But not in time to be with her when it had really mattered—when she had really needed him! she thought, trying to excuse his absence, to understand. Deep regret, though, fatigue and the long hours of missing him had robbed her of her ability to be reasonable, and suddenly she was sniping back, ‘So in the meantime they’ve sent you to step into his shoes.’
‘Hardly.’ The pull of that incredibly masculine mouth made her at once both ashamed and embarrassed at even hinting that this dynamic specimen of manhood might entertain the idea of playing surrogate husband to her. And as for trying to suggest that anyone else could dictate his movements, she had to be kidding! ‘I did, however, feel it appropriate to bring you these.’
She would never forget her surprise or the lump that rose to her throat as he handed her the bunch of deep crimson roses. She wouldn’t forget their scent or their dew-tipped freshness either, but it was the dark brilliance of his eyes as they collided with hers and the husky quality of his voice as he produced those flowers that would remain with her for a long time. That and how mesmerised she felt by the intensity of his dark regard; how she was unable to look away. Then, as a small gurgling sound from the little cot broke the silence between them, ‘May I?’ he enquired with an assertion that brooked no refusal, because he was already moving around to the other side of the bed.
‘You’re his uncle,’ she said with a little lift of her shoulder beneath her modest cotton nightie, wanting to tag on a grudging, How can I stop you? But after that last gesture on his part and that uneasy and silent transmission of something between them, the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, she watched with a blend of screaming rejection and fascination as he bent over the cot, saw him clasp a miniature waving pink finger with the strength of his own, and then, uttering a low rumble of welcome to the newest Vincenzo, amazingly he lifted the tiny infant out of his cot, as tenderly as if it were his own.
Watching the emotions chase across his face and reluctantly marvelling at the self-assured confidence beneath that leather-clad frame, she found herself wondering how Romano Vincenzo would treat the woman who had just given him an heir, and knew instinctively that he would have been there for her from the very first twinge, right through her labour, his strength supporting her, until the final moments of birth.
Unaware of how dark she looked under the eyes, or how wildly unkempt her hair was—not until she’d stolen a glance in the bathroom mirror afterwards and found herself wishing that it was anyone but him who had seen her like that—as their eyes clashed over the tiny bundle he was holding, her attention was suddenly drawn to her appearance when he gently commented, ‘You look tired, Libby. Has it been a particularly rough ride?’
Exhausted after a difficult labour, vulnerable, aching for Luca, that hint of tenderness in his brother’s voice suddenly proved too much.
Tears welled into her eyes, and as her gaze dropped to the perfect little boy that she and Luca had created she clamped her teeth together for fear of revealing any emotion to Romano before, frustrated at her own lack of self-control, she turned shamefully away.
‘What’s wrong, Libby?’ The tenderness was gone, leaving only that cold, incisive edge she knew only too well. ‘Haven’t things gone in quite the way you’d planned?’
Realisation hit her hard as it dawned on her what he was presuming. That she’d screwed up her face—turned away—because, having married Luca solely for financial gain, the last thing she would want would be to be lumbered with his baby!
She didn’t tell him just what she thought—or even attempt to dispel his totally erroneous illusion. Yet afterwards, when he had gone, missing those snatches of concern and gentleness she had glimpsed in him—not just towards Giorgio but also, however unintended, towards her—she cried bitterly.
When he came back again, twelve hours later, it was to break the news to her that Luca was dead.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘DON’T you think you’re being rather unwise—fraternising with that girl?’ The bright morning sunlight streaming in through the long window scored unkind lines across Sophia Vincenzo’s face, marring her mature beauty.
‘No one’s fraternising, Sophia.’ Romano’s tone was impatient. ‘She simply needed help.’
‘And you gave it to her.’
He watched her rearranging flowers with her usual ballerina-like grace, remembering how often as a child and a young adult he had wanted to break through that impenetrable exterior; wanted until he had given up.
‘What’s this all about?’
She didn’t look at him as she continued with her arrangement. It had to be perfect. For Sophia, perfection was everything. Or the illusion of perfection at least.
