unable to quite accept that she had fooled around with Luciano to the extent that she had forgotten not only the tenets that she had been raised by, but also everything she could not afford to forget about her current predicament. She was acting as Julie, not herself, and, although she was convinced that her late sister would also have succumbed to the advances of a gorgeous billionaire, she knew she couldn’t grasp at that as an excuse for her behaviour. In reality she had lost control and had allowed herself to be swept away on a roller coaster of sexual sensation new to her. She had acted like a giddy teenager rather than a grown-up, had lived in the moment, had rejoiced in the moment without any thought of what it would be like to meet Luciano again or to work for him in an official capacity.
‘You’re lying solely for Nicky’s benefit,’ Ellie told her with loyal reassurance. ‘And by going to Sicily with Nicky you’re making all these changes easier for him—’
Jemima gave her friend an anxious look. ‘So you think I’m doing the right thing?’
‘I always thought that the best solution for Nicky was to be with the father who arranged for him to be born. He’s a lovely child, I can see that, but he’s not your child. I hate to agree with Steven about anything but I do want you to get your own life back,’ her friend told her ruefully. ‘Be young, free and single again. You deserve that. Nicky was Julie’s mistake.’
Jemima compressed her lips and said nothing. She could not think of Nicky’s bright, loving existence as a mistake on any terms and being single and free had proved a less fun-filled experience for her than she had been led to expect. Nicky was part of her life now and she loved him. She had not carried her nephew through a pregnancy but the little boy felt as much a part of her as though she had. She knew that walking away from him was going to hurt her a lot, but, if that was truly what was best for Nicky in the long run, she would have to learn to live with that.
The next morning, Jemima, Nicky and their luggage were collected by a limousine accompanied by a car full of bodyguards. The trip to the airport was accomplished in record time and even boarding the private jet awaiting them was a fairly smooth and speedy experience. Jemima was surprised that Luciano was not on board and that, indeed, she and Nicky appeared to be the only passengers aside of the security staff, who took seats at the rear of the plane. The cabin crew made a big fuss of Nicky and were unceasingly attentive.
Luciano boarded in Paris, where he’d had a meeting, and the first thing he noticed was Jemima, curled up fast asleep in a reclining seat with Nicky out for the count beside her in his fancy travelling seat. Her mane of hair was braided when he wanted to see it loose again...even though he knew much of that hair was fake? He shook off that awkward question and scanned the worn jeans and casual washed-out top she sported with a frown of incomprehension forming between his dark brows. Why had she not yet made the effort to dress up for him...even once? No woman had ever been so sure of her hold on Luciano’s interest that she would show up garbed almost as poorly as a homeless person! Or was this deliberate dressing down and this avoidance of glamour merely Jemima’s highly effective way of ensuring that he bought her a new wardrobe?
Jemima wakened slowly, comfortably rested after having endured a final nervous, sleepless night in her parents’ home. Luciano now sat across the aisle. Drowsily she studied his perfect profile, thinking that no man should have lashes that long, that dark or that lush or a nose and a jaw that would not have disgraced a Greek god. Butterflies found wings in her stomach and fluttered. Luciano turned his handsome dark head and she encountered dark golden eyes as lustrous as melting honey. A little quiver ran through her like a tightening piece of elastic, unleashing far less innocent responses that made her squirm with self-consciousness.
‘We’ll be landing in thirty minutes.’
‘Right...er...I’ll go and freshen up,’ Jemima muttered, sliding out of her seat.
For a split second he gazed up at her, scanning the bloom of soft pink warming the porcelain complexion, which merely enhanced the ice-blue-diamond effect of her unusual eyes and the full softness of the lips he had already tasted. And his body reacted as instantly as a starving man facing a banquet, urgency and hunger combining in a mind-blowing storm of response. His strong jaw line clenching, Luciano gritted his even white teeth angrily and looked away, schooling himself to coldness again.
He didn’t like losing control. He had never liked losing control. He had often seen his father lose his head in temper and living through the experience unscathed had been a challenge for everyone around him. Luciano had little fear that he himself would erupt into mindless violence, but he was absolutely convinced that reactions like passion and anger twisted a man’s thinking processes and made bad decisions and human errors more likely. She would be in his bed this very night, he reminded himself soothingly. He would have what he wanted, what he increasingly felt he needed from her, and then this temporary insanity would be over and done with, decently laid to rest between the sheets. It astonished him, it even slightly unnerved him, that sexual desire could exercise that much power over him.
Jemima concentrated on the mechanics of feeding and changing Nicky while stubbornly denying herself the opportunity to look back in Luciano’s direction. He was gorgeous and he had to know he was gorgeous. After all, he saw himself every time he shaved, she thought wildly. But that was not an excuse to stare and blush and act all silly like an adolescent who didn’t know how to behave around a man. Absolutely not any sort of an excuse at all, Jemima reminded herself doggedly as she abstractedly admired how much Nicky’s glossy black curls resembled his father’s and resisted the urge to make another quite unnecessary visual comparison.
Suddenly the thought that she would be in Luciano’s vicinity for the rest of the summer was a daunting one. She could never act polite and indifferent in the company of such a dynamic and passionate male. He lit her up like a fire inside but she ought to be fighting that tooth and nail. She was lying to Luciano and he was Nicky’s father, which meant that there was no possibility of any normal relationship developing between them. Keeping her distance and resisting temptation were what she needed to do. Intellectually she knew that...but knowing and actually doing were two very different things, as she had already discovered. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, Luciano’s attraction yanked at her on every possible level...
LUCIANO’S PHONE BUZZED into life after they landed, shooting out a string of text messages and missed calls, every one of which hailed from his British lawyer, Charles Bennett. His mouth quirking as he wondered what could possibly have prompted the relaxed Charles to such an uncharacteristic display of urgency, Luciano phoned the older man as soon as he stepped inside the airport.
‘I have the worst possible news for you. We’ve all been conned,’ Charles announced with rare drama the instant the call connected. ‘Jemima Barber is not the mother of your child—’
Luciano froze and waved an impatient hand at his bodyguards to silence their chatter while he listened. ‘That’s not possible,’ he declared.
‘I haven’t got all the details yet and I won’t waste your time with speculation but I believe that the mother of your child was one of an identical set of twins. She died when she was struck by a car a couple of months ago,’ the lawyer explained curtly.
Luciano was frowning darkly. ‘Which would mean—’
‘That at best our Jemima is an aunt to the boy and a con artist,’ Charles framed drily. ‘I have a top-flight set of investigators digging into this right now and I expect to have the whole story for you by this evening at the latest.’
‘How sure are you of these facts?’ Luciano prompted,
