Defying Her Billionaire Protector

Nico hesitated, tension vibrating in every muscle, his gut churning with anger and indecision. After a moment he walked back, sat again.

‘Thank you,’ Jack said, lowering himself to the edge of his chair. He rested his elbows on his knees, scrubbed a hand over his face before speaking again. ‘Julia had a good heart, is what I was trying to say. And she was smart—an excellent judge of character.’ He paused, looked Nico in the eye. ‘Despite my reservations in the beginning it didn’t take me long to realise she’d chosen a good man.’

Emotion punched through Nico’s chest, so swift and powerful his lungs were left airless for a moment.

‘Losing her was the worst thing that had ever happened to me,’ Jack went on. ‘I didn’t know how to handle it. The anger, the grief...’ He bowed his head. ‘I blamed you, but it was my fault...my fault,’ he repeated, his voice bleak, filled with self-loathing. ‘I was arrogant, stupid—’

He broke off, his body heaving with a sob that seemed torn from him, and Nico instinctively reached over, gripped the man’s shoulder.

‘You tried to save her,’ he said. ‘We both did—and we failed. But we are not to blame for her death. That responsibility lies with the men who took her.’

And for the first time in ten years, he truly believed that.

Jack looked up, his eyes deeply shadowed, his face ravaged by years of grief and self-recrimination. ‘I don’t know how to move beyond it.’

Nico firmed his grip on Jack’s shoulder. ‘You have to let go of the guilt,’ he said, his throat thickening as Marietta’s voice echoed in his head.

Jack nodded and they sat in silence for a moment. And then they talked—until the whisky decanter was nearly empty and the shadows outside had lengthened across the manicured lawns.

Barbara ventured in to ask Nico if he would stay for supper. He accepted, and then excused himself to place a call.

Though it was already evening, his assistant at his New York office answered on the first ring.

‘I need to travel on the jet out of LaGuardia first thing tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. Destination?’

‘Rome.’

* * *

Marietta stared at the printout of the ultrasound image and felt all the same emotions she’d experienced the first time Helena and Leo had announced they were expecting: joy, excitement, happiness, and envy.

That last one she tried not to feel too keenly.

‘Oh, Helena!’ She leaned forward in her chair and threw her arms around her sister-in-law. ‘I’m so happy for you. A little sister or brother for Riccardo.’

Helena hugged her back. ‘I know—I’m so excited.’

Marietta was thrilled for her brother and his wife. They deserved every happiness. Their road to love had been rocky, and eight years ago their first child—an unplanned baby—had been stillborn. The tragedy had affected both of them deeply, even though Leo hadn’t learnt about his son until some years after the event.

Ridiculously, her eyes began to prickle.

Helena looked at her. ‘Marietta—what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m happy for you, that’s all.’

She blinked the tears back and forced a smile. She’d left Île de Lavande over a month ago and still she was an emotional wreck. She needed to pull herself together, get back to being her old self, and yet she’d started to suspect with an awful sinking sensation in her stomach that her ‘old self’ was long gone and wasn’t ever coming back.

Because her ‘old self’ would have celebrated the lucrative commission she’d recently landed with a night out with friends, instead of sitting at home alone with a glass of brandy and the DVD of a silly romantic movie—and, worse, crying over that movie.

Her ‘old self’ would have gone about her day with her usual vigour and would not have felt her heart surge every time she saw a tall dark-haired man, only to feel it shrink again when she realised it wasn’t him.

Her ‘old self’ would have noticed the black vehicles with their tinted windows and the occasional watchful man in the shadows and felt outraged, instead of feeling her heart swell with the knowledge that he was still protecting her, from a distance.

And her ‘old self’ definitely wouldn’t be sitting here feeling envious of her sister-in-law, wishing she had a handsome husband and children of her own to shower with love and affection.

Helena was still looking at her and she slipped her sunglasses on. They were sitting in the landscaped garden at Leo and Helena’s Tuscan villa, enjoying the late morning sun and some ‘girl time’ while Leo entertained Ricci indoors. Autumn had arrived but the days were still warm, and the air carried the fragrance of flowers and fruits from the neighbouring orchards. Marietta had travelled up for the weekend, hoping a change of scenery would lift her mood.