The Mills & Boon Stars Collection

‘Yes...past,’ Jemima stressed, stringing a line of haphazard kisses along the clenched line of his strong jaw until some of his tension eased.

He frowned down at her. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, knowing what I just told you?’

‘Not as much as it bothered you telling me.’

‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ he breathed into her hair. ‘I used to have nightmares about it.’

‘And who comforted you then?’ she whispered.

‘Agnese...she was always there for me. She saw it happen too.’

‘And nobody went to the police?’

‘My father had too many friends in high places and corrupt connections within the police. My mother’s death was written off as a tragic accident and he got away with it. By the time I was old enough to do any different he was dead. But he would have killed anyone who stood as a witness against him, even if I had been the witness,’ he explained heavily. ‘That was his life. That is the kind of environment that I grew up with and it is exactly those experiences that made me swear that I would never ever be like my father in any way.’

‘And you’ve lived up to that promise,’ Jemima reminded him quietly. ‘Haven’t you?’

‘Yes, piccolo mia.’

‘So, you should be proud of what you have achieved and celebrating your success,’ Jemima told him, shifting her hips in the hope of giving his thoughts a different direction.

Being highly suggestible, Luciano lifted his tousled head with a sudden smile and kissed her again with all the pent-up fire of his hot temperament. She smiled up at him, satisfied that she had finally got behind his barriers, broken through the hard shell to the real man within. He didn’t have to love her to confide in her. Somehow at that instant it seemed more than sufficient compensation.

CHAPTER NINE

‘COME FOR TEA, said the spider to the fly,’ Ellie mocked with a grimace. ‘I don’t like Sancia.’

Jemima wrinkled her nose. Her best friend, Ellie, was very quick in her judgements but Jemima tried to give everyone a fair hearing. And that included Sancia Abate, the gorgeous blonde who had stepped unannounced and unforeseen out of Luciano’s past. After all, Jemima would have been the first to admit that the main source of her unease about Sancia was the other woman’s close blood tie to Luciano’s celebrated first wife. Luciano, however, had been so casual about the continuing friendship that only an extremely jealous and possessive woman could have been suspicious of the relationship. Sancia was evidently still accepted as family and Jemima was happy to respect that.

In any case, she had to admit that Sancia had proved to be an almost invisible guest over the past two weeks while Luciano had been abroad. For the past three days, Jemima had been entertaining Ellie and her parents’ friends and relatives, all of whom Luciano had had flown out for the wedding that was scheduled to take place in forty-eight hours’ time. Her parents and their closest friends had already settled into a comfortable routine of strolls on the beach and visits to the village café, while Jemima had whiled away many a happy hour trying on wedding dresses and relaxing with Ellie.

‘I mean, what’s a blonde that looks like that doing hanging round here on a very quiet island without even a boyfriend in tow?’ Ellie remarked suspiciously.

Jemima had learned that Sancia was not only gorgeous to look at but also multitalented. Sancia had written a bestselling biography on her much-loved sister’s life and currently seemed to drift between stints as a well-known fashion model and a less-well-known actress. The guest house was situated beyond the castle gardens above the beach, a former boathouse that had been renovated to offer extra accommodation. Bearing in mind the sheer size of the castle, the cottage was virtually never used.

Jemima was wryly amused that she had found it necessary to dress up to visit Sancia. More and more she was making use of the wardrobe Luciano had bought for her, recognising that the garments might be more fashionable and form-fitting than she was accustomed to wearing but were also more flattering in style and shape. To enjoy tea with the glamorous Sancia, she was wearing a lilac skirt and top with an unmistakeable designer edge.

‘Oh, you haven’t brought Nicky.’ Sancia sighed in disappointment as soon as she opened the door. ‘Come in.’

‘He always has a nap straight after lunch.’

‘Porca miseria! You sound like one of those rigid English nannies people joke about!’ the blonde commented with a teasing smile.

‘I hope not...’ Jemima stilled on the threshold of a spacious reception room that was dominated by photos and portraits of Gigi Nocella.

‘Oh, didn’t you know that the guest house is where Luciano keeps his stash of memorabilia?’ Sancia remarked in apparent surprise. ‘I thought you would have guessed. I mean, there’s nothing at all to be seen up at the castle.’

