The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Fiona Harper

  See? Scarlett didn’t know what she was talking about. She was capable of admitting her mistakes. She’d just unearthed an extra two. Denial? Hah!

  She’d matured since she’d met Kate again. She was ready to turn around and face the past she’d been running away from for so long. That didn’t sound much like denial, did it?

  What about Romano?

  What about Romano? she asked herself in a haughty tone. Things are going well there, too. He hasn’t disowned Kate. Early days, but it’s all good.

  What about how you feel about him?

  She closed her eyes, but the question just reverberated round the inside of her head, so she opened them again. I don’t love him, she told herself. I’m attracted to him, yes, I can admit that, but that’s all there is to it.

  See? No denial at all. She was being brutally honest with herself.

  But that attraction wasn’t a factor in her plan. The only relationship she wanted with Romano was as co-parent. No time for distractions or repeating any of the silliness of yesteryear. They would have to work as a team, think up strategies, come up with a plan for blending their lives with Kate’s seamlessly.

  You’re getting all wordy and businesslike again.

  Oh, shut up, she told herself.

  The only place they could think to meet nearby where they wouldn’t be interrupted was the old farmhouse. Jackie drove her rental car as far up the dirt track as it would go, then walked the rest of the way.

  On the surface, it was exactly the same. But then she looked more closely. The olive trees looked even knottier and had grown tall and spindly. Some had fallen or been damaged in storms or high winds and had never been repaired or cleared away. The roof of the farmhouse had almost gone completely and every window was broken. In the cracks in the masonry, weeds and wild flowers had found sanctuary and were busy pushing the stones apart as they anchored themselves better.

  She found Romano sitting on the low step by the front door. He was looking at the ground, shoulders hunched, his elbows rested on his knees and his hands hanging limp between his bent legs.

  She’d always thought Romano untouchable, capable of dissolving anything negative with a wink or a dry comment, but he looked…broken.

  She’d done this.

  Why hadn’t she tried harder, told him sooner? It all seemed so stupid now, her reasons—her justifications—for keeping their lives separate. She hadn’t been thinking of Kate at all, even though that had been a big part of her rationalisation. She’d been selfish, keeping herself protected and pretending she was being altruistic.

  But you were fift—

  No. No more excuses. You were wrong. Live with it.

  ‘Romano?’

  He looked up, smiled. But the eyes didn’t twinkle the way they ought to. They were cold and grey and still.

  ‘I want to meet her.’

  Jackie nodded and sat down next to him on the step, mirroring his pose. ‘Of course you do.’

  Of course he did. Why had she expected anything else? This was Romano. Didn’t she remember what he was like? Yes, he was full of froth and bluster, but underneath there was so much more. The boy she’d known had carefully hidden his softer, more sensitive side from the world, but he’d revealed all of it to her. Yet she’d only chosen to remember the surface. The lie.

  And she knew all about lies. For the first time, she wondered why Romano stuck with his, why he persisted in letting everyone think he was shallow, feckless. Even in a few short days she could see that he’d surpassed the man she’d hoped he’d become. Oh, he’d never lose that infuriating charm—and she wasn’t sure she’d want him to—but he was honest and caring, committed and trustworthy. A man worth knowing. A man worth—

  No. Co-parents, remember? Focus, Jacqueline.

  ‘When? I’ll have to talk to her parents—’

  ‘We’re her parents.’

  He sounded cross. She could understand that.

  ‘I know. But this is complicated.’

  He looked across at her, one eyebrow raised. She put her hands up in the air, palms out.

  ‘Yes…okay! I made it complicated. I accept that.’

  Romano snorted, the kind of snort that said: What’s new…?

  ‘But it doesn’t change anything,’ she added. ‘We’ll have to tread carefully.’

  Romano stood up and walked away. ‘To hell with treading carefully.’

  ‘For Kate,’ she added softly. ‘Don’t do it for me. Do it for her.’

  He turned and nodded, and his expression softened a tad. ‘Okay. For Kate.’

  He walked back towards her and offered her a hand. Jackie looked at it. He’d done the same many times before. Then she looked at the half-dilapidated farmhouse and the neglected olive grove. Some things could never be the same. She mouthed her thanks, but pushed herself up on her own. He shoved his hand in his jeans pocket.

  ‘I have booked us flights back to London in the morning.’

  Jackie’s eyes bulged. Tomorrow?

  ‘That’s too soon! I need to talk to Sue—her adoptive mother. I thought we said—’

  ‘And I agreed,’ he said, his brows bunching together. ‘But if I have to wait, I would rather be in London.’

  She could understand that too.

  ‘Okay.’ She exhaled. It seemed to have been an awfully long time since she’d done that. ‘What time do we fly?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE sun drifted softly between the leaves of the olive tree Jackie was propped up against and tickled her cheeks. Her lashes fluttered and then she opened her eyes. It was a perfect afternoon. A gentle breeze flowed round her occasionally and she felt utterly relaxed.

  ‘Hey there, sleeping beauty…’

  She shifted against the warm body underneath and behind her and smiled gently. ‘Yeah, right. If “beauty” means “the size of an elephant”.’

