Married for His One-Night Heir

by Jennifer Hayward

  “Half of New York’s female population is undoubtedly in mourning,” Chloe interjected drily. “No surprises there.”

  “Not that I’m going to dress her anymore,” Chiara amended hastily. “He never looked at her the way he looks at you, by the way. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Gia’s lashes swept down. “What do you mean?”

  “Like someone would have to walk through him to get to you. I’ve never seen him like that.”

  A flush warmed her cheeks. That had always been Santo’s way. But in this case, it didn’t mean anything other than he’d married her for his son and he was protecting his investment. Because he was determined to carve out that perfect family he’d promised himself.

  “I think it’s obvious why Santo and I married,” she said quietly, aware these women were too smart and perceptive not to sense the truth. “We did it for Leo.”

  Chloe studied her for a long moment with that quiet scrutiny of hers. “Is it? I don’t pretend to know what happened between you and Santo. Frankly, it’s none of my business. But you know him as well as I do. The last thing he would do is commit himself to a marriage he doesn’t want. He could have his pick of any woman on the planet. So clearly,” she observed, “there is something there for him. Something he thinks can work.”

  Or, Gia countered silently, he was simply going to make it work because he had to.

  Chloe’s words, however, stuck with her as the lazy evening stretched on, a delicious dinner served on the terrace amidst a stunning, rose-red Westchester sunset. Maybe she was right. Santo seemed committed to making this relationship work. Maybe it was her that was the stumbling block. Maybe she had to let go of this anger. Believe everything he was saying. That she and Santo had a foundation to build this marriage of theirs on that could make it a success. That once, they’d shared something rare and special and maybe they could have it again.

  When her husband suggested they should leave as the sky darkened to black, the sound of an army of cicadas filling the air, a current of anticipation fizzled her blood at the promise of what was to come. She made a quick trip upstairs with Chloe to get the bottle of perfume she’d promised, and was about to join the others at the front of the house when she remembered she’d left her wrap on a chair on the terrace. Winding her way through the house to the patio, she had set one foot through the open sliding glass doors, before the low pitch of Santo’s voice froze her in her tracks.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I am attempting to hold my tongue, that’s what I’m doing.” Lazzero’s voice held a dark frown. “Your shotgun wedding has us all a bit shell-shocked, Santo. I’m simply attempting to process it all.”

  “Some kind of a friendly welcome might be nice.”

  “She is a Castiglione,” his brother said, biting out the words. “Her father is the topic du jour of the newspapers. She is a political liability. Immersing yourself in this, taking Stefano Castiglione on, is madness with the biggest launch in our history right around the corner.”

  “She is the mother of my child,” her husband growled back. “There was no question as to what I’d do. You would have done the same.”

  “No,” his brother said deliberately, “I wouldn’t have. I think it’s a mistake. I think she is a mistake. I can hold my tongue on your private affairs, Santo, but do not ask me to tell you lies about how I feel.”

  “You don’t know her.” Santo’s voice was low, resonant. “You are judging her based on the family she comes from, not for who she is.”

  “I am judging her based on what I saw every day for a decade. Her running to you every time she had a problem. You playing knight in shining armor. You’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to keep a woman like that happy. Dealing with her backstory. And you never will.”

  Gia’s heart splintered into pieces. Unable to bear hearing any more, she turned on her heel and retreated the way she’d come, tears stinging the back of her eyes.

  It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. It shouldn’t cut so deeply. It was the last comment that did it, because she knew it was true. Santo had always been her shelter. Her rock. She’d always run to him when she’d needed someone. It was exactly what she’d been trying to rectify when she’d started her new life in the Bahamas. To learn how to stand on her own two feet. And now, she’d lost that, too.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SANTO FOLLOWED GIA into the penthouse. He stripped off his watch and tossed it on the dresser in the bedroom, while she put Leo to bed, frustration seething through his bones. He’d been so sure they’d been making progress in this détente of theirs only to have her freeze up on him on the way home as if the temperature had been subzero instead of damn near balmy.

  He absorbed the icy look on her face as she slipped into the bedroom, slid the clip from her hair and threw it on the dressing room table, her silky blond hair swinging against the delicate line of her jaw.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” He leaned a palm against the dresser. “Everyone was making an effort to make you feel comfortable tonight. We were good and then we were not.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said frostily. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh, no.” He eliminated the prospect of that happening, covering the distance between them with swift steps. “We are not doing this again. I’ve made it clear that isn’t how our marriage is going to work.”

  She stared him down with belligerent heat. “It’s nothing. You are barking up the wrong tree, Santo. I’m tired. I want to go to bed. That’s all.”

  “Gia,” he growled, “you can tell me what’s wrong or we can stay here all night.” He spread his hands wide. “Your choice. I’m easy.”

  She hiked up her chin. “I overheard you and Lazzero talking before we left. About what a mistake he thinks I am. A political liability.”

  Maledizione. He raked a hand through his hair. “You heard that?”

  “I was coming back to get my sweater. I’d left it on the terrace.”

  He absorbed the cloud of hurt suffusing her eyes, his insides contracting. “It doesn’t matter what Lazzero thinks,” he said quietly. “This is our relationship, not his.”

