past?’
Jackie removed her hand from under his so fast he thought he might have a friction burn.
‘It’s too late. We can’t go back, not after all that has happened.’ Instead of looking fierce and untouchable, she looked very, very sad as she said this, and he saw just a glimpse of the young, stubborn, vulnerable girl he’d once lost his heart to.
‘Why not?’
Suddenly he really wanted to know. And it wasn’t just about putting the past to rest.
She looked down at his hand on the tablecloth, still waiting in the same spot from where she’d snatched hers away. For a long time she didn’t move, didn’t speak.
‘You know why, Romano,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t push this, just…don’t.’
‘I don’t want to push this. I just want us to be able to be around each other without spitting and hissing or creating an atmosphere. That’s not what you want for Lizzie’s wedding, is it?’
She frowned and stared at him. ‘What on earth has this got to do with Lizzie’s wedding?’
Didn’t she know? Hadn’t Lizzie or Lisa told her yet?
‘The reception…Lizzie wanted to have it at the palazzo. She thought the lake would be so—’
‘No. That can’t be.’ She spoke quietly, with no hint of anger in her voice, and then she just stood up and walked away, her chin high and her eyes dull, leaving him alone at the table, drawing the glances of some of the other diners.
This was not how most of his evenings out ended—alone, with all the pretty women having left without him. Most definitely not.
Back at the villa, Jackie ignored the warm glow of lights spilling from the drawing-room windows and took the path round the side of the house that led into the terraced garden. She kept walking, past the fountains and clipped lawns, past the immaculately groomed shrubs, to the lowest part of the garden, an area slightly wilder and shadier than the rest.
Right near the boundary, overlooking Monta Correnti and the valley below, was an old, spreading fir tree. Many parts of its lower branches had been worn smooth by the seats and shoes of a couple of generations of climbers.
Without thinking about the consequences for her white linen trousers, Jackie put one foot on the stump of a branch at the base of the trunk and hoisted herself up onto one of the boughs. Her mind was elsewhere but her body remembered a series of movements—a hand here, a foot there—and within seconds she was sitting down, her toes dangling three feet above the ground as she stared out across the darkening valley.
The sun had set long ago, leaving the sky a shade of such a deep, rich blue that she could almost believe it possible to reach out and sink her hand into the thick colour. The sight brought back a rush of homesickness, which was odd, because surely people were only supposed to get homesick when they were away, not when they came back. It didn’t make any sense. But not much about this evening had made sense.
She’d expected Romano to be a grown-up version of the boy she’d known: confident, intelligent, incorrigible. But she hadn’t expected such blatant insensitivity.
She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the sensation of the cool night breeze on her neck and cheeks.
Thank goodness she hadn’t given into Kate’s pleading and let her daughter come on this trip. If Romano could be so blithe about their failed relationship all those years ago, she’d hate to think how he might have reacted to their daughter.
If only things had been different…
No. It was no good thinking that way. Time had proved her right. Romano Puccini was not cut out to be a husband and father. The string of girlfriends he’d paraded through the tabloids and celebrity magazines had only confirmed her worst fears. Maybe, if he’d settled down, there would have been some hope of him regretting his decision to disown his firstborn. Maybe a second child might have melted his heart, caused him to realise what he’d been missing.
A huge sigh shuddered through her. Jackie kicked off her shoes and looked at her toes.
And Romano had made her miss all of those moments too. Without his support she’d had no choice but to go along with her mother’s wishes. How stupid she’d been to believe all those whispered promises, all those hushed plans to make their parents see sense, the plotting to elope one day. He’d said he’d wait for ever for her. The truth was, he hadn’t even waited a month before moving on to Francesca Gambardi. One silly spat was all it’d taken to drive him away.
For ever? What a joke.
But she’d been so in love with him it had taken right up until the day she’d handed her newborn daughter over to stop hoping that it was all a bad dream, that Romano would change his mind and come bursting through the door to tell her he was so sorry, that it was her that he wanted and they were going to be a proper family, no matter what his father and her mother said.
Well, she’d purged all those silly ideas from herself about the same time she’d tightened up her saggy pregnancy belly. It had taken just as much iron will and focus to kill them all off.
‘Jackie?’
It was Scarlett’s voice, coming from maybe twenty feet away. Jackie smiled. She’d never quite got used to the Aussie twang that both her sisters had developed since moving away. It seemed more prominent here in the dark.
‘Up here.’
‘What on earth are you doing up there?’
Scarlett walked closer and peered up at her, or at least in her general direction. She’d only just left the bright lights of the house behind and her eyes wouldn’t be accustomed to the dark yet.
‘Come up and join me. The view’s lovely,’ she said.
‘I know what the view looks like.’ Scarlett stared up at the tree. ‘You’re being silly.’
That was altogether possible, Jackie conceded silently, but she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone. Scarlett folded her arms and stared off into the distance.
‘What? You’re not going to tell me I had too much wine at dinner?’ Jackie said.
Scarlett just shook her head, the movement so small Jackie guessed it was more an unconscious gesture than an attempt at communication. She had that same can’t-quite-look-at-you expression on her face that she always wore in Jackie’s presence. It made Jackie want to be twice as prickly back. But it became obvious as she continued to observe her sister that Scarlett hadn’t taken into account that Jackie had been out here long enough to get her night vision and could see her sister’s features quite clearly. After a few seconds the hardness slid out of her expression, leaving something much younger, much truer behind.
‘No. I’m not going to tell you that.’ Her voice was husky but cold.
Jackie stopped swinging her legs. She knew that look. It was the one Scarlett had always worn when she’d heard Mamma’s footsteps coming up the stairs after she’d done something naughty. Was Scarlett…was she hiding something?
Just as she tried to examine Scarlett’s face a little more closely, her sister turned away.
‘Mamma wants us all in the drawing room for a nightcap. She says she’s got some family news, something about Cristiano not being able to come to the wedding.’
Jackie swung herself down off the branch in one fluid motion and landed beside her sister. She supposed they’d better go and make peace with their mother. Mamma hadn’t been best pleased when she’d returned from her powwow with the restaurant manager to find that all her illustrious dinner guests had deserted her.
CHAPTER THREE
DESPITE the lateness of the hour, Romano stripped off by the edge of the palazzo’s perfect turquoise pool and dived in. Loose threads hung messily