The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Fiona Harper

  ‘I don’t think we should tell her straight away. I’ll take her out for the day. You can come along, and she can get to know you a bit first.’

  Romano still lounged in his seat, but there was something about the set of his shoulders now that gave him away. That spark in his eyes had turned cold.

  ‘So…who do you introduce me as? Your boyfriend?’ His eyebrow hitched ever so slightly, making an innocent suggestion sound all rakish and inappropriate. Jackie felt the familiar slap-or-kiss reflex and her cheeks got all hot and puffy. He was doing it on purpose, to get a rise out of her, making her pay for her unwanted suggestion.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘No,’ he said, a dry half-smile on his lips. ‘Stupid idea. Who would believe anything so…what do you always say? Ah, yes. Ridiculous.’

  The eyebrow dropped and his mouth straightened as the ever-present lopsided quirk evaporated. Her breathing stalled for a heartbeat and then kicked in at double speed.

  This man was the darling of the gossip mags for his seductive charm, his devil-may-care attitude but, when the devil did care, he was twice as devastating. Knowing this, seeing what everyone else usually missed, was what had got her into trouble the last time. She didn’t want to see it now.

  ‘What about us? What are we, Jackie?’

  His voice was all soft and rumbly. Her throat suddenly needed moisture. She reached for the glass of water perched on the arm of her chair and then remembered that the stewardess had cleared it away.

  ‘There is no us,’ she managed to say after swallowing a few times.

  His eyelids lowered a fraction; the shoulders bunched a little further. ‘We have to have some kind of relationship,’ he said. ‘We have a daughter together.’

  ‘I know that. Don’t you think I know that?’ She heard the shrewish tone in her voice and made herself breathe, consciously relaxed her vocal cords before she tried again. ‘We’re…co-parents. That’s all.’

  The infuriating smirk was back. ‘That sounds very formal. This isn’t a business merger. You know that too, yes?’

  She folded her arms across her stomach. ‘It’s the best I could come up with,’ she snapped. ‘Stop making fun of me. This isn’t easy for either of us, and you’re taking this out on me by being all…by making me feel all…’ She shook her head, gave a half-shrug. ‘You know what you’re doing, Romano.’

  He dismissed the whole thing with a slight pout of the bottom lip and an imperious wave of the hands.

  They both straightened in their seats and stared straight ahead. For the longest time, as the plane circled and circled, he didn’t say anything then, just as the jet straightened and began to lower again, making her ears feel full and heavy, he spoke. His voice was quiet, all the bravado gone.

  ‘Do you think she’ll like me?’

  With just that one question, walls inside Jackie that had been built and firmly cemented into place years ago crumbled like icing sugar. She’d never heard such self-doubt in his voice before, such sadness. It broke her heart.

  She didn’t have to force the smile that accompanied her next words. ‘Of course she will.’

  He looked across at her without moving his head much, just his eyes. That hooded, sideways glance reminded her so much of the boy who had made it his mission to be cool, no matter what. The boy she’d lost her head and her heart to. The air turned cold in her lungs.

  ‘Everybody does,’ she added, keeping the smile in place, even though her mouth wanted to quiver.

  He broke the moment with a subtle shift of his features and she knew he had his mask back in place while hers was still sliding.

  ‘That is true,’ he said, pretending to be serious, but covering his real vulnerability with a twinkle and a smile in his eyes. ‘I am me, after all.’ But what he said next just confused her further, because she couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or in earnest. ‘You don’t.’

  She didn’t leap to agree with him the way she knew she should have done and, for the life of her, she didn’t know why. The only option was to follow his lead and descend into razor-sharp humour.

  ‘Maybe that’s because I’m a world-class bit—’

  He covered her mouth with the tips of three fingers, leaned in close enough to make her pulse race and shook his head.

  ‘You might be able to fool the rest of them,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder and then locking his gaze back onto hers, ‘but you can’t fool me.’

  Waiting. He’d never liked it. Now he absolutely hated it.

  He wanted to meet Kate.

  His every waking moment was spent anticipating this moment, and the more he waited, the more he started to think he’d be the worst father in the world and should probably just get back on a plane to Naples and do the kid a favour.

  But he couldn’t leave.

  He sat down on the edge of the hotel bed and stared at his shoes. It should have made him laugh that he could actually see tracks in the carpet from this angle. Not that he’d worn it away. It was just his pacing had brushed the pile into a wide stripe.

  When Jackie had first told him about his daughter he’d been furious. It had been easy to be angry; everything had been black and white, right and wrong, but now he’d been living with the knowledge for a while he was only too aware that anger had been the first of so many emotions he’d experienced.

  He stood up again. It was all so complicated. Multilayered. Confusing.

  Jackie’s actions—her choices—that had seemed so wrong to him, now were much more understandable. He knew the same gut-wrenching fear of rejection, the same awful sense of impending failure, had pushed and pulled her too.

  He’d forgiven her.

  That might seem odd to some, especially as revenge and retribution were coded into his genes, but from the moment she’d collapsed onto the grass and told him of the rainy day when Kate had come into the world in that strange monotone voice of hers, he hadn’t been able to stop his heart going out to her.

