‘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.
Julie fumed as Rocco carried Josh through into the nursery, leaving her to drop his leather coat onto her bed and hurry after him, protesting, ‘There’s no need for you to do that. You might wake him up.’
He was still ignoring her, laying Josh on his changing table with unexpected expertise and then efficiently removing his outdoor suit. Josh slept on obliviously.
‘Perhaps you’d like to check his nappy and change him as well?’ Julie suggested sarcastically.
‘What I’d like is to feel that he’s got someone in his life who takes a responsible attitude towards his care. But right now, much as I’d like to think that, I can’t,’ Rocco told her pointedly.
Guilt and pride warred with one another inside Julie’s heart. She hated having her care of Josh questioned, but at the same time she was guiltily aware that she had allowed herself to be blinded by her own stubborn determination not to let Rocco dictate to her what she could and could not do.
‘If anything had happened to Josh I’d never have forgiven myself,’ she admitted in a low, tortured voice, her guilt and honesty winning the battle.
Rocco hid his surprise at her admission. Somehow it was out of character for the kind of woman he knew her to be—and yet, if he was honest, this wasn’t the first time in their short acquaintanceship when she had surprised him and challenged his perceptions of her. Nor the first time either that she had driven him to the point where she had tested his self-control way beyond its normal limits, he admitted—and not just the self-control that governed his temper. He was still battling to deny the extent to which she aroused him sexually—and failing, as his body was telling him very clearly right now.
How was it possible for him to want a woman he could only despise? A drowned rat of a woman who ricocheted between stubborn folly, aggressive antagonism and the kind of passionately intense sexual response to him that his head told him had to be manufactured, given her history, but that this body swore was the adult version of being a child let loose in a sweet shop.
Deftly, Rocco slid Josh into his cot and covered him up.
‘Maria said to tell you that she’s making you a special dish of liver cooked to her special recipe for dinner, along with a good helping of spinach. Or perhaps I should have said warn you,’ he told Julie dryly.
Maria had taken the doctor’s dietary suggestions for Julie to heart, with the result that iron-rich meat and greens had been served to her at every meal since the doctor’s visit apart from at breakfast, when she was served her iron in the form of eggs.
Julie managed a wan smile. ‘I was hoping to persuade Maria that cannelloni filled with spinach and ricotta cheese would be just as beneficial.’
‘You need to get out of those wet clothes.’