Pride: Captive At The Sicilian Billionaire's Command

‘It is too cold,’ Maria told her immediately.

‘The sun’s out,’ Julie protested.

‘We have a wind here that slices into the flesh like a knife,’ she warned Julie. ‘On one side of the island even the vines and lemon trees have to be cut close to the ground to protect them from it. Here we might be on the most favoured part of the coast, where the nobility built their fine summer villas so that they could enjoy the summer breeze away from the heat of their estates, but it is still not warm enough for any walking. Besides, you would have to ask Rocco for his permission, and he is not here.’

Immediately Julie could feel herself stiffening in angry resentment at the thought of having to ask Rocco Leopardi’s permission for anything. It was bad enough that she had to accept his charity by living under his roof, eating his food, and worst of all wearing the clothes that he had paid for. She was not going to let him control her by forcing her to ask him for permission to do something as ordinary as go for a walk, Julie told herself firmly, instantly and rebelliously making up her mind that taking Josh for a walk was exactly what she was going to do.

It might not have been quite as easy as she had imagined to get the buggy—a solid affair, which was heavier than she had expected—down all the stairs, but Julie possessed an obstinacy that would not allow her to give up. Even though virtually all the good work done by the iron tablets had been undone by the time she had got the buggy down to the ground floor. Her heart was racing and thumping, and the horrible sense of needing to lie down was back, but she wasn’t going to give in. She still had to go back upstairs to get Josh after all.

Ten minutes later, as she pushed the buggy along a dirt road towards the grove of citrus trees up ahead of her, Julie admitted that the wind was colder than she had expected. Josh, though, at least was securely protected from it, carefully wrapped up in several layers of warm clothes and tucked up securely in the buggy. She was not so fortunate, having come out in one of the fine wool skirts that filled the wardrobes of her bedroom. It was off white, and worn with a beautiful grey Italian knitted top and a pair of buttersoft steel-grey leather shoes with a small heel, but she was without a coat, having been deceived by the sunshine and by the warmth generated from her exertions with the buggy into thinking it was a lot warmer than it actually was. The sun was warm, but the wind, once she had left the protection of the courtyard, cut into her like a knife—just as Maria had predicted that it would.

Only her stubborn determination not to be dictated to any more than she had to be kept her from turning back—that and the fact that Josh was smiling happily, so obviously enjoying the outing that she didn’t have the heart to take him back.

She’d only intended to go as far as the citrus grove, but what she hadn’t bargained for was the fact that the land sloped down to it, so that once she turned round to come back she had to walk uphill, buffeted by the wind that had now blown clouds up out of nowhere to fill the sky and blot out the sun.

The effort she was having to make to push the heavy buggy along the muddy track should have warmed her up, but strangely it seemed to be having the opposite effect of making her shiver.

She felt the first spot of rain at the same time as she realised she had walked a lot farther than she had thought and was still a good half an hour away from the villa, judging from her current frustratingly slow rate of progress. By the time she had pulled up the hood of the buggy and fastened on the protective waterproof cover it was raining quite hard, and the buggy, which might have travelled at speed on tarmac or proper pavements, was difficult to push on a dirt track that was rapidly turning into muddy puddles.

How could it have gone so cold in such a short space of time? The rain felt like ice, reminding her of London and the cold winter they had just endured, especially now that the storm clouds had grown so heavy that it almost seemed dark. Mount Etna, whose snow-capped summit she had admired only that morning through the windows of the villa, was now wreathed in a mist of ominously grey cloud.

It was too late now to wish that she hadn’t given in to that foolish surge of rebellious defiance.

Her head was bent into the wind as she pushed the buggy, whilst her body shivered and her heart pounded with the sick exhaustion that was draining her of energy. And Julie didn’t even know that she wasn’t alone anymore until she saw the dark male hands on the buggy’s handles next to her own.

‘Rocco!’

Did Rocco hear the relief in her voice beneath the angry guilt? If he did he wasn’t saying so. The look in his eyes as she turned her head to glance uncertainly up at him was one of incensed biting disapproval.

She was trapped between him and the buggy, but the warmth coming off his body felt so blissful that she didn’t feel inclined to object.

‘Here—put this on,’ he told her, thrusting a thick leather jacket over her shoulders. His own jacket, Julie recognized, as she caught the scent of him on it. He didn’t wait for her to obey him, but instead pulled the jacket round her and removed one of her hands from the buggy to push it into the sleeve, whilst holding securely on to the buggy himself with his free hand.

‘You need this yourself,’ Julie protested, realising now that he had turned her to face him that he hadn’t brought the jacket with him, but had removed it from his own body.