‘No, nothing,’ Jemima agreed, having naturally noticed that, surprisingly, Luciano had not a single photograph on display anywhere of his late first wife or their little daughter.

‘I know. He had the place stripped...the poor guy.’ Sancia sighed. ‘Once Gigi was gone, he just couldn’t live with even the smallest reminder of her. It was too painful for him. Haven’t you noticed that he never ever mentions her?’

Jemima was not very practised at female games of one-upmanship but she knew enough to know when she was being targeted and she murmured quietly, ‘Are we having tea?’

‘I’m not very domesticated but I do have the tray ready for us.’ Sancia gave her a wide grin, unperturbed by Jemima’s cool intonation, and stepped out into the room that Jemima assumed held a kitchen.

Jemima hovered by the window overlooking the fabulous view of the beach before succumbing to a curiosity that she simply couldn’t suppress. The room she stood in was ironically both her worst nightmare and her most precious discovery. All around her sat the means to satisfy her curiosity about Luciano’s first wife. Giving way to temptation, Jemima wandered around peering at the photos and the paintings.

There was no denying that Gigi Nocella had been superbly photogenic and immensely gifted in the genes department. The brown-eyed blonde, of whom Sancia was but a pale, more youthful copy, was exquisite to a degree very few women were and had reputedly been mesmerising on-screen. And here she was represented in all her earthly glory in various attitudes that ran from young and naïve to sexy and smouldering to pensive and mysterious. But the photos that Jemima paid most heed to were the ones that also contained Luciano.

The first she noted was their wedding photograph, in which he looked ridiculously youthful, reminding her that he had been very young when he married and that Gigi had been several years older.

‘He worshipped the ground she walked on,’ Sancia murmured from behind Jemima, making her flinch.

‘Oh, my goodness, you gave me a fright!’ Jemima spun and fanned the air, refusing to react to the blonde’s provocative statement.

In any case, she didn’t need the verbal commentary when she could see the adoration etched in Luciano’s lean dark face as he looked intently at the mother of his daughter. It hurt Jemima to see that light in his eyes. She knew that he would never look at her with that depth of caring and concern. She would never be that important to him or that perfect in looks and figure that every head would turn to watch her walk by. No, she conceded sadly, she was in a totally different category from Gigi and, whether she liked it or not, Luciano would probably not have looked twice at her had his son not looked at Jemima with love first.

But she would have to learn to live with that reality, wouldn’t she?

‘After the crash, Luciano said he would never ever love a woman again,’ Sancia delivered.

‘Ah, well, life moves on and now he’s getting married and he’s starting another family,’ Jemima responded with deliberate insensitivity before adding, ‘It’s different for you, though, as her sister. You’ll never be able to replace her and you must miss her terribly.’

Red coins of colour accentuated the blonde’s cheekbones. ‘You have no idea.’

‘I do actually. I didn’t know my sister for very long before I lost her but there was a special bond there...at least on my side,’ Jemima confided.

With hindsight she had begun to accept that her twin had not had the capacity to care for others in the same way as she did. She could not argue with the evidence and it was surely better for her to remember her sibling as she had been rather than idealise her memory.

‘Gigi was irreplaceable,’ Sancia told her a tad sharply.

‘But I’m not trying to replace her,’ Jemima responded quietly. ‘How could I? And why would I even want to? Luciano and I have a completely different relationship.’

As Jemima walked back from the beach through the castle gardens her pale blue eyes were overbright with tears. She didn’t want to let the tears fall, not with her usual bodyguards bare yards from her, silent and watchful of her every move. Furthermore she had not the slightest doubt that anything unusual she did would be reported straight back to Luciano, who seemed to worry a great deal about her while he was away from her. He phoned her several times a day and questioned her right down to asking what she ate at mealtimes. And when she had asked him why he bothered when she had so little news to relate, he had told her teasingly that he liked the sound of her voice and could listen to her reciting an old phone book just as happily. The minutiae of Nicky’s day were of equal interest to him and it was obvious to Jemima that Luciano really did miss seeing his son. His conversations with her, however, were just polite and sort of flirty, she reasoned ruefully. He wasn’t a teenager, after all, he was a man of almost thirty-one with sufficient experience to know exactly how to charm a woman.

