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Pride: Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command
Pride: Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command

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Pride: Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command

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Rocco had brought the car to a halt in front of the double flight of stone stairs. His arrogant, ‘I will take the child,’ as he got out of the driver’s seat, had Julie rushing feverishly to remove Josh from the baby seat, determined not to let him do so. She held her nephew tightly.

Instead of calming her, the sensation of the night air on her face made her feel slightly sick and dizzy. Holding on to Josh, she looked towards the flight of steps. So many of them, and she felt so very odd and weak—not like herself at all. Way above the porticoed entrance up at the top of the villa the carved stone heads of gargoyles and mystical animals stared down at her. All her growing doubts rushed in on her.

Why had she allowed him to persuade her to come here? Just as soon as she could she was going to demand some proper reassurances and explanations—and a lawyer to hear them, she told herself fiercely as she started to climb the stone steps.

She was halfway up them when it happened—her foot somehow slipping on the wet stone so that she half stumbled forward, with Josh in her arms.

Before she had time to cry out strong arms were gripping them, holding them both safe. She could smell male flesh—alien, and yet at the same time recognised by senses already attuned to him. She could feel male warmth, and had to fight to stop herself from simply wanting to relax into it, to give in to the weakness that had invaded her. She wanted to lie here against him, protected by him, never to have to leave that protection. She wanted his arms to close round her and stay closed round her. She ached almost desperately for a man like this one—a totally male, totally strong man—to lift the burdens she was carrying from her heart and heal the hurt inside her.

What was she thinking? The only man she had ever wanted—the only man she would ever want—was dead.

How long had passed? How many minutes had she been lying against him, her heart thumping sickly, too weak to move, whilst shocked tears of reaction and remorse blurred her vision? Too long.

If he hadn’t been close enough and quick enough—if she had dropped Josh on the steps—if he had been hurt because of her.

‘Give me the child. Unless, of course, you want to risk hurting him.’

He knew how to hurt her, she recognised. How to sense her weaknesses and use them against her.

Numbly, Julie handed the still-sleeping baby over to him.

It was Josh he wanted—just as it was for Josh’s sake that he had saved her, not her own. And now that he had Josh he was striding up the stairs away from her, leaving her to follow on her own.

Out of nowhere a terrible lethargy rolled over her, accompanied by a bizarre longing to lie down and close her eyes. She looked up to the portico, her heart thumping ever harder. She could not climb the steps. She could not climb even one of them. But she must. Somehow, leaning against the stair wall for support, she managed to drag herself up one step and then another, closing her mind against the ache of pain in her legs.

Rocco took the steps two at a time, driven by the savage bite of his anger. Of all the stupid, irresponsible things to do.

She was a woman with pride.

What if he hadn’t caught her in time?

She had defied him.

She had lain against him like a trapped fawn, too exhausted to flee its hunter, her heartbeat shaking her whole body.

She had risked the child’s safety.

She had looked at the child with such anguish in her eyes that it was as though she had bared her whole heart.

She was a good-time girl—an easy lay who had no appeal for him.

She was a devoted mother who touched some chord deep within him that overran the settings of his moral criteria of what he found desirable in a woman.

Something frightening was overwhelming her. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The ache in her legs that had become so familiar to her over the last couple of weeks had intensified to such a pitch that it made her want to cry out.

Her heart was thudding so much it frightened her. She desperately wanted to sit—no, to lie down, Julie corrected herself tiredly, even as her fingers curled round the metal handrail, so that she could pull herself up the final few stairs and follow Rocco into the villa.

Normally she would have been entranced by the hallway, with its frescoes and its magnificent return staircase to the upper floors, its walls filled with paintings which Julie suspected were each worth a prince’s ransom. Normally she would have been thrilled by the opportunity to enjoy such a feast of artworks. But right now she longed so much to lie down that she couldn’t think of anything else. She was actually grateful that Rocco was holding Josh.

