an unknown child’s bloodlines? Rocco looked down into the cot, where Josh lay fast asleep. Being here was doing Josh good. He had put on weight, and his skin looked less sallow, warmer.
Rocco leaned closer and studied the sleeping baby. His fluff of dark hair had a slight curl to it. All the Leopardi men had thick dark hair with a curl, even if in adulthood Rocco had chosen to have his own hair cut so short that its curl couldn’t be seen. Josh’s eyelashes fanned out across his cheeks. His eyes were growing darker in colour. But what, after all, did that mean? Rocco could see nothing in Josh that reminded him of Antonio, but that would not stop his father from doing so if he was so minded. His father might now be bedridden, and living in the shadow of his own death, but he was still a very powerful and autocratic man—a man who was used to making sure that his will prevailed, no matter what the cost to others.
Rocco could see a difficult future ahead for this child lying so peacefully asleep in his cot if he did turn out to be Antonio’s son—and an even harder one for his mother. For all that he would welcome Josh into the family, Rocco knew his father would feel very differently about Josh’s mother. The Prince had indulged and spoiled Antonio from the moment he had been born, turning a blind eye to all his excesses as he grew to adulthood. How much had that indulgence been responsible for Antonio’s lifestyle and ultimately for his death?
Rocco smoothed the cover over Josh’s sleeping body, smiling at the small star-shaped little hand and watching Josh’s fingers curl round his own index finger, as though even in sleep the baby instinctively reached for the security of an adult touch.
The first thing Julie saw when she woke up was Rocco, bending over Josh’s cot, with one hand on the side of the cot and the other inside it. Her heart lurched into her chest wall. Rocco might deny it, but neither he nor his brothers had any reason to love Josh. They certainly hadn’t loved their own half-brother. Maria had gossiped to her, saying that all three brothers were independently wealthy, and there was certainly no question of any child of Antonio’s usurping their right to inherit their father’s titles. But if their father chose to leave his grandson money they had assumed would be theirs …
Immediately her protective instincts had her on her feet and hurrying into the nursery, demanding sharply, ‘What are you doing?’
Rocco turned his head to look at her, but didn’t remove his hand.
Protectively, Julie went round to the other side of the cot to look anxiously at Josh, only able to relax when she recognised that he was breathing safely and easily. That should have been enough to steady her, but the sight of
Josh’s small hand curled tightly round Rocco’s finger caused a fresh lurch of her heart—this time from angry pain rather than fear for the little boy.
Rocco had no right to enter the nursery and watch over the child in a way that should have belonged only to Josh’s father. Julie had to fight not to snatch Josh up and hold him tightly, but she had to satisfy herself with demanding, ‘Why are you in here?’
‘Because I choose to be. This is after all my home, and Josh could be my nephew. It’s only natural that I should want to check that he hasn’t taken any harm from the reckless behaviour of his mother.’
His suave response, with its reminder of things she’d rather forget, increased Julie’s anxiety—but that was nothing to the sudden downward plunge of her heart when Rocco gently eased his finger free of Josh’s grip and urged Julie back into her own room with a calm, ‘I have news.
‘Unfortunately my father is aware that you and Josh are on the island,’ he began, ‘and even more unfortunately he has decided that he will know Antonio’s son, without recourse to a DNA test, the minute he sets eyes on him. I realize, of course, that you will probably be delighted by the thought that my father in his desperation to find his grandson may well decide that Josh is Antonio’s child.’
‘Well, that is where you are wrong,’ Julie denied immediately. ‘Surprising though you might find it, the truth is that I do not want Josh to be Antonio’s son. I’d much rather that James is his father—after all, James was prepared to marry … me, and bring Josh up as his own.’
The minute the hot words were out Julie wished desperately that she had not said them. But it was too late for those regrets now. Rocco was giving her a very grim look indeed, and as she watched he strode over to her bedroom door and closed it, turning round to confront her.
‘So there is another man whom you know could be Josh’s father?’ he demanded coldly.
‘Not is—was,’ Julie was forced to admit. ‘He’s dead now. Killed in a rail accident.’
‘Why have you not said anything of this before?’
‘You hardly gave me the chance. All you cared about was proving whether or not your half-brother was Josh’s father.’
‘You say you do not want Josh to be Antonio’s, and yet you contacted Antonio to tell him that you were having his child. He gave you money to buy you off.’
Rocco was angry—furiously, savagely angry—at the thought of all the time that had been wasted when with a few simple words she could have said right from the start that Antonio was not Josh’s father.
‘Was there ever any chance that Josh might be Antonio’s? Or was it all a scam cooked up between you and your lover to get money out of Antonio for a child that you knew all along was not his? Answer me,’ he demanded harshly, ‘unless you want me to shake the answer out of you.’
‘I don’t know,’ Julie admitted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROCCO stared at her.
‘You don’t know what?’ he demanded caustically.
‘I don’t know who Josh’s father was,’ she told him truthfully. ‘But I do know that I want it to be James and not Antonio.’
‘You loved him? This James?’
What was he doing? What possible difference did it make what she had felt, and why should he care?
‘Yes.’ The tears Julie didn’t want to shed blurred her vision and her voice.
‘But you still had sex with my brother.’
His voice might be flat, but there was no mistaking the contempt it held.
‘James and I had quarrelled. I thought it was over. I went on holiday and … and it just happened …’
‘It just happened?’ Rocco mimicked her. ‘Just like that? A moment of weakness when you were missing the man you really loved. Is that what you mean?’
Julie swallowed. That was what had happened to her when she had for those awful, dreadful minutes actually wanted him, Rocco, wasn’t it? The betrayal of her longstanding love for James had merely been a shameful moment of madness and weakness.
‘Yes,’ she agreed woodenly.
Rocco strode towards her, his hands gripping her shoulders so tightly that his fingers dug painfully into her tender flesh. He half shook her as he told her bitingly, ‘Liar. What “just happened”, as you call it, was that Antonio hired you—along with another girl—to indulge him in his sexual fantasies.
