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The car, long, shiny and expensive, was parked beneath a streetlight, and she could see quite plainly the contemptuous look in the slightly hooded golden-amber eyes as he turned towards her. The eyes of a predatory hunter. Leopard’s eyes.
‘Antonio was my half-brother, not my brother. He was Sicilian, therefore this child—his child—is also Sicilian, and as such is entitled to his inheritance. That is the law of our blood and our family.’
The whole sentence was seamed with warnings as dark and ancient as Sicily’s own history, but initially it was the first three words he had spoken that Julie focused on.
‘Antonio was Sicilian?’ she repeated. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means exactly what it always means when one speaks of a person’s life in the past tense,’ Rocco told her curtly. ‘My half-brother—your lover, the child’s father—is dead. However, whilst the Leopardi family does not have another Antonio, and most certainly will not supply you with a replacement lover—’ another even more derisory look, designed to strip whatever pride she might have left from her much in the same manner that one of his ancestors might have ordered that a criminal be flayed alive, followed the first one ‘—it does take its responsibilities towards those of its blood very seriously.’
She was almost mentally and emotionally numb now, as well as numb with cold, and the hardship of these last months was abruptly taking its toll on her. It was hard to remember now that she had ever been a confident, successful young woman, with a promising career in local government in front of her—never mind that it was less than six months since she had been smartly turned out, well fed, a stone heavier, with glossy hair and a growing circle of new acquaintances, sharing a comfortable apartment with three other young female graduates who, like her, had jobs in local government.
The thought of sharing the responsibility for the safe upbringing of the child she loved so much with a proper family, with a man with shoulders broad enough to carry that weight easily and safely, filled her with unexpected relief. How much easier all those decisions that would need to be made down through the years would be if there were others to share them with her, for her to turn to, others who—unlike James’s sister—would not reject her nephew.
Rocco Leopardi might not reject Josh, but he was making it plain what he thought of her, and instinctively Julie wanted to defend herself and refute his accusations. She began to say indignantly,
‘But I am not—’ and then wondered if it would be wise to tell him that she was not Josh’s mother. He might have given her his word that she and Josh would not be separated, but that word had been given to her as Josh’s mother, not his aunt—even if, as his aunt, she was also his legal guardian. Julie had no idea why she felt the need to conceal her true relationship to Josh, only that instinctively somehow she did.
‘You’re not what? Distraught at the thought of Antonio’s death? No, I can see that,’ Rocco observed as he held open the car door for her to get in. ‘But then it was hardly a long-standing relationship that you had with him, was it?’
As she sank into the luxury of the blissfully comfortable seat Julie dipped her head, knowing that she now had to either accept his insults or confess that she wasn’t Josh’s mother.
‘What happened to…to Antonio?’ Julie had no idea why she was asking. She had not even known the man, after all, even if the news of his death had come as a shock.
‘He died as he lived,’ Rocco told her curtly. ‘Believing that nothing and no one mattered apart from himself.’
Now Julie looked at him, taken aback by the contempt she could see in his gaze.
‘He was showing off, driving a car he did not have the skill to control far too fast.’
Judy had said that she and Antonio were two of a kind, and from what Rocco had just told her it sounded as if she had been right, Julie acknowledged.
‘However, if the child is of our blood,’ Rocco continued curtly, ‘then no matter how carelessly he was conceived he is of us—a part of us, Leopardi.’
Instinctively Julie wanted to tell him that there was no way Josh could be a Leopardi, and that it was James who was his father. She had been so determined to believe that Josh was James’s son that she was still in shock from the sudden appearance of Rocco Leopardi, with his unwanted reminder that not even her sister had known just who Josh’s father was.
The look in the leopard eyes whilst he had been speaking had been all fiercely proud severity and intent. He really meant what he was saying, Julie recognised. His words revealed to her the centuries-old proud belief of a family who prized their blood and honoured their responsibility towards it above everything and everyone else.
It was slowly beginning to sink in for her just what it would mean if Josh was Antonio Leopardi’s son. A part of her wanted to state that she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Antonio could not be Josh’s father—but, even if Rocco Leopardi would accept that claim, how much damage might she be doing to Josh if she were to deny him his right to a heritage that might be his?
It was his need and his well-being that she must put first from now on, until the day came when he was old enough to make such a decision for himself. After all, she loved him for himself equally as much as she loved the thought of him being James’s son.
Just as she could not and must not refuse to go to Sicily and reject whatever financial advantage for Josh that visit might bring about, so equally she must not deny the fact that he could be, as Rocco Leopardi has so emotively put it, ‘of Leopardi blood’.
It was obvious that Rocco Leopardi did not know about her sister’s death and thought that she was Judy. Julie’s lips twisted in a small sad smile. If he had known her sister he would never have mistaken them. Both of them had disliked the fact that their parents had chosen such similar names for them, but it had been Judy who had complained about it most frequently when they had been growing up, stating that it was silly when they were so different and she was so much prettier and more popular than Julie.
‘What will happen wh
en we reach Sicily?’
‘Our family doctor will do a DNA test.’
‘But that could have been done here,’ Julie protested.
Ignoring her outburst, Rocco continued, ‘It will be at least five days before it is possible to have the results of this test. If it should prove that the child was fathered by Antonio then naturally that will mean that your son is part of our family.’
‘And if they do not prove that?’ Julie asked huskily, unable to bring herself to look at him as she made what she knew in Rocco Leopardi’s eyes would be an admission of her lack of morals.
Rocco frowned. Her behaviour was not what he had ex¬ pected. He had anticipated that her manner would be more coy—cloyingly so—with many protestations of love for Antonio and her conviction that her child must be his half-brother’s. It seemed out of character that she should talk so openly about the possibility of the child not being Antonio’s.