Rocco was talking to a plump woman whose dark hair was streaked with grey, and who Julie assumed from her demeanour must be the housekeeper. He was handing Josh over to her and she was beaming down at him.

Rocco was turning back to her.

‘A room has been prepared for you,’ he told Julie. ‘Maria will show you to it.’

Julie nodded her head and made to follow Maria, who was already walking up the stairs.

Rocco frowned as he watched Julie. Her face was bonewhite and she was staring at the stairs as though she was terrified of them. She took a step towards them—and then stopped moving, suddenly crumpling to the floor.

Rocco covered the distance between them in three easy strides, catching Julie as she collapsed. She wasn’t, as he had first thought, unconscious. Her eyes were open and dark with confusion.

‘I’m all right. Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

Her face looked as bloodless as the marble steps, and he could feel the frantic tolling thud of her heartbeat through the silk blouse where her trenchcoat had fallen open. She was so slight that carrying her felt like carrying a child—except no child had such magnificent breasts. The sensation of them pressed against his own body as he carried her up the stairs stirred his body as well as his senses.

Rocco headed for the stairs still carrying her, ignoring her frantic demands to be put down, simply telling her tersely, ‘Keep still.’

Through her embarrassment and her exhaustion Julie had a dizzy impression of white marble stairs, ancestral portraits, a long corridor with white walls, and very dark polished and carved wooden doors—one of which was open.

It was heaven to be lying down, even if her heart was pounding so uncomfortably that it was making her feel sick and anxious.

The bed on which she was lying was large and canopied, in a room that looked as though it had come out of an eighteenth-century film set. A fire burned in the marble fireplace beyond the bed, and Maria was placing Josh in what looked like a brand-new cot at the bottom of the bed, fussing over him. Julie wanted to go to him, but she simply felt too weak.

Rocco frowned as he watched her, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall. Something was wrong—and, given her lifestyle, it could be drugs. He knew the signs; after all they were easy enough to recognise in these modern times. But, no—this was something other than substance abuse. She was very thin—dieting, then? She hadn’t eaten during the flight, and if celebrities were anything to go by it was the fashion to be skeletally thin—skeletally thin but with such large surgically enhanced breasts that women turned themselves into something close to physical freakery.

Maria spoke to him, telling him that the baby was asleep.

Nodding his head, he turned back to the bed and demanded curtly, ‘When was the last time you ate a proper meal?’

Julie tried to think, but even that was too much for her. What was the truth? Did she even know? Could she remember? Did she care?

These last weeks had been a nightmare jumble of trying to look after Josh whilst worrying about Judy’s debts. Making a meal for herself had been the last thing on her mind, even if she had had the money to buy proper food. And she hadn’t really felt like eating. She had lost James. Not just once, but a second time. Losing him to Judy had hurt dreadfully, but losing him to death had brought another kind of pain—this time not just for herself but for Josh, and for James himself as well. Just the thought of the physical effort it would take to eat had made her feel even worse. She simply had not had the energy.

Her tormentor was still looking at her. Waiting for her to reply. He wouldn’t leave her in peace to sleep as she so longed to do until she had answered him. She knew that.

She struggled to sit up.

‘I would have had a meal at home in my own flat this evening if I hadn’t been virtually hijacked,’ she told him, trying to inject a note of scathing contempt into her voice and wondering if it sounded as thin and frail to him as it did to her.

‘And before that—at lunchtime, for instance? You ate then? What?’

He was asking her too many questions andtoo fast.

‘There wasn’t time. The shop was busy, and Jenny the other girl didn’t come in.’

‘No lunch, then—breakfast?’

‘I had coffee and toast.’

It was a lie. She had made coffee and toast, but all she had had time for was a few sips of the coffee before she’d had to take Josh to nursery.

‘And every day is like that, is it? You deliberately starve yourself, out of some pathetic belief that being thin makes you more desirable to men like my late brother?’

‘No!’

There was real denial as well as outrage in her voice.

‘You say no, but it is obvious that you do not eat.’