He shook his head, ignoring her protest. The rain was coming down so heavily now that it had already plastered the fabric of his shirt to his body, revealing the outline of the solidly muscled torso beneath it.

‘What is it with you?’ he demanded furiously, raising his voice so that it would carry above the increasing noise of the fiercely buffeting wind. ‘You claim to love your child, and yet you do something like this—bringing him out here when you were warned that the weather isn’t suitable.’

Maria had obviously told him what she had said to her, Julie realised. ‘I wanted him to have some fresh air.’

‘Did you? He could have had that in the courtyard—in safety.’

‘He is safe.’

‘No thanks to you.’

That was too much.

‘I would never put Josh at risk. He’s wrapped up and warm.’

‘And in your care. And you are suffering from a debilitating illness that doesn’t allow you enough strength to climb a flight of stairs without the risk of passing out, never mind go for a walk in these conditions.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Julie protested. ‘I’ve been a lot better since I’ve been taking the iron tablets.’

‘A lot better?’ She could hear the derision in his voice. ‘I watched you just now—you were so exhausted that you could hardly put one foot in front of the other, never mind anything else. What is it with you British that you have this need to trudge over every landscape even when common sense must tell you that it is inhospitable?’

‘I don’t know—probably the same level of gene that makes Leopardi men so bossy and arrogant,’ Julie was stung into retorting.

All the time he had been hectoring her they had been walking back towards the villa, with Rocco pushing the buggy and making much better progress than she had done as she struggled to keep up with him.

‘You claim that you are better,’ Rocco told her, ignoring her comment about his arrogance and returning instead to a subject that obviously suited him much better since it involved criticising her, Julie thought darkly as he continued, ‘Look at you now. You are struggling to cover a few yards. Don’t bother denying it. And what the hell were you about, coming out without a coat?’

‘What’s wrong?’ Julie yelled at him, her self-control snapping. ‘Are you worried that I might have ruined the expensive clothes you paid for?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You should know perfectly well that my concern isn’t for a few pieces of cloth. Your child is my concern—just as he should be yours. Didn’t you stop to think what might happen if you collapsed, or how long the pair of you might be out here? You’ve seen how the weather has turned. You must be able to feel the force of the wind.’

Julie could only nod her head in grudging admission of the truth of his words.

‘If this wind had caught the buggy it could quite easily have turned it over. The pair of you would have been lucky to get away with pneumonia—if fate had been less kind you could have died.’

Rocco wasn’t going to tell her just how he had felt when he had come back from a site meeting earlier than he had planned to discover that she and Josh were missing—only to learn from Maria that Julie had been talking about going out for a walk.

Rocco had no idea what had made him check the track that led to the lemon grove first, but she was damned lucky that he had.

He was furiously angry with her for putting at risk all the effort he had gone to to get her and Josh here and thus start to fulfil his part of the responsibility he and his brothers had taken on. A prize fool he would have looked if something had happened to her and the child whilst they were in his care. And if Josh did turn out to be Antonio’s child then there was no doubt that his father would have accused him—totally without any foundation or truth—of being only too glad that Josh had not survived.

Rocco could feel his heart thudding with a mixture of anger and relief. Relief that he had found them and anger because he had had to come and do so.

‘What the hell did you want to go out for anyway? No, let me guess—you were bored and missing your normal way of life. Well, you won’t find the kind of party scene that you like so much, nor the men that go with it, here.’

‘I wasn’t looking for any party scene or any man,’ Julie denied. ‘In fact a man is the last thing I want.’

They were back, and she was exhausted. Exhausted and sick with the fear instilled in her by Rocco’s far too graphic descriptions of what might have happened to Josh. Despite accepting that she was at fault, somehow she was still so angry at him that her anger was virtually all that was keeping her on her feet.

It was Rocco who now removed Josh, who had miraculously fallen fast asleep and stayed that way, from his buggy, and Rocco who carried him upstairs to the nursery—whilst Julie trailed behind him, willing herself to find the strength to make it to the bedroom. Josh looked so small clasped against Rocco’s shoulder—and so safe.

‘You’d better take this,’ Julie told Rocco ungraciously, removing his jacket and holding it out to him at arm’s length as she informed him, ‘I’ll take Josh.’

‘I may as well put him in his cot, since he’s asleep.’

He was refusing to give Josh to her? Why? What did he think she was going to do? Drop him?

‘He can’t go in his cot like that. He’s wearing an outdoor all-in-one suit.’

‘Yes, but presumably it comes off?’

Rocco wasn’t even bothering to wait for her response, or to give her demand even a second’s proper consideration. He was ignoring her, just as though she had no say at all in what was best for Josh.