‘May I remind you,’ she said, ‘that your father didn’t like her—and with just cause. Oh, I know she’s pretty and the stuff of every man’s fantasies, but no one rules your heart, Romano—no one ever has. Sometimes I’ve wondered if you have one—for anyone besides Giorgio, that is.’
Romano’s strong teeth clamped together. He didn’t relish another pointless argument with Sophia. They had never been close. And, to coin a phrase she had just used herself in relation to Libby, he thought ironically, with just cause.
‘I’m going out. Would you like me to do anything for you?’ he enquired softly but firmly, hoping to ease the present tension between them. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘Yes.’ Her grey-streaked hair gleamed as she looked up at him now, her eyes cold and clear despite the briefest smile that touched her lips. ‘Just remember what she did to my son.’
Her son. His brother. Romano’s jaw tightened as he strode out of the room. Luca had been special to her. Her favourite. Sophia had never made any secret of that. He recalled how his brother had needed guiding—watching. Someone in control who could take command over his far too adventurous spirit and try to channel his energies into positive and constructive outlets; rescue him from his own raw and destructive irresponsibility. And Romano, as the elder sibling, he remembered all too painfully, had tried to do that. Over and over and over again.
His business finished, Romano consulted his watch as he moved lithely across the courtyard into the castle. It was two hours since that episode with his mother.
Now, moving through the huge rooms, he found every one deserted; remembered that Sophia had taken Giorgio on a previously arranged coach trip to the coast.
‘Why can’t Mama come?’ the little boy had asked her earnestly when it had been mentioned before dinner the previous evening.
‘Because we only have two tickets.’ His grandmother’s reply had brooked no argument. It was clear, Romano thought, that Sophia had had no intention of relinquishing a day with her grandson to his long-estranged mother, or even to attempt to see if another ticket could be arranged.
Libby might not rank very highly in his mother’s opinion. Or indeed, he thought drily, in his own. But he had felt a rare degree of sympathy for her when, obviously having interpreted all that was being said, she had put an arm around Giorgio and said she hoped he’d enjoy it, hiding her disappointment behind a brave little smile.
Now, having tossed down his briefcase and jacket, slipped off his tie and enquired of a member of staff where she could be, it was with a smug satisfaction that he headed for the garden, realising that for the first time since he had brought Libby back here he was going to have her all to himself.
With Giorgio gone for the day, Libby hadn’t realised how much she would miss him. It was as though a limb had been torn from her, she thought, and she didn’t know what to do.
She had wandered out here into the garden to lose herself amongst the vibrant shrubs and quiet pathways that were all part of Romano’s new and very aesthetically planned landscaping, to try and walk off the restlessness that had plagued her inside.
Some things hadn’t changed, she noticed, picking out the statues and tall, tapering cypress trees she recognised from when she had lived there before.
She stopped
dead suddenly, inhaling the honey-scented pink spikes of a huge bush that was growing near the path.
Her butterfly bush! she remembered with a stab of something painfully acute. Luca had brought it home for her one day—just a small shrub in a pot—knowing how much she’d wanted one. That was one of the less detrimental reasons why he’d started calling her ‘his butterfly girl’. He’d said it was a token of his love and that he would plant it for her, but in the end he hadn’t got around to it, and she had had to do it alone. As she’d found herself doing everything with increasing regularity, a cruel little voice inside suddenly piped up to taunt her. Alone.
Oh, he had been full of high ideas and good intentions, Libby reminded herself with a sad little smile in his defence. And his few faults, of course, had paled into insignificance beneath the weight of loss and grief she had suffered after his accident. Yet now, watching a colony of red admirals flitting appreciatively over the bright crimson blooms that wreathed gracefully curving branches, she was forced to accept that planting her butterfly bush was just one of those intentions that had never came to fruition.
“We’ll do it together,” he’d resorted to saying when she had given him one or two gentle reminders. Over three weeks later, when it was looking sad and pot-bound on one of the lesser used balconies, she had taken it herself and found a spade after the gardeners had finished for the day, and tried, without much success, to penetrate the hard, baked earth.
