by Fiona Harper
She had style—and that wasn’t a compliment he assigned easily.
She was dressed casually in a pair of deep turquoise Capri pants and a white linen halter-neck top, which she immediately covered with a sheer, long-sleeved shirt the moment she stepped into the sunshine. Her hair was in a loose, low ponytail and the honey highlights glinted gold in the midday sun. Bewitching. She pulled a large pair of sunglasses down from the top of her head to cover her eyes and it only added to the effect, making her seem aloof and desirable at the same time. He’d always been a sucker for forbidden fruit.
There was no doubt in his mind, though, that when she’d got dressed for this meeting, she’d thought very carefully about the ‘look’ she wanted to create. The clothes said: Think of me as any other woman—down-to-earth, non-threatening, relaxed. Romano was intrigued with her choice, why she’d felt the need to dress down when most other women would have dressed up.
He stood up, vaulted out of the boat and walked towards her. She didn’t smile, and he liked her all the more for it. A smile would have been a lie. He was very good at reading women, their bodies, the silent signals their posture and gestures gave off, and as he watched Jackie walk towards him the signals came thick and fast—and all of them contradictory.
Greeting people with visible affection, even if little or no emotion was involved, was part of their world and, almost out of reflex, they leaned in, he kissed her on the cheek and took her hand. He’d done it a thousand times to a thousand different women at a thousand different fashion shows, seen her do the same from across the room, but as he pulled away a wave of memories as tall as a wall hit him.
She smelled the same. Warm. Spicy. Feminine.
And suddenly the hand in his felt softer, more alive, as if he could feel the pulse beating through it, and his lips, where they had touched her cheek, tingled a little.
Up until now the idea of embarking on a second summer fling with Jackie Patterson had been a mentally pleasing idea rather than a physical tug. He sensed that afterwards he would be able to erase the niggling questions about their romance that surfaced every few years from his subconscious, only to be swiftly batted down again. A rerun now they were older and more sensible would soothe whatever it was that jarred and jiggled deep down in his soul, wanting to be let out. But this time they would end it cleanly. No fuss, no ties.
As he ushered her into the small speedboat he realised that his only half-thought-out plans had moved up a gear. Now he didn’t just want to get close to Jackie again to put ghosts to rest; his body wanted her here and now. But it wouldn’t do to rush it. While she was all cool glamour on the surface, underneath she was awkward and nervous. Skittish. If he wanted to take Jackie to his bed, he was going to have to see if he could peel back some of those layers first.
He smiled. Not many men would guess what warmth and passion lay behind the glossy, cool exterior. But he knew. And it made the anticipation all the sweeter.
There were several mooring sites on the island and he chose the one that gave them a walk through the lush gardens to the palazzo. Jackie didn’t say much as she walked in front of him, looking to the left and right, a slight frown creasing her forehead as she climbed the sloping steps from terrace to terrace. Now and again he saw her eyelids flicker, the very bare hint of colour flare in her cheeks, and he knew she was remembering the same things he was—memories of soft naked flesh, cool garden breezes that carried the scent of flowers. Heat and fulfilment.
It was here that they’d first made love, one night when his father had been away. He’d managed to invent an excuse to send the housekeeper and cook off for the evening—making sure they’d prepared food before they’d left, of course—and he and Jackie had spent the evening eating at the grand six-metre-long dining-room table, sneaking sips of his father’s best vintage wine and pretending they were older and more sophisticated, free to love each other without remark or interruption.
He hadn’t intended to seduce her. He’d just wanted some time alone with her far away from prying eyes, somewhere nicer than a dusty old run-down farmhouse. She’d been too young, and he’d been holding himself back, but that night…when they’d taken a walk in the gardens after dinner and she’d turned to him, kissed him, whispered his name and offered herself to him with wide eyes and soft lips, he hadn’t been able to say no. Not when she’d purposely played with fire, done things that she knew got him so hot and bothered that he could hardly think straight.
