by Fiona Harper
Jackie exhaled. She knew all about chickening out, all about desperately wanting to let the truth out but not being able to find the right word to pull from the pile to start the avalanche.
It was much harder than she’d anticipated to stay angry at Scarlett. Just yesterday she’d thought this fierce sense of injustice would burn for ever. But these weren’t just pretty words to smooth things over and keep the family in its disjointed equilibrium. Scarlett’s apology had been from the heart. After all that had passed between them, could they use this as a starting point to building their way back to what sisters were supposed to be?
‘At least I understand why you hated me all these years.’ She’d done it herself many times—made an error of judgement and turned her fury on the nearest victim rather than herself. A trick they’d both learned from their mother, she suddenly realised.
She wanted to say she was sorry too, for disappointing Scarlett, for setting up the series of events that had forced her to leave her home and live with her father, but she couldn’t mimic Scarlett’s disarming honesty. The words stuck in her throat.
In one quick movement Scarlett swung herself off her branch and landed on the same one as Jackie, side on, so both her legs dangled over one side. Her eyes were all pink but she hadn’t surrendered to tears yet.
‘Is that what you thought? That I hated you?’
Jackie felt the skin under her eyebrows wrinkle. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘No!’ The volume of her reply startled both of them. ‘No,’ she repeated more quietly.
‘But…’
Now the tears fell. ‘I didn’t leave because of you, Jackie. I left because I couldn’t live with myself.’ Scarlett hung her head and a plop of salty moisture landed on her foot. ‘When you came back from London you looked so different, so sad…I couldn’t face seeing you like that. So I did what any self-respecting little girl would—I ran away and told myself it wasn’t my fault.’
Jackie hadn’t thought the pain could get any worse. She’d only ever thought about how she’d felt, how she’d been wronged. Emotionally, she’d never matured past fifteen on this issue, too concentrated on her own wounds to see the others hurting around her. It was as if she’d only just woken up from suspended animation, that she could suddenly see things clearly instead of through a sleepy fog of self-absorption.
Romano had a daughter he didn’t even know existed. He’d missed all those years; he’d never be able to get them back.
And Scarlett had carried the scars of this terrible secret round with her all her life. It had affected their relationship, Scarlett’s relationship with their mother…everything.
Jackie’s eyes burned. She closed her lids to hide the evidence and grabbed at the sleeve of Scarlett’s blouse, using it to pull her into a hug. They stayed like that just resting against each other, softening, breathing, for such a long time.
‘I was too proud,’ Jackie whispered. ‘I should have gone to Romano myself, but I took the coward’s way out. I shouldn’t have dragged you into it, Scarlett.’
Scarlett pulled back and looked at her, eyes wide. ‘You mean that? You forgive me?’
Jackie had to stop her bottom lip from wobbling before she could answer. ‘If you can forgive me.’
Scarlett lunged at her, tightening the hug until it hurt. Unfortunately it caught Jackie off guard and she lost her balance. Scarlett let out a high-pitched squeak and it took a few moments for Jackie to register what that meant. Uh-oh. They clung even tighter onto each other as the tree slid away from them and they met the ground with a whomp, leaving them in a tangle of arms and legs.
‘Ow,’ said Scarlett, and then began to laugh softly.
Jackie wasn’t sure whether she was moaning in pain or laughing along with Scarlett. The pathetic noises they were making and their fruitless attempts to separate their limbs and sit up just made them laugh harder.
‘Girls?’
Their mother’s voice sliced through the late-afternoon air.
Scarlett and Jackie held their breath and just looked at each other. Unfortunately this prompted an even more explosive fit of the giggles, and Lisa found them crying and laughing helplessly while trying to wipe the dirt off their bottoms at the foot of the old pine tree.
The boy slowed his Vespa to a halt at the back of the abandoned farmhouse and cut the engine. Everything seemed still. He looked up. The sky was bright cobalt, smeared with thin white clouds so high up they were on the verge of evaporating, and there was the merest hint of moisture in the air, a slight heaviness that he hadn’t noticed while the wind had been buffeting him on his moped. Now he was motionless, he felt it cling to his skin and wrap around him.
Wasn’t she here? Why hadn’t she come running round the side of the farmhouse at the sound of his arrival as she usually did?
Frowning slightly, he jogged round the old building calling her name. No one answered.
He found her sitting on the front step, her back against the rotted door jamb, her long legs folded up in front of her. She didn’t move, didn’t look at him, even though she must have heard him arrive.
‘Jackie? What’s the matter?’
He sat down on the step beside her and she swiftly tucked her legs underneath herself. Her long dark hair was pulled into a high, tight ponytail and combined with the coldness in her hazel eyes it made her look unusually severe.
‘I’m surprised you managed to drag yourself away,’ she said, looking up, her tone light and controlled. ‘I thought you’d be down in the piazza still, letting that Francesca Gambardi make eyes at you.’
Romano turned away. He was getting tired of this. Ever since they’d spent the night together almost three weeks ago Jackie had been acting strangely.
