Bella Rosa Marriages: The Bridesmaid's Secret

CHAPTER SEVEN

I WAS pregnant.

Those words had the combined effect of a cold shower and a slap round the face for Romano. His arms dropped to his side and he stepped back.

She had to be joking, right? It had to be some unfathomable, Jackie-like test. He searched her face as she stood there with all the flexibility of an ironing board, her eyes wide and her mouth thin.

‘You mean…you…and I…?’

She bit her lip. Nodded.

Now, Romano was a man who usually liked to indulge in the elegant use of language, but at that moment he swore loudly and creatively. Jackie flinched.

He looked at her stomach. After making that dress he knew her measurements to the millimetre, had crafted it to hug them. There was no hint. Fewer curves, even, than when he’d…than when they’d…

A million questions flooded his mind, all of them half finished. And then the awful truth hit him.

‘You had a…You lost it?’ he said, unable to work out why a solid wall of grief hit him as he uttered those words.

She shook her head, and the sorrow reared its head and became an ugly, spitting monster. He clenched his fists, spoke through his teeth.

‘You got rid of it?’

The look of pure horror on her face was more than enough of an answer. He didn’t need to hear the denial she repeated over and over and over. But that meant…

It couldn’t.

He’d never heard mention of a child…a family…in all the years he’d worked in the same gossip-fuelled industry as Jackie. She was a private person, sure enough, but could that fact have slipped by him unnoticed?

He turned in a circle but came back to face her.

Of course it could.

When had he ever been interested in colleagues’ pictures of pink-faced, scrunched-up newborns? He tuned out every single conversation about their children’s ballet recitals and football games, preferring to amuse himself with statistics of a different kind. Cup sizes, mainly.

He looked around his sunken garden, at the grotto, which now seemed less like a lovers’nest and more like a crime scene.

‘Romano?’

He looked back at her, confused. The soft, vulnerable expression she’d worn only moments ago had been replaced with something much harder.

‘You have a daughter,’ she said, voice as flat as if she’d been reading random numbers in the phonebook.

A baby? He had a baby?

He backed away, and, when he could go no further, sat down on a low, mossy wall.

No. Don’t be stupid. It had been such a long time ago. She was a girl by now. Almost a woman. He stood up again, suddenly fuelled by another revelation.

‘You kept this a secret from me? Why?’

There was a flicker of discomfort before Jackie resumed her wooden expression. ‘I tried, but—’she looked away ‘—it’s complicated. I’ll explain in a minute, when you’ve calmed down a bit.’

When he’d…?

This woman had been sent to test him to the limits. All these years she’d kept this from him. All these years she’d preferred to bring up their child on her own rather than involve him. Who gave her the right to make such decisions?

And why had she done it?

The answer was a sucker-punch, one from his subconscious: she hadn’t believed him ready or capable to take on that responsibility, hadn’t even entertained the thought he might be able to rise to the challenge. Just as she hadn’t deemed him worthy of her love. Inside his head something clicked into place.

‘Is that why you ended it? Refused to see me? Or take my calls?’

She inhaled. ‘No. I didn’t know then. I only realised…later.’

Then why hadn’t she told him later? The words were on his lips when he remembered he already knew the answer. He matched Jackie’s stance, returned ice with ice as he looked at her.

‘Where is she now?’ He looked to the terraced garden above them, back to the house. ‘Is she here?’ His stomach plummeted at the thought, not from a fear of being trapped, he realised, but in anticipation.

‘She’s in London.’

London. How many times had he been in that city over the last seventeen years? It was a massive place, with a population of millions, and the chances of having walked by her in the street were infinitesimal, but he was hounded by the idea he might have done just that.

‘Does she know about me? Does she know who her father is?’

At that question, the inscrutable Jackie Patterson wavered. ‘No.’

He closed his eyes and opened them again. Even though he’d had the feeling that would be her answer, it felt like a karate kick in the gut.

‘What about the birth certificate? You can’t hide it from her for ever. One day she’ll find out.’

To his surprise, Jackie nodded, but the words that followed twisted everything around again and sent him off in an even more confusing direction.

‘I didn’t tell anyone who her father was. Not even Mamma. The birth certificate has my name alone on it.’

Romano sucked in a breath. That was it, then. He was nothing more than an empty space on a form. All these years trying to prove himself, trying to get the world to understand he was something in his own right, and that was what this woman had reduced him to. An empty box.

Jackie came a little closer, but not so close that she was within touching distance. He didn’t have any more words at the moment, so he just looked at her. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her fingers so tense he could clearly see the tendons on the backs of her hands.