But he couldn’t regret it.
It had been intoxicating, and for the rest of the summer they’d lived in a blissful, heated bubble where the only thing that had mattered was time they could spend alone together. Foolish, yes. Forgettable, no.
They reached the large terrace with the parterre and giant urns. He watched her amble round a few paths, stooping to brush the tops of the geometric hedges and leaning in to smell the flowers dripping over the edges of the stone ornaments. This time it would be different. An adult affair, free from all the teenage angst and complications. He had a feeling it would be just as memorable.
On a large patio around to the side of the palazzo a table was set with linen and silver, a cream umbrella shading the waiting food. He led her to it. Crisp white wine was chilling in a bucket of ice, a dish on a stand stood in the middle of the table. She lifted her sunglasses for a moment and he noticed her eyebrows were already raised. He knew what she was thinking.
‘I had a little help,’ he said, not being able to resist teasing her, even though he’d prepared most of the meal himself. He liked cooking. It was just another way to be creative, and the results brought such pleasure, if the right amount of time and precision was lavished upon a dish. And he was all for pleasure, whatever the cost.
‘Would you prefer to sit in the sun? I can remove the umbrella.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t do sun. It’s aging.’
He shrugged and pulled her chair out for her and she sat down, her eyes fixed on the domed cover over the central dish. He whipped it away to reveal a mountainous seafood platter: oysters, mussels, fat juicy prawns, squid and scallops, all stacked high on a mound of ice. Jackie forgot for a second to wear her mask of composure. He’d remembered well. She loved seafood.
‘Wow.’
‘See? I can cook.’
For the first time since he’d zipped her up in her mother’s dressing room, she smiled. ‘You don’t really expect me to believe you prepared all this?’ She swept a hand across the table. ‘Even the salads?’
He handed her a serving spoon and nodded towards the platter. ‘Any fool can shred a lettuce or slice a few tomatoes and drizzle a bit of oil and vinegar on them.’
She fixed him with a sassy look. ‘It seems that any fool did.’
Warmth spread outwards from his core. He’d always loved her acerbic, dry sense of humour. Jackie was funny, intelligent, and with a quirky prettiness that had fascinated him; she’d been his favourite summer fling. His last, actually. After that he’d had other things to concentrate on. Learning the ropes at Puccini Designs, proving he wasn’t a waste of space. It wasn’t until success had come that he’d returned to finding women quite so distracting. And by then he’d been older, and summer flings had had their day.
Lunch was pleasant. He almost forgot that he’d sensed Jackie had a secret agenda for their meeting. They talked about work and what was new in the fashion world. She listened with interest as he bounced a few ideas for the next collection off her. Jackie Patterson deserved to be where she was. She knew her stuff. Not one person he’d ever come across in the length of his career had ever dared to suggest she was a success because her mother had once been a famous model. Quite the reverse, actually.
Lisa’s prima-donna tendencies had been legendary. No one who’d been in Jackie’s company for more than five seconds would accuse her of being anything but highly focused, knowledgeable and professional. He was so taken with getting to know her again that he almost forgot his own secret agenda.
/> ‘How long are you staying in Monta Correnti?’ he asked as he served her second helpings of almost everything from the platter, hoping that she wasn’t going to announce some urgent meeting back in London straight after the wedding.
She swallowed the scallop she’d been chewing. ‘Two weeks. Mamma convinced me to take a holiday since Scarlett would be visiting.’
He nodded, too preoccupied with his own calculations to fully register the heat that suddenly burned in her eyes and died away. Two weeks would be perfect. Long enough to seduce her—it was his turn this time, after all—but not long enough to tie them together for life.
When they’d finished eating, there was a natural lull. They sat in silence, staring out at the lake, which was showing off for them, flipping its waves into frothy white crests. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a subtle shift in Jackie’s posture, felt rather than heard her take in a breath and hold it. He moved his head so he could look at her.