Especially if that woman wasn’t Gigi Nocella, Jemima thought, her throat closing over convulsively on a sob. He wouldn’t have had to make a special effort to say the right thing to a woman as perfect as Gigi had been. So, how often did he go down to visit that personal shrine in the guest house? If Jemima hadn’t existed and Luciano hadn’t been away on business, would he have been with Sancia right now happily reminiscing about the old days when his first wife and child had still been alive? It was hardly any wonder that Sancia resented Jemima and clearly felt threatened by her appearance on scene. Nothing could put Gigi more effectively back into the past than her once-besotted widower having another child and taking a second wife to put in Gigi’s place.

Well, it wasn’t Gigi’s place any longer, Jemima told herself urgently. In less than two days Jemima would be Luciano’s wife and she could hardly wait! She wasn’t so silly as to allow Sancia’s mean outlook to affect her personally, was she?

As her mobile phone rang she dug it out, grateful for an interruption that would hopefully give her thoughts a new and more positive direction. When she heard Steven’s familiar badgering tones she almost groaned, however, for she had thought she had heard the last from her ex-boyfriend when he had phoned her to say he wouldn’t be attending the wedding—he hadn’t been invited!—because he knew she was making a dreadful mistake.

‘Luciano has turned your head with his wealth,’ Steven told her, merely starting a new angle of attack.

‘His wealth doesn’t matter to me. His kindness does,’ Jemima parried, thinking of the generosity of Luciano’s invitation to her parents and their friends, who were all enjoying a wonderful holiday in the run-up to their wedding. And by bringing her family and Ellie out to join her, he had ensured that she wasn’t lonely and without support.

‘You may not see it but I see very clearly that you are paying me back for what happened with Julie.’ Steven sighed. ‘You weren’t able to forgive me.’

‘I did forgive you, Steven. I simply didn’t want to take back up again where we’d left off and I think that’s fair enough,’ Jemima fielded. ‘I saw you in a different light when you were with my sister.’

‘I made a dreadful mistake, Jemima,’ Steven groaned. ‘But I do love you.’

‘Not the way you loved her,’ Jemima told him without heat.

‘That wasn’t genuine love and you don’t love Luciano either. You’re marrying him to keep Nicky,’ Steven protested.

Jemima sat down on a stone bench surrounded by glorious rose beds and stared out blindly at the magnificent view of the bay. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Marriage is a sacrament and it shouldn’t be used.’

‘But I do love him,’ Jemima heard herself say and her whole mental view of the world lurched as she made that belated discovery. She was thinking about the male who had chilled her at first meeting and travelling at supersonic speed through the whole history of their relationship, ranging from his laughter in bed with her to the brutal background that he had triumphed over.

And there at the very heart of all her turmoil was the love she had neither acknowledged nor understood. She loved Luciano with all her being and easily zeroed in on every kind and caring thing he did for her from his hesitant tendering of his mother’s ring for their engagement to his patient, undemanding love for Nicky in which he was willing to wait and earn his son’s trust and affection. In the same moment she recognised why her encounter with Sancia and Gigi’s shrine in the guest house had distressed her so much. It had hurt to see Luciano’s love for her predecessor. It had hurt even more to frankly admit that she could never emulate such a woman to win that level of appreciation. With Luciano, she would always be Nicky’s loving stepmother first and his wife second. Second best, second best for all time...

Could she truly live with that?

‘Sorry, Steven. I have to go,’ she said, cutting the call on Steven’s expostulations with relief.

Her face was wet with tears. She had been crying without knowing it and she mopped her face, praying her mascara hadn’t run. There could be no pleasure in appreciating that she would always be inferior in her future husband’s eyes and heart to his first wife, but she was a practical, realistic woman and there really wasn’t much she could do about that hurt. Was there?

She wouldn’t even consider abandoning Nicky, for he felt as much her child as if he had been born to her rather than her sister. She saw no advantage to refusing to marry Luciano either. What would that achieve? She didn’t want to be Nicky’s nanny for the rest of her days or merely Luciano’s lover. And if she didn’t choose to marry him and give him more children, some other woman eventually would.

Not on my watch, Jemima conceded fierily.

CHAPTER TEN

SOMETHING VERY LIKE panic sent chilling tentacles travelling deep to pierce Luciano’s usually rock-solid sense of security. He completed the phone call to his future relative, which had been preceded by one from Agnese. He had made a mistake, a serious mistake, he acknowledged with a sinking heart, and now he had to pray that he had sufficient time and the opportunity to put it right. And if he didn’t?