He came full circle again. ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why have you never told me?’

‘I thought I had.’

Her answer turned his pain into anger. And when he was angry his usual good humour became biting and sarcastic. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, aware that the set of his jaw was making it blindingly obvious he was anything but amused, ‘because I think I would have remembered that conversation.’

Jackie walked over to a low stone bench and sat down, staring at the floor. Reluctantly he followed, sensing that keeping close, pushing her, would be the only way to uncover more facts.

As he sat there staring at the fountain bubbling away she told a ridiculous story of lost letters, secret rendezvous and missed opportunities. She told him she’d waited at the farmhouse for him. Waited for him to turn up—and dash her hopes, he silently added, because, surely, that was what she’d expected.

‘Why didn’t you try to reach me again when I didn’t show up? You had no way of knowing if I’d been prevented from meeting you there.’

Jackie leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. For a long time the only sound she made was gentle, shallow breathing.

‘I wondered about that at first,’ she said through her hands, and then she sat up and looked at him. ‘I waited for hours, way past when I should have been back home. Just in case you were late. And I would have come back day after day until I saw you. I wanted to believe you were coming.’

The look of exquisite sorrow in her eyes tugged at him. It felt as if she were pulling at a knot of string deep inside him, a knot that was just about to work itself loose. He refused to relax and let it unravel.

‘I thought you knew me better than that, Jackie. If I’d got the letter, of course I would have come.’

She made a tiny little noise and he couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a snort. ‘And you would have done…what?’

‘I don’t know.’ He frowned. ‘We would have worked something out.’

Jackie stopped staring straight ahead and turned her whole body towards him. ‘You’re not saying that you would have stood by me?’

‘Yes.’

‘No!’ She blinked furiously. She spoke again, softer this time. ‘No.’

‘You can’t know that!’

He would have stood by her. He would have. At least that was what the man he was now wished he would have done.

‘Think about this, Romano! You’re saying you would have wanted to keep her, that you would have put a ring on my finger and we have had our own little teenage Happy Ever After?’

He looked deep inside himself, saw a glimmer of something he’d hoped he’d find. ‘Maybe.’

Instead of her laughing in his face, Jackie’s eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t let a single one fall, not even as her hands shook in her lap. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.You’re just daydreaming.’

He jumped up, started pacing. All this sitting around, keeping everything in, was far too British for him. He needed to move, to vent.

‘Is that so hard to believe? Am I that much of a disappointment?’

Jackie opened her mouth to answer, but there was a sudden rustling and the sound of voices further up the path. Without thinking about how or why—maybe it had been the memories of all that sneaking around in the past—Romano grabbed Jackie by the arm and manhandled her into the shelter of the grotto, silencing her protests with a stern look. This was one conversation neither of them wanted to have overheard.

He was close to her again now, pressed up against her, her back against the wall of the grotto. If they stayed in exactly this position they couldn’t be seen from most of the sunken garden. She was rigid, all of the soft sighing, the moulding into his arms, over and done with. Just as well. Any desire to fling with Jackie Patterson had completely evaporated.

But how much worse would it have been if she’d told him afterwards? She’d been right to put a stop to what had been going on. However, that one small mercy in no way balanced out her other sins.

‘It’s Lizzie and Jack,’ she mouthed at him, obviously recognising the voices.

He nodded and tilted his head just a little to get a better view, hoping that the happy couple weren’t looking in his direction. He was lucky. Bride and groom were too wrapped up in each other to spot an inconsistency in the shadows at the far end of the garden.

Lizzie laid her head against Jack’s shoulder and let out a loud sigh. He stroked her back, kissed her hair. Romano and Jackie weren’t the only ones who had needed a bit of fresh air. He hoped, however, that the newly-weds’ walk was going to turn out better than his had done.

Jack and Lizzie wandered briefly round the sunken garden, hand-in-hand, stopping every now and then to kiss, before moving on down the path towards the small beach.

Romano stepped out of the grotto as they disappeared out of view and stayed there, staring at the spot where he’d last seen a flash of white dress.

They seemed so happy.

From his short observation of the bride and groom, they were a wonderful complement for each other. They had so much to look forward to: their honeymoon, starting a new life together, raising the twins Lizzie was carrying and building their own little family.

He realised he was outrageously jealous, which surprised him. He’d never expected to want all of that. He’d got on quite well since the death of his mother without feeling part of a traditional family, and he’d never guessed he’d harboured a longing for it, preferring to keep his relationships light, his ties loose.