Spirit flashed in her eyes as she told him fiercely, ‘We aren’t all rich enough to own private jets and have staff to cook for us, you know.’

Ignoring her attack, Rocco said flatly, ‘If you are not starving yourself out of some self-destructive desire to attract the attention of men who can only be aroused by women who look like children and behave like whores, then why are you not more aware of your responsibility to your child? He is wholly dependent on you. After all he has no one else.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Julie demanded, goaded beyond endurance. ‘Do you think I don’t think about that every waking hour?’ Her eyes were burning with the emotion spilling through her. ‘Do you think I don’t wish more than anything else that his father were still alive? That he was here to care for and protect his son as I know he would?’

‘Antonio?’ Rocco eased his shoulders away from the wall on which he had been leaning. He didn’t want to admit her championing of his half-brother had hit a nerve that was more sensitive than he had known, causing pain to strike searingly into him. His dead half-brother didn’t deserve such loyalty, and she was a fool for giving it to a man who was so unworthy of it.

‘The only person my half-brother would ever protect is himself—and if you don’t know that then you didn’t know him very well.’ His voice was harsh and unkind, its contempt making Julie wince as he added, ‘But then of course you did not know him, did you? How long does it take, after all, to perform the act that created your child? Five minutes? He couldn’t even remember your—’

Just in time Rocco caught himself back. It went against his own pride to tell her that Antonio hadn’t even been able to remember her name.

Thank goodness he had interrupted her when he had, Julie thought sickly. Otherwise she would have said James’s name. She had been so caught up in her grief, but she couldn’t do that—not until she had some kind of assurance from Rocco that they would be returned safely to London.

‘Dr Vittorio, our family doctor, is coming tomorrow morning to take swabs from the child for DNA testing. Whilst he is here I shall ask him to take a look at you.’

‘There is nothing wrong with me.’

The dark eyebrows slanted in ironic query. ‘You cannot climb a dozen stone steps without collapsing and you say there is nothing wrong with you? I beg to differ. Did you stay in touch with Antonio when you returned to England?’

The question was casual enough, but it made Julie’s heart bound in fear.

What exactly had Judy said about Antonio? Julie wondered frantically, trying to remember. Her sister had implied that she had told Antonio she was expecting Josh and he had not wanted to know. That was when she had decided to tell James that the baby she was carrying was his.

‘I informed him that I was carrying Josh, yes,’ Julie lied. ‘But he didn’t want to know.’ That at least was the truth.

‘And yet you have just claimed to me that he would have wanted to love and protect his child?’

‘As its father, I would hope he would have wanted to do that,’ she felt forced to say—even though the truth was that she had been talking about James, who had loved Josh so much, not Antonio.

‘As I have already told you, if the child turns out not to be my brother’s then you will be compensated for your time and the disruption caused to your life. You will be asked to sign a confidentially agreement never to discuss the matter with anyone—for which you will be paid.’

Julie nodded her head, fighting back her natural instinct to say that she did not want any money. The appropriate time to announce that would be once the DNA results were known.

‘And that is all?’ she pressed him. ‘There is nothing else? No further conditions?’

Rocco walked over to the bed and looked down at her.

‘If by that you are daring to imply that I or my brothers would want some kind of sexual payment from you, then let me tell you—’

A sudden wail from the cot had them both looking over to it.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Julie protested tiredly. ‘You’ve woken Josh.’

‘Stay where you are. Maria will attend to him.’

‘No. He’s my child.’

She was sliding her feet onto the floor, but Rocco was standing in front of her.

‘You are in no condition to look after him. Do you really want to risk dropping him again?’

It was a low blow, and it hurt, but to her relief Josh stopped crying and seemed to have gone back off to sleep.

Sleep. How she craved it herself right now.

‘It’s four o’clock. I suggest you try and get some sleep. Dr Vittorio will be here at ten to do the DNA tests. And, in answer to your question, no—there are no other conditions. All my brothers and I wish to do is fulfil our promise to our father to find Antonio’s child—if indeed such a child exists, and was not merely a figment of Antonio’s imagination. He was always very good at telling our father what he wanted to hear.’