  He leaned forward, placed his hands, fingers spread wide, on the curved mound of her stomach. ‘You’re beautiful…both of you.’

  She sank back into him and sighed. ‘What did I do to deserve you?’

  She waited for an answer, but none came. After a few minutes she realised she wasn’t as comfortable, that something hard was sticking into her back, just below her left shoulder blade. She sat up, all the sleepy languor gone, and turned around. The only thing behind her was the twisted trunk of the ancient tree.

  Carefully she hoisted herself to her feet, resting a hand on the trunk of the tree when things got dicey, when the seven months’ worth of baby growing inside her made it too difficult.

  ‘Romano?’

  Nothing. She heard nothing save the sound of the clouds bumping by and the sun warming the dry grass in the meadow.

  ‘Romano!’ Louder now, with an edge of panic to her voice.

  She began to run—well, waddle—as fast as she could, every step making her feel heavier and heavier. She called his name once more and listened for his reply.

  Silence.

  No…wait!

  She could hear something. Just at the edges of her range of hearing, a familiar rumble…

  A Vespa!

  She began to half waddle, half run again, supporting her stomach underneath with splayed hands, searching, calling…

  Soon it got dark and it began to rain. Not the warm, heavy drops of a summer storm, but cold, icy drizzle that chilled her skin and sank into her flesh. There were no meadows and olive trees now, only grey paving slabs and narrow brick alleyways. And the rain, always the rain. She began to shiver.

  Where was he? Where had he gone?

  She kept looking, no longer running, just loping along as best she could, putting one foot in front of the other, through dirty puddles and potholed backstreets. It seemed to take hours to find somewhere she recognised.

  Did she know this street? The trees reminded her of the ones near her father’s house, but the buildings were wrong—too small, too dirty. And not a single one had a light on.

  Another shiver ran
through her and she instinctively reached for her bump, a habit she’d developed in the last few months, a form of self-comfort.

  But her fingers found nothing but fresh air.

  Now she was grabbing at her stomach with both hands, but it was saggy…empty…the hard, round proof of the life inside her gone.

  ‘No,’ she whispered as her legs buckled under her. And then the whisper became a scream.

  ‘No!’

  Jackie, although her eyes were still closed, breathed in sharply and tensed. Romano lowered the paper he was reading and turned to watch her, lying rigid in the half-reclined seat.

  ‘It’s just turbulence,’ he murmured, watching the movement below her closed lids and guessing she’d just woken up. ‘The captain mentioned a while ago that the descent into Gatwick might be a bit bumpy.’

  While he’d been talking she’d opened her eyes. She looked very sad, almost on the verge of tears.

  ‘I’m sorry it hasn’t been a smoother journey.’

  Jackie nodded. And then she looked away, turned to the window.

  Romano straightened in his seat and stared straight ahead. He sensed that Jackie was finding his smooth composure irritating. Even he was finding it irritating, but he didn’t seem to be able to snap out of it. What was the alternative? Lose his temper? Have a breakdown? He would be meeting his daughter for the first time in a few days and the last thing he needed was to be a nervous wreck. What good would that do anyone?

  On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be the same old, skating-on-the-surface Romano. He wanted to change, be better. Learning he’d been a father for the last sixteen years had caused him to look back on that time with fresh perspective.

  He’d been successful professionally, yes. But the rest of his life? Full of ugly holes, a wasteland—which was odd, because he’d always thought he’d been having so much fun. Why had he never seen this desolation before?

  Ah, but you saw it a long time ago. Jackie showed you.

  He shifted in his seat and frowned.

  But he’d done something about that, changed since then. He’d matured, hadn’t he? He’d stopped living the life of a poor little rich kid and had learned how to work for a living.

  Work. Is work life?

  Oh. Now he got it. He’d channelled his newfound sense of responsibility into his professional life, but not much had spilled over into his private life. True to form, he’d been so shallow that it had taken him seventeen years to see that. And once again, it had been Jackie Patterson that had held the mirror up to his face.

  He turned just his head, the leather of the headrest squeaking against his ear, and looked at her.

  It was Jackie who had caused him to look deep inside himself as a teenager. At first he’d been horrified by the casual arrogance he’d seen, but she’d not let him stop there, she’d brought out the nobler virtues that had been rusting away in the dark—honesty, courage, love. Things he’d thought he had lost for ever after the death of his mother.

  He’d cried right up until the funeral, but after that he’d become numb. When he’d thought of her, he’d been unable to produce a single tear. He’d been so upset about that he’d just stopped thinking of her, worried he was a bad person for not being able to feel anything more.

  It had been a horribly short time before his father had started disappearing regularly, being photographed with one woman after another, but Romano hadn’t judged him. He’d known that his father had adored his mother, and that this had just been his way of distracting himself from the grief he’d been too afraid to feel.

  A cold churning began in his stomach, nothing to do with aeroplane food. Like father, like son, Lisa Firenzi had once said to him. She’d meant it as a compliment, but suddenly another layer of his life was ripped back, exposing the unflattering truth.