How ironic. He could have had it all along. He could have been the man in the morning suit looking captivated by his fresh-faced bride. He could have been the one looking forward to seeing his child born, to rocking her when she cried and, when she was older, scaring the monsters away from under her bed. But now, when he realised how much he wanted those things, those moments were gone, never to be salvaged. They’d been stolen from him by the woman steadying herself against the grotto wall with wide-spread hands, looking as much like an out-of-her-depth teenager as he’d ever seen her.

The sight drew no pity from him. He wouldn’t allow it. Instead he looked away.

Marry her? Have a Happy Ever After with her? Right at this moment it was the last thing he wanted to do. In fact if he never saw her again he’d be ecstatic. But that wasn’t an option. She was his sole link to his daughter. A daughter he could still hardly believe existed.

He spoke without looking at Jackie. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Kate,’ she said blandly.

Kate. Very English. Probably not what he would have chosen, given the chance. But he hadn’t been given the chance—that was the point. He wanted to shout, to punch, to…do something to rid himself of this horrible assault of feelings. Normally he could bat negative things away, dissolve them with a joke or distract himself—usually with something female and pretty—but this just wouldn’t go away and he didn’t know how to handle it.

Facts. Stick to facts.

‘Kate,’ he echoed. ‘Short for Katharine?’

She didn’t answer. He let out a rough sigh. How could she still be playing games with him after what she’d revealed? How did she have the gall to make him work for the answers?

Because she’s Jackie. She sets tests. You have to prove yourself to her over and over and even then she’ll never believe you.

He swivelled round and looked her in the eyes, knowing that the lava inside was bubbling hard, even though he was desperately trying to keep a lid on it. Instead he let its heat radiate in his stare, let it insist upon an answer.

She swallowed. ‘I suppose so. I’m not sure.’

Was a straight yes or no so hard to come by? Suddenly, it was all too much for him. He couldn’t do this now. He needed time to think, to breathe. One more of her cryptic answers and he was going to lose it completely.

‘Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll go.’

She looked shocked at that. He didn’t care why.

‘But don’t think you’ve heard the end of this,’he added. ‘You owe me more.And you can start paying tomorrow with answers. Facts. Details. Call them what you want, but I will have them.’

Jackie got over her surprise and pushed herself away from the wall of her grotto with her hands so she was standing straight. She fixed him with that flesh-melting stare he remembered so well. He refused to acknowledge the ripple of heat that passed over him in response.

‘Don’t you dare act all high and mighty about this, Signor Puccini! You and I both know you weren’t ready for fidelity and commitment back then.’

That lid he’d been trying to keep tightly on? It popped.

But he was aware Lizzie and Jack might well still be within earshot and he didn’t have the luxury of using the volume he would have liked to. He did the next best thing and dropped his voice to a rasping whisper.

‘You have no right to judge me. No right at all. You don’t know what I would have done, how I might have reacted. Who do you think you are?’

Jackie marched out of the grotto and for a moment he thought she was going to leave him standing there, all his anger unspent, but she got halfway up the garden and then turned back and strode towards him.

Of course. She always had to have the last word. Well, let her. It still wouldn’t make what she’d done right.

‘Who do I think I am? I’ll tell you who I think I am!’ Her face twisted into something resembling a smile. ‘I’m the poor, pathetic girl who waited at the farmhouse all afternoon for you, scared out of her wits, feeling alone and overwhelmed.’

She wasn’t making any sense.

‘You know I didn’t get your letter,’ he said. ‘You can’t blame that on me.’

She took her time before she answered, her eyes narrowing, faint glimmer of victory glittering there. ‘I saw you, Romano, that afternoon.’

Saw him? What was she talking about? He’d thought the whole point had been that he hadn’t turned up.

‘When I finally gave up waiting, I walked back up the track towards the main road, and that was when I saw you.’ She waited for him to guess the significance of her statement, but all he could do was shrug. ‘I saw you drive past on your Vespa with…her. With Francesca Gambardi!’

Ah.

He’d forgotten about that.

So that was the afternoon he’d finally given in to Francesca’s pestering, had agreed to take her out on his bella moto, as she’d called it, because he’d hoped her presence would make him forget the crater Jackie had left behind when he’d finally got the message she’d wanted nothing more to do with him.

It hadn’t been one of his finest moments. Or one of his best ideas.

And it hadn’t worked. Francesca hadn’t been enough of a distraction. Every time she’d looked at him, every time she’d brushed up against him, he’d only been plagued by the feeling that everything had been all wrong, that it should have been Jackie with her arms around his waist as they whipped through the countryside, that it should have been Jackie sidling up to him as they’d stopped to look at a pretty view. In the end, he’d taken Francesca home without so much as a kiss. A first for him in those days.