  “Which he completely disapproves of. Both of your brothers do.”

  “So what?” He shrugged “I’m sorry you had to hear that. Lazzero is being... Lazzero. You know what my brothers are like. But that doesn’t mean he is right. Which is exactly what I told him.” He shook his head. “You have to stop worrying so much about what other people think and focus on us.”

  “How can I?” she bit out. “You haven’t lived with the constant judgment like I have, Santo. You saw it growing up. It doesn’t matter how hard I work to prove myself as something other than a Castiglione, I will always be a Castiglione.”

  “So you rise above it. Choose how you define yourself rather than let others do it for you. We’ve had this conversation dozens of times, Gia.”

  Yes, they had. And yet, every time it kept on happening.

  He waved a hand at her. “You think I don’t understand what it’s like to live with a legacy? My father imploded in spectacular fashion, Gia. Thousands of people lost their jobs when his company failed. The analysts couldn’t wait to savage the great Leone Di Fiore in the press. The golden boy of Wall Street’s meteoric fall from grace. Lazzero and I have had to battle that legacy every step of the way. If we make a wrong move, they point to my father. When we succeed, they tell us we’ve risen too far, too fast. It is always there.”

  “You can’t compare the two,” she shot back. “Your father was an honorable man. My father is...” She stumbled to a halt, her cheeks blazing. “You know what he is.”

  “What?” he prompted quietly. “Why don’t you just say it?”

  “You know why.”

  “You aren’t bound by those rules anymore. You
walked away, remember?”

  The storm in her eyes brewed darker. “Fine,” she said. “You want to get the elephant in the room out in the open? My father is a criminal, Santo. A monster in a slick suit. He rose to the top of the food chain by the exercise of extreme power and brutality. He has blood on his hands. Who knows how much?”

  He stared at her, shocked into silence.

  Her lashes lowered, brushing her cheeks. “People assume that I am guilty by association. How can I not be when I lived that life? When I condoned what he was?”

  “You don’t choose who your father is,” he said evenly. “You were too young and too defenseless to make any sense of it, Gia. When you got older, when you could make those decisions for yourself, you left. You made your choice.”

  But she had been indelibly shaped by who she was, as he himself had pointed out in the Bahamas. Gia curled her arms tight around herself and paced to the window, everything she’d kept hidden inside of her for what seemed like forever bubbling to the surface. Pushing at the edges of her tightly held composure. The secrets, the memories, the shame of it all.

  And suddenly, she needed to get it out before it ate her alive. Before it destroyed her even more than it already had.

  “I didn’t know what he was in the beginning,” she said huskily, turning to lean a hip against the sill. “I was dazzled by him. I loved him. I thought he was larger than life. I would see him for a few minutes before bed every night. I would make sure I had a witty thing to tell him, something to make it worth his while. A funny joke I’d heard, a cool fact I’d collected from my National Geographic Kids magazine.” Her mouth softened at the memory. “He would laugh and tell me how smart or funny I was. It seemed, in that moment, like it was the best thing I’d accomplished all day.”

  Her innocence about her father, she acknowledged, stomach twisting, had still been alive and well then.

  “But soon,” she continued, “the rumors started. My father was climbing the ranks—gaining power in the family. He was always working. Even more distant than he was before. I would hear the whispers at school about what he was, something a kid’s parents had seen in the newspaper or on TV. I would go home and ask my mother if it was true. She would tell me that successful people like my father were a target for those types of stories and that I shouldn’t believe any of it. Nor was I to talk about it.”

  “You never did,” Santo observed. “Not even when I asked.”

  “I was bound by the omerta—the vow of silence we take. Talking about the business could land my father in jail. We could be forced to testify. Or worse,” she added matter-of-factly, “it could be used against us.”

  She wrapped her arms tighter around herself as the memories enveloped her. “I didn’t know what he was until the night before my thirteenth birthday. We’d finished dinner. Mamma had gone to her sister’s. I was bored and lonely, angry I wasn’t out socializing like every other kid I knew. My father always held these secret meetings in his library at night. I was desperately curious about them. So, I slipped into the secret compartment behind the library wall.”

  The memory was burned into her head, an indelible image she’d never forget. Her heart had been beating so loud in her ears she’d thought it might thunder right out of her chest. Her fingertips clutched the gnarled old oak shelves in a death grip as she listened through the gap in the wood. She’d been old enough to suspect that what everyone had said was true, but hoped it wasn’t. Had been desperate to prove all the catty whispers wrong. Because, of course, it couldn’t be true. Her father couldn’t be that.

  “My father was meeting with my Uncle Louis. Who wasn’t my real uncle at all,” she acknowledged, her mouth twisting. “He was my father’s top lieutenant. His right-hand man.

  “My father and Louis were talking about Giuliano Calendri, the famous jazz singer my father hung out with. Giuliano was refusing to play an engagement at one of my father’s casinos.” The knots in her stomach pulled tight. “My father told Louis that if Giuliano couldn’t find the time to play his gig, he would ensure he never did another date on the east coast. Then, he would break his knees.”

