidst the ferns.

  ‘The reason we can’t do this,’ she said, ‘is that there’s something you don’t know. Something important.’

  He froze. ‘You’re not married?’

  She shook her head and the smile returned, saucier than ever. ‘Buono.’ And he went back to placing tiny little teasing kisses on her neck.

  It was no good. Romano had obviously decided she was playing along with him, albeit in a very ‘Jackie’ way. He stopped what he was doing and straightened, one eyebrow hitched high, but paused when his lips were only a few millimetres from hers. She had to do this now.

  ‘There’s something you don’t know about that summer we were…together.’

  He was too close to focus on properly, but she sensed him smiling, felt him sway just that little bit closer. ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘When I left for England that autumn, after our summer, I was…’

  Oh, Lord. Did she really have to say it? Did she really have to let the words out of her mouth?

  ‘I was pregnant.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I WAS pregnant.

  Those words had the combined effect of a cold shower and a slap round the face for Romano. His arms dropped to his side and he stepped back.

  She had to be joking, right? It had to be some unfathomable, Jackie-like test. He searched her face as she stood there with all the flexibility of an ironing board, her eyes wide and her mouth thin.

  ‘You mean…you…and I…?’

  She bit her lip. Nodded.

  Now, Romano was a man who usually liked to indulge in the elegant use of language, but at that moment he swore loudly and creatively. Jackie flinched.

  He looked at her stomach. After making that dress he knew her measurements to the millimetre, had crafted it to hug them. There was no hint. Fewer curves, even, than when he’d…than when they’d…

  A million questions flooded his mind, all of them half finished. And then the awful truth hit him.

  ‘You had a… You lost it?’ he said, unable to work out why a solid wall of grief hit him as he uttered those words.

  She shook her head, and the sorrow reared its head and became an ugly, spitting monster. He clenched his fists, spoke through his teeth.

  ‘You got rid of it?’

  The look of pure horror on her face was more than en
ough of an answer. He didn’t need to hear the denial she repeated over and over and over. But that meant…

  It couldn’t.

  He’d never heard mention of a child…a family…in all the years he’d worked in the same gossip-fuelled industry as Jackie. She was a private person, sure enough, but could that fact have slipped by him unnoticed?

  He turned in a circle but came back to face her.

  Of course it could.

  When had he ever been interested in colleagues’ pictures of pink-faced, scrunched-up newborns? He tuned out every single conversation about their children’s ballet recitals and football games, preferring to amuse himself with statistics of a different kind. Cup sizes, mainly.

  He looked around his sunken garden, at the grotto, which now seemed less like a lovers’ nest and more like a crime scene.

  ‘Romano?’

  He looked back at her, confused. The soft, vulnerable expression she’d worn only moments ago had been replaced with something much harder.

  ‘You have a daughter,’ she said, voice as flat as if she’d been reading random numbers in the phonebook.

  A baby? He had a baby?

  He backed away, and, when he could go no further, sat down on a low, mossy wall.

  No. Don’t be stupid. It had been such a long time ago. She was a girl by now. Almost a woman. He stood up again, suddenly fuelled by another revelation.

  ‘You kept this a secret from me? Why?’

  There was a flicker of discomfort before Jackie resumed her wooden expression. ‘I tried, but—’ she looked away ‘—it’s complicated. I’ll explain in a minute, when you’ve calmed down a bit.’

  When he’d…?

  This woman had been sent to test him to the limits. All these years she’d kept this from him. All these years she’d preferred to bring up their child on her own rather than involve him. Who gave her the right to make such decisions?

  And why had she done it?

  The answer was a sucker-punch, one from his subconscious: she hadn’t believed him ready or capable to take on that responsibility, hadn’t even entertained the thought he might be able to rise to the challenge. Just as she hadn’t deemed him worthy of her love. Inside his head something clicked into place.

  ‘Is that why you ended it? Refused to see me? Or take my calls?’

  She inhaled. ‘No. I didn’t know then. I only realised…later.’

  Then why hadn’t she told him later? The words were on his lips when he remembered he already knew the answer. He matched Jackie’s stance, returned ice with ice as he looked at her.

  ‘Where is she now?’ He looked to the terraced garden above them, back to the house. ‘Is she here?’ His stomach plummeted at the thought, not from a fear of being trapped, he realised, but in anticipation.

  ‘She’s in London.’

  London. How many times had he been in that city over the last seventeen years? It was a massive place, with a population of millions, and the chances of having walked by her in the street were infinitesimal, but he was hounded by the idea he might have done just that.

  ‘Does she know about me? Does she know who her father is?’

  At that question, the inscrutable Jackie Patterson wavered. ‘No.’

  He closed his eyes and opened them again. Even though he’d had the feeling that would be her answer, it felt like a karate kick in the gut.

  ‘What about the birth certificate? You can’t hide it from her for ever. One day she’ll find out.’

  To his surprise, Jackie nodded, but the words that followed twisted everything around again and sent him off in an even more confusing direction.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone who her father was. Not even Mamma. The birth certificate has my name alone on it.’

  Romano sucked in a breath. That was it, then. He was nothing more than an empty space on a form. All these years trying to prove himself, trying to get the world to understand he was something in his own right, and that was what this woman had reduced him to. An empty box.

