lost their chance because of a few sheets of soggy paper.
She had to be real. Statistics were on her side. She was more likely to have been a harried single mother, burned out and bored out of her mind, while her friends dated and went to parties and were young and frivolous.
Yes. That picture was better. That would have been her reality. She had to hang onto that. But the tenderness in the young man’s eyes as he looked over the downy top of the baby’s head at its mother wouldn’t leave her alone.
She walked towards the window but kept back a little, just in case any of the family were milling on the terrace with their cocktails. She stared off into the sunset, which glowed as bright as embers in a fire, framing the undulating hills to the west. Tonight the sun looked so huge she could almost imagine it was setting into the crystal-clear lake that lay behind those hills. Where Romano probably was right now.
All these years she’d hated him. For nothing. What a waste of energy, of a life. Surely she must have had something better to do with her time than that? Maybe so, but nothing came to mind.
Slowly, quietly, she began to feel the right way up again. Get a grip, Jacqueline. You’re not a terrified fifteen-year-old now; you’re a powerful and successful woman. You can handle this.
Romano wasn’t the monster she’d needed to make him in her imagination. And he probably wasn’t the boy-father of her fantasies either. The truth probably lay somewhere in between.
She had to give him a chance to prove her wrong, to find out what the reality would be. He had a daughter on this planet, one who was hungry to know who she was and where she came from.
Jackie walked away from the window and sat back down on the edge of the bed. This changed all her plans. She couldn’t tell her family about her daughter’s existence yet. She had to tell Romano first. It was probably a bit late for cigars and slaps on the back, but he needed to know that he was a father.
Warm light filtered through the skylights in Romano’s studio, dancing across the walls as tiny puffy clouds played hide-and-seek with the sun, daring him to come out and play. That was one of the downsides of having a home office in a home like his. Distractions, major and minor, bombarded him from every direction. One of the reasons he’d accepted Lizzie’s wedding invitation was that it had given him a perfect excuse to spend two whole weeks at the palazzo. The plan had been to use the free time running up to and after the festivities to think about the next Puccini collection.
Just as he’d managed to dismiss the idea that the sky was laughing at him for sitting indoors working on a day like this, his mobile rang. He stood up with a growl of frustration.
He didn’t recognise the caller ID. ‘Hello?’
There was a slight pause, then a deep breath. ‘Romano?’
He stopped scowling and his eyebrows, no longer weighted down with a frown, arched high.
‘It’s Jackie,’ she said in English. ‘Jackie Patterson.’
It wasn’t lack of recognition that had delayed his reply, but surprise. After all these years her voice was still surprisingly familiar. It was her reasons for calling that had stalled him.
Why, when she’d been at pains to avoid him at all costs for the last couple of days—including that ridiculous show of some ‘secret’ lunch with Isabella and Scarlett—had she called him? As always, Jackie Patterson had him running in circles chasing his own tail. It was to his own shame that he liked it.
He smiled. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure?’
There was a pause.
‘I believe you owe me lunch.’
He might be laid-back, but he wasn’t slow. She hadn’t actually agreed to lunch before she’d been whisked away.
He let it pass. If thirty-two-year-old Jackie was anything similar to her teenage counterpart, the starchy accusation was only the surface level of her remark. With Jackie, there were always layers. Something that had both bewitched him and infuriated him during their brief summer fling. Her about-face could only mean one thing: Jackie wanted something. And that also intrigued him.
‘So I do,’ he said, injecting a lazy warmth into his voice that he knew would make her bristle. Jackie might like to play games, rather than come straight out and say what she thought and felt, but that didn’t mean he was going to lie down and let her win. The best part of a game was the competition, the cycle of move and counter-move, until there was only one final outcome. ‘Do you want to go to Rosa?’
‘No,’ she said, almost cutting the end of his sentence off. ‘Somewhere…quieter.’
Romano smiled. ‘Quieter’ could easily be interpreted as intimate.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly, letting her lead, letting her think she was in control.
He racked his brains to think of somewhere nice…quiet… to take Jackie. He doodled on a pad as he came up with, and rejected, five different restaurants. Too noisy. Bad food. Not the right ambience…
He looked out of the window, at the shady lawns and immaculate hedges. ‘You want to talk? In private?’
‘Yes.’
Did he detect a hint of wariness in her voice? Good. Jackie was always more fun when she was caught off guard. She always did something radical, something totally unexpected. He liked unexpected.
‘Come to the island, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll have all the quiet we want. We’ll eat here.’
There was a sharp laugh from Jackie. ‘What? You can cook?’ Her response reminded him of the way he’d used to tease her until she just couldn’t take it any more and had either walloped him or kissed him. He’d enjoyed both.
He laughed too. ‘You’ll just have to accept my invitation to find out.’
There was a not-so-gentle huff of displeasure in his ear. He waited.
‘Okay.’ The word was accompanied by a resigned sigh. ‘You’re on.’
Jackie was on time. He hadn’t expected anything less. She parked a sleek car on a patch of scrubby grass near a little jetty on the shore of Lake Adrina, just south of Isola del Raverno. He had been waiting in a small speedboat tied at the end of the rough wooden structure. The gentle side-to-side motion lulled him as he watched her emerge from the car looking cool and elegant.
She had style—and that wasn’t a compliment he assigned easily.
She was dressed casually in a pair of deep turquoise Capri pants and a white linen halter-neck top, which she immedi-ately covered with a sheer, long-sleeved shirt the moment she stepped into the sunshine. Her hair was in a loose, low ponytail and the honey highlights glinted gold in the midday sun. Bewitching. She pulled a large pair of sunglasses down from the top of her head to cover her eyes and it only added to the effect, making her seem aloof and desirable at the same time. He’d always been a sucker for forbidden fruit.
There was no doubt in his mind, though, that when she’d got dressed for this meeting, she’d thought very carefully about the ‘look’ she wanted to create. The clothes said: Think of me as any other woman—down-to-earth, non-threatening,
