PENNY JORDAN - Pride - Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command

‘We’ll be landing in half an hour. Rocco said to warn you that it will be cold and possibly raining.’

‘In Sicily?’ Somehow Julie had assumed that the island would have warm weather all year round.

‘The island faces three different seas, and its winters can be harsh. By the end of this month, though, the temperature will be rising and the weather will be much warmer.’

The steward’s entrance had brought Julie out of her unplanned sleep.

He’d brought her a tray of tea when he’d come to wake her, and to warn her that they would soon be landing, but after he’d left her Julie was too busy to have time to pour and drink it.

For one thing Josh had to be changed, and fastened into clean clothes and a padded outdoor all-in-one suit before she could even think about getting ready herself. She doubted somehow that Rocco would have much patience if they delayed him.

To her dismay there was no sign of her wet jumper in the bathroom, or in fact of any of her own clothes, and there was certainly no time to go and find Russell and ask what had happened to them. Trying not to panic, Julie pulled open the wardrobe door, remembering that the steward had said he had hung her clothes there. Thankfully Josh was content to lie quietly as she stood staring at the things hanging inside the wardrobe, whilst her heart sank.

Designer jeans—she recognised the label as one that Judy had coveted—a silk shirt, a cashmere sweater, and a beautiful trench coat with a thick, warm removable lining swung invitingly in front of her. Timelessly elegant clothes, every single one of them way beyond her budget, never mind all of them together—and paid for by a man who had already shown his contempt for her. Wearing them would be a form of accepting his contempt, accepting his patronage, becoming a Leopardi possession—a woman who could be bought as easily as Antonio Leopardi had bought Judy—but what choice did she have? Her own clothes had vanished. She could hardly leave the plane wearing a towelling bathrobe—which in any case also belonged to Rocco Leopardi.

Almost fiercely she reached for the clothes and pulled them on, her angry movements softening the moment she touched the cashmere and the luxurious silk. It was a crime to treat such beautiful fabrics so harshly and uncaringly. The cashmere clung to the pads of her fingertips, slightly rough from all the domestic work she had to do without the luxury of protective gloves.

She had told herself that she wouldn’t wear the expensive leather boots, but in the end she had to, when she found that her shoes had vanished along with everything else.

She was just folding the bathrobe when Russell knocked briefly on the door, and then came in carrying a butter soft suede bag of the type that Julie had seen A-list celebrity mothers toting.

‘I’ve packed all the babe’s things in it, and filled a fresh bottle. I’ll make sure that everything else is sent on to Villa Rosa for you,’ he told Julie with a smile. ‘Oh, and you’ll need the raincoat.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘When it rains in Sicily in the winter, it really rains.’

She had her own nappy bag. Designer bags were an affectation and a waste of money, Julie told herself. But the butter-soft suede was already packed full. What was more important—her pride or Josh’s comfort? There was no contest, really, was there?

When Julie emerged from the sleeping compartment carrying Josh, Rocco had to admit that the change in their appearance momentarily caught him off guard.

Julie still had her hair in a plait, and her face free of make-up, but somehow that simplicity only served to accentuate how perfectly suited she was to the stylish elegance of what she was wearing. Even the way she was carrying herself had altered, Rocco noted. She was standing taller, her shoulders straighter.

The concierge service had done an excellent job and he must remember to thank them. He had simply instructed them to make sure that enough clothes to last a young mother and her child for a fortnight, including both indoor and outdoor things, were sent to his private jet in time for their flight, along with adequate supplies of baby formula and other necessities.

If he said one word about the clothes he had bought, which she had been forced to wear, she would rip them off and refuse to leave the plane until she had her own clothes back, Julie decided defiantly, lifting her chin. She certainly wasn’t going to thank him for them, was she? But somehow she heard herself saying huskily, ‘Thank you for … for providing everything for Josh and me. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.’

Her voice made it plain that she was more resentful of his generosity than grateful, Rocco acknowledged grimly, and he told her, ‘One phone call to a concierge service is hardly going to any trouble.’

He’d put his suit jacket back on, and over it he was wearing a raincoat with the collar turned up—with that special kind of aplomb and style that Italian men were so very good at.

A flashing light warned that their descent was about to begin, and broke the tension. Julie let Russell help her into her seat and fasten Josh into his, glad of the fact that their descent allowed her to escape from further conversation.

IT WAS raining—hard. The rain bounced noisily off the umbrella that the steward was struggling to keep open over her against the fierce force of the wind as he escorted her to a waiting car, making sure she was safely inside it and settled comfortably in the rear with Josh in the baby seat before returning to the plane for Rocco.

The bright lights of the landing strip and the airfield illuminated a landscape that could have been anywhere: scrubby vegetation just visible beyond the perimeter fence under the flare of the lights, vanishing into an ink-black darkness that could have been land, sky or sea.

The cream leather upholstery of the car was so luxurious Julie was almost afraid of touching it. She looked at Josh, mentally praying that he would not be sick.

They were soon leaving the airfield and its lights behind them, to be sucked into the rain-lashed darkness. Despite the warmth of the interior of the car, Julie shivered. The darkness was so intense it almost felt as though it was pressing in on the car, driven by the same wind that was forcing the rain against the car windows with a buffeting roar.

She didn’t really know very much about Sicily, but she had never imagined it would be subject to this kind of violent weather.

Like a tightly wound spring, abruptly released to unravel too quickly, thoughts as wild as the night spun frantically through Julie’s head. What if Rocco Leopardi’s intentions towards Josh were not benign? What if Josh was an obstacle to him in some way? Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Who would know—or care—if tonight she and Josh were driven away into the darkness never to return?

Reaction not just to the extraordinary events of the last few hours but also to everything else that had happened over the last few months and which she had refused to allow herself to react to—first for James’s sake and then later for Josh’s sake—hit her, smashing her self-control and thrusting her headlong into the grip of an attack of panic and self-blame so strong that it seized her breath and made her heart thump so heavily and with such speed that she thought it was going to burst out of her chest.

Rocco knew every centimetre of the single-track road that led from his private airstrip to Villa Rosa, one of the Leopardi country houses, but as always, as he drove round the final sharp curve in the road to reveal the villa up ahead, he felt the familiar surge of pride and pleasure at the sight of it, rising from the fertile plain to dominate the landscape with its elegance.