  He’d let his guard down once, briefly—for Jackie—and when she’d walked away without a backward glance, so he’d thought, he’d done what he’d always done. Instead of asking himself why, of being brave enough to keep trying until he’d made her listen to him, he’d given up, run from those awful feelings of not being good enough to stay around for. And he’d kept himself busy with pretty young things like Francesca Gambardi, distracting himself.

  He’d been seen out and about with the cream of the fashion world, A-list celebrities. Women who had everything. And yet he hadn’t wanted everything from even one of them. Where Jackie had been high-maintenance, abrasive, complex, he’d chosen to date bland, interchangeable blondes who would sit at his feet and worship. No threat there. He’d been safe.

  He’d also been incredibly bored.

  At the time he’d told himself not to be so stupid, told himself he was reaching for a fantasy that didn’t exist, and that he might as well enjoy the moment. Despite his best efforts, he’d never been able to convince himself he was in love.

  Jackie sighed softly and pulled her seat belt a little tighter. The plane was rocking now as they descended through a thick layer of cloud. She glanced across at him and when she found him looking back at her she averted her gaze and pulled the duty-free magazine from the pocket on the back of the seat in front of her.

  Only her.

  He’d only ever loved one woman.

  Did that mean she was the love of his life? The one he was fated to be with?

  He let out a gentle huff of a laugh. His friends would never let him live it down if they knew he was thinking like this.

  He really hoped he was wrong. If Jackie had been ‘the one’, then his chances of finding anything close to a fulfilling love life in the future with someone else were zero. And that was a scary thought. He couldn’t live his life looking over his shoulder, believing his one chance was behind him, getting farther and farther away with each passing year. No wonder he’d not wanted to consider this before. It had been much more comfortable to pass her off as a fling and kid himself that the chance to have what his mother and father had had was still in his future.

  She’d become a speck in the distance, a grain of sand that irritated and niggled now and then. Not any more. They were slap-bang in the middle of each other’s lives now, joined for ever—but not in the naïve way they’d imagined when they’d been young and in love.

  What did it mean? Was this a second chance or a cruel joke? He was slightly terrified by either option.

  Getting involved with Jackie again would be…complicated. But if that wasn’t his fate, it didn’t seem fair that he’d been woken up to the truth only to make him ache for chances lost. He’d have preferred to stay happy and ignorant in the shallows if that were the case.

  No. No, he wouldn’t.

  Somehow he knew the mix of emotions that was finally breaking through the crust of numbness was necessary. Kate didn’t need a father who would only provide money, status and a million opportunities to have too much too soon. She needed a man who could be there for her, who could communicate his love without flashing his credit card. And he wanted to be that man.

  Love.

  Normally that word made him itchy.

  But when he thought about the girl he was yet to meet, who didn’t even know he existed, warmth flooded every vein and filled his chest to bursting point.

  He loved his daughter. He always would. Strangely, the realisation didn’t bring panic, but relief.

  The captain announced it would be another twenty minutes before they were able to land. A collective sigh of frustration travelled through the cabin.

  Jackie held hers in.

  She held everything in.

  She felt very similar to how she did when a bee or a wasp was buzzing round her. She knew she needed to be still, calm, but the effort of doing so made her feel as if she were going to implode. Even in the wider business-class seats, she felt crowded. Romano was too close and she couldn’t switch her awareness of him off, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.

  That stupid dream was lingering in her subconscious, flavouring the atmosphere, making her wa
nt things she shouldn’t, ache for things that were impossible.

  She’d dreamt about him every night for the last week, ever since he’d done up her zip and given her the tingles. Had that only been a week ago? She felt as if she’d aged a decade since then.

  She turned that thought around and made it work for her.

  Act your age, Jacqueline. You’re a mature woman in control of your emotions. You’re too old for silly fantasies and fairy tales. You’ve got to stay focused, strong. For Kate’s sake.

  Think of Kate.

  She shifted her hips slightly under her seat belt and angled herself to face Romano. ‘I got a text from Kate’s adoptive mum, Sue, before we boarded. She was responding to the message I left.’

  Romano looked completely relaxed, even with his feet planted squarely on the floor and his arms on the arm rests of his chair. Most people would look rigid in that pose, but Romano just looked as if he owned the world and was slightly bored with it. If there hadn’t been a spark of interest in those grey eyes, she’d have wanted to slap him.

  ‘Kate’s finished all her exams,’ she continued, ‘so she doesn’t have any school at the moment. Sue’s going to see if she wants to meet up with me tomorrow, but she stressed it was totally up to Kate and she wasn’t going to push it if Kate had other plans.’

  Romano blinked and his lids stayed closed just a nanosecond longer than they needed to. ‘What about me?’

  Jackie cleared her throat, tried to make herself sound as neutral as possible. ‘I think we need to minimise the shock factor.’

  No, the overwhelming first meeting loaded with fears and expectations hadn’t gone brilliantly for her and Kate. Too much pressure on them both. And it had set the tone for subsequent meetings, a tone that was doing its best not to fade away. She wanted to spare him that. After all she’d done, it was the least she owed him.

  ‘What does that mean?’