Desire Has No Mercy (4 page)

Everyone laughed… they didn't notice the frozen way Julia was looking at the tall, dark man who stood on the edge of the crowd. He was the stranger here, the outsider, and yet he shared with her the most intimate of secrets. How shocked everyone would be if they knew she was having his baby!

Julia noticed on the aircraft how the stewardesses kept glancing at Rome as they moved up and down the aisle, ensuring that the passengers were comfortable and had all they required. She felt certain they were extra concerned that he should be well taken care of, and didn't doubt that each one of them would have liked to change places with her.

She didn't think that she and Rome looked like a 'just married' couple. They weren't holding hands and looking into each other's eyes as if they couldn't wait to be alone together. They sat with a certain amount of space between them and she still wore her glove on her left hand, concealing the golden gleam of the wide-banded ring he had placed on her marriage finger twenty-four hours ago, almost gothic in design and companioned by an emerald in gold claws which weighed on her slim hand. She had tried to resist the emerald, whose clarity and cut told her it was real, but he had gripped her by the wrist there in Tiffany's and slid the ring on her finger, smiling narrowly when the assistant remarked that it matched her eyes.

'That's the idea,' Rome drawled as he wrote out the cheque. 'It's a rare combination, isn't it, a blonde with green eyes?'

'In case you're wondering,' she had said to him outside the shop, 'my hair isn't dyed.'

'I know that, Julia.' Inside the cab that drove them to the church he had smiled in a nostalgic way. 'I knew you when you were a little one, remember? Your hair was bright as a dandelion and my mother once told me that your nurse-maid used to rinse it in lemon juice so it would keep its colour. It worked, eh?'

Oh yes, thought Julia, sitting there beside him on the jet, it would suit his sense of style that her fairness was a pleasing contrast to his Latin darkness. There was no denying that he was stylish, with excellent taste that was either innate or carefully cultivated. His three-piece grey suit was without fault, combined with a shirt and tie in white and grey, with golden ovals at his cuffs, matching the gold ring which had been held out to her on the prayer book and which she had to place on his marriage finger. He could, she supposed, have been taken for a member of a high class family, with the well-defined profile and patrician nose.

'Why are you called Rome?' she suddenly asked him.

He looked at her a trifle sardonically, for she hadn't spoken to him voluntarily since they had left the church as husband and wife, merely replying to his remarks as they drove to the airport and were checked in for the flight. When he had bent his tall head to kiss her mouth she had quickly turned her cheek so his kiss fell against the side of her lips. In her ivory-coloured suit and
eau-de-nil
blouse she looked as cool as her eyes upon his face.

'To remind my mother of the eternal city when she and my father left Italy to live in America,' he replied. 'There seemed more chance of him finding a good job and he worked hard so he could buy a share in a shoe business. He was unaware that one of the partners was crooked, and he was blamed for a fraud that wasn't his and sent to prison. While there he tried to defend a youth who found himself under siege by a homosexual thug, and for that my father was beaten senseless and he died in the prison hospital of a ruptured blood vessel in his inside. Of necessity my mother had to cook and clean for those who could afford to pay her for working herself half to death so I wouldn't go hungry to school with holes in my shoes.'

He broke off abruptly and took a deep drink of his champagne. 'I don't suppose you remember my mother, but in her wedding photograph she wore a lace veil and looked so lovely and eager, as if she believed that love was going to be hers all her life. I gave her my love, but how could it ever be the same as my father's? She died herself in Naples two years ago, and I am thankful that her sad life ended in the sunshine of Italy. She adored Italy and never could like America, and that was one of the reasons why I chose to make Naples my place of business. I won't make excuses for the casino, except to say that I wanted money as soon as possible. My mother had leukaemia and I was able to give her a few comfortable years before she joined my father.'

He fell quiet, his grey eyes fixed broodingly upon the champagne glass in his hand. 'The best vintage you have on board,' he had requested, and it had struck Julia that he would have liked to tell the stewardess that he was a bridegroom.

'I—I'm sorry to hear about your parents,' she said. 'But that doesn't excuse your behaviour, does it, Rome? Or doesn't it worry you very much that you've ruined my life?'

'My dear, if you represent ruin, then there should be more of it about.' His eyes were smiling, taunting her just a little as they wandered over the smooth sweep of her hair from her temples, a bright frame around the delicate charm of her face. 'You're looking particularly lovely.'

'It wouldn't suit you to have it otherwise, would it, Rome? You want women to be as stylish as the clothes you put on, so they compliment your Latin looks.'

'Do you like my looks, Julia?' He said it a trifle mockingly. 'It would be nice to know that something about me appeals to you.'

'Do you need me to like something about you, Rome?' Her cool green eyes studied his face, made striking by the good bone structure that was so entirely rooted in his Italian background. There were shadings of ruthlessness in the thrust of his cheekbones, a suggestion of great passion about the moulding of his mouth, a secretiveness in the cleft that was so exactly centred in his chin.

