Modern Romance Collection: March 2018 Books 1 - 4. Cathy Williams

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       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘WHAT CAN I bring you for le petit dejeuner, madame?’

      Her eyelids feeling as heavy as lead, Nicole sat down at the table which had been laid up for breakfast on the terrace, momentarily dazzled by the crystal and silver which gleamed in the early morning sunshine. The air was warm with the combined scent of jasmine and strong coffee and Veronique was gazing at her expectantly.

      ‘We have bread and croissants, madame,’ the housekeeper continued. ‘Though Signor Barberi has reminded chef that it is the English way to eat a cooked breakfast—should you wish for bacon and eggs.’

      Nicole smiled, even though smiling was the last thing she felt like doing. Pulling a face full of remorse would surely be more appropriate in the circumstances. After a restless night haunted by disturbing dreams she had woken up amid sex-scented sheets, revelling in the delicious glow of her body until the heart-sinking moment when she’d remembered exactly what had made it feel that way. Or rather, who.

      An image of her unzipping Rocco’s jeans and caressing him intimately rushed into her head and her cheeks burned as, hastily, she put on a pair of sunglasses and pulled her coffee towards her, wishing that last night wouldn’t keep flooding back in a conflicting rush of hungry and humiliating memories. Her cheeks burned as she recalled the way she had welcomed her husband into her body with an urgency which had taken her by surprise—startled her in the discovery that her desire for him was stronger than ever. And that had puzzled her. Because at the tail end of their marriage, hadn’t she resigned herself to the fact that she no longer wanted Rocco anywhere near her?

      And he hadn’t wanted her either, had he? They had pushed each other away in every sense of the word. She watched the breeze tugging at the pink petals of the roses at the centrepiece of the table and tucked her hair behind her ears. Last night shouldn’t have happened but there was nothing she could do about it now. She couldn’t wind back the clock and wish she’d suggested Rocco take a hike when he’d wandered into her bedroom—uninvited—and told her to undress.

      But her sexual gymnastics had left her with a ravenous appetite and hungrily Nicole eyed the dish of iced peaches before looking up at the housekeeper. ‘I’d love some poached eggs,’ she said. ‘With wholemeal toast, if that’s possible.’

      ‘D’accord, madame.’

      After Veronique had gone, Nicole ate some fruit and watched the expensive yachts bobbing in the exclusive harbour until the housekeeper returned with the rest of her breakfast. She was busy dipping a rectangle of toast into the runny yolk of an egg and oblivious to the presence of anything else when a shadow fell over the table and she looked up to see Rocco standing there, obviously fresh from the shower. His black hair was curling in shiny tendrils around his neck and his jaw looked newly shaved. Unjacketed, his ice-blue shirt contrasted with the much darker hue of his eyes and those exquisitely cut trousers emphasised his long legs. Her breakfast forgotten, Nicole stared up at him and all that blatant masculinity so early in the morning began to do worrying things to her pulse-rate.

      ‘Rocco!’ she accused. ‘Do you always make a habit of creeping up on people like that?’

      ‘I move quietly, tesoro. It is in my nature. It’s only because you’re so damned jumpy that you react like that,’ he drawled, drawing out a chair opposite her and lowering himself onto it.

      Nicole put her toast back on the plate because eating had suddenly lost its allure. Those thighs, she thought with unwilling hunger, unable to forget their tensile power as he’d driven into her last night. She grabbed her napkin and blotted it over her lips. ‘Maybe it’s just you who has that effect on me.’

      He leaned across the table to pour himself a cup of coffee. ‘Should I be flattered?’

      She met his gaze. ‘What do you think?’

      He shrugged. ‘I never know what to think where you’re concerned, Nicole. Take last night, for example. One minute you’re hot for me and the next as cold as ice. You are something of an...enigma.’

      She gave a short laugh. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. The man who never talks about his feelings.’

      ‘Because that is not my way,’ he said, lifting the cup to his lips and sipping from it. ‘You know that. It has never been the way of Barberi men.’

      Nicole pushed her plate away. That much was true. She thought about his grandfather, the man who had helped bring up Rocco and his siblings after their parents had been killed in the dramatic speedboat accident which had been splashed across the front pages of the world’s press. She remembered the day she had arrived at the family complex just outside Palermo, fresh from her honeymoon and slightly daunted at meeting the patriarch of Sicily’s most powerful clan for only the second time since her wedding. Very quickly she’d discovered that the revered elder was as uptight as Rocco about expressing his feelings. She’d thought his lack of warmth was because Turi was an old-fashioned man who would have preferred his golden-boy heir to have married a Sicilian woman with an equally elevated status.

      Yet despite the barriers she’d encountered, Nicole had been determined to overcome them and make a good impression. She’d wanted to fit in, no matter what it took, because she’d wanted to make a proper family home for her new husband and their baby. She had spent most of her American honeymoon—when she wasn’t being sick—trying to learn as much Italian as possible in order to impress her new family and especially Rocco’s grandfather. But everything had seemed so new and strange and different when she’d arrived in Sicily. She had felt like a lonely outsider in the huge and sprawling house with nothing much to do all day and nobody to talk to. Rocco had buried himself in work and Turi had spoken only in dialect so that they had barely been able to communicate with each other. Like grandfather, like grandson, she remembered thinking. Maybe her mistake had been to expect anything different. To think that the orphaned nobody who had mopped floors could ever have been considered suitable.

      And it was weird. Rocco spoke of her inability to discuss her feelings as if it were a character flaw, while for him it was simply something he accepted as a natural trait of Barberi men. Meanwhile, he showed no inclination to change. He was still concealing his feelings—if he had any—behind the weapons of blame and possession. He was a hugely СКАЧАТЬ