Long after Rocco had gone Julie lay awake, staring up at the tented silk ceiling of her vast bed, her head aching with too many conflicting thoughts.

Family. What an emotive concept that was. She had always known that their parents preferred Judy, their firstborn, the clever, pretty and bright one, and that she had come a poor second in their affections. Not that they had ever been unkind to her. They hadn’t been like that. It was just that they had never been able to hide their joy and delight in Judy, or their mere tolerance of her.

She had craved the closeness of a loving family all through her childhood and her teenage years. She had thought she had found it with James, whom she had met during her time at university.

She had fallen in love with him, and she had loved his parents too, when he had taken her home with him to Newcastle to meet them. But then James had met Judy, and she had known immediately what was happening. Though the man Judy had stolen so easily had clearly not been dear to her, as she had cheated on James early into their relationship.

Judy had betrayed them both, but at least Julie still had Josh.

Had Judy and James and their parents lived Josh would have had a family—parents and grandparents, and a loving auntie in her—but they had not, and now all he had was her.

If he should prove to be Antonio Leopardi’s child then he would still have a large extended family, with uncles, aunts and cousins, and of course his grandfather.

Lying sleepless in the dark, Julie acknowledged that for Josh’s sake she should hope that he was a Leopardi.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WELL, although it can’t be confirmed, of course, until I have the results of the blood tests, I am reasonably confident from what you have told me that the cause of your current symptoms is a shortage of iron.’

Dr Vittorio’s diagnosis was delivered as he deftly released Julie’s arm from the pressure of the cuff he had put round it whilst he took blood samples from her. It left Julie feeling extremely relieved, but even more of a fraud than she had done before.

Her intention to be up early to prove to Rocco how competent and capable she was had been well and truly sabotaged when she overslept, waking only when Maria had arrived carrying a tray containing a formidably hearty breakfast and wearing an equally formidable expression. What was worse was that she had made it clear that she intended to stand over Julie until every last scrap of food had been eaten.

Julie could sense that Maria did not approve of her—and who could blame her, given what she must believe about her? To Maria she was a young woman who slept around and who didn’t even know who the father of her child really was.

However much Maria might disapprove of her, though, Julie could not fault her care of Josh.

Julie had been halfway through the poached eggs when Josh had woken up and started to cry, but before she had even had the chance to put down her knife and fork Maria had swung into action.

By the time Julie had finished her breakfast Maria had, under Julie’s anxiously protective watch, changed, fed, bathed and dressed Josh, whilst explaining in her hesitant English that she was a mother of five children, a grandmother of twelve and a great-grandmother of three. Julie was a convert to the efficacy of her maternal skills, and ready to do virtually anything to acquire Maria’s ability to soothe a fractious baby. Even more importantly and impressively, Maria had also managed to get Josh to feed steadily and happily.

‘It is because the little one know that I know what is right,’ Maria had told Julie firmly, when honesty had obliged Julie to confess how much she worried about Josh’s refusal to take all his feed.

‘He puts up the fuss because he is scared—because he knows that you are scared,’ Maria had unbent enough to tell her.

‘I just want to do what’s best for him,’ Julie had responded emotionally, so relieved to see Josh take all his bottle that she forgot that Maria’s loyalties would lie with Rocco Leopardi. ‘I love him so much.’

Maria’s watchful expression had softened a little then, and she had shaken her head, telling Julie calmly, ‘He knows that you love him. And he loves you. He watches for you all the time.’

They had exchanged tentative and cautious smiles, their relationship now on a shared footing of wanting to do their best for Josh.

What with wanting to make the most of the unexpected opportunity to get some valuable baby-raising tips from an expert, and the pleasure of watching Josh lying kicking and gurgling happily on his changing mat—a totally different baby from the fretful child she was used to—Julie hadn’t realised what time it was until Maria had reminded her, pointing out that the doctor would soon be arriving.