For a moment she was motionless, but then she pushed her sunglasses back onto her head and stared at him. He blinked and refused to let his muscles tighten even a millimetre.
‘Romano…’
She broke off and looked at the lake. After a long, heavy minute, she turned to him again. ‘I…I wanted to talk to you about something.’
Although they’d been talking Italian all this time, she switched into English and the consonants sounded hard and clunky in comparison. He stopped smiling.
‘Would you consider an exclusive fashion shoot for Gloss!, timed to come out the day after the new Puccini collection is revealed?’
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. For some bizarre reason he hadn’t been expecting that at all.
But that was Jackie Patterson all over. She had a way of overturning a man’s equilibrium in the most thrilling manner. It was a pity he’d forgotten how that excitement was always mixed with a hint of disorientation and a dash of discomfort. Didn’t mean he liked it any less.
This could be the perfect opportunity to keep close to Jackie for the next few days, easing that frown off her forehead, making her relax in his company until she remembered how good they’d been together instead of how messily it had ended.
‘It’s a possibility,’ he said and gave her a long, lazy smile. ‘But let’s save the details for later—say, drinks tomorrow evening?’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS just as well that Jackie knew the road to Monta Correnti like the back of her hand, because she wasn’t really concentrating on her driving as she travelled back to her mother’s villa. Just as well she’d only drunk half a glass of wine at lunch too. Romano had her feeling light-headed enough as it was and she’d decided she needed her wits about her if she was going to tell him what could be the biggest piece of news in his whole thirty-four years on this planet.
Only, it hadn’t quite turned out that way, had it?
She’d chickened out.
Jackie sighed as she made her way up the steep hill, hogging far too much of the road to be polite.
She’d thought she’d been ready for it, thought she’d been ready to open her mouth and change his life for ever.
What she hadn’t counted on was that, without the benefit of almost two decades of hate backing her up, Romano’s effect on her would be as potent as ever. He’d always made her a little breathless just by standing too close, just by smiling at her. It had got her completely off track. Distracted. She’d do well to remember the mess she’d ended up in the last time she’d given in to that delicious lack of oxygen.
All the chemistry she was feeling probably didn’t have anything to do with her. He couldn’t help it, just exuded some strange pheromone that sent women crazy. While Romano had built a solid foundation and long-lasting reputation in his professional life he wasn’t the greatest in the permanence stakes, and she’d started panicking that he’d be a bad father, that he wasn’t what Kate needed.
Jackie muttered to herself as she took a hairpin bend with true Italian bravado.
What did she know? Did she have any more ‘permanence’ in her life? The truth was, after Romano, she’d never really let anyone get that close again. Oh, she’d had relationships, but ones where she’d had all the power. They’d dragged on for a couple of years until the men in question had realised she never was going to put them ahead of her work, and when they’d left she’d congratulated herself for having the foresight not to jump into the relationship with both feet.
Jackie slowed the car and pulled into a gravelly lookout point near the top of the hill. She switched off the engine, got out and walked towards the railing and the wonderful view of the lake.
She’d wanted to run, to get as far away from him as possible. Was that why she’d chickened out of telling Romano the truth? Was she once again thinking of herself, of keeping herself safe, of keeping the illusion of perfection intact?
No. She’d been scared, but not for herself—for Kate. She’d imagined all the different scenarios, all the different reactions he might have. Would Romano be angry? Horrified? Ambivalent?
What if she scared Romano off by dropping this bombshell? It was too sudden, too much, after seventeen years of silence. She wouldn’t get a second go at this. It had to be right the first time.
She swallowed and gripped the wonky iron railing for support, but instead of staring at the majesty of Lake Adrina, she just stared at her feet.
Her heart might just break for Kate if Romano didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She knew what it was like to lose a man like that. It hurt. Really hurt. And Kate might hate her for doing it all wrong and scaring him away. She couldn’t have that.
