The soup—lobster bisque—smelled heavenly. Julie couldn’t remember the last time she had sat down to eat any kind of meal, never mind one like this, with beautiful napery and china, silver cutlery and Michelin-star-type food.
Russell was pouring them both a glass of wine. Julie looked at hers a little uncertainly. She wasn’t a big drinker and, given that she hadn’t eaten all day, alcohol on an empty stomach might not be a good idea.
‘I dare say your tastes run more to Cristal?’ Rocco said, seeing her expression and mistaking its cause.
Julie didn’t bother to respond. She doubted he would believe her if she were to tell him that she had never even tasted Cristal champagne.
The soup was delicious, but very rich—too rich, Julie suspected, for her digestive system, which was more accustomed to baked beans on toast and porridge: cheap, filling food that somehow she never seemed to get the time to finish eating.
She took a quick sip of her wine and then wished she hadn’t, when the alcohol went straight to her head.
If she was trying to impress him with her make-up-free face, and by wearing something that enveloped her from the neck virtually down to her ankles, she was wasting her time, Rocco thought grimly.
For one thing the bathrobe was gaping, so that every time she lifted her soup spoon he could see a bit more of the vulnerable curve of her throat and the soft pale skin below it, where her breasts lifted against the thick toweling, and for another he already had a perfectly recorded image of her standing naked beneath the shower imprinted on his memory.
The soup was good. Julie lifted another spoonful to her mouth and then paused, listening as she turned her head in the direction of the open bedroom door.
‘Josh is awake,’ she told Rocco, putting her spoon down. ‘I’d better go to him. He might be hungry.’
‘You’ve only just fed him,’ Rocco pointed out as he too heard the thin, fretful cry from the bedroom.
‘He’s had a digestive problem which means that he needs small, regular feeds,’ Julie told him.
Rocco frowned as he listened to her. ‘Perhaps,’ he pointed out, ‘if you were less concerned about preserving your admittedly exceptionally well-shaped breasts and were feeding him as nature intended babies should be fed, he’d be more satisfied?’
Clearly her argument that she needed to work hadn’t registered. Julie longed to tell him that his criticism was unfounded, but how could she without revealing the fact that she was not Josh’s mother?
An unfamiliar feeling gathered inside her in a tense ball. A mixture of self-consciousness—she wasn’t used to men commenting on the shape of her breasts—anxiety—she could hardly tell him why she wasn’t breastfeeding—and something that had nothing to do with either of those feelings but instead had rather a lot to do with the knowledge that he had seen her naked, had her body responding to that fact. She hurried into the bedroom, glad of an excuse to escape from the table and the unwanted proximity of Rocco Leopardi.
Josh’s fretful cry increased in volume the minute he saw her. At least now he recognised her and knew that she was the source of his food, Julie acknowledged, as she lifted him out of the travel cot. She’d have to ask Russell if she could use the galley to make Josh up a fresh bottle. She felt his nappy. He was dry and clean. She knew from experience that if she put him down he would get more upset and start to scream. Because Judy had often picked him up and then put him back down when he was hungry without feeding him? Her late sister had been the first to admit that she wasn’t maternal, and that she had found the responsibilities of motherhood an onerous and unwanted burden.
Holding him against her shoulder, Julie popped a dummy in his mouth and carried him back to the main cabin, where Russell was clearing away their soup bowls.
‘I need to make Josh a fresh bottle,’ Julie told him.
‘No problem,’ he assured her. ‘Everything is ready in the galley. I can’t hold back the lamb cutlets much longer, though.’
‘I don’t want to interrupt your meal,’ Julie told Rocco immediately. ‘Josh can wait until it’s been served, then I’ll go and feed him in the other cabin.’
Her comment about the baby was made so naturally that it was impossible to accuse her of trying to score points, but at the same time it so directly opposed the selfish, non-maternal character he’d assigned her it made Rocco frown. He didn’t like having his judgements challenged—especially when the person doing the challenging was himself.
‘I rather think that Russell was thinking about your dinner as much as mine,’ he told Julie succinctly, shaking his head as the steward reached for the wine bottle to refill his glass.
‘Oh.’ Julie smiled at the steward. A warm, natural smile that lit up her pale and thin face, illuminating it with the illusion—or was it the past shadow?—of a delicate, piquant beauty. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’m not really hungry.’
Russell nodded and headed back towards the galley.
He had just disappeared inside it when Josh spat out his dummy, his face creasing up as he started to cry.
‘You’d better sort his food out,’ Rocco announced. He had to raise his voice slightly over the sound of Josh’s cries, and he wasn’t looking very pleased.
Josh was probably getting on Rocco Leopardi’s nerves, Julie thought, hugging the baby even more protectively. He was the kind of man—rich, powerful and no doubt spoiled—who wasn’t used to having his wishes or himself taking second place to anything or anyone. No doubt when he had children they would be presented to their father only when he wished them to be. It would be someone else who would be there for the sleepless nights, the colic, and all the other exhausting aspects of parenthood.
He was the kind of man who would enjoy creating his children, though.
The thought slipped past the gates that should have barred it. Then, like a serpent, once it was there on the fertile ground from which it had been banished it luxuriated in its freedom and soon found a willing accomplice to listen to its dangerous story in the shape of a female instinct Julie hadn’t even known she possessed until now.
It struck too swiftly for her to escape its deadly venom. One minute she was picturing Rocco Leopardi as a selfish father—the next she was imagining him as an arrogantly sensual lover, wanting to impregnate his woman, wanting to make his mark on the future via the creation of a child that would carry his genes into that future with it.
Inside her head she could see the face of the woman, and in it her intense pleasure—her face.
Shock gripped her body in a violent tremor.
‘I’ll go through to the galley and sort out Josh’s bottle,’ Julie said, desperate to get away from Rocco even whilst she calmed her frantic thoughts. They ricocheted around inside her head in every direction in their flight to escape from what she had ‘seen’.
Turning on her heel, she bolted for the galley, her heart jumping inside her chest in a panicky, unsteady rhythm that made her feel slightly sick.
‘I’m really sorry about this,’ she apologised to the steward as he looked up at her, ‘but I think Josh is getting on Rocco’s nerves. I thought I’d better come and do his bottle.’ As she spoke she was measuring out the formula with practised ease, whilst holding Josh.
‘No worries,’ Russell reassured her calmly.
The lamb cutlets he was just sliding onto a serving dish decorated with wilted radicchio and mint leaves, before ornamenting them with white frilled ‘caps’, looked and smelled delicious, but Julie’s anxiety about Josh had killed her appetite. She just hoped he would take his feed this time, and not have another attack of colic.
Josh was still crying when she carried him back to the bedroom, where she settled herself