  “So then you knew,” Santo said softly.

  “Yes.” But it had felt as if she hadn’t known anything, really. Because if her Uncle Louis wasn’t her real uncle, what was true? Were the stories in the newspapers true? How much else had her father lied to her about? Was anything real in her world?

  “I almost got away with it,” she reminisced. “Until one of my father’s security men found me slipping back into the house.” A chill went up her spine as she recalled her father’s violent rage. The sting of his fingers as he’d slapped her face so hard, her head snapped back. She’d been in shock. Her father was hard. Undeniably ruthless. But he had never hit her before.

  “He lost it with me,” she said, lifting her gaze to Santo’s. “He hit me. Told me I was never to do it again. That I should know my place. I never,” she said quietly, “gave him reason to do it again.”

  Santo watched her with an unblinking look. “So you turned yourself into a straight A student. Won every track competition you entered. Did everything you could do to earn his approval, including marrying Franco. Walking away from what we had.”

  She lifted her chin, Lazzero’s soul-destroying words slicing open jagged wounds inside of her. “It was never going to work, Santo. That’s why I walked away. We both knew it. It’s why we avoided the attraction between us.”

  “I ignored the attraction between us because you were promised to someone else,” he qualified. “In case you have forgotten that pertinent fact. I was trying to be sensible for the both of us, Gia.”

  “And the fact that it was complicated, that I was complicated, never figured into it?”

  The evasive look on his face cut a swath right through her. “It is inconsequential,” he murmured. “Because we crossed that line and now we are here. Together. Stop trying to throw roadblocks between us.”

  A hot ball of hurt lodged itself beneath her ribs. At him for refusing to acknowledge the truth. Anger at herself for ever agreeing to a marriage she shouldn’t have. For allowing herself to believe, even for a moment, that it could work, because she had never been, nor would she ever be, what he needed. Nor what he’d wanted.

  She hiked her chin higher, refusing to show the pain and humiliation shredding her insides. “I am telling you the truth you refuse to admit. It wasn’t going to work then, and it isn’t going to work now.”

  * * *

  Santo absorbed the hurt darkening his wife’s big green eyes. Watched her shut herself down. It had been complicated. He had held himself back because of it. But he’d picked her up and carried her into that hotel room, anyway, because he’d thought it had been worth it. That she had been worth it. And it infuriated him that yet again, she was denying everything it had been.

  He stalked across the room and came to a halt in front of her. “First of all,” he murmured, tipping her chin up with his fingers, “you are the one who walked away, not me, Gia. It may have been complicated, but I thought it was worth it. Secondly,” he qualified, “if you had stayed around long enough to hear the end of my conversation with Lazzero, you would have heard me say that he needs to open his eyes, because you are the strongest, most courageous woman I know to have walked away from everything you knew to protect Leo like you did. I respect that, even if I haven’t understood all of the decisions you’ve made.”

  Her eyes grew large, glittering pools of emerald green in the lamplight. “And finally,” he concluded, “for the record, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about us. I only care what we think about us. What we make of this marriage. So how about we focus on that?”

  Gia sucked in a breath.

  He swept the pad of his thumb over the trembling line of her bottom lip. “What are you so scared of when it comes to us?” he murmured. “Because I think it has
to do with more than this.”

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  “Gia.” His tone commanded an answer.

  “We went from zero to a hundred in one night,” she whispered, eyes on his. “I don’t know how to handle it. How to put the pieces back together.”

  “So we slow it down. Learn each other all over again.”

  She stared at him as if she wasn’t quite sure how to do that. He braced both of his palms on the window on either side of her. Shallow, fractured with anticipation, her breath sat frozen, trapped in her lungs as he lowered his head. Waited, his mouth just millimeters from hers until she made the first infinitesimal move—a tiny lift of her chin. Then he closed the almost imperceptible gap between them and claimed her mouth in a slow, gentle kiss.

  * * *

  Lazy, sensual, magical—it was so unlike Franco’s impatient, rough caresses, it rocked her world. Wiped the memories clean from her head. She slid her fingers into his hair and kissed him back, a leisurely, mutual relearning of each other that affirmed everything they had once been. Real. Right.

  Gauging her responses, reading the softening in her body, he took the kiss deeper. She tipped her head back, slid her fingers to his jaw and accepted his questing foray. The slow slide of his tongue against hers was stomach-clenchingly erotic. The remembrance of a taste once savored and never forgotten.

  It filled the jagged, empty holes inside of her. Banished the loneliness she’d felt for so long.

  Heat swept through her—surged to every inch of her skin. Slowly, seductively, he made love to her mouth until she melted beneath him, her limbs lax as she plastered herself against the glass.

  Santo lifted his mouth from hers and took her in. Cheeks aflame with color, her breathing erratic, she watched as he dropped his gaze to the erect peaks of her breasts, which jutted through the silk of her dress. Her pulse beat an erratic edge as he splayed a warm palm against her rib cage. Slid his hand up over the smooth expanse of skin covered by the silk until he found the pebbled peak that throbbed for him. Eyes on hers, he rubbed his thumb over the distended surface. Stroked the need higher.