was furiously angry with her for putting at risk all the effort he had gone to to get her and Josh here and thus start to fulfil his part of the responsibility he and his brothers had taken on. A prize fool he would have looked if something had happened to her and the child whilst they were in his care. And if Josh did turn out to be Antonio’s child then there was no doubt that his father would have accused him—totally without any foundation or truth—of being only too glad that Josh had not survived.
Rocco could feel his heart thudding with a mixture of anger and relief. Relief that he had found them and anger because he had had to come and do so.
‘What the hell did you want to go out for anyway? No, let me guess—you were bored and missing your normal way of life. Well, you won’t find the kind of party scene that you like so much, nor the men that go with it, here.’
‘I wasn’t looking for any party scene or any man,’ Julie denied. ‘In fact a man is the last thing I want.’
They were back, and she was exhausted. Exhausted and sick with the fear instilled in her by Rocco’s far too graphic descriptions of what might have happened to Josh. Despite accepting that she was at fault, somehow she was still so angry at him that her anger was virtually all that was keeping her on her feet.
It was Rocco who now removed Josh, who had miraculously fallen fast asleep and stayed that way, from his buggy, and Rocco who carried him upstairs to the nursery—whilst Julie trailed behind him, willing herself to find the strength to make it to the bedroom. Josh looked so small clasped against Rocco’s shoulder—and so safe.
‘You’d better take this,’ Julie told Rocco ungraciously, removing his jacket and holding it out to him at arm’s length as she informed him, ‘I’ll take Josh.’
‘I may as well put him in his cot, since he’s asleep.’
He was refusing to give Josh to her? Why? What did he think she was going to do? Drop him?
‘He can’t go in his cot like that. He’s wearing an outdoor all-in-one suit.’
‘Yes, but presumably it comes off?’
Rocco wasn’t even bothering to wait for her response, or to give her demand even a second’s proper consideration. He was ignoring her, just as though she had no say at all in what was best for Josh.
Julie fumed as Rocco carried Josh through into the nursery, leaving her to drop his leather coat onto her bed and hurry after him, protesting, ‘There’s no need for you to do that. You might wake him up.’
He was still ignoring her, laying Josh on his changing table with unexpected expertise and then efficiently removing his outdoor suit. Josh slept on obliviously.
‘Perhaps you’d like to check his nappy and change him as well?’ Julie suggested sarcastically.
‘What I’d like is to feel that he’s got someone in his life who takes a responsible attitude towards his care. But right now, much as I’d like to think that, I can’t,’ Rocco told her pointedly.
Guilt and pride warred with one another inside Julie’s heart. She hated having her care of Josh questioned, but at the same time she was guiltily aware that she had allowed herself to be blinded by her own stubborn determination not to let Rocco dictate to her what she could and could not do.
‘If anything had happened to Josh I’d never have forgiven myself,’ she admitted in a low, tortured voice, her guilt and honesty winning the battle.
Rocco hid his surprise at her admission. Somehow it was out of character for the kind of woman he knew her to be—and yet, if he was honest, this wasn’t the first time in their short acquaintanceship when she had surprised him and challenged his perceptions of her. Nor the first time either that she had driven him to the point where she had tested his self-control way beyond its normal limits, he admitted—and not just the self-control that governed his temper. He was still battling to deny the extent to which she aroused him sexually—and failing, as his body was telling him very clearly right now.
How was it possible for him to want a woman he could only despise? A drowned rat of a woman who ricocheted between stubborn folly, aggressive antagonism and the kind of passionately intense sexual response to him that his head told him had to be manufactured, given her history, but that this body swore was the adult version of being a child let loose in a sweet shop.
Deftly, Rocco slid Josh into his cot and covered him up.
‘Maria said to tell you that she’s making you a special dish of liver cooked to her special recipe for dinner, along with a good helping of spinach. Or perhaps I should have said warn you,’ he told Julie dryly.
Maria had taken the doctor’s dietary suggestions for Julie to heart, with the result that iron-rich meat and greens had been served to her at every meal since the doctor’s visit apart from at breakfast, when she was served her iron in the form of eggs.
Julie managed a wan smile. ‘I was hoping to persuade Maria that cannelloni filled with spinach and ricotta cheese would be just as beneficial.’
‘You need to get out of those wet clothes.’
‘Yes.’ Rocco was walking past her and heading for the bedroom door. Julie took a deep breath and told him reluctantly, ‘Thank you for … for coming to find us.’
Her head was bowed, so she didn’t see the way his gaze rested on her before he said coolly, ‘There’s no need to thank me. After all, I have a vested interest in protecting Josh.’
He’d gone before Julie had time to raise her head and look at him—much to her relief. The last thing she needed right now was to endure the discomfort of having him realise that his pointed reminder that it was Josh who mattered to him and not her had hurt her. Hurt her? How crazy was that? How could a man she had only known four days possibly be able to hurt her emotionally?
It was possible for one heart to recognise another in the space of a single heartbeat, with all that that meant, she reminded herself. But she and Rocco didn’t have hearts that recognised each other, did they? In fact Rocco probably didn’t have a heart at all.
No heart? Then what was pumping the blood round that magnificent body?
And it was magnificent. The way in which his damp shirt had clung to his flesh had shown her that. Julie rubbed her eyes. She was cold and wet, and in need of a hot shower and probably a rest. A sudden gust of wind drove the rain against her bedroom window, making her shiver as she contemplated what might have so easily happened if Rocco hadn’t come to look for them. He might not have said it in so many words, but she knew he thought that she wasn’t fit to have charge of Josh, and perhaps he was right. She hadn’t done a very good job so far of looking after her little nephew, had she? It was only since he had been here that Josh had finally started to thrive and put on weight.
What was going to happen if he did turn out to be Antonio’s child?
Did she really need to ask herself that? Rocco and his brothers would take Josh from her. They would find him a proper, suitable substitute mother; they would surround him with all the care that Leopardi money could buy; they would cherish and protect him.
But she would love him, Julie told herself fiercely. And surely that meant something?