She had felt the power of his physical passion, so unlike anything she had imagined with a cultured, civilised man like Paul Wineman. Rome was utterly Latin, with a deep vein of southern sensuality running through him, erotic and out to enslave a woman by her senses. He would understand the dark desires a woman might feel… might need to have gratified. At the thought Julia blushed and felt as if waves of alarm and awareness singed the very roots of her being.

This man was her husband! How could she be sure he'd abide by his promise to behave as if he were her guardian? The gold rings on her hand and the vows they'd exchanged in the church, with its stained-glass windows, its holy statues and incense, were symbols of his ownership.

'To love, honour and cherish,' he had said.

'With my body I thee—take,' she had substituted in her mind.

Julia felt a subtle sense of torment. The man she had married was ineffably his own master… and hers. She felt it in the way he looked at her, in the way he leaned towards her, his nostrils tensing. 'You smell of lilacs,' he murmured. 'You look as if you'd been dipped in crystal like one of those classic figurines, all shining and worth a pretty penny.'

'And that pleases you, doesn't it, Rome? I now belong to you and anything you possess has to be distinctive and worth its price.' Her voice matched her outward look of cool poise, but in her mind, and her body, she was remembering how he had swept her up in his arms as if she were weightless and how warm his skin had felt when he pressed her to his brown flesh hardened by the Italian sun. Rome was flesh and blood all the way through!

'Are you very rich?' she asked. 'Have you made heaps of dollars out of those fools who gamble at your tables? I expect you have, you're that sort of man. But something puzzles me, Rome. I thought gambling was controlled by the Godfathers, those dark men from Sicily who lay down the laws where gaming is concerned—and other activities of a sinful nature.'

'You're asking if I'm a member of the Brotherhood?' He looked at her in silence a moment, and then softly laughed. 'It's always the assumption, isn't it,
carina
? But as it happens life takes odd twists and turns. I told you, didn't I, that my father died as a direct result of defending a young man in prison. That young man eventually became one of the Dons of great power and he is a friend of mine, but he isn't in any way my boss. I run my own casino in Naples because of his friendship, but I run it regardless of the Brotherhood, who would never dare touch me because of Vitale's regard for me. It is in human nature to gamble… just as it's in the nature of the human race to eat and drink… to love and hate. I run a good establishment. No one gets really hurt.'

'No one?' she murmured. 'You can say that to my face?'

He swept his grey eyes over her, taking in the suit that was slightly open to reveal the silk-chiffon of her blouse, on its lapel a single orchid pinned with a little tiger whose eyes shimmered green as her own. 'If I hurt you, baby, it doesn't show.'

'I have feelings,' she rejoined. 'I suppose you think be-cause you're good-looking and well-bathed, what you did to me bears no relationship to the back alley variety of assault? I had little defence against you. You're as strong as an ox!'

'My first compliment from my bride,' he mocked. 'I'll treasure it.'

'I'd tell you to go to the devil, Rome, only I know you're there already.' She smiled sweetly as she said it and in reply he raised his champagne glass to her.

'Do you think we'll always be as happy as we are right now, Julia?'

'Always?' she echoed, and as he continued to look at her, she felt goose bumps rising on her skin, especially her arms and the base of her spine, tingling cold and yet hot as if dry ice had been dropped down the back of her blouse.

'Always is a long time, Rome, if you're getting ideas just because of that ceremony yesterday morning. Why was it in church? You aren't a religious man, you take too many gambles.'

'It would have pleased my mother. She wanted me to marry so she could be a grandmother. Italian people like the solid continuation of the family; they enjoy seeing children around the house, hearing their laughter and seeing in their faces the family likeness. It makes death seem but a door through which to step, with part of you still alive. She would have been pleased about the child.'

'Is that why you married me?' Julia asked quietly. 'It is only the child you want, isn't it? I—I need to know.'

'Of course I want my child.' His lashes seemed to darken his eyes, the lowering of his lids giving him both a sinister and a sensual look. 'I've already made that perfectly plain, have I not, Julia?'

'So long as I know, Rome. I don't want to stay married to you for longer than is necessary.'

'The child will be as much yours as mine, Julia. You may love it regardless of me.'

'I could never love any part of you,' she said scornfully. 'The kind of men I like behave like gentlemen, and for all your fine clothes and your villa in Campania, you're basically a ruthless, vindictive brute who pretends to care for the memory of your mother. If you had any real respect for women, I wouldn't be here right now, married to you and hating every minute of it.'

'Do you mind lowering your voice?' he said pleasantly. 'I don't care to have it broadcast that I have a shrew for a wife.'

'I'd like to tell the world what I have for a husband.' Her eyes blazed into his. 'I'm no sweet and adoring Italian girl for you to order about,
signore
. Respect and adoration have to be earned, and all I have for you is aversion. It's only because you're tall that I look up to you, but to me you'll always be low class.'