Lunch had been good, but it had only been a starting point. They had to build on the fragile truce they’d started to mesh together. Whether they liked it or not, she and Romano would be for ever linked once he knew the truth.
So she’d invented a reason to keep him talking to her, to keep them seeing each other. They needed to get to know each other again. Then she could work out a way of telling him about Kate that wouldn’t send him running.
She’d just have to ignore the glint of mischief deep in those unusual grey eyes, forget about the fact her body thought it was full of adolescent hormones again when she clapped eyes on him. At least Romano hadn’t tried anything; he’d been the perfect gentleman, even though she was sure there’d been a hum of remembered attraction in the air. Thank goodness they were older and wiser now and both knew it would be a horrible mistake to act on it.
When Jackie finally drove through the gateposts of her mother’s villa, she spotted Scarlett sitting on the low steps that led to the front door, watching her rental car intently as she swung it round and parked it beside her mother’s sports car. She pressed her lips together as she switched off the engine. She knew that look. Scarlett was in the mood for a showdown and Jackie really wasn’t.
She got out of the car and tried to ignore Scarlett, but as she neared the steps Scarlett stood up and blocked her path.
‘What?’ she said with the merest hint of incredulity in her voice. ‘Have you been waiting for me here all afternoon?’
Scarlett returned her stare. ‘Basically.’
Jackie shook her head and moved to pass her sister. Stubborn wasn’t the word.
‘Please?’ Scarlett said, just as they were about to brush shoulders.
It wasn’t the tone of her voice—slightly hoarse, slightly high-pitched—that stopped Jackie in her tracks, but the desperation in her sister’s eyes. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, and Jackie found it impossible to look away or even move.
‘Okay,’ she finally said.
Scarlett nodded, a flush of relief crossing her features, and set off towards the garden at breakneck pace. Instead of heading for the table and chairs on the terrace, or the spacious summer house, Scarlett kept marching downhill through the gardens. Without even glancing back over her shoulder at Jackie, she launched herself at the old tree and swung her leg over one of
the thicker, lower branches.
‘I thought we might as well talk on your territory,’ she said.
Jackie just stared at her. This week had to be the most bizarre of her entire life.
Scarlett smiled at her—not her usual bright, confident grin, but a little half-smile that reminded Jackie of the way she’d looked when she’d stuck her head round Jackie’s bedroom door and had asked her to read her a bedtime story when Mamma had been too busy.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ Jackie hoisted herself up onto ‘her’ branch again. ‘I thought you said this was silly,’ she said, shooting a look across at Scarlett, who was now sitting quite merrily astride a branch, swinging her legs.
‘It is.’
Jackie grunted and pulled herself upright and straddled the branch so she could look at Scarlett.
‘We always used to come here to whisper about things we didn’t want Mamma to know,’ Scarlett said. She picked at a scrap of loose bark on the branch in front of her, then studied it intently for a few seconds. ‘Are you going to tell her?’ she said, not taking her eyes off the flaking bit of tree she was destroying.
Jackie waited for her to meet her gaze.
‘I have to. It’s all going to come out into the open shortly.’
Scarlett nodded.
Jackie drew in a breath and held it. ‘But I have to tell Romano first.’
A look of pain crossed Scarlett’s features. ‘I’m so sorry, Jackie. I should have told you earlier…’
Jackie kept eye contact. Scarlett didn’t shrink back; she met her gaze and didn’t waver.
‘Yes, you should have,’ she eventually replied.
Scarlett sighed. ‘It was easier to pretend it had all been some horrible nightmare once I’d moved to the other side of the world. I thought I could run from it, pretend it hadn’t happened… But as time went on, I realised the true implications of my actions and I…’ her chin jutted forward ‘…I chickened out. I’m sorry.’ She shrugged one shoulder. ‘What can I say? The gene for self-preservation is strong in our family.’
