opposite to her own and who had often treated her so unkindly.
The sad truth was—as Julie had feared and the doctor had gently confirmed—that poor little Josh had been neglected and malnourished by his mother during the first weeks of his life. Because the infection he had picked up had been left untreated it had compromised his immune system, which had then struggled to combat the winter viruses other babies could throw off. Emotionally too he had suffered—from maternal neglect. Julie had sworn to herself that she would make up for the sad early weeks of his life, and ideally she would have liked to be with him herself twenty-four-seven. But that, of course, was not possible since they were dependent on her income until her parents’ estate was settled.
Slowly Josh had started to recognise her and respond, and earlier in the week for the very first time he had smiled at her and held out his arms to be picked up. Just thinking about that precious, wonderful moment now as she looked at him brought a lump of emotion to Julie’s throat.
Everything about this car was expensive and new and clean, including the baby seat, and so very different from the shabby second-hand things that were all she had been able to afford once she had realised that many of those to whom her sister had owed money expected her to pay off her sister’s debts.
Rocco started the car’s engine and eased away from the pavement, causing Julie to look at him and demand, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m driving us to the airport,’ he told her with exaggerated patience, ‘where we shall board a plane to take us home to Sicily.’
Sicily? Now? When she didn’t have so much as a change of clothes for Josh, never mind herself, and she hadn’t even agreed that they would go—at least not properly.
‘We can’t do that,’ Julie protested wildly.
‘Why not?’ Rocco asked her.
‘There are things I need to do, people I need to tell—my landlord, and the crèche, and where I work. And we…Josh needs…we both need clothes and…and his…’
‘You can telephone everyone you need to speak with here from the car. As for everything that the child might need, you may leave that to me.’
Quite plainly he was a man who did not like wasting time, Julie thought weakly, her eyes widening as Rocco pressed a button on the steering wheel of his car and a mobile phone slid out from the dashboard.
It gave Julie a feeling rather like deliberately swimming out of her depth to make the phone calls which were in effect committing her to accompanying Rocco to Sicily.
She was just finishing leaving a halting explanation on the message service at the crèche when a small whimper from the back of the car had her concluding her message quickly, so that she could turn to look at Josh, who was now awake and grizzling.
‘Could you stop the car, please?’ she asked Rocco, elaborating when he frowned, ‘I want to sit in the back with Josh.’
Rocco had pulled over almost before she had stopped speaking, getting out of his own seat whilst she was still unfastening her seat belt to come round to her door and open it for her. He placed his hand beneath her elbow as he helped her out.
His manners certainly could not be faulted, Julie admitted, along with his kissing technique. They were in a class of their own.
Julie froze, hardly daring to breathe, the blood suddenly flooding her face in a rich tide of guilty colour. What on earth had made her think that? She felt shocked and mortified, reduced by her own confusion to stammering slightly as Rocco opened the rear passenger door of the car for her, allowing her to get inside.
She couldn’t—dared not—look at him, so she busied herself instead with removing her coat and fussing over Josh, who had stopped crying now but was still awake, whilst from the front of the car she could hear Rocco speaking in what she assumed must be Italian, using the hands-free phone she herself had just used.
As he explained to an exclusive concierge service exactly what he wanted, Rocco watched Julie discreetly in his rearview mirror, and then frowned. He hadn’t expected her to be as devoted to her child as she obviously was. That, like the fear of him she had displayed earlier, sat uncomfortably with his pre-assessment of her.
Only now that the decision was made, and its execution taken out of her hands, could she admit to herself how exhausted she felt, Julie admitted. The debilitating and often frightening feeling that it would be easier to crawl than walk, easier to lie down than do either, had been growing steadily these last few months, inexorably stalking her until at times she came face to face with it and realised how much stronger and more powerful it was than her.
The peace and comfort of the car, along with its steady movement, were lulling her to sleep, but she must not give in to her aching need to close her eyes. She must think of Josh. She must put his needs first….
Rocco glanced in his driving mirror to see if Julie was still asleep. It was nearly an hour now since he had seen her eyes close, and she had fallen asleep with the speed of a child. But even in sleep her hand rested protectively on the side of the baby carrier. No one else could touch it or the child in it without waking her, Rocco suspected.
The smell of cheap wet wool being warmed by the car’s heating system reached his nostrils. His fastidious eldest brother would quickly have shown his displeasure, Rocco re¬ flected, but he was more down to earth. In the construction industry one had to be.
His father had been furious when he had learned what Rocco planned to do with the land left to him by his mother’s uncle. A resort with its own private airfield on what should have been Leopardi land—it was unthinkable, an abomination, a betrayal of everything that the name Leopardi stood for: tradition, continuation of the male line, pride and secrecy.
‘On my mother’s land,’ Falcon had corrected his father, stepping in to shield his younger sibling from their father’s wrath, just as he had done so many times during their childhood.
They said that blood was thicker than water, but it was the Leopardi blood he shared with his brothers to which Rocco was loyal—not the Leopardi blood of his father.
The lights of the airport, gleaming on the wet tarmac, shone up ahead of them through the winter night, and as Rocco brought the car’s speed down Julie woke up, not knowing just where she was for a few seconds, and then—when she did—looking anxiously at Josh, relieved to see that he was still asleep before glancing self-consciously towards the front of the car. She could see Rocco’s hands resting on the steering wheel, and for some reason the sight of them made her heart jerk against her ribs. It was an effort to drag her gaze away from him to look out of the car window instead.
They were turning off the main access road, swinging round down a smooth road and up to a checkpoint, where Rocco produced a plastic card for the security guard—who saluted him before raising the barrier.
The car picked up speed, and Julie’s eyes widened in disbelief as she realised that, no, she wasn’t seeing things. Rocco was driving right up to the sleek silver jet parked on the tarmac in front of them.
* * *
‘Good evening, sir.’
Rocco smiled at Nigel Rowlins, the first officer of his private jet, as he opened the door of the Mercedes.
‘Good evening, Nigel. All set to go, are we?’
‘Yes,
