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

words echoed round in his mind as Rocco stood beneath the jets of the gushing shower, and he reluctantly realised Nicole had been right. They shouldn’t have done it. Because what purpose had it served? Okay, it had fed his desire—and hers—but they were supposed to be over, and divorcing couples didn’t keep having sex.

      He turned off the shower and towelled himself dry but once he’d dressed and gone downstairs he was surprised by a wave of emotion. He found himself thinking about the future and about what might happen when Turi died. Even if he survived this bout of illness, he couldn’t go on for ever. Nobody could. Rocco found himself asking what it was going to be like here once Turi had gone and why he’d never stopped to think about it before.

      Because Turi had always been there. A man who was larger than life—and you imagined that those kinds of men never died.

      But they did.

      He wondered if his siblings would turn to him and expect him to slip into the replacement role of patriarch? What if he told them he wasn’t interested in such a role? That he had already given as much as he was prepared to give to ensure the survival of the family?

      Was he in danger of overthinking matters because he’d been stirred up by Nicole’s presence here? And wasn’t he in danger of allowing her to skew his vision? Just because the sex had been dynamite, didn’t mean it couldn’t be as good with somebody else. His lips hardened with renewed resolve as he heard her light footstep on the stairs.

      Once she had returned to England everything would shake down. He could stop looking at his life and questioning it. He could start bedding women who didn’t mess with his head.

      He clenched his fists.

      Once she had gone.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      ‘DO YOU WANT me to stay?’ Rocco questioned as he pushed open the door of the sickroom.

      Nicole wasn’t sure what she wanted as she stepped into the shuttered room and gazed over at the inert body in the bed. Would Rocco be a comforting presence at her side, or a distraction? The latter, probably—especially after what had just happened back at the house. The sex which had just sort of happened and which had blown her away. Not because of his amazing technique, which had never been in question, but because of his unexpected tenderness which had made her heart want to burst with pleasure and break with sorrow, all at the same time. She was just about to politely tell him she’d be fine on her own when the figure in the bed spoke.

      ‘Leave us, Rocco.’

      Turi’s voice wasn’t as strong as Nicole remembered but it still wasn’t the kind of voice you ignored and she watched as his grandson gave a terse nod.

      ‘The nurse will be in the room next door, if you need anything,’ Rocco said. ‘Don’t wear yourself out, Nonno.’

      Turi lifted a wavering hand to indicate that he should cut short the lecture and leave. ‘Come,’ the old man said to Nicole, once the door had closed.

      Nicole approached the bed. The quietness and the dimness of the room reminded her of nursing her adoptive mother and at that moment she missed Peggy Watson very much. As she grew closer she could see that although age and sickness had diminished him, the faded blue eyes, which must once have been so like Rocco’s, were unexpectedly bright as the elderly patriarch gestured for her to sit down.

      ‘Turi,’ she whispered as she perched on a chair next to the bed and squeezed his gnarled old hand in hers. ‘I wish I could say I hope you’re feeling better, in dialect.’

      ‘I think we had better speak in English,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

      Nicole couldn’t hide her surprise and something in the way he said it made her suddenly want to get honest with him. Because if you couldn’t say what was really on your mind at times like this, then what was the point of anything? She remembered his refusal to use her native tongue when she’d arrived at the house—even rejecting her faltering attempts in Italian as he’d insisted on conversing in Sicilian dialect. ‘Unlike before,’ she said quietly.

      He nodded in agreement. ‘That was foolish of me. I recognise that now. I wanted you to integrate fully with life here and I thought that imposing a tough regime from the beginning was the way to do it.’ He gave a croaky little sigh. ‘I wanted so much, but none of it happened the way it was supposed to. I handled it wrong. Just like I handled Rocco all wrong.’

      Nicole felt a frown pleating her brow. ‘What do you mean, Nonno? What did you do wrong with Rocco?’

      His voice gained more strength as he began to speak. ‘Did he ever speak to you of his childhood?’

      She shook her head. ‘Never. He used to shut all my questions right down and make me feel bad about asking them. It was only very recently that he talked about his parents.’

      Turi’s eyes were inquisitive. ‘You know he was only fourteen when they died?’

      She nodded. ‘Yes, I knew that much.’

      ‘His brother was nine, his sister only five and the little ones, they were...’ The old man blinked his rheumy eyes rapidly. ‘They were broken,’ he said at last, clearing his throat. ‘I was trying to do it all. My wife was no longer alive and I had the business to run—as well as the younger children to cope with. I leaned on Rocco too much. I see that now. I told him...’

      Nicole leaned forward as his words faded away. ‘What, Nonno? What did you tell him?’

      He indicated she should plump up the bank of pillows behind his head, and once she’d done so he lay back on them and continued. ‘I told him that the younger children would look to him for strength and that was what he needed to show them. To keep his head down and work hard and carry on, no matter what—because that would hold the family together. To follow my example and never cry or show his feelings. And he didn’t. He learned his lesson well. Too well, perhaps.’

      To never show his feelings. A painful breath escaped Nicole’s lips because didn’t Turi’s words explain so much about the man she had married? Why he could appear so distant. Why he had the ability to bury himself in his work, no matter what was going on around him. Was that why he hadn’t reacted as she’d thought he might when she’d had the miscarriage? Why he’d never really talked about it—not even when they’d been having that heart-to-heart in Monaco, when she’d given him every opportunity to do so. ‘Yes, he did,’ she said slowly. ‘But then, I imagine that Rocco must have been an exemplary student in everything he undertook.’

      ‘Not once did I see a tear fall,’ Turi added shakily. ‘At least, not then.’

      Nicole narrowed her eyes as he held her gaze. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered. ‘Not then?’

      There was a pause. ‘When you left, he was heartbroken.’

      Angrily, Nicole shook her head. Turi might be old and sick but even he couldn’t convince her of that. Heartbroken? Never in a million years. Rocco had pushed her away and no mistake. She remembered him taking a trip to the States when she’d most needed him, weeks after it had happened, when she’d still been mired in her own sense of misery.

      But she hadn’t told him that, had she? She hadn’t really known how and he hadn’t seemed to want her to.

      She’d put his emotional distance down to the fact that he’d been forced to marry her and once there wasn’t going to be a baby, there was no reason for the relationship to continue. Yet what Turi had told her made her look at it differently. Wouldn’t Rocco’s behaviour be more understandable if he’d been schooled in the art of concealing his true emotions?

      No, she told herself fiercely. It wasn’t like that. Turi was an old man sentimentalising his past in a clumsy attempt to achieve some sort of peace towards the end of a long life. And she wasn’t going to buy into it—because hadn’t she