Santa Madonna, that option could not even be considered!

Why the hell had he valued his pride above every other thing in his life for so many years? How on earth had he allowed a past bad experience to cast such a dangerous shadow over the present and potentially destroy his future?

And you thought you were so cool, so clever, he reasoned in a daze of growing shock at the mess he had created. But the creed of silence as a form of protection had been bred into his very bones at his father’s knee. Never tell, never explain, never apologise. And before he had experienced that one weak moment with Jemima he had never broken that rule. He had kept his secrets. He had kept them from the media too. Indeed he had buried those sleazy secrets deep and had refused even to think about them, for that was the safest, wisest way to hold on to sanity.

He had never dwelt on his mistakes because he was a rational man and it came naturally to him to move on past and not look back at car wrecks. Even so, those mistakes had seriously influenced the choices he had made, he conceded belatedly. Furthermore, Jemima didn’t have his conditioning or his inhibitions and she would not understand...

* * *

The helicopter came in over the bay while Jemima was having breakfast with everyone in the shaded loggia on the ground floor. Nicky dropped his toast as he waved his hands with excitement, straining in his high chair to get a better view of the craft as it dropped down out of sight to land in the castle grounds.

‘Is that Luciano coming back?’ Ellie asked uncertainly.

‘I doubt it. He’s not due until tomorrow,’ Jemima said a little tiredly because she had not slept well. ‘And he’s a stickler for his schedules.’

‘I suspect,’ her father murmured warmly as he stared over her shoulder, ‘that your bridegroom missed you more than you know because here he is now...’

Jemima twisted her head round so fast she risked a whiplash injury and she thrust her chair back and stood up to stare in surprise at the male striding through the gardens towards them. It was, without a doubt, Luciano. Sheathed in a dark business suit teamed with a white shirt and silvery tie, he looked both formal and formidable. His lean, darkly handsome face was taut, the line of his beautiful mouth forbidding. A jolt of dismay ran through Jemima and quite instinctively she found herself wondering if she had done something wrong.

His stunning dark golden eyes immediately sought hers as though he was looking for something and then he quickly turned his attention on to their guests and his first physical meeting with her parents. To a backdrop of Nicky’s squeals of excitement and loud vocal appeals to be noticed, Luciano responded smoothly and pleasantly to the tide of introductions before stooping to detach Nicky from his harness and lift him into his arms.

‘Hush,’ he said softly to his son while ruffling his hair. ‘You can’t always be the centre of attention.’

‘Well, when he isn’t he likes to let us know he doesn’t like it!’ her father quipped cheerfully. ‘He’s a terrific little scene stealer.’

‘Let me take him,’ Jemima’s mother urged, holding out her arms. ‘You and Jemima should have some time together in peace.’

Nicky complained loudly at the transfer, demanded Jemima with pleading arms and then sobbed. Carlotta came out of the house to help while Jemima hovered, her attention anxiously pinned to Luciano, for all her nervous antennae were still telling her that something was badly wrong. His long, lean, powerful body was incredibly tense, his movements less fluid than usual and his lean, strong face taut with self-discipline.

Oh, my goodness, she thought in sudden consternation. Maybe he had returned early because he had changed his mind about marrying her! It was a nightmare scenario with the wedding guests and her family already staying at the castle, but it was perfectly possible that he had got cold feet and come back early to tell her. Jemima was quite convinced that such disasters had occurred to better women than her and it was surely more likely to happen when a man wasn’t in love with the woman he had asked to marry him.

Luciano shot another veiled glance at Jemima. She was pale and there were shadows below her beautiful pale eyes and he could see that she looked nothing like a happy bride on the brink of her wedding. Inwardly he cursed himself again and he reached for her hand.

‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ he intoned in a roughened undertone. ‘We have a visit to make.’

Her brow furrowed as he deftly walked her away from the breakfast table. ‘A visit?’

‘I believe you had tea with Sancia yesterday—’

‘My goodness, the grapevine around here is positively supersonic!’ Jemima countered while she thought fast.

‘I like to keep an eye on events when I’m unable to be present in person,’ Luciano assured her with a perfectly straight face.