  At the moment his generosity annoyed him. He wanted to be cross with her, cross that she’d scuttled back to her house and had left him to his thoughts while he’d booked into a nearby hotel. He needed her to distract him.

  Because distracting him she was.

  The phone rang and he was relieved to hear her voice on the other end of the line. Meet up for dinner to finalise plans for tomorrow? Sure.

  He filled up the hour before dinner by having a shower and at eight o’clock sharp he met Jackie at some overpriced restaurant close to both her flat and his hotel in Notting Hill. One look at the menu told him he was going to order an unpromising appetiser just so he could send it back and vent some of this nervous energy that was eating him alive.

  As soon as they’d ordered, Jackie got straight down to business. It was as if the London air had breathed fresh starch into her.

  ‘I thought we could either go to this new art gallery I’ve heard good things about, an exhibition on Chinese music or a walking tour of Churchill’s London. What do you think?’ she asked without even cracking a smile.

  ‘That’s the sort of things you do with Kate when you take her out?’

  Jackie nodded, but was distracted by a movement near the kitchen, which heralded the arrival of their appetisers.

  ‘How about I pick the venue?’ he said. ‘It’s the least you can let me do, if I am going to ride shotgun.’

  Jackie’s mouth tightened and her eyebrows puckered. ‘But you hardly know London—’

  ‘I know it well enough,’ he said, refusing to blink or even look away. ‘I’ve been here plenty of times—for business and pleasure.’

  ‘Oh…okay.’ She kept scowling as the waiter placed a dish of seared scallops in front of her. Romano studied his calamari with disappointment. It looked much better than he’d expected.

  The waiter had only retreated a few steps when Jackie called him back. ‘I can’t possibly eat these,’ she said, shoving the plate back at him. ‘They’re horribly overdone. Bring me so
mething else.’

  That was when Romano began to chuckle. All the tension rolled out of him in wave after wave of laughter. Jackie just stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Perhaps he had. Tomorrow was the most important day of his life and he was acting like an idiot.

  ‘You are not as English as you make out,’ he finally explained when he was able to get a word out.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Jackie said, lifting her chin. A tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth gave her away.

  As they continued their meal Romano realised he hadn’t watched Jackie eat in the last week. Once she’d attacked her food with passion, now she measured it out with meticulous cuts, removing any trace of fat or sauce or flavour. He eyed the steamed vegetables she’d requested to go with her plain grilled fish suspiciously. Why did he know she was going to order nothing but black coffee for dessert? How had he guessed that she’d leave half of her meal picked over but not eaten?

  Because he’d seen this behaviour before.

  Suddenly it all made sense.

  He could see it so clearly, as if he’d known her during the time when she’d punished her body, when she’d denied herself life and pleasure. It didn’t take much imagination to fill in the blanks of the years he’d missed. He could tell she wasn’t in the grip of it any more, but the ghosts of old habits lingered.

  He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t needed to do it to herself, that she was the bravest, strongest, most maddening woman he’d ever met. That she ran circles around the doe-eyed, physically interchangeable girls that seemed to be everywhere these days. Her sharp humour, her quick mind—and, yes, her giving heart—set her apart, but he doubted she’d believe him.

  And that was when it hit him like a steel-capped boot to the solar plexus.

  It didn’t matter what had happened in the past. He still wanted her.

  No. He wasn’t ready to admit that yet.

  He focused back on her half-finished food. This was her coping mechanism. So what was she coping with? What was she finding hard to deal with?

  ‘You’re nervous,’ he said as the waiter cleared away their plates.

  She’d been folding up her serviette and she paused. Without answering, she carried on, folding it into perfect squares—once, twice, three times. And then she laid it on the table and smoothed it flat.

  He pushed harder. ‘Why?’

  She looked up at him, moving only her eyes and keeping her head bowed. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘About me? You think I’ll blow it? That I won’t be up to scratch?’

  She exhaled and everything about her seemed to deflate a little. ‘I don’t want to think that way, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d worried about it once or twice.’

  Thanks, Jackie. That’s the way to put a man at ease.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m more worried about me than I am about you.’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s not been going well, Romano. Kate and I…’ She gave a hopeless little shrug. ‘We can’t seem to find any common ground. I’m worried that she’s slipping away from me. Again.’

  Just the panic at the thought of the same thing happening to him was enough to erase any lingering indignation that her less-than-subtle but totally honest answer had caused. They didn’t need coffee. He signalled for the bill.

  ‘Andiamo,’ he said.

  Jackie just nodded.

  A few minutes later they were walking down the street, the warm, slightly humid air of the summer evening hugging them close. Jackie didn’t seem to be thinking about where she was going, but her feet were taking her in the direction of her tall white house and he kept pace beside her.

  He took her hand and she let him.

  They were the only two people in the world who felt this way at this precise moment. Both of them waiting, fearing, dreaming of what might happen in the morning, their fate resting in the hands of a stranger. Yet that stranger was their daughter.

  Somehow the skin-to-skin contact, their fingers intertwined, communicated all of this. They didn’t need to speak. The silence continued until they were standing on Jackie’s doorstep.

