by Penny Jordan
The solitaire diamond surrounded by a circle of smaller diamonds and set on a diamond and white gold band perfectly matched the diamond and white gold wedding ring that went with it. They were rings that caught at the heart with their beauty and exclusively expensive allure, but diamonds were a poor substitute for love, Julie thought painfully.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised that the rings should be so very much to her taste—nor that the engagement ring which Rocco insisted on sliding onto her finger fitted it perfectly.
He was still holding her hand. Without thinking Julie looked up at him, her eyes widening slightly in a mixture of panic and longing as she saw the way he was looking back at her, his eyes darkening as he shifted his gaze from her eyes to her mouth and then began to lower his head. His intention of kissing her was quite plain.
Ridiculously, Julie panicked, shaking her head and pulling back from him as she told him quickly, ‘There’s no need for that. We both know that it doesn’t mean anything.’
Why was he frowning at her? She would have thought that he’d be pleased that she was being so sensible and businesslike, that she was not expecting him to behave as though he was a real bride- groom-to-be and she his bride. If that had been the case then…
Then what? Then right now she would be in his arms, her love for him spilling emotionally from her heart as she told him how much his love meant to her?
A small noise indicated that Josh had woken up, and, glad of the opportunity to do so, Julie turned away from Rocco to go to her nephew.
Having picked Josh up, it was safe to turn round and look at him. She was holding Josh like a barrier between them.
There was something she had to say to him. She took a deep breath, and said huskily, ‘Thank you.’ She swallowed, and then added, ‘For…for everything. I know this can’t be something that you really want. It’s different for me, of course. I have to put Josh first. But…what I’m trying to say is…I’m very grateful to you for what you’re doing.’
Rocco nodded his head, but the grim look he was giving her suggested that her gratitude didn’t really mean very much to him. Was he having second thoughts? Wishing that he hadn’t behaved so gallantly and taken on such a heavy responsibility?
When he left without saying anything more, Julie didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
In the corridor outside Julie’s room, Rocco stared unseeingly into the shadows. His reaction when Julie had recoiled from him as he’d bent his head to kiss her had stunned him, catching him off guard. But it was irritation he felt, nothing else. Irritation because she was clinging so naïvely and stubbornly to her adolescent crush, elevating it to a status it didn’t deserve. She had rejected his kiss out of some misguided loyalty to a man who had never taken the time to show her pleasure. Well, let her deny herself the pleasure they could have shared if she wished. Why should he care?
But he did care, Rocco recognised as he headed for the stairs. He cared very much. Abruptly he stopped in mid-step. He cared? For her? Was that his real motivation for marrying her? No! He was marrying her because it was his responsibility to do so and for no other reason.
* * *
Daylight was creeping into the room through the uncurtained windows as the night’s shadows lifted. Julie didn’t know whether to be alarmed or relieved. She had barely slept—how could she, knowing what the morning would bring?—and now that the day was here she could feel the enormity of what lay ahead flooding her senses.
Removed from their protective covers, the gowns fluttered like fragile ghosts in the breeze from the open windows. Julie had already made up her mind which one she would wear—the simplest of the three, in matt cream silk satin and cut on the bias, its seams sewn with tiny pearls. Pearls for tears? No, she mustn’t think of that. It had a high neckline and long sleeves, and a small bustle at the back, falling into a demi-train. She had chosen it because she felt that its plainness and its high neckline and long sleeves were more suited to the occasion than the more flamboyant styles of the other two gowns.
There was no time for her to linger over her preparations.
Maria, who had brought her the breakfast she had not been able to eat, had returned to help her dress and take charge of Josh for her.
Julie leaned over the cot to look at the sleeping baby. She could see for herself the way in which their time here had already benefited him. He looked so much healthier, and he was happier too. It had startled her at first to see the way Josh looked towards Rocco whenever he was in the same room. His delight when Rocco smiled at him or picked him up was plain to see. If he were never to see Rocco again he would miss him, but he was barely two months old—he would forget him.
It was all very well her telling herself that it would be wrong to deprive Josh of Rocco’s presence in his life, but wasn’t she only doing so to mask the fact that she wanted to marry Rocco? Rocco was not connected by blood in any way to Josh, after all. But that did not mean they could not form a deep emotional bond. Just as it had surprised her to see how Josh responded to Rocco, so too it had amazed her to see the genuine warmth and tenderness in Rocco whenever he was with Josh. Was she doing the right thing? Or was she rushing into something that she would later regret?
It was too late. Maria was holding out her dress for her.
Giving Josh a light kiss, Julie went back to stand submissive whilst Maria fussed round her, her manner and her expression filled with the delight and excitement that Julie knew she should be sharing.
It felt so unreal, stepping into her wedding dress. In the past when she had dreamed of this moment she had imagined herself in her childhood home with her parents—not here, in this feudal land of powerful, arrogant men who lived by their word, their honour and their pride. She had dreamed of marrying James and of a quiet, steadfast love. Not Rocco and the fierce, dangerous passion he aroused in her.