Controlling...much? But Jemima said nothing because she knew that he was upset and she couldn’t bear that. Glancing up at him, she could see the haunted look she had seen before was back in his eyes and she could see that, for all that he looked spectacular, he must have been travelling all night and lines of strain were etched between his classic nose and even more perfect mouth. Of course, if he wanted to cancel the wedding, he would be feeling awfully guilty about it, she thought painfully.

‘What did you think of Sancia?’

‘We don’t have much in common,’ Jemima replied mildly.

‘She was a bitch to you, wasn’t she?’ Luciano growled within sight of the guest cottage above the beach.

Taken aback, Jemima came to a halt and stared up at him. ‘I—’

‘I can be selfish but I’m not stupid...most of the time,’ Luciano tacked on, compressing his hard mouth. ‘I’ve been foolish—’

‘It’s all right...whatever you decide to do, it’s all right. Just don’t be upset about it,’ Jemima mumbled helplessly, resisting the urge to wrap both arms around him and offer him comfort. Even in the overly emotional mood she was in, she knew that was not the normal way to behave when a man dumped you and that the very last thing she should be worrying about was how he felt. And yet that urge was engrained in her when he was around, she thought painfully as he closed his hand firmly round hers and urged her on towards the cottage.

‘Why are we going to see Sancia?’ she prompted uncomprehendingly. ‘I admit she wasn’t the kindest hostess but I have nothing more to say to her.’

‘But I have plenty to say,’ Luciano incised, banging on the door with his fist.

Sancia opened the door little more than three seconds later. It was barely nine in the morning but she was wearing a pristine white sundress and had a full face of make-up on, so she had evidently been expecting visitors. ‘Luciano...’ she said, wreathed with welcoming smiles.

‘Sancia...’ he grated, moving past her to stare in shock at the array of photographs and paintings decorating the cottage living room. ‘What is all this?’ he breathed.

‘Well, you should know,’ the blonde said archly. ‘You insisted on giving it to me.’

‘You asked me for it—you wanted it for your book,’ Luciano reminded her.

Only moments into their visit and Jemima was already feeling better, for she could already see that Luciano had had no part in creating the shrine in the room to his late wife. That, it seemed, had been solely Sancia’s doing.

‘It’s been like this ever since the year she died,’ the blonde fielded, playing it for all she was worth.

‘You’re the only person who has ever used this place.’ Luciano released Jemima’s hand and swept up a book from the coffee table. ‘Wasn’t the book enough for you?’

‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘Sancia, I was married to Gigi for five years. This isn’t a biography, it’s a work of fiction. You gave her fans what they wanted to read, not the truth. The truth would have been too ugly,’ he breathed, his deep, dark drawl roughening along the edges.

Sancia switched to Italian and spoke at length.

‘No, we will discuss this in English so that Jemima understands,’ Luciano decreed grimly. ‘I want to know what Sancia told you yesterday.’

‘Nothing that was untrue,’ Sancia trilled, sweetly saccharine. ‘That you don’t like to talk about Gigi and that you said you’d never love a woman again.’

Luciano grimaced. ‘Sancia! Where is your compassion? Your sister almost destroyed me!’

‘There is no need for you to tell—’ Sancia began urgently.

‘A couple who are about to marry should have no secrets from each other,’ Luciano declared, and as Jemima stiffened in surprise he smiled ruefully. ‘A very wise woman once told me that but I wasn’t listening.’

‘But you have never wanted the truth to come out!’ Sancia was still arguing. ‘You were happy for me to write a whitewash!’

‘I’ve matured.’ Luciano tossed the book back down on the table and looked at Jemima. ‘Gigi was not the glowing star and wonderful woman described in this book. I married her because she told me I was the father of the child she carried. She was repeatedly unfaithful to me with the leading men in her movies, and the day she died she was leaving me for another man.’

‘Oh, no...’ Jemima mumbled, pained by the look in his eyes.

‘That man, Alessio di Campo, is a famous producer and he was the love of Gigi’s life—well, as much as she could love anyone, she loved him,’ Luciano revealed doggedly. ‘He was a married man with a wife and only when his wife died were the two of them willing to go public about their relationship. Their affair had, however, apparently continued throughout our marriage. I told her that she was welcome to leave but that I would not let her take our daughter, Melita, with her.’

