he had been very young when he married and that Gigi had been several years older.
‘He worshipped the ground she walked on,’ Sancia murmured from behind Jemima, making her flinch.
‘Oh, my goodness, you gave me a fright!’ Jemima spun and fanned the air, refusing to react to the blonde’s provocative statement.
In any case, she didn’t need the verbal commentary when she could see the adoration etched in Luciano’s lean dark face as he looked intently at the mother of his daughter. It hurt Jemima to see that light in his eyes. She knew that he would never look at her with that depth of caring and concern. She would never be that important to him or that perfect in looks and figure that every head would turn to watch her walk by. No, she conceded sadly, she was in a totally different category from Gigi and, whether she liked it or not, Luciano would probably not have looked twice at her had his son not looked at Jemima with love first.
But she would have to learn to live with that reality, wouldn’t she?
‘After the crash, Luciano said he would never ever love a woman again,’ Sancia delivered.
‘Ah, well, life moves on and now he’s getting married and he’s starting another family,’ Jemima responded with deliberate insensitivity before adding, ‘It’s different for you, though, as her sister. You’ll never be able to replace her and you must miss her terribly.’
Red coins of colour accentuated the blonde’s cheekbones. ‘You have no idea.’
‘I do actually. I didn’t know my sister for very long before I lost her but there was a special bond there...at least on my side,’ Jemima confided.
With hindsight she had begun to accept that her twin had not had the capacity to care for others in the same way as she did. She could not argue with the evidence and it was surely better for her to remember her sibling as she had been rather than idealise her memory.
‘Gigi was irreplaceable,’ Sancia told her a tad sharply.
‘But I’m not trying to replace her,’ Jemima responded quietly. ‘How could I? And why would I even want to? Luciano and I have a completely different relationship.’
As Jemima walked back from the beach through the castle gardens her pale blue eyes were overbright with tears. She didn’t want to let the tears fall, not with her usual bodyguards bare yards from her, silent and watchful of her every move. Furthermore she had not the slightest doubt that anything unusual she did would be reported straight back to Luciano, who seemed to worry a great deal about her while he was away from her. He phoned her several times a day and questioned her right down to asking what she ate at mealtimes. And when she had asked him why he bothered when she had so little news to relate, he had told her teasingly that he liked the sound of her voice and could listen to her reciting an old phone book just as happily. The minutiae of Nicky’s day were of equal interest to him and it was obvious to Jemima that Luciano really did miss seeing his son. His conversations with her, however, were just polite and sort of flirty, she reasoned ruefully. He wasn’t a teenager, after all, he was a man of almost thirty-one with sufficient experience to know exactly how to charm a woman.
Especially if that woman wasn’t Gigi Nocella, Jemima thought, her throat closing over convulsively on a sob. He wouldn’t have had to make a special effort to say the right thing to a woman as perfect as Gigi had been. So, how often did he go down to visit that personal shrine in the guest house? If Jemima hadn’t existed and Luciano hadn’t been away on business, would he have been with Sancia right now happily reminiscing about the old days when his first wife and child had still been alive? It was hardly any wonder that Sancia resented Jemima and clearly felt threatened by her appearance on scene. Nothing could put Gigi more effectively back into the past than her once-besotted widower having another child and taking a second wife to put in Gigi’s place.
Well, it wasn’t Gigi’s place any longer, Jemima told herself urgently. In less than two days Jemima would be Luciano’s wife and she could hardly wait! She wasn’t so silly as to allow Sancia’s mean outlook to affect her personally, was she?
As her mobile phone rang she dug it out, grateful for an interruption that would hopefully give her thoughts a new and more positive direction. When she heard Steven’s familiar badgering tones she almost groaned, however, for she had thought she had heard the last from her ex-boyfriend when he had phoned her to say he wouldn’t be attending the wedding—he hadn’t been invited!—because he knew she was making a dreadful mistake.
‘Luciano has turned your head with his wealth,’ Steven told her, merely starting a new angle of attack.
‘His wealth doesn’t matter to me. His kindness does,’ Jemima parried, thinking of the generosity of Luciano’s invitation to her parents and their friends, who were all enjoying a wonderful holiday in the run-up to their wedding. And by bringing her family and Ellie out to join her, he had ensured that she wasn’t lonely and without support.
‘You may not see it but I see very clearly that you are paying me back for what happened with Julie.’ Steven sighed. ‘You weren’t able to forgive me.’
‘I did forgive you, Steven. I simply didn’t want to take back up again where we’d left off and I think that’s fair enough,’ Jemima fielded. ‘I saw you in a different light when you were with my sister.’
‘I made a dreadful mistake, Jemima,’ Steven groaned. ‘But I do love you.’
‘Not the way you loved her,’ Jemima told him without heat.
‘That wasn’t genuine love and you don’t love Luciano either. You’re marrying him to keep Nicky,’ Steven protested.
Jemima sat down on a stone bench surrounded by glorious rose beds and stared out blindly at the magnificent view of the bay. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Marriage is a sacrament and it shouldn’t be used.’
‘But I do love him,’ Jemima heard herself say and her whole mental view of the world lurched as she made that belated discovery. She was thinking about the male who had chilled her at first meeting and travelling at supersonic speed through the whole history of their relationship, ranging from his laughter in bed with her to the brutal background that he had triumphed over.
And there at the very heart of all her turmoil was the love she had neither acknowledged nor understood. She loved Luciano with all her being and easily zeroed in on every kind and caring thing he did for her from his hesitant tendering of his mother’s ring for their engagement to his patient, undemanding love for Nicky in which he was willing to wait and earn his son’s trust and affection. In the same moment she recognised why her encounter with Sancia and Gigi’s shrine in the guest house had distressed her so much. It had hurt to see Luciano’s love for her predecessor. It had hurt even more to frankly admit that she could never emulate such a woman to win that level of appreciation. With Luciano, she would always be Nicky’s loving stepmother first and his wife second. Second best, second best for all time...
Could she truly live with that?
‘Sorry, Steven. I have to go,’ she said, cutting the call on Steven’s expostulations with relief.
Her face was wet with tears. She had been crying without knowing it and she mopped her face, praying her mascara hadn’t run. There could be no pleasure in appreciating that she would always be inferior in her future husband’s eyes and heart to his first wife, but she was a practical, realistic woman and there really wasn’t much she could do about