Maria was sobbing emotionally, praising the beauty of her gown and her good luck in securing such a wonderful man—a Leopardi—for her husband.
All too soon it was time for her to go downstairs to where Rocco’s lawyer was waiting to escort her to the private chapel. He told her Rocco was already waiting for her.
The chapel was small but magnificent, its ceiling and walls brilliantly frescoed with biblical images and its pews beautifully carved. Julie could feel the weight of its years of devotion, and panic started to fill her at the thought of the awesome nature of the commitment she was about to make here in this holy place.
She hesitated in mid-step and felt the quick look the lawyer gave her. She was doing this for Josh, Julie reminded herself shakily, and she focused on Rocco’s ramrod-straight back. Somehow just looking at him calmed her, and filled her with a deep spiritual awareness of the purpose of the commitment she and Rocco were making, so that her body stopped trembling. The lawyer, who was holding her arm, paused to give her an approving smile, as though he sensed her determination to do what she felt so deeply to be right.
But it was only when Rocco turned to look at her that she felt truly able to take the final steps that brought her level with him, as though somehow he himself was drawing her to him and giving her strength.
The service was simple, its words timeless and beautiful and the priest compassionate and yet stern as he underlined the gravity of the commitment they were making, joining their hands and commanding them to repeat after him their vows to one another.
This time she did not evade Rocco’s kiss. In fact she desperately wanted to cling to it and to him, needing reality in a world that seemed all too unreal.
In the small room off the chapel there were papers to sign, and then Rocco was guiding her back into the chapel and down the aisle to the font, where Maria and Josh, awake and dressed and lying happily in his buggy, were waiting for them.
It was done. Josh was safe. But at what cost to her? Only time would tell if she had the strength to endure her love for Rocco and his lack of love for her. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t already had p
ractice, she reminded herself, remembering James. But her feelings for James couldn’t in any way compare with what she felt for Rocco.
Rocco looked at Julie’s pale, set face. She was his now. His wife. A feeling he couldn’t analyse seized him: primitive, male, and very possessive. The satin gown caressed her body so lovingly that he almost felt jealous of its intimate contact with her, wanting to replace its touch with his own. He could see the admiring looks his lawyer was giving her, and he wanted to draw her away from him, to keep her from the desiring looks of all other men and for himself alone. She and the child were both now beneath his protection. His. He was now a husband and a father, and his duty was to keep them both safe. Their future was his responsibility.
A husband, but not a lover—nor loved.
Did he want to be?
That he should even need to ask himself that question was a warning that rubbed against Rocco’s pride like wet sandpaper against tender flesh.
It astonished Julie just how much attention to detail Rocco had given to the outward form of their marriage—there was a photographer to capture their images, and a small, hastily arranged but nonetheless elegant champagne reception to which a variety of local dignities had been invited. Rocco informed Julie, as they stood side by side whilst Rocco introduced her to their guests, that it was expected and would give rise to comment if he did not show public pride in their marriage and in her as his wife.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ he added, ‘I’ve told Maria that rather than disrupt Josh, since his nursery is off your bedroom, it makes sense for you to continue to sleep in your own room rather than move into the master bedroom.’
Simple enough words, and there had been a time when she would have received them with gratitude, but now they felt like a mortal blow to her heart, Julie admitted.
‘I wouldn’t want things any other way,’ she managed to answer, but she didn’t dare risk looking at him as she spoke, just in case he could see her real feelings in her eyes.
But what else could she reasonably have expected? She knew he didn’t love her, that he had only married her for Josh’s sake, and logically she ought to be pleased he had found such a tactful way of pointing out to her that he didn’t want her sharing his bed, given his almost arrogantly alpha maleness.
Their ‘guests’ had left, Rocco was escorting his lawyer to a car waiting to take him to the private plane that would fly him back to the mainland, and Josh, who had been awake to be admired during the champagne breakfast, was now a soft, sleeping weight in her arms. The silk satin dress, for all its elegance, somehow felt tawdry, given the real reason for her marriage, and Julie longed to take it off and put on clothes that she had bought for herself, no matter how cheap and unstylish they might be compared with the things Rocco had bought for her. Like the champagne that had soured her palette and left her longing for clean, fresh water, those designer clothes were part of a lifestyle that was not really hers, and they reinforced the fact that she had in one sense been bought by Rocco just as easily as Antonio had bought her sister.
But for very different reasons. Everything she had agreed to and had done was for Josh’s sake.
That wasn’t true. Hadn’t at least part of the reason she had agreed to marry Rocco been the fact that she had fallen in love with him, and had snatched eagerly at the opportunity to share his life?
Share his life? She was indeed a fool if she really thought there was any chance of that. If Rocco wouldn’t let her share his bed then there was precious little hope that he would allow her to share anything else, was there? A single tear splashed down onto Josh’s face, causing him to open his eyes and then yawn sleepily before closing them again. His trust in her touched Julie’s heart, and she curved her mouth in a softly tender smile as she bent to wipe away the tear.
