Bella Rosa Marriages: The Bridesmaid's Secret

It didn’t take long to catch her up, only twenty steps away from where the trees parted and she would have a full view of the shingle beach.

‘Jackie!’ It wasn’t quite a shout, wasn’t quite a whisper, but a strange combination of the two.

She faltered but didn’t alter her course. He was closer now and put a restraining hand on her arm, spoke in a low voice. ‘Not that way.’

All of her back muscles tensed and he just knew she was getting ready to let rip, but then they heard a rumble of low laughter from the direction of the water’s edge and she jolted in surprise.

‘This way,’he said, as quietly as possible, and led her through the trees in the opposite direction, heading for the narrow tip of the island, away from the house, where they would be less likely to be disturbed by wandering wedding guests. They reached a clearing with a soft grassy bank and she just seemed to lose the ability to keep her joints locked. Her knees folded under her and she sat down on the grass with a thud.

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she said, enunciating each word carefully. ‘You don’t know…’

It took Romano a couple of seconds to realise she was continuing the conversation she’d walked out on as if no time had passed. And that wasn’t the only strange thing that had happened. He no longer wanted to erupt. He didn’t know why. Maybe he’d experienced so many strong emotions in the last half-hour that he’d just run out, had none left. He sat down beside her.

‘So tell me what it was like.’

He knew his request didn’t sound exactly friendly, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

She kicked off her shoes and sank her bare feet into the grass. Even the shade of her toenails complemented her outfit. So Jackie…

She hugged her legs, drew them up until she was almost in a little ball, and rested her cheek on her knees. Her face was turned in his direction, but her eyes were glazed and unfocused.

‘I wanted to believe you’d come,’ she said in a voice that reminded him of a little girl’s. ‘I wanted to believe that it would all turn out right, but I truly didn’t think it was ever going to happen.’

Another nail in the coffin. Another confirmation from her that he was a loser. He ought to get angry again, but there was something in her voice, her face, that totally arrested him.

Honesty. Pure and unguarded.

It was such a rare commodity where Jackie was concerned that he decided not to do anything to scare it away. He needed answers and she was the only one who could provide them.

‘Mamma was so cross when I told her I was pregnant that I thought she was going to break something.’

One corner of his mouth lifted. Yes, he could well imagine the scene. It wouldn’t have been pretty.

‘She insisted that adoption was the only way. How could I argue with her? I couldn’t do it on my own.’

‘What about your father?’

She snorted. ‘He might be a blue-sky-thinking entrepreneur, but he’s smart enough to do what Mamma tells him to do.’ She blinked, looked across at him as she lifted her lashes again. ‘I don’t think he knew what to do with me. He’s good with big ideas and balance sheets, but not so great with the people stuff. I think he wanted the problem to just go away. It was as much as he could manage just to let me go and live with him until the baby was born.’

Romano didn’t say anything. He’d always thought of Jackie as being just like him—a child of a wealthy family, secure in the knowledge of her place in the world. He’d even envied her the sisters and the multitude of cousins compared to his one-parent, no-cousin family. His father hadn’t been perfect, but he’d always shown him love, and that had made Romano too sure, too cocky, when he’d been young, but he realised that Jackie had never had that.

One loving parent—however unique he might be—had to be better than two clueless ones. His father would never have forced him to do what Jackie’s parents had made her do. Yes, her mother had been the driving force, but her father had to take responsibility too. He’d let her down by omitting to stand up for her, to fight for her, to do anything he could to make her happy. That was what fathers were supposed to do.

That was what he was supposed to do now.

Jackie lifted her head from her knees. ‘Once I was too big to keep it a secret any more, Mamma packed me off to London to live with Dad, and you know what?’ She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and took a long gulp of air.

‘What?’ he said softly. No longer was he trying just to keep her talking, aiming to get dates and times and details from her. He really wanted to know.

‘When I went to live with him, he never even mentioned my pregnancy, even though I was swelling up in front of his face. He just…ignored it. It was so weird.’ She shook her head. ‘And when I came home from the hospital without…on my own…the only emotion he showed was relief.’

She hugged her knees even tighter and rested her chin on top of them. He could see her jaw clenching and unclenching, as if there were unsaid words, words she’d wanted to say to her father for years, but never had.

She’d been so young. And so alone.

He didn’t have a heart of stone. He would have been a monster if he couldn’t have imagined how awful it must have been for her. And she’d only told him bare details.

There wasn’t anything he could say to change that, to make it better. For a long time they sat in silence.

‘What was it like?’ he finally said. ‘The day she was born?’

Jackie frowned. ‘It rained.’

He didn’t push for more, sensing that the answer he wanted was coming, he just needed to give her room. The sun had started to set while they’d been in the clearing and, through the trees, the sky was turning bright turquoise at the horizon, and the ripples on the lake glinted soft gold. The temperature must have dropped a little, because Jackie shivered.

Not a monster, he reminded himself, and pulled his jacket off and draped it around her shoulders. The sleeves hung uselessly by her sides.

When she spoke again, she went on to describe a long, complicated labour that had ended in a distressed baby and an emergency Caesarean section. All the half-formed ideas of cute newborns sliding easily into the world were blown right out of the water. Real birth, it seemed, was every bit as traumatic as real life. And she’d done it all on her own, her father away on a business trip and her mother still in Italy keeping up at the façade, lest anyone suspect their family’s disgrace.

‘What was she like? Kate?’

Jackie’s face softened in a way he hadn’t thought possible. ‘She was perfect. So tiny. With a shock of dark hair just like yours and a temper just like mine.’

He wanted to smile but he felt strangely breathless.

