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

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 successful man with a massive global influence, who examined business opportunities in the most minute of detail. He was prepared to bring her out here in order to facilitate a deal, yet he was able to ignore the deep, dark hole at the centre of their marriage and make as if it had never happened.

      He was acting as if they had never created a baby together. As if that brief little life had never existed.

      Her heart contracted with pain and suddenly Nicole knew that she couldn’t carry on not knowing. Maybe that was why this whole relationship felt so...unfinished. She recognised now that she must shoulder some of the blame, because she had run away rather than face up to their issues. But she was here now, wasn’t she? Maybe it needed to be resolved once and for all before either of them could have true peace. Was it that which gave her the courage to come right out and say it? The sense that she would never get the answers she sought unless she pushed for them, no matter how painful that might be?

      She removed her dark glasses and looked at him. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting back in the chair. ‘We’ve both accused the other of never discussing our true feelings—’

      ‘I don’t remember putting it exactly like that,’ he said.

      ‘You called me an enigma,’ she pointed out. ‘So why don’t we agree to ask each other a question and then answer it truthfully? No excuses—and no getting out of it.’

      ‘You’re proposing some kind of party game?’

      ‘Don’t deliberately misunderstand me, Rocco. That’s not what it’s about.’

      His flattened lips indicated a lack of enthusiasm which bordered on contempt. ‘No? And the purpose of this interrogation is...what?’

      It was a bad sign he even had to ask but Nicole wasn’t going to back down now. She leaned across the table towards him. ‘Couldn’t you just do it, Rocco? Just this once. Just to humour me?’

      ‘Very well.’ He gave an impatient sigh. ‘As long as you are prepared to ask first.’

      How typical of him to say that! Nicole took a deep breath and started to speak and the words came rushing out before she had a chance to question the wisdom of saying them. ‘You only married me because I was pregnant, didn’t you?’

      There was a pause. ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

      She felt her heart twist as if someone were turning a corkscrew in her chest. She’d known that all along—so why did it hurt so much? Did hearing him say it mean she could no longer pretend that her brief marriage had been anything more than a sham?

      She was tempted to abandon the conversation but forced herself to continue. After all, they’d come this far—which was further than they’d ever come before. Why stop now? ‘Now you,’ she said, praying for him to address the subject they’d both shied away from for so long. She’d given him a lead by talking about her pregnancy—all he had to do was take it from there and confront the dark space which linked them both. ‘Your turn.’

      He took a sip of coffee before turning the full brilliance of his sapphire gaze on her. ‘That’s easy.’ His voice dipped into a seductive caress. ‘Did you enjoy last night?’

      Nicole blinked and stared at him in dismay, unable to believe he’d come out with something so...so...superficial. Was that the only thing which mattered to him? Sex? She swallowed. Maybe it was. Sex had been the thing which had brought them together and remained the only thing which united them.

      ‘You mean, was I satisfied?’ she demanded, her temper suddenly flaring. ‘Yes, of course I was. You’re very good at satisfying a woman, Rocco—but you don’t need me to tell you that.’

      It had been a mockery of a question and she suspected he’d asked it simply to even the score. To make him an equal player in this ‘game’—or maybe warn her against ever trying to do something like this in future. But his attitude infuriated her. Couldn’t he have done the bigger thing and asked her about something which mattered? No, of course he couldn’t—because Rocco Barberi didn’t do feelings. He acted like a machine and expected everyone else to do the same. And suddenly she knew she couldn’t let this opportunity go. She was going to say it, no matter how much it angered him, or how much it brought back the pain. Because she needed to say it.

      ‘You never talk about our child, Rocco.’

      She saw a shadow briefly cloud his face but if she’d been expecting heartache, or anger, or pain, or longing, or any of the dark stream of emotions which had dragged her down into the depths of despair so many times, then she was about to be disappointed. Because Rocco was putting his cup down on the saucer as calmly as if she’d just asked him how often it rained in Monaco, his rugged features as impassive as she’d ever seen them, his blue eyes their habitual shade of cold.

      ‘What is there to talk about?’ he questioned tonelessly. ‘It happened and there’s nothing we can do to change it. We both wish it hadn’t, but there you go.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more I can add