Oh, most of the time she was her normal, fiery, passionate self—a fact he was capitalising on, since they didn’t seem to be able to keep their hands off each other for more than a few seconds at a time—but every now and then she just went all quiet and moody. And then she’d come out with some outrageous statement. Just as she had done a few moments ago. His head hurt with trying to figure it all out.
He sighed. ‘We were just talking.’
Jackie humphed. ‘Well, you seem to do a heck of a lot of talking with Francesca these days!’
He felt unusually tired and old when he answered her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with talking to a friend and, besides, I was only in the piazza because I was waiting for a chance to ask you to meet me here. Which I did. And you came. So I can’t see what the problem is.’
She rolled her eyes and Romano felt his habitually well-buried temper shift and wake. ‘What more do you want me to do?’
Jackie’s answer was so fast it almost grazed his ears. ‘Tell her you’re not interested!’
‘I have told her! She keeps asking me why, wanting a reason. I can’t very well tell her it’s because I’m seeing you. The news would be all over town in a flash and we’d never be able to see each other again. So, until we can convince our parents to take us seriously, I’m just going to have to let Francesca talk and I will pretend to listen.’
‘How very convenient for you. Sounds like you’ve got the perfect excuse to flirt with whomever you want and still have me on the side.’
There was a hint of grit in his voice when he replied. ‘It’s not like that.’
She knew it wasn’t. How could she believe he’d spend every moment he could making love with her, whispering promises, making plans, and the next moment be chasing around after girls like Francesca? Did she really believe him capable of that?
Jackie’s silence, the thin line of her mouth told him all he needed to know.
He stood up and walked away. Only a few paces, but hopefully far enough from her distracting presence to let him think.
‘You’re not being logical,’ he said.
Jackie jumped to her feet. ‘I’m as logical as the next girl!’
That was what he was worried about.
She put her hands on her h
ips, looked at him as if she wanted to melt the flesh from his bones with just her stare. Jackie always had the oddest effect on him. Instead of making him cower, it made him want to stride over to her and kiss her senseless, persuade her she was everything he wanted.
He was on the verge of doing just that when she shot his plan full of holes by marching over to him and poking him in the chest with one of her fingernails. ‘I don’t need your so-called logic when I’ve got eyes in my head. You like her, don’t you? Francesca?’
He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked swiftly back towards the farmhouse and went inside, hoping the cool air would improve his mood.
Jackie had fooled him.
At best the rest of the world saw him as a financial drain on his famous father, at worst a spoiled brat who knew no limits and respected no authority. He’d always thought that Jackie was the one person who credited him with more depth than that—more than he did himself even. So it stung for her to accuse him like this, it stung. It was the worst insult she could have flung at him.
It was a pity that just a few short months ago she would have been right. He’d been all those things. But that was before he’d met her, before she’d challenged him to join her in seeing who he could be if he was brave enough. But he’d obviously failed her, and that hurt.
There was a noise behind him and he looked over his shoulder to find her standing in the doorway, backlit with dust and sunshine and looking anything but penitent.
‘This is stupid,’ he said, sounding steelier than he’d meant to.
Instead of agreeing with him, softening and running to him and throwing her arms around him as he’d hoped she would, she just lengthened her spine and looked down her nose at him.
‘Hit a raw nerve, did I?’
He didn’t even bother answering her and she took a few steps towards him. ‘Francesca is a very pretty girl, isn’t she?’ She blinked innocently and her voice was suddenly all syrup and silkiness.
He didn’t know what kind of game she was playing but he had a feeling he’d lose, whichever tack he took. She went on and on, asking him over and over again, until he began to think she wanted him to agree with her, that on some level his capitulation would give her satisfaction, and eventually he got so cross with her incessant prodding that he walked over to her and gave her what she wanted.
‘Yes. Okay? Francesca is very pretty.’
There. That had shut her up.
Jackie seemed to shrink a little, wither, as her eyes grew round and pink.
‘You like her better than me,’ she said, her voice husky.
Romano ran his hand through his hair, sorry he’d let her goad him into agreeing with her. He loved her, he really did, but if he’d known that taking their relationship to the next level would have opened this Pandora’s box of female emotions, he might have resisted and sat on the lid a little longer.
She hadn’t been ready for this. Neither had he.
Suddenly a summer of sweet, stolen kisses and innocent eye-gazing had morphed into an adult relationship, full of complications and blind alleys.
‘I see you’re not denying it,’ she said, her voice colder than ever.
That was it. Romano didn’t lose his temper very often, but when he did…
His thoughts were red and bouncing off the inside of his skull, searing where they touched. Perhaps this wasn’t all worth it. Perhaps he would be better off with a girl like Francesca—a simple girl who wouldn’t tax him the way this one did. This jealousy of Jackie’s…it was ugly. And he was just furious enough to tell her so.
‘At this precise moment in time, I’m starting to think you are right.’
The look on Jackie’s face—pure horror mixed with desolation—warned him he’d gone too far, crossed a line. It wouldn’t help to tell her that he hadn’t jumped over it willingly, that she was the one who’d given him an almighty shove.