Jackie was way off base, thinking he’d had something going with Francesca, but he remembered how insecure, how jealous she’d been of the other girl, and he knew how it must have looked to her. But if she’d only asked, only would have deigned to talk to him, she would have known the truth. He’d acted foolishly, yes, but she hadn’t behaved with any more maturity.

‘And that was why you didn’t bother telling me you were carrying my child? Because you saw me with another girl on the back of my Vespa? Jackie, that’s a pathetic excuse.’

The smug look evaporated and she looked as if she’d been slapped across the face with the truth of his statement. Her jaw tensed. It didn’t take her long to regroup and counter-attack.

‘But I thought you’d read my letter, remember? I thought you knew I was pregnant, that I was waiting for you to discuss our future. And when you rode past the farmhouse—our special place—with that girl pressing herself up against you…well, it sent a message loud and clear.’

Okay, things might not be as black and white as he’d thought.

It was all so complicated, so hard to keep track of who knew what and when. Jackie had always been hot-headed and quick to judge and while he didn’t like her reaction to the situation he could understand it, understand it was the only way she could have acted in that moment. What he didn’t understand was why that one, unlucky coincidence, when he’d driven past with Francesca, had decided everything, had defined both their futures.

‘But you didn’t think to ask me? To find out for sure? Maybe not right then, when you were still angry, but what about the next month or the one after that? What about when the baby was born, or when you registered her? On her first birthday? On any of her birthdays? Hasn’t she asked questions? Doesn’t she want to know?’

Jackie just stared at him.

Maybe his daughter took after her mother. Maybe Jackie had brought her up to be as hard and self-obsessed as she was. Unfortunately he could imagine it all too easily. The elegant flat in one of the classier parts of London, the two of them being very sophisticated together, eating out, going to fashion shows. What he couldn’t imagine was them laughing, making daisy chains or having fun.

He sighed. Jackie had always been such hard work, had always kept him on his toes. What would it be like if he had two such women to placate? It would leave him breathless.

He’d drifted off, almost forgotten Jackie was there. Her voice pulled him out of his daydream…nightmare…whatever.

‘I did think of you when she was born, in the days following…’ She paused, made a strange hiccupping noise. ‘And don’t think that every birthday wasn’t torture, because it was. But by then it was too late. It had already been done. And I wouldn’t have turned back time if I could have done. It would have been selfish and wrong.’

His first reaction was to stoke his anger—she was talking in riddles again—but the weighty sorrow that had settled on her, making her shoulders droop, diluted his rage with curiosity.

‘What do you mean “it was too late”?’

Jackie looked up, puzzled. ‘She’d gone to her new family—the people who adopted her.’

The words didn’t sink in at first. He heard the sounds, even knew what they represented, but, somehow, they still didn’t make sense. He walked away from her, back towards the grotto and stuck his hand—shirtsleeves and all—into one of the chilly black pools, just because he needed something physical, something to shock his body and brain into reacting.

It worked all right. Suddenly his brain was alive with responses. Unfortunately, the temperature of the water had done nothing to cool his temper. He flicked the water off with his hands and dried them on the back of his beautifully crafted, mortgage-worthy suit.

‘You’re telling me that, rather than raise our daughter yourself, rather than telling me—her father—of her existence, that you gave her away to strangers? Like she was something disposable?’

He marched up to her, grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘Is that what it was like, Jackie? She didn’t fit into your nice, ordered plans for your life, so you just put her out of sight…out of mind?’

Jackie’s jaw moved, but no sound came out. She had gone white. And then she wrenched herself free and stumbled out of the garden on her high heels, gaining speed with every step.

For a man who lived his life in the shallows, Romano experienced the unfamiliar feeling of knowing he’d gone too deep, said too much, and he didn’t know how to deal with that. There wasn’t a quip, a smart remark, that could save the situation. He was in open water and land was nowhere in sight.

Jackie had disappeared along the path and into the small patch of woodland that hid the sunken garden from the island’s shore.

The path. The one that led down to the beach.

Oh, hell.

He sprinted after her, even though he couldn’t rationalise why stopping her from bumping into Jack and Lizzie was so important. In his mind she deserved all she got. He told himself he was speeding after her to stop her putting a huge dampener on the wedding and ignored the pity that twinged in him every time he thought of how much she would hate anyone—especially her adored older sister—to see her in such a mess.