She hadn’t even been aware of Romano’s approach. Not until he was standing right next to her and, without a word, had taken the spade out of her hands.
Surprised and disconcerted by his presence, she’d looked on as, dressed in the immaculate dark suit he’d worn to the office, he’d forced the earth to yield beneath his expensive black shoe, and driven the spade effortlessly into the ground.
He still hadn’t spoken as she shook the tangled little plant free of its confining pot, loosening its strangled roots. Not until he had refilled the hole with an economical wielding of the spade and she’d patted the freshly dug earth firmly down with her bare hands.
‘Nurture it,’ he’d advised succinctly then. ‘Like husbands, they require a little attention now and again if you’re to reap all the rewards you’re clearly hoping for.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ she’d said sarcastically, knowing he was referring to her frequent and increasingly long visits to England and what he saw as an escape from the confines of her inconvenient marriage. They hadn’t known—any of them! she thought, with emotion welling up inside of her—how much she adored Luca, and yet how increasingly like an outcast she had been made to feel.
‘So this is where you are!’
His deep voice made her jump and, swiping at her wet cheeks, Libby swung round, struck by that feeling of déjà vu he’d commented on the day he brought her back.
‘It’s cooler here.’ Her words came out on a shaky little croak because she hadn’t expected to see him; because he had caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment and, from the furrow deepening between his eyes, he was fully aware of it.
‘Much.’ He glanced up at the welcome canopy of narrow green leaves and dense, spiky flowers, causing Libby to wonder if he too was remembering their joint efforts that day so long ago.
‘It lived—without my being here to nurture it,’ she quietly reminded him and guessed that he was probably supplementing an unvoiced ‘so there!’ although she hadn’t intended to sound in any way smug. All that was in her mind right now was how stupendously masculine he looked with an open-necked white shirt accentuating his tan and pale grey trousers hugging every hard angle of his lower body so that she could feel every feminine cell zinging in response to it.
‘Buddleja davidii,’ he quoted, reminding her of its Latin name. ‘It’s thoroughly invasive and will take over the garden if you let it. Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful specimen and butterflies are addicted to it.’ As he could so easily become addicted to her, he warned himself brutally, wondering what was stopping him from pulling the pins out of the swept-up hair that exposed her enticing neck and shoulders and dragging her into his arms, feel her warm, pliant body beneath that virginal white sundress pressing against every hard, pulsing sinew of his. ‘Attributed to a French priest…’ somehow he managed to force himself to concentrate on a far safer subject, ignore the burning ache in his groin ‘…who also discovered the giant panda, which is, unfortunately, one of his less productive discoveries.’
A bubble of laughter burst from Libby. ‘Are you always such a mine of useless information?’ she enquired cheekily.
‘It’s a topical subject.’ A smile touched his mouth. A mouth which only hours before had been driving her crazy for him, Libby thought shamefully, banishing the humiliating memory of it fiercely from her mind. ‘Giorgio has been learning about him at school.’
‘Did he teach you all that?’ she laughed, more tensely this time.
Romano shrugged. ‘From the mouths of babes.’
Libby nodded. They could teach you a lot, she thought. Only she’d been denied the chance of learning anything from her young son.
‘You’ve spent a lot of time with him, haven’t you?’
It was the closest thing to admitting that she had watched those cassettes and that she had behaved badly and ungraciously when he had left them in her room. But even alluding to last night after what had transpired between them brought embarrassed colour to her cheeks and, unsettled by his dark, all too knowing scrutiny, she had to look away, pretend an interest in a large peacock butterfly that had settled just above her head, the bright circles on its wings quite conspicuously blue.
‘Someone had to,’ the sudden change in Romano’s tone chilled her like a cold wind, ‘the child having been robbed of both a father and a mother.’
Libby’s head jerked back, the accusation in her eyes vying with the palpable condemnation she could see burning in his. ‘And what are you saying? That it was all my fault?’
The sun filtering through the yellow leaves of an Acer tree growing behind the butterfly bush slashed harsh shadows across Romano’s face. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to! Libby thought, peeved.