‘In that case,’ she said, backing away, walking heel-to-toe in an exaggerated manner, ‘I never want to see you again.’
And then she turned and sprinted out of the farmhouse, leaving him only one option. It didn’t take him long to catch up with her, despite those long toned legs.
‘Jackie,’ he yelled, when he was only a few metres away, that one word a plea to cool down, to see sense.
She stopped dead and turned around. ‘I mean it. If you try to call me, I’ll slam the phone down. And if you come to the house, I’ll set the dog on you!’
His burst of laughter didn’t help her temper, but surely when he explained she’d see the funny side and it would pop this bubble of tension. Then they could walk hand in hand to the bottom of the grove and spend the rest of the afternoon making up.
She was still glaring at him, but he stepped forward, brushed her cheek with his thumb. ‘Your mother’s dog is a miniature poodle,’ he said, a join-me-in-this smile on his face. ‘What is he going to do? Fluff me to death?’
It was at that moment that he realised he’d stupidly taken one of those blind alleys he’d been trying to avoid. Jackie was not amused by his observation in the slightest. She called him a few names he hadn’t even known were part of her vocabulary then set off down the dirt track. As she passed his Vespa, she gave it a hefty kick with her tennis shoe and it fell over.
Romano didn’t bother following.
There was no salvaging the situation this afternoon. He might as well get his Vespa vertical again and take off on a ride to clear his head. Jackie would calm down eventually—she always did—and then he would go and see her and they would both say sorry and things would get back to normal.
Jackie couldn’t help thinking about Romano as she slid into her bridesmaid’s gown. As Scarlett helped her zip it up it wasn’t her sister’s fingers she felt at her back, but his. Wearing his gown, knowing he had designed the ridiculously romantic bodice with her in mind, made her feel all fluttery and unsettled. And as the thick satin brushed against her skin she was reminded of what it had felt like to feel the tips of his fingers on her shoulder blades, the weight of his hands around the small of her waist, the tease of his thigh against hers…
‘There,’ Scarlett said as she did up the hook and eye at the top of the zip. ‘I’m just going back to my room to get my bag. I’ll meet you downstairs.’
Jackie just nodded. She needed to snap out of this, really she did.
There was no point in thinking about…remembering…Romano that way. Romantically, they were explosive. An unstable force. But what Kate needed right now were parents who could stand in the same room without tearing each other to shreds, and she knew from personal experience just how destructive bad parental relationships could be.
No, Kate needed security, stability. Sensible, supportive co-parent was the only relationship she wanted with Romano these days.
Jackie leaned towards the mirror on the dressing table and checked her make-up. It hadn’t helped that in the last couple of days she and Romano had been in constant contact. But that had been the plan, hadn’t it? They’d talked on the phone, had coffee together, another lunch. Conversation had mainly revolved around business, but she’d felt she’d accomplished what she’d set out to. They had the beginnings of a friendship, one that she hoped would survive the bombshell she was about to drop.
It was time to tell him.
Not today, of course. Tomorrow. She’d have to catch him at the wedding reception and arrange a meeting, somewhere far away from her family’s straining ears.
‘Jackie?’ Scarlett yelled for her as she ran past her bedroom door and headed down the staircase.
‘Coming,’ she called back and grabbed both her wrap and her bag. She ran as quickly and elegantly as she could in heels to meet the rest of the bridal party, which had now assembled in the wide marble entrance hall. She slowed as she reached the last couple of stairs.
‘Lizzie, you look absolutely perfect. Glowing.’
A slight blush coloured her elder sister’s cheeks just adding to the effect.
‘Well, it’s good to know I’m glowing, especially as these two—’ she paused to rub her tummy ‘—have been having a two-person Aussie rules football match inside me since five a.m.! I’m absolutely exhausted.’
Jackie kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re not glowing in spite of those beautiful boys, but because of them.’ She sighed. ‘You have so much to look forward to…’
She hadn’t meant to say that. Her mouth had just done its own thing. Her mouth never did its own thing. She was always in control, always careful about what she said and what she projected, and she was horrified to have heard her voice get more and more scratchy, until it had almost cracked completely as she’d trailed off.
Lizzie did have so much to look forward to. And it had suddenly hit her again that she’d missed all those things with Kate. Moments she wished she’d witnessed, had treasured, instead of giving them to someone else for safekeeping. Moments she would never get back.
Scarlett rested a hand on her shoulder, gave her a knowing squeeze.
‘Are you okay?’ Lizzie asked, ruining her ‘glow’ a little with a concerned frown.
Jackie instantly brightened, glossed up. ‘Of course. Absolutely fine. Just the…you know…emotion of the day getting to me.’
At that her mother gave a heavenwards glance. ‘Not everything is about you, Jackie.’
A couple of months ago, maybe even a couple of days ago, she would have bristled at that remark, stored it away with the others to be brought out as ammunition at some time in the future, but today she turned to face her mother and did her best to stop her eyes glinting with pride and defiance.
‘I know that, Mamma,’ she said quietly. ‘Believe me, I finally get it.’
CHAPTER SIX
