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

Julie nodded her head, fighting back her natural instinct to say that she did not want any money. The appropriate time to announce that would be once the DNA results were known.

‘And that is all?’ she pressed him. ‘There is nothing else? No further conditions?’

Rocco walked over to the bed and looked down at her.

‘If by that you are daring to imply that I or my brothers would want some kind of sexual payment from you, then let me tell you—’

A sudden wail from the cot had them both looking over to it.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Julie protested tiredly. ‘You’ve woken Josh.’

‘Stay where you are. Maria will attend to him.’

‘No. He’s my child.’

She was sliding her feet onto the floor, but Rocco was standing in front of her.

‘You are in no condition to look after him. Do you really want to risk dropping him again?’

It was a low blow, and it hurt, but to her relief Josh stopped crying and seemed to have gone back off to sleep.

Sleep. How she craved it herself right now.

‘It’s four o’clock. I suggest you try and get some sleep. Dr Vittorio will be here at ten to do the DNA tests. And, in answer to your question, no—there are no other conditions. All my brothers and I wish to do is fulfil our promise to our father to find Antonio’s child—if indeed such a child exists, and was not merely a figment of Antonio’s imagination. He was always very good at telling our father what he wanted to hear.’

Long after Rocco had gone Julie lay awake, staring up at the tented silk ceiling of her vast bed, her head aching with too many conflicting thoughts.

Family. What an emotive concept that was. She had always known that their parents preferred Judy, their firstborn, the clever, pretty and bright one, and that she had come a poor second in their affections. Not that they had ever been unkind to her. They hadn’t been like that. It was just that they had never been able to hide their joy and delight in Judy, or their mere tolerance of her.

She had craved the closeness of a loving family all through her childhood and her teenage years. She had thought she had found it with James, whom she had met during her time at university.

She had fallen in love with him, and she had loved his parents too, when he had taken her home with him to Newcastle to meet them. But then James had met Judy, and she had known immediately what was happening. Though the man Judy had stolen so easily had clearly not been dear to her, as she had cheated on James early into their relationship.

Judy had betrayed them both, but at least Julie still had Josh.

Had Judy and James and their parents lived Josh would have had a family—parents and grandparents, and a loving auntie in her—but they had not, and now all he had was her.

If he should prove to be Antonio Leopardi’s child then he would still have a large extended family, with uncles, aunts and cousins, and of course his grandfather.

Lying sleepless in the dark, Julie acknowledged that for Josh’s sake she should hope that he was a Leopardi.

‘WELL, although it can’t be confirmed, of course, until I have the results of the blood tests, I am reasonably confident from what you have told me that the cause of your current symptoms is a shortage of iron.’

Dr Vittorio’s diagnosis was delivered as he deftly released Julie’s arm from the pressure of the cuff he had put round it whilst he took blood samples from her. It left Julie feeling extremely relieved, but even more of a fraud than she had done before.

Her intention to be up early to prove to Rocco how competent and capable she was had been well and truly sabotaged when she overslept, waking only when Maria had arrived carrying a tray containing a formidably hearty breakfast and wearing an equally formidable expression. What was worse was that she had made it clear that she intended to stand over Julie until every last scrap of food had been eaten.

Julie could sense that Maria did not approve of her—and who could blame her, given what she must believe about her? To Maria she was a young woman who slept around and who didn’t even know who the father of her child really was.

However much Maria might disapprove of her, though, Julie could not fault her care of Josh.

Julie had been halfway through the poached eggs when Josh had woken up and started to cry, but before she had even had the chance to put down her knife and fork Maria had swung into action.

By the time Julie had finished her breakfast Maria had, under Julie’s anxiously protective watch, changed, fed, bathed and dressed Josh, whilst explaining in her hesitant English that she was a mother of five children, a grandmother of twelve and a great-grandmother of three. Julie was a convert to the efficacy of her maternal skills, and ready to do virtually anything to acquire Maria’s ability to soothe a fractious baby. Even more importantly and impressively, Maria had also managed to get Josh to feed steadily and happily.

‘It is because the little one know that I know what is right,’ Maria had told Julie firmly, when honesty had obliged Julie to confess how much she worried about Josh’s refusal to take all his feed.

‘He puts up the fuss because he is scared—because he knows that you are scared,’ Maria had unbent enough to tell her.

‘I just want to do what’s best for him,’ Julie had responded emotionally, so relieved to see Josh take all his bottle that she forgot that Maria’s loyalties would lie with Rocco Leopardi. ‘I love him so much.’

Maria’s watchful expression had softened a little then, and she had shaken her head, telling Julie calmly, ‘He knows that you love him. And he loves you. He watches for you all the time.’

They had exchanged tentative and cautious smiles, their relationship now on a shared footing of wanting to do their best for Josh.

What with wanting to make the most of the unexpected opportunity to get some valuable baby-raising tips from an expert, and the pleasure of watching Josh lying kicking and gurgling happily on his changing mat—a totally different baby from the fretful child she was used to—Julie hadn’t realised what time it was until Maria had reminded her, pointing out that the doctor would soon be arriving.

Realising that she only had half an hour to shower and dress, Julie had nodded her head gratefully when Maria had offered to take charge of Josh and take him downstairs with her so that Julie could get ready speedily.

Dr Vittorio had been shown up to her room at ten on the dot by Rocco, who had introduced them and then said that Maria would bring Josh back upstairs for his DNA test once the doctor had let Rocco know that he was ready.

When Rocco had described Dr Vittorio as their family doctor Julie had anticipated that he would be an older man, not someone who at the most was only in his very early thirties, a similar age to Rocco himself, although thankfully with a very different and kinder personality.

His kindness and his excellent English had put her completely at her ease.

So much so, in fact, that now that he had given her his early diagnosis of the cause of her symptoms she was able to shake her head and marvel in relief, ‘Is that all? I felt so dreadful that I was beginning to worry it could be something serious.’

‘Anaemia is serious,’ Dr Vittorio told her firmly. ‘Rocco tells me that you have not been eating?’

‘He has only known me a matter of hours, so how he can think he has the right to make that kind of assumption about me?’ Julie began heatedly—only to stop self-consciously when she remembered that Dr Vittorio was the Leopardi family’s doctor, and that meant his allegiance would be to them, and with it his sympathy.