Watching her unobserved from the doorway, Rocco frowned. There could be only one reason for a bride to cry tears of sorrow on her wedding day, and that was because she had married the wrong man, her love having been given to someone else. Anyone observing her with Josh could see how much he meant to her—the child of the man she loved.
With the curves of her body hidden by the sleeping baby she looked more like a Madonna than a bride, untouchable and aloof. But he wanted to touch her, he wanted to hold her, he wanted to hear her cry out to him in her need as she had done before. He wanted her, Rocco admitted, stepping back from the doorway before Julie could see him mooning over her like some yearning lovesick adolescent. For a moment he wondered if that was why he had deliberately left it too late for his brothers to make it in time for the wedding.
No, he had done his duty by Julie and Josh, that was all. Now he had a duty to his business, to the construction site where he had had to postpone several important meetings in order to make time for today’s hurried marriage.
There was no need for him to hang around the villa as though he was waiting around to beg for what few spare crumbs of attention Julie might throw his way. He had better things to do with his time.
It was Maria who informed Julie that Rocco had gone out and that she didn’t know when he would be back.
Was that sympathy or pity she could see in Maria’s eyes? Julie wondered as she asked Maria to help her unfasten her wedding dress—a duty and a pleasure that should surely have been Rocco’s. Only there was no pleasure for him in touching her, was there? Not for him. But for her that pleasure was the sweetest and the most dangerous she had ever known or would ever know.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS gone ten o’clock in the evening and Rocco had still not returned. There was nothing to keep her downstairs. The last thing she wanted was for Rocco to come in and find her hanging around as though she was waiting for him, desperate for his company. Maria had already locked up, and she might as well go up to her room as stay downstairs Julie acknowledged.
In the nursery Josh lay fast asleep, his eyelashes fanning across his healthily pink cheeks. For his sake if not for her own she knew beyond any doubt that she had done the right thing. She had no idea just why James’s sister had decided that she wanted Josh, but what Julie did know was that she would never have been a good mother to him.
Her wedding dress had been carefully packed away in its dress bag, and there was no sign anywhere in the room that today had been her wedding day unless it was in the new shine of her rings. There was certainly no husband—no Rocco here with her, to make the vows they had exchanged real in the only way a marriage could be made real.
Julie undressed and headed for the shower before changing her mind, tempted instead by the thought of a luxurious soak in the large deep bath.
Pinning up her hair, she started to run the bath. On impulse she closed the nursery door so that she wouldn’t disturb Josh and switched on the bathroom’s state-of-the-art music system, which was loaded with a wide selection of different kinds of music.
Tonight the haunting sound of female blues singers crooning about their lost love best suited her mood.
The bathroom was its own private oasis of blissful self- indulgence, and the music and the bittersweet scent of the bath oil she had chosen perfectly matched her mood of melancholy and longing. The blues music whispered its knowledge of what it meant to be a woman hungering for a man who did not hunger back for her.
The bath was deep enough for her to slide her body beneath the water and let it lap at her throat, caressing her like warm scented silk. Her flesh was so aware of the pleasure it had known with Rocco and was now denied that every small movement of the water was almost a physical touch. If she closed her eyes it would be so easy to remember, to imagine, to transfer her memories of Rocco’s possession from the past to the present, to pretend that she was in truth his bride, lying here waiting for him and for his caress…
Rocco heard the muted strains of music the minute he opened the door and walked into the bedroom. He had spent longer at the site than he had planned, and even though he’d known that Julie wouldn’t have waited up for him there had been somethi
ng about entering the darkened villa on this, his wedding night, that had touched a newly exposed nerve deep within his sense of self, where he felt most vulnerable. He had thought himself safe from the pain that came from emotional loss through the death of his mother, as though the intensity of that had seared and sealed away his vulnerability, but now he rec¬ ognised that he had been wrong. Rocco didn’t like being wrong—about anything—and he liked even less the driving need that had brought him here to this night-shadowed bedroom that smelled of the rose scent Julie had worn when they exchanged their vows.
The bedroom was empty, and when he opened the door to the nursery Josh, its only occupant, lay sleeping peacefully in his cot. Closing the nursery door as he exited, Rocco looked towards the bathroom. A blues singer was sobbing out her tale of angry, passionate grief, her song drowning out the sound of his entrance. Julie was lying in the bath, her eyes closed, damp tendrils of hair escaping from her topknot to cling to her face. She was lost, oblivious to his presence, her parted lips and accelerated breathing telling his senses that she had given herself over to some private, sensual daydream. But not of him! Her left hand rested on the side of the bath, devoid of the ring he had placed there earlier.
A feeling Rocco didn’t want to analyse ripped through him in a tidal wave, sucking away reason and replacing it with the powerful rip curl of emotions it had dredged up from deep within him.
Julie was his wife, and this was their wedding night. No way was he going to have her fantasising about some other man. Without stopping to analyse his own reactions, he strode over to the bath, reaching down to take hold of her hand.
Julie opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, shocked into a panicky reaction by the unexpectedness of Rocco’s touch. The violence of her movements sent the bathwater splashing over the side of the bath, soaking Rocco’s shirt and jeans.