‘How can you trust her? She could go to the press with all this!’ Sancia screeched accusingly.

‘Jemima won’t and even if the story was to get out, so what?’ Luciano shrugged a broad shoulder with fluid fatalism. ‘It’s all done and dusted now. To finish the story, Gigi told me that Melita was not my daughter but Alessio’s,’ he revealed heavily. ‘I had stayed in a bad marriage for years for my daughter’s sake and suddenly she wasn’t my child any more. That truth was more devastating than Gigi’s departure with Melita that day.’

‘It was a cruel lie,’ Sancia swore, desperate to be heard again. ‘I never believed that!’

‘Testing was carried out after the crash,’ Luciano cut in flatly, his lean, masculine face unrelentingly grim. ‘Melita was not my child but I loved her as though she was and had she survived I would have kept her with me had I had the choice. As it was, both mother and child died instantly when the helicopter Alessio had sent to pick them up crashed on the flight to Monaco.’

Jemima’s eyes were stinging. Only Sancia’s sullen, resentful presence prevented her from saying what she really felt because her heart was bleeding for him. He had been hiding the truth from her all along and she was deeply shaken by the true version of what his marriage had entailed. It had not occurred to her that Gigi could have been anything less than perfect. In reality, though, Gigi had been a horribly disloyal and dishonest partner and Jemima was no longer surprised that Luciano had required DNA testing before he had been prepared to accept Nicky as his son.

‘Let’s go...’ Luciano breathed, curving a protective arm to Jemima’s spine.

‘I could sell Gigi’s true story for a fortune,’ Sancia remarked quietly.

‘Go ahead. I no longer care,’ Luciano responded almost cheerfully. ‘But if you go naming names you will probably make a lot of dangerous enemies amongst the very people whom you still want to employ you. But that’s your business now that I will no longer be settling your bills. My pilot’s waiting for you at the helipad. I’m sure I don’t need to add that you’re no longer welcome here.’

And with that final withering speech they were both back out in the fresh air and sunshine again. Shell-shocked, Jemima leant against Luciano for a few seconds, revelling in the strength of his tall, powerful body and the gloriously familiar scent of him. All she could think about was that Gigi had been a dreadful liar and then Julie had lied to him and cheated him and then Jemima had lied to him as well! How could he ever fully forgive her for having lied to him after what he had had to endure in his first, unhappy marriage?

‘You know... I thought you’d got cold feet about the wedding,’ she told him dizzily. ‘I believed you were back early to dump me—’

‘No, I was too scared I was losing you. I didn’t know what Sancia had done but I always suspected she could be poisonous.’

‘But how could you even find out that I was seeing her yesterday? The bodyguards?’

‘No, Agnese. She’s like a bloodhound. She phoned me to tell me that Sancia had invited you and informed me that that was suspicious because Sancia is not friendly towards other women.’

‘Why were you paying Sancia’s bills?’

‘At first I felt sorry for her because she was always overshadowed by Gigi. Of course, she knew all her sister’s dark secrets because she worked as Gigi’s assistant on the Palermo estate we lived on in those days.’ He hesitated. ‘With the timing involved, nobody guessed that Gigi had been in the act of leaving me when she died and I told myself that it was my private business. But, more honestly, I chose to save face rather than tell the truth. The paparazzi had dogged us obsessively throughout our marriage because, of course, there were always rumours about Gigi’s behaviour but she was never caught out.’

‘I can understand you not wanting people to know that she had affairs,’ Jemima murmured ruefully. ‘It hurt your pride and Sancia played along with that because it suited her to do so.’

‘She made a killing on the book because she wrote what Gigi’s fans wanted to read. They didn’t want to hear about the man-eater with the monstrous ego who seduced me when I was twenty-two and too rich and naïve to smell a rat. Of course, she was already pregnant when she first slept with me.’

‘And you didn’t even suspect?’

‘I was infatuated with her. It was probably a little like the way you reacted to your unknown twin when she first turned up. I only saw what I wanted to see in Gigi and I was flattered by her interest.’

‘But the marriage only lasted because of Melita?’

Luciano could not hide his sadness. ‘The marriage died within months of Melita’s birth. I loved that little girl and she loved me. Gigi had no interest in her daughter but she wouldn’t have given up custody of her because she said that would damage her reputation as a mother.’