disarmed and distracted him, making him want to hold her close, tempting his tongue- tip to explore the shape and tease apart that closed line of denial.
Rocco wasn’t used to women who denied him.
The reason why Julie had ended up in Rocco’s arms had become buried beneath a surge of other feelings and a very different kind of panic. James was the only man she had ever wanted to hold her like this and kiss her like this, Julie thought painfully, but somehow—either through exhaustion or fear or both—she could feel her will to resist him giving way to the warmth emanating from him. It was as though her weakness was irresistibly drawn to his strength, her woman to his man, the softness of her lips to the hard command of his mouth, until the determined male pressure of his tongue was melting her resistance as easily as the heat of a Sicilian summer sun could melt winter snow. Her starving senses were betrayingly greedy for the sensual pleasure of his kiss.
This was how she had once dreamed of James holding her and kissing her—before they had become lovers, before she had lost him to Judy.
It had been bad enough having to listen to James telling her gently that, whilst he liked her and valued their time together, he had fallen in love with Judy, but it had been even worse having to listen to Judy confessing in a drunken moment that she was not sure who was the father of the unwanted child she had been carrying.
It could, she had admitted, be the wealthy Sicilian playboy with whom she’d had an affair but who had since ditched her and was refusing to answer her letters. But she was going to tell James that it was his—because, as she had told Julie smugly and with open malice, it actually could be, seeing as James had rushed her into bed the minute she had returned from Sicily.
Having to listen to Judy telling her about them making love had been pure torture. Julie clung fiercely to Rocco. It had been her kisses she had wanted James to long for, her touch, her body… Lost in her own emotions, she felt the man holding her become James, and the intensity of her emotions dictated her actions, so that she was kissing him with all the fierce longing and pride of her love for James.
Julie’s sudden passion caught Rocco off guard. She was pressing her body into his, opening her mouth beneath his, and her breathing was altering to become as unsteady as her heartbeat.
Unaware of the reason for it, instinctively he responded to it, shaping her body to his own, taking the sweetness her parted lips were offering, and letting the soft moan of assent she gave at the first thrust of his tongue be the signal that brought his hands sweeping down her body to bring her intimately close to his own flesh.
The sensation of hard male thighs pressing against her jolted Julie back to reality.
This man was not James.
As soon as he felt her struggle Rocco stopped kissing her, sliding his hands back up over her body more out of habit than desire, as distaste for his own actions filled him. Since when had he ever wanted Antonio’s leavings?
It was unthinkable that he should want a woman like this one—a pathetic excuse for a real woman.
He had stopped kissing her, but he was still holding on to her, Julie recognized, shivering in his hold. Why had she kissed him like that? He wasn’t anything like James. The couple she would have called out to for help had now, of course, gone.
As much as he wanted to turn his back and walk away from her, and from his own momentary betrayal of himself and his values, Rocco knew that he could not do so. On this occasion his duty to his family must come before any duty to himself.
‘There are matters we need to discuss,’ he told Julie coldly.
‘I will not let you take my baby away from me,’ Julie warned him fiercely, blinking back the tears caused by the overload on her emotions.
Rocco frowned at her.
‘You are being ridiculous. There is no question of anyone wanting to take your child. This is simply a matter of you both accompanying me to Sicily so that the legal complexities of a certain situation can be dealt with. All that is involved is a stay of a week—ten days at the most—and then you will be free to return here if that is your wish. I give you my word on that.’
Julie looked at him. His giving of ‘his word’ should have sounded theatrical, something for her to question and even mock, but somehow instead she found herself reacting to his words at some deep psychological level—as though a contract had been made, a promise given, a vow, almost. She could feel her breath leaking from her lungs and she knew that the slight inclination of her head was an acknowledgement of that contract—just as powerful a commitment from her as his words had been from him.
She had relaxed slightly, but a woman like this one, who had no conception of honour or what was due to a man’s given word, was all too likely to cause the kind of public display she had already tried to cause once, Rocco decided, making up his mind that the sooner they were on their way to Sicily the better. Since she had their passports with her, he could see no sense in prolonging their departure. His personal jet was on standby, with its flight path filed. There was nothing to be gained by delaying things. Once she was in the car, she could argue with him all she wanted.
‘Now, if we can both get into the car and out of this rain,’ Rocco continued, opening the passenger door of the car for her.
Julie was still hesitating.
‘I assure you that, far from suffering any harm, as you seem to think, ultimately both you and the child stand to benefit financially,’ Rocco told her coolly.
Benefit? Financially? What did that mean? Julie’s heart started to beat too fast.
Ah, now he had found the key to unlock her resistance, Rocco thought cynically.
‘But why? I mean, I know that your brother…’ She could not bring herself to say that she knew that his brother might be Josh’s father, because that meant admitting to herself that Josh might not be James’s son, and she longed so much for it to have been James who had fathered him, even though Judy herself had told her that she was not completely sure about who the father was. It was Josh she must think of now, though, she warned herself, and if the family of the wealthy playboy with whom her sister had had a fling were prepared to make some kind of financial provision for Josh, what right did she have to deny her nephew that benefit?
A fresh fear struck her. What if Antonio Leopardi wanted to claim Josh and take him from her? What if that was what this was all about?
The car, long, shiny and expensive, was parked beneath a streetlight, and she could see quite plainly the contemptuous look in the slightly hooded golden-amber eyes as he turned towards her. The eyes of a predatory hunter. Leopard’s eyes.
‘Antonio was my half-brother, not my brother. He was Sicilian, therefore this child—his child—is also Sicilian, and as such is entitled to his inheritance. That is the law of our blood and our family.’
The whole sentence was seamed with warnings as dark and ancient as Sicily’s own history, but initially it was the first three words he had spoken that Julie focused on.
‘Antonio was Sicilian?’ she repeated. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means exactly what it always means when one speaks of a person’s life in the past tense,’ Rocco told her curtly. ‘My half-brother—your lover, the child’s father—is dead. However, whilst the Leopardi family does not have another Antonio, and most certainly will
