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

Rocco frowned as he watched Julie. Her face was bonewhite and she was staring at the stairs as though she was terrified of them. She took a step towards them—and then stopped moving, suddenly crumpling to the floor.

Rocco covered the distance between them in three easy strides, catching Julie as she collapsed. She wasn’t, as he had first thought, unconscious. Her eyes were open and dark with confusion.

‘I’m all right. Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

Her face looked as bloodless as the marble steps, and he could feel the frantic tolling thud of her heartbeat through the silk blouse where her trenchcoat had fallen open. She was so slight that carrying her felt like carrying a child—except no child had such magnificent breasts. The sensation of them pressed against his own body as he carried her up the stairs stirred his body as well as his senses.

Rocco headed for the stairs still carrying her, ignoring her frantic demands to be put down, simply telling her tersely, ‘Keep still.’

Through her embarrassment and her exhaustion Julie had a dizzy impression of white marble stairs, ancestral portraits, a long corridor with white walls, and very dark polished and carved wooden doors—one of which was open.

It was heaven to be lying down, even if her heart was pounding so uncomfortably that it was making her feel sick and anxious.

The bed on which she was lying was large and canopied, in a room that looked as though it had come out of an eighteenth-century film set. A fire burned in the marble fireplace beyond the bed, and Maria was placing Josh in what looked like a brand-new cot at the bottom of the bed, fussing over him. Julie wanted to go to him, but she simply felt too weak.

Rocco frowned as he watched her, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall. Something was wrong—and, given her lifestyle, it could be drugs. He knew the signs; after all they were easy enough to recognise in these modern times. But, no—this was something other than substance abuse. She was very thin—dieting, then? She hadn’t eaten during the flight, and if celebrities were anything to go by it was the fashion to be skeletally thin—skeletally thin but with such large surgically enhanced breasts that women turned themselves into something close to physical freakery.

Maria spoke to him, telling him that the baby was asleep.

Nodding his head, he turned back to the bed and demanded curtly, ‘When was the last time you ate a proper meal?’

Julie tried to think, but even that was too much for her. What was the truth? Did she even know? Could she remember? Did she care?

These last weeks had been a nightmare jumble of trying to look after Josh whilst worrying about Judy’s debts. Making a meal for herself had been the last thing on her mind, even if she had had the money to buy proper food. And she hadn’t really felt like eating. She had lost James. Not just once, but a second time. Losing him to Judy had hurt dreadfully, but losing him to death had brought another kind of pain—this time not just for herself but for Josh, and for James himself as well. Just the thought of the physical effort it would take to eat had made her feel even worse. She simply had not had the energy.

Her tormentor was still looking at her. Waiting for her to reply. He wouldn’t leave her in peace to sleep as she so longed to do until she had answered him. She knew that.

She struggled to sit up.

‘I would have had a meal at home in my own flat this evening if I hadn’t been virtually hijacked,’ she told him, trying to inject a note of scathing contempt into her voice and wondering if it sounded as thin and frail to him as it did to her.

‘And before that—at lunchtime, for instance? You ate then? What?’

He was asking her too many questions andtoo fast.

‘There wasn’t time. The shop was busy, and Jenny the other girl didn’t come in.’

‘No lunch, then—breakfast?’

‘I had coffee and toast.’

It was a lie. She had made coffee and toast, but all she had had time for was a few sips of the coffee before she’d had to take Josh to nursery.

‘And every day is like that, is it? You deliberately starve yourself, out of some pathetic belief that being thin makes you more desirable to men like my late brother?’

‘No!’

There was real denial as well as outrage in her voice.

‘You say no, but it is obvious that you do not eat.’

Spirit flashed in her eyes as she told him fiercely, ‘We aren’t all rich enough to own private jets and have staff to cook for us, you know.’

Ignoring her attack, Rocco said flatly, ‘If you are not starving yourself out of some self-destructive desire to attract the attention of men who can only be aroused by women who look like children and behave like whores, then why are you not more aware of your responsibility to your child? He is wholly dependent on you. After all he has no one else.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Julie demanded, goaded beyond endurance. ‘Do you think I don’t think about that every waking hour?’ Her eyes were burning with the emotion spilling through her. ‘Do you think I don’t wish more than anything else that his father were still alive? That he was here to care for and protect his son as I know he would?’

‘Antonio?’ Rocco eased his shoulders away from the wall on which he had been leaning. He didn’t want to admit her championing of his half-brother had hit a nerve that was more sensitive than he had known, causing pain to strike searingly into him. His dead half-brother didn’t deserve such loyalty, and she was a fool for giving it to a man who was so unworthy of it.

‘The only person my half-brother would ever protect is himself—and if you don’t know that then you didn’t know him very well.’ His voice was harsh and unkind, its contempt making Julie wince as he added, ‘But then of course you did not know him, did you? How long does it take, after all, to perform the act that created your child? Five minutes? He couldn’t even remember your—’

Just in time Rocco caught himself back. It went against his own pride to tell her that Antonio hadn’t even been able to remember her name.

Thank goodness he had interrupted her when he had, Julie thought sickly. Otherwise she would have said James’s name. She had been so caught up in her grief, but she couldn’t do that—not until she had some kind of assurance from Rocco that they would be returned safely to London.

‘Dr Vittorio, our family doctor, is coming tomorrow morning to take swabs from the child for DNA testing. Whilst he is here I shall ask him to take a look at you.’

‘There is nothing wrong with me.’

The dark eyebrows slanted in ironic query. ‘You cannot climb a dozen stone steps without collapsing and you say there is nothing wrong with you? I beg to differ. Did you stay in touch with Antonio when you returned to England?’

The question was casual enough, but it made Julie’s heart bound in fear.

What exactly had Judy said about Antonio? Julie wondered frantically, trying to remember. Her sister had implied that she had told Antonio she was expecting Josh and he had not wanted to know. That was when she had decided to tell James that the baby she was carrying was his.

‘I informed him that I was carrying Josh, yes,’ Julie lied. ‘But he didn’t want to know.’ That at least was the truth.

‘And yet you have just claimed to me that he would have wanted to love and protect his child?’

‘As its father, I would hope he would have wanted to do that,’ she felt forced to say—even though the truth was that she had been talking about James, who had loved Josh so much, not Antonio.

‘As I have already told you, if the child turns out not to be my brother’s then you will be compensated for your time and the disruption caused to your life. You will be asked to sign a confidentially agreement never to discuss the matter with anyone—for which you will be paid.’