‘Oh, I know exactly what you think of me, Romano!’ Arms folded as though to protect herself from some invisible attack, she brushed purposely past him, intent on heading back towards the equally harsh austerity of his home. ‘I know that to you I’m just an avaricious little gold-digger who saw your brother as an easy target!’ she threw back over her shoulder, aware of his hounding footsteps right behind her.
‘Wasn’t he?’
She sliced him a hard, deprecating look as he caught up with her.
Too big. Too commanding. Too powerful. The type of man who struck awe into the hearts of lesser men and an overwhelming excitement into those of most women! Herself included! she thought despairingly.
‘To someone who might have been hoping to take him for every penny they could get—yes, he was,’ she agreed. ‘He was a little bit naïve in that respect and generous to a fault.’ All too well she recalled the gifts he had lavished upon her. Jewellery. Designer clothes. An extortionately priced car she hadn’t been at all sure he could afford.
‘Generous to a fault, si, and would have been more so, no doubt, if the money he had inherited from his grandfather hadn’t been safely withheld from him until his twenty-fifth birthday.’ Because Luca had been a fool with money. And not just with her, but with his friends, too. Most of them opportunists—nothing but hangers-on, she remembered unhappily.
‘But I didn’t need that money, did I?’ she reminded his brother bitterly, exasperated by his eternal implications. ‘Not when I could use Giorgio as a bargaining tool to get it out of your father instead!’ An angry glance at him revealed the taut lines of his cheek and jaw, and the granite-hard firmness of his mouth. And suddenly, frustrated by his inexorable refusal to see her for who she really was, she burst out, ‘You’re just a narrow-minded bigot, Romano Vincenzo! Good grief! You mus
t really hate me if you still believe a thing like that!’
Which was the wrong thing to say, she realised at once when, catching her arm, he suddenly pulled her round to face him.
‘And does it matter, my beautiful grieving widow…’ his scything words didn’t quite tally with the husky quality of his voice ‘…whether I hate you or not?’
It did. Heaven knew! She didn’t know why! But it did!
The pulsing strength of his masculinity seemed to be igniting her blood, the elusive scent of his cologne weakening her resolve after last night to resist the dangerous pull of whatever it was between them that overrode resentment, dislike or even—as he’d suggested—hate.
‘Of course not!’ she breathed, and pulled angrily out of his grasp. ‘Only that any human being should think me so unscrupulous!’
‘I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary,’ Romano said, pursuing her despite her attempts to shrug him off, wondering why he no longer felt the full weight of his convictions. Was it because of those tears he had witnessed a moment ago when he had caught her off-guard? Or because of the surprising yet unmistakable depth of feeling she had for Giorgio? Perhaps Sophia was right, he speculated grimly. Perhaps he was allowing the effects of this girl’s soft femininity to rule his head.
Driven by that thought, and by the mental imagery that always kicked in hard whenever he felt his defences being weakened by her, he ground out, ‘And you seem to have forgotten, cara, but I haven’t. That night I saw you during one of your many sojourns to England. Pregnant with my brother’s child and—what is the expression?—living it up under the pretext of playing nursemaid to your father, while Luca was safely and conveniently out of the way here in Italy!’
‘That’s not true!’ Libby defended herself, hot colour staining her cheeks, creeping down her throat. ‘And I didn’t keep going back because I had some clandestine lover I’d left at home—as I’m well aware you were all too ready to believe! My father was ill! He had nobody else to care for him and I couldn’t leave him on his own! When you saw me that night at the country club it was only because people had been keeping on at me—telling me I should take a night off, go out for an evening. I was exhausted! Worn down with the strain and worry of Dad and torn in two by split loyalties! Trying to do what was best for him and be fair to Luca! Even my doctor told me I should take a break! And the only time I gave in and got a friend to sit in for Dad—allowed myself a few hours’ recreation—I had to bump slam-bang right into you!’
Blackmailed For Her Baby (Bought For Her Baby Series Book 4) Page 8