  She turned, her back to the door, and looked somewhere in the region of his chest. ‘I can’t lose her again,’ she whispered. And then the tears fell.

  Romano was momentarily stunned. He’d seen Jackie cry before, of course, but this was different. Each bead of moisture that slid down her face was alive with heartbreaking desperation. Until a few days ago, he wouldn’t have understood that, but now he did. She couldn’t give up now. He wouldn’t let her.

  He rested his hands on her shoulders, pulled her a little closer. ‘You won’t.’

  She looked up into his face, eyes burning. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like.’

  He wanted to say something, but the words weren’t in his head yet. He knew what she was like deep down inside, how she loved freely and passionately and completely. He knew she had it in her to win her daughter’s heart.

  He moved his hands up her neck, held her face gently and stroked her cheeks with the sides of his thumbs. ‘You can do this, Jackie. You have so much to give—if only you’d let yourself.’

  She blinked another batch of tears away and stared back at him. Do you think so? her eyes said. Really?

  He started to smile. Really.

  This was the Jackie he’d missed all these years, this unique woman full of contradictions and fire. Finally she’d peeled the layers back and he could see the woman he’d loved. The woman he still loved—God help him.

  He sealed the realisation with a kiss, bending forward, pressing his lips gently against hers. It reminded him of their first kiss ever: tender, slightly hesitant, as if they both could hardly believe it was happening. This kiss was far sweeter than the hungry ones they’d shared in the grotto, because it joined them. They weren’t just ‘co-parents’ any more; they were Romano and Jackie—nothing more, nothing less—two souls that were meant to be together.

  Full of romance and drama as teenagers, they’d seen themselves as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Now, as he held her close against him, as he felt her warm breath through the cotton of his shirt, he hoped with all his might that their tragedy would end up better. He wasn’t sure he could lose either her or Kate again.

  He kissed her again, losing himself in her softness, in the feel of her slender frame within his arms. Every soft breath from her lips pulled him deeper. He knew he was lost now. He might as well admit it.

  She broke the kiss and shifted back a little to look at him. He just drank her in, letting his eyes communicate what his mouth was on the verge of saying.

  ‘I—’

  She quickly pressed her fingers to his lips, mirroring the gesture he’d made on the plane.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ she whispered, looking not angry but very, very frightened.

  ‘I want to,’ he said plainly, unable to keep the beginnings of a smile from his lips.

  Jackie just looked pained. ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I am.’

  He knew this wasn’t going to be easy; he’d been prepared for that, but something in her tone made his insides frost up.

  ‘You feel the same way. I know you do.’ The smile uncurled itself from his mouth and left.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s just chemistry, Romano. Echoes of long ago. We couldn’t make it then, how are we supposed to make it now?’

  He threw his hands upwards in lieu of an answer. He didn’t know how or why; he just knew.

  ‘We were kids back then,’ she said, stepping to the side and walking back down the garden path a little. ‘We weren’t ready for that kind of relationship.’

  ‘We’re not kids any more.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ She clasped her hands in front of her and straightened her back. ‘But I don’t think we’re any more ready for it now than we were then.’

  ‘What you mean is—you’re not ready.’

  ‘Neither of us are ready. I don’t want�
��’

  ‘Save it, Jackie!’ Unfortunately, he knew only too well what she didn’t want. Him.

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said, looking and sounding infuriatingly calm. ‘You know that, deep down.’

  ‘Then what was all this about?’ he said, walking up to her and invading her space, reminding her of just how close they’d been a few moments ago.

  ‘Like I said—chemistry.’

  Oh, she really knew how to send him skyrocketing.

  He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘So what you’re saying is, I’m good enough for a—’ he was really proud that he managed to find a milder English idiom than the first that had come to mind ‘—for a roll in the hay, but I’m not good enough for anything permanent? And you call me shallow?’

  Jackie got all prim and prickly on him. ‘I’m not saying that at all!’

  Somehow the fact he had her all flustered too made him feel better, but the glow of triumph only lasted for a few seconds and then he was feeling as if he needed to burst out of his skin again.

  He moved closer and closer to her, walked round her and kept going, so she backed up until she was pressed against her front door and had nowhere to go.

  ‘Then maybe I should be the man you think I am and give you what you want,’ he said with a devilish twinkle in his eye, his lips only millimetres from hers.

  If she’d looked fierce, or frightened, he would have walked away as he’d intended to, but he saw her pupils dilate, heard the little hitch of breath that told him he wasn’t entirely wrong, so he kissed her instead. Hard and long and hot. And he pulled back before she had a chance to push him away, while her fingers were still tangled in his hair and her chest was rising and falling rapidly.

  The name she called him wasn’t nice.

  He shrugged. The contrary kid in him rejoiced in having her confirm her assessment of him, even if he knew it was no longer the truth. If she couldn’t see it, then it was her loss.

  He walked back down the path and swung the black iron gate wide. ‘I’ll be here at nine with a car to pick you up,’ he said. ‘Wear comfortable shoes.’ And then he strode away into the falling darkness.