A single tear ran down her cheek. ‘She’s amazing, Romano. Just so…amazing.’

He sat up a little straighter. ‘You’ve met her?’

She nodded. ‘She started looking for me a few months ago and we’ve been meeting up, trying to establish a bond.’ She pulled a face. ‘It’s not been going very well.’

Well, if she had Jackie’s temper, that was hardly surprising.

He watched Jackie as she stared out into the gathering dusk, not sure he’d ever seen her like this before, with all the armour plating stripped away.

‘I was going to tell my family after the wedding,’ she said. ‘She wants to meet them, find out where she comes from. And then Scarlett told me about the letter and I realised I had to tell you too—tell you first. But I was going to do it after today, to avoid all…this.’

You stupid fool, he told himself. All this time you thought she was coming on to you and all she was doing was paving the way for the truth to come out.

‘What are we going to do?’ she said, with equal measures of fear and uncertainty in her eyes.

He stood up and offered her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet and waited while she slid her feet back in her shoes.

He stared at a cluster of trees, looking for answers.

Honesty deserved honesty.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but it’s time we went back to the party and faced everybody.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

JACKIE felt as if her skin were too thick, as if sensations from the outside world couldn’t quite get through. She was floating and heavy all at the same time. The details of the walk back towards the terrace were fuzzy; she didn’t remember which path they took, or any of the sights and sounds. Just before they emerged from the trees and into the open, she stopped, pulled at Romano’s shirtsleeve.

‘Here. You’d better have this back.’

She started to slide his jacket from her shoulders, but he hooked the collar with a finger and pulled it back up. ‘Keep it. You look cold.’

She was cold. Ever since Romano had said those things to her in the grotto, she hadn’t been able to ignore the shivering deep, deep inside. Sometimes it worked its way outwards and she had to clench her teeth to stop them rattling, but it all felt a little disconnected from her, as if it were happening to someone else.

‘But—’

‘What’s the point, Jackie?’

‘I…’

She didn’t know. Just that it seemed the right thing to do, to hide the fact she’d been in the garden with Romano. The need to keep everything about their relationship under the radar had become a habit she’d never thought to break.

‘We don’t have to keep it a secret that we went for a walk in the garden,’ he said, taking her by the hand and leading her forwards. ‘Who cares if anyone sees us together? Your family will know all there is to know soon.’

Jackie nodded, because she recognised the need for response of some kind. Her brain wasn’t working fast enough to keep up. Romano’s words seemed to make sense. Why hadn’t she thought about this before? Somehow in the confusion of recent days she hadn’t connected the fact that telling her family also meant that they would know about Romano, that they would all know the secrets she had kept to herself for seventeen years.

Seventeen years.

That was more than half of her life. She’d hated Romano, believed him to be heartless and superficial, for all that time. But now the truth was out. Her secret had been revealed. Wasn’t she supposed to feel free? Lighter? But she was too numb to feel anything but the pressure of Romano’s fingers on her hand and the warmth spreading all the way up her arm.

In their absence the party had spilled outside. The tall glazed doors that led from the ballroom onto the patio had been thrown open and guests were wandering through the upper terraces, champagne flutes in hands. The large paved area where she and Romano had lunched the other day had been cleared of furniture and planters, and a swing band played while couples danced.

She tugged on Romano’s hand, not really knowing why. Just that she didn’t want to throw herself headlong back into the party. She didn’t know what to do now, how to behave. How could she just go and rejoin her family as if nothing had happened?

He squeezed her fingers lightly and nodded towards the palazzo.

Good idea. Perhaps there was somewhere quiet inside where she could sit and recover.

Despite the fact she was still wearing his jacket, nobody took any notice of them as they weaved their way through the neatly clipped bushes. Romano walked slightly ahead, his face serious but not forbidding.

He’d surprised her by taking her news incredibly well. Too well—he was handling it much better than she was, even though she’d had more time to adjust to recent revelations. Under normal circumstances, doing better than Jackie Patterson at anything simply wasn’t allowed, but at this moment she was heartily relieved.

They were only a matter of steps from one of the entrances to the ballroom when she spotted her mother inside, heading their way. Jackie suddenly veered in another direction, following the curve of one of the low hedges. Their hands were still joined and she took Romano with her. He let out a grunt of surprise, then muttered something about quick thinking. Jackie was looking directly ahead but with all her attention behind her as she strained to pick out her mother’s footsteps, as she waited to hear her name in that shrill voice.

Just as they reached the edge of the dance floor it came.

‘Jackie?’

She kept going. There was no way that she could deal with her mother in her present state. The only fireworks planned for this evening were the ones that Jack and Lizzie had arranged, and she’d very much like to keep it that way.

‘Jacqueline!’

She should have known that she’d need a more sophisticated plan than just trying to outrun Mamma.

‘Sorry, Lisa,’ she heard Romano say beside her as he slipped his jacket off her shoulders and pulled it away. Jackie didn’t see how he disposed of it. ‘Jacqueline promised me a dance. You don’t mind, do you?’

And then he took her in his arms and spun her away. When the motion had taken her one hundred and eighty degrees and they were disappearing into the crowd, she looked back to see her mother standing there, holding Romano’s jacket, with her mouth open.

‘I can’t believe you just did that!’

Romano smiled his twinkly smile. ‘What was it that you called me? Incorrigible?’

A soft laugh escaped her lips. ‘I never thought I would say this, but I’m very glad that you are.’

He turned again with some nimble footwork and her mother disappeared from view.

‘Glad to know I have a redeeming feature,’ he said softly so only she could hear. ‘I’ve been trying very hard to develop one.’

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