  Jackie came a little closer, but not so close that she was within touching distance. He didn’t have any more words at the moment, so he just looked at her. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her fingers so tense he could clearly see the tendons on the backs of her hands.

  He came full circle again. ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why have you never told me?’

  ‘I thought I had.’

  Her answer turned his pain into anger. And when he was angry his usual good humour became biting and sarcastic. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, aware that the set of his jaw was making it blindingly obvious he was anything but amused, ‘because I think I would have remembered that conversation.’

  Jackie walked over to a low stone bench and sat down, staring at the floor. Reluctantly he followed, sensing that keeping close, pushing her, would be the only way to uncover more facts.

  As he sat there staring at the fountain bubbling away she told a ridiculous story of lost letters, secret rendezvous and missed opportunities. She told him she’d waited at the farmhouse for him. Waited for him to turn up—and dash her hopes, he silently added, because, surely, that was what she’d expected.

  ‘Why didn’t you try to reach me again when I didn’t show up? You had no way of knowing if I’d been prevented from meeting you there.’

  Jackie leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. For a long time the only sound she made was gentle, shallow breathing.

  ‘I wondered about that at first,’ she said through her hands, and then she sat up and looked at him. ‘I waited for hours, way past when I should have been back home. Just in case you were late. And I would have come back day after day until I saw you. I wanted to believe you were coming.’

  The look of exquisite sorrow in her eyes tugged at him. It felt as if she were pulling at a knot of string deep inside him, a knot that was just about to work itself loose. He refused to relax and let it unravel.

  ‘I thought you knew me better than that, Jackie. If I’d got the letter, of course I would have come.’

  She made a tiny little noise and he couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a snort. ‘And you would have done…what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned. ‘We would have worked something out.’

  Jackie stopped staring straight ahead and turned her whole body towards him. ‘You’re not saying that you would have stood by me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No!’ She blinked furiously. She spoke again, softer this time. ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t know that!’

  He would have stood by her. He would have. At least that was what the man he was now wished he would have done.

  ‘Think about this, Romano! You’re saying you would have wanted to keep her, that you would have put a ring on my finger and we have had our own little teenage Happy Ever After?’

  He looked deep inside himself, saw a glimmer of something he’d hoped he’d find. ‘Maybe.’

  Instead of her laughing in his face, Jackie’s eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t let a single one fall, not even as her hands shook in her lap. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re just daydreaming.’

  He jumped up, started pacing. All this sitting around, keeping everything in, was far too British for him. He needed to move, to vent.

  ‘Is that so hard to believe? Am I that much of a disappointment?’

  Jackie opened her mouth to answer, but there was a sudden rustling and the sound of voices further up the path. Without thinking about how or why—maybe it had been the memories of all that sneaking around in the past—Romano grabbed Jackie by the arm and manhandled her into the shelter of the grotto, silencing her protests with a stern look. This was one conversation neither of them wanted to have overheard.

  He was close to her again now, pressed up against her, her back against the wall of the grotto. If they stayed in exactly this position they couldn’t be seen from most of the sunken garden. She was rigid, all of the soft sighing, the moulding into his
arms, over and done with. Just as well. Any desire to fling with Jackie Patterson had completely evaporated.

  But how much worse would it have been if she’d told him afterwards? She’d been right to put a stop to what had been going on. However, that one small mercy in no way balanced out her other sins.

  ‘It’s Lizzie and Jack,’ she mouthed at him, obviously recognising the voices.

  He nodded and tilted his head just a little to get a better view, hoping that the happy couple weren’t looking in his direction. He was lucky. Bride and groom were too wrapped up in each other to spot an inconsistency in the shadows at the far end of the garden.

  Lizzie laid her head against Jack’s shoulder and let out a loud sigh. He stroked her back, kissed her hair. Romano and Jackie weren’t the only ones who had needed a bit of fresh air. He hoped, however, that the newly-weds’ walk was going to turn out better than his had done.

  Jack and Lizzie wandered briefly round the sunken garden, hand-in-hand, stopping every now and then to kiss, before moving on down the path towards the small beach.

  Romano stepped out of the grotto as they disappeared out of view and stayed there, staring at the spot where he’d last seen a flash of white dress.

  They seemed so happy.

  From his short observation of the bride and groom, they were a wonderful complement for each other. They had so much to look forward to: their honeymoon, starting a new life together, raising the twins Lizzie was carrying and building their own little family.

  He realised he was outrageously jealous, which surprised him. He’d never expected to want all of that. He’d got on quite well since the death of his mother without feeling part of a traditional family, and he’d never guessed he’d harboured a longing for it, preferring to keep his relationships light, his ties loose.

  How ironic. He could have had it all along. He could have been the man in the morning suit looking captivated by his fresh-faced bride. He could have been the one looking forward to seeing his child born, to rocking her when she cried and, when she was older, scaring the monsters away from under her bed. But now, when he realised how much he wanted those things, those moments were gone, never to be salvaged. They’d been stolen from him by the woman steadying herself against the grotto wall with wide-spread hands, looking as much like an out-of-her-depth teenager as he’d ever seen her.