warned. ‘And if we’re getting married there’s nothing you should need to hide from me.’
Luciano sat up, his dark eyes veiled, his lean, strong body taut with tension. ‘My father killed my mother when I was three,’ he breathed in a constrained undertone. ‘She was trying to take me and leave him... He threw her down the stairs and she broke her neck. I saw it happen.’
Jemima froze and then consciously unfroze again to close her arms protectively round him. ‘How horrible for you to be forced to live with a memory like that.’
Luciano was rigid in the circle of her arms. ‘It’s my past.’
‘Yes...past,’ Jemima stressed, stringing a line of haphazard kisses along the clenched line of his strong jaw until some of his tension eased.
He frowned down at her. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, knowing what I just told you?’
‘Not as much as it bothered you telling me.’
‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ he breathed into her hair. ‘I used to have nightmares about it.’
‘And who comforted you then?’ she whispered.
‘Agnese...she was always there for me. She saw it happen too.’
‘And nobody went to the police?’
‘My father had too many friends in high places and corrupt connections within the police. My mother’s death was written off as a tragic accident and he got away with it. By the time I was old enough to do any different he was dead. But he would have killed anyone who stood as a witness against him, even if I had been the witness,’ he explained heavily. ‘That was his life. That is the kind of environment that I grew up with and it is exactly those experiences that made me swear that I would never ever be like my father in any way.’
‘And you’ve lived up to that promise,’ Jemima reminded him quietly. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘Yes, piccolo mia.’
‘So, you should be proud of what you have achieved and celebrating your success,’ Jemima told him, shifting her hips in the hope of giving his thoughts a different direction.
Being highly suggestible, Luciano lifted his tousled head with a sudden smile and kissed her again with all the pent-up fire of his hot temperament. She smiled up at him, satisfied that she had finally got behind his barriers, broken through the hard shell to the real man within. He didn’t have to love her to confide in her. Somehow at that instant it seemed more than sufficient compensation.
‘COME FOR TEA, said the spider to the fly,’ Ellie mocked with a grimace. ‘I don’t like Sancia.’
Jemima wrinkled her nose. Her best friend, Ellie, was very quick in her judgements but Jemima tried to give everyone a fair hearing. And that included Sancia Abate, the gorgeous blonde who had stepped unannounced and unforeseen out of Luciano’s past. After all, Jemima would have been the first to admit that the main source of her unease about Sancia was the other woman’s close blood tie to Luciano’s celebrated first wife. Luciano, however, had been so casual about the continuing friendship that only an extremely jealous and possessive woman could have been suspicious of the relationship. Sancia was evidently still accepted as family and Jemima was happy to respect that.
In any case, she had to admit that Sancia had proved to be an almost invisible guest over the past two weeks while Luciano had been abroad. For the past three days, Jemima had been entertaining Ellie and her parents’ friends and relatives, all of whom Luciano had had flown out for the wedding that was scheduled to take place in forty-eight hours’ time. Her parents and their closest friends had already settled into a comfortable routine of strolls on the beach and visits to the village café, while Jemima had whiled away many a happy hour trying on wedding dresses and relaxing with Ellie.
‘I mean, what’s a blonde that looks like that doing hanging round here on a very quiet island without even a boyfriend in tow?’ Ellie remarked suspiciously.
Jemima had learned that Sancia was not only gorgeous to look at but also multitalented. Sancia had written a bestselling biography on her much-loved sister’s life and currently seemed to drift between stints as a well-known fashion model and a less-well-known actress. The guest house was situated beyond the castle gardens above the beach, a former boathouse that had been renovated to offer extra accommodation. Bearing in mind the sheer size of the castle, the cottage was virtually never used.
Jemima was wryly amused that she had found it necessary to dress up to visit Sancia. More and more she was making use of the wardrobe Luciano had bought for her, recognising that the garments might be more fashionable and form-fitting than she was accustomed to wearing but were also more flattering in style and shape. To enjoy tea with the glamorous Sancia, she was wearing a lilac skirt and top with an unmistakeable designer edge.
‘Oh, you haven’t brought Nicky.’ Sancia sighed in disappointment as soon as she opened the door. ‘Come in.’
‘He always has a nap straight after lunch.’
‘Porca miseria! You sound like one of those rigid English nannies people joke about!’ the blonde commented with a teasing smile.
‘I hope not...’ Jemima stilled on the threshold of a spacious reception room that was dominated by photos and portraits of Gigi Nocella.
‘Oh, didn’t you know that the guest house is where Luciano keeps his stash of memorabilia?’ Sancia remarked in apparent surprise. ‘I thought you would have guessed. I mean, there’s nothing at all to be seen up at the castle.’
‘No, nothing,’ Jemima agreed, having naturally noticed that, surprisingly, Luciano had not a single photograph on display anywhere of his late first wife or their little daughter.
‘I know. He had the place stripped...the poor guy.’ Sancia sighed. ‘Once Gigi was gone, he just couldn’t live with even the smallest reminder of her. It was too painful for him. Haven’t you noticed that he never ever mentions her?’
Jemima was not very practised at female games of one-upmanship but she knew enough to know when she was being targeted and she murmured quietly, ‘Are we having tea?’
‘I’m not very domesticated but I do have the tray ready for us.’ Sancia gave her a wide grin, unperturbed by Jemima’s cool intonation, and stepped out into the room that Jemima assumed held a kitchen.
Jemima hovered by the window overlooking the fabulous view of the beach before succumbing to a curiosity that she simply couldn’t suppress. The room she stood in was ironically both her worst nightmare and her most precious discovery. All around her sat the means to satisfy her curiosity about Luciano’s first wife. Giving way to temptation, Jemima wandered around peering at the photos and the paintings.
There was no denying that Gigi Nocella had been superbly photogenic and immensely gifted in the genes department. The brown-eyed blonde, of whom Sancia was but a pale, more youthful copy, was exquisite to a degree very few women were and had reputedly been mesmerising on-screen. And here she was represented in all her earthly glory in various attitudes that ran from young and naïve to sexy and smouldering to pensive and mysterious. But the photos that Jemima paid most heed to were the ones that also