Realising that she only had half an hour to shower and dress, Julie had nodded her head gratefully when Maria had offered to take charge of Josh and take him downstairs with her so that Julie could get ready speedily.

Dr Vittorio had been shown up to her room at ten on the dot by Rocco, who had introduced them and then said that Maria would bring Josh back upstairs for his DNA test once the doctor had let Rocco know that he was ready.

When Rocco had described Dr Vittorio as their family doctor Julie had anticipated that he would be an older man, not someone who at the most was only in his very early thirties, a similar age to Rocco himself, although thankfully with a very different and kinder personality.

His kindness and his excellent English had put her completely at her ease.

So much so, in fact, that now that he had given her his early diagnosis of the cause of her symptoms she was able to shake her head and marvel in relief, ‘Is that all? I felt so dreadful that I was beginning to worry it could be something serious.’

‘Anaemia is serious,’ Dr Vittorio told her firmly. ‘Rocco tells me that you have not been eating?’

‘He has only known me a matter of hours, so how he can think he has the right to make that kind of assumption about me?’ Julie began heatedly—only to stop self-consciously when she remembered that Dr Vittorio was the Leopardi family’s doctor, and that meant his allegiance would be to them, and with it his sympathy.

‘You are a single mother with a young child. For Rocco that alone would be enough to bring to the fore his most protective instincts.’

The doctor was speaking as easily and openly as though what he had just said was the most acceptable comment in the world—so much so that Julie wondered if she might have misheard him.

But, as though he sensed her confusion, the doctor continued, ‘The death of the Princess shortly after Rocco’s birth affected all three of her sons, naturally, but especially Rocco. I can understand that you will feel that his concern is overly protective, and perhaps even an unwarranted interference,’ he acknowledged, ‘but the death of their mother has left its mark on all her sons.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Julie was forced to agree, swallowing against her own unwanted sympathy as she added, ‘I hadn’t realised that that was the case.’

The doctor gave a small, dismissive shrug.

‘There was perhaps no reason for Antonio to tell you. He was not, after all, close to his older brothers.’

In those few short words the doctor’s contempt and dislike of the dead man was made quite plain.

‘As for your anaemia, it is not unusual for a new mother to suffer from such a condition. The child was delivered several weeks short of full term, I understand?’

‘Yes,’ Julie agreed. ‘He was. He was delivered by Caesarean section.’

James had pleaded with Judy not to go ahead with the early Caesarean she had insisted she wanted, having claimed that ‘everyone’ had their baby a month early to avoid putting on too much weight, but she had refused to change her mind.

‘There were complications?’

Julie was getting into deep and dangerous waters now.

‘No, not really,’ Julie made herself admit.

‘So it was more a matter of convenience?’ The doctor made it clear that he disapproved with his small frown. ‘Such a major operation can affect the health of both mother and child, but I shall know more once I have the results of the blood tests.’

DrVittorio had been thorough; Julie had to give him that. He had taken enough blood from her to fill several small phials, taking swabs from inside her mouth as well—presumably because she had told him that she had had a heavy cold.

He had been professional and courteous, apart from that brief lapse when she had admitted that Josh had been delivered in a non-medically necessary pre-full-term Caesarean. He had to know, of course, that she was not sure if Antonio was the father or not, and that must colour his view of her even if he hadn’t shown it.

Unlike Rocco Leopardi, who had made it very plain what he thought of her morals—or rather what he assumed was the lack of them.

Was she being selfish in hoping that Josh would not turn out to be Antonio Leopardi’s child? No matter who had fathered Josh, she would still love him every bit as much as she did now, but for James’s sake she so much hoped that he was Josh’s father, and that in that way a little of him would live on in Josh. James had been such a kind, loving person, with so much to give. Even though he had fallen so desperately in love with Judy he had always been kind and caring towards her, Julie, never wanting to hurt her. But he had hurt her.

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