by Penny Jordan
He was the man she adored with every breath in her. He was the man who showed her to be strong, who showed her what she was made of.
He would fight for custody, she knew. He would do what he deemed to be right by their child. He would tie her up in clauses and contracts, he would use the fact that she hadn’t instantly told him to tie her to him.
To achieve what he had wanted two months ago.
Even as every inch of her thrummed with pain, even as every inch of her recoiled at subjecting her coming child to separate parents living across the globe, Clio made her decision as the woman he had helped her become.
It was better her child had two parents who loved him, rather than a mother who would forever be in agony, living with the man who would never love her back, a mother who would so easily become a shadow of herself.
She straightened her spine and faced him. Waited for the hardest battle of her life to commence. “No. I wouldn’t have hid it from you. But I…” she swallowed the tears in her throat, “I would have given myself a few weeks to prepare first.”
* * *
“Prepare for what?” Stefan threw back at Clio, finding it unbearable to meet her eyes. How deep and sharp her words cut, how easily she had turned him into this mass of ache and love…
Her denial didn’t bring him even infinitesimal relief. His gut still ached, his breath rushed out of him unevenly.
She would have taken a few weeks to prepare herself…that he had driven her to this, it traveled through him like a missile launched specifically to torture him.
He turned, not sure what he would say, and stilled.
With her palm splayed against her stomach, her green eyes shining with tenderness and determination, she faced him. The wide curve of her mouth trembled. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen and it only brought home again how much he loved this woman. How fortunate that she would mother his child…
“Please answer me, Clio. Preparing for what?” he asked again, fisting his hands at his sides, stifling the urge to take her in his arms.
She shrugged, but the casualness she was going for didn’t come through. There was a wariness in her eyes that he decided he would never be the cause of again.
“I knew that if I had told you immediately, you would come armed to the teeth with clauses and contracts. That you would want this child and me and the whole family thing. That you would seduce your way into my life and convince me this was for the best. As sad as it sounds, I need to shore up my defenses against you.”
“You think I will bind you to me in the name of our child? You think me that heartless, Clio?”
Tears ran over her cheeks and she swayed. Cursing himself over and over, Stefan caught her.
“What am I supposed to think, Stefan? Two months have gone by and you didn’t call me once. Two months in which I wondered if I would ever see you again. Two months in which every minute felt like an eternity. Two months in which I battled the urge to come to you, to beg you to take me back any way you wanted.”
He grabbed her hands, willing her to understand him. “I hurt you so much that day. I couldn’t face myself in the mirror thinking of what I had ruined. The minute you had walked out, I realized what I had done, how wrong I was.
“I have been cursing myself, wondering if I could ever take back what I had done. I was terrified that I would hurt you even more after everything you have been through, Clio. I’m terrified that I might never be worthy of you, bella.”
He knelt in front of her, wrapped his arms around her. Bent his head, burrowed into her warmth, the love he felt for her unmanning him.
And even as he trembled at the thought that he might have lost her, he could feel the rightness of this, feel everything in him slide into place. Striving for control that was out of his reach, he pulled her fingers in his hand and kissed her.
“Stefan?” she whispered. There was so much pain and hope in it that he ached.
He raised his head and met her beautiful gaze, poured the emotions flowing through him into words. “I’m desperately in love with you. With every breath in my body. With every cell in my being. I come to you today with nothing but my heart in my hands, Clio.
“All I want is to be part of your life, a chance to show you how much I adore you. Every moment of my life, every decision I have ever taken, it…it has made me into this. But it also brought me to you, bella.
“The bastard that I am today, I’m still all yours to do with, Clio.”
Sinking to her knees, she clutched him. “Oh, Stefan…”
And just when Stefan thought he couldn’t fragment anymore, that he could feel no more, the sound of her pain pierced him again.
Wrapping his arms around her gingerly, he pulled her onto his lap. Buried his face in her hair and breathed in a lungful of her scent. Pushed himself to be the man that was worthy of the generous, brave woman that his beautiful wife was.
“Please, Clio. Do not cry, cara. I will not challenge you over our child. I will walk out, I will sign any paper you want me to sign. All I want is your happiness, even if it will kill me to be away from you.”
Meeting his gaze, she rested her forehead against his. “You really want me? Me and not just the mother of your child?”
Hating that she doubted him, hating that he had given her cause to, he hugged her to him.
“I came today because I couldn’t bear to be apart from you anymore, Clio. I couldn’t breathe for the thought of never seeing you smile again.” His hand moved over her stomach, and his breath caught in his throat. “That you…that you carry a part of me inside you…it’s more than I wished for in my wildest dreams, bella. Will you truly be my wife, Clio? Will you help me be the man you deserve again?”
“You’re already everything I could have ever hoped for, Stefan. You know me better than anyone else in the world. And you take care of me, you enable me, you…you love me more than anyone else ever has, even as you shred me to pieces. Loving you—” tears pooled in her eyes and overflowed “—somehow, it has only made me stronger.”
His heart thudded fast in his chest, the back of his eyes prickling with warmth. “I love you so much, bella…I have missed you so much…it felt like a part of me was forever gone. Promise you will never walk away from me, Clio. Even if I make a mistake, promise me you will fight for me.”
Shaking her head, she covered his mouth with her hand. Sank her hands into his hair and tugged him up. Pressed her mouth to his and kissed him so hard and for so long that he came undone.
“All I want is my friend, my lover, my husband back, Stefan. All I want is the man who made me the best I could be. And if we make a mistake, we’ll rail and rage at other, but we will always find our way to each other again.”
Reaching for her mouth, Stefan breathed in her scent, clutched her to him. With Clio by his side, there would be nothing but happiness and joy in the coming days.
Combing his fingers through her hair, he kissed her forehead, a smile curving his mouth. “I want a little girl with hair the color of fire.”
Turning around, Clio tucked her face under his chin, her arms tightly vined around his midriff. “Do you think we will be good parents?”
The thread of anxiety in her tone, that she would show him her fears, made his chest fill up. “We will be the best parents in the world, bella. If we do make any mistakes, he or she will have grandparents and a host of aunts and uncles to complain to,” he said, thinking of Rocco and Christian and Zayed and the wonderful women they had married.
His heart seemed as if it was bursting to the full. Their friends would be over the moon for him, would find so much happiness in his.
“New York or Sicily?” he said, his hands roving restlessly over her lithe curves. With a moan that curled around his senses, she pushed herself into his touch.
Found his mout
h with hers and demanded everything. Nipped his lower lip with her teeth until he was rock-hard under her. Splaying her legs wide around him, she rubbed herself over his erection, and let out another long moan.
“New York and Sicily, with regular stops at Milan, Athens and Gazbiyaa,” she breathed, her fingers busy over his belt buckle.
The moment her fingers danced over his rigid shift, Stefan pushed her down to the carpet and covered her with his body.
This time, they both groaned, and joy filled his heart. “That should work, bella,” he finished and kissed his wife’s luscious mouth.
* * * * *
ISBN-13: 9781460381908
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
Copyright © 2015 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Tara Pammi for her contribution to the Society Weddings series.
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Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Tara Pammi’s new release,
HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE
The third and final book in her The Drakon Royals trilogy!
For ten years Ariana has hidden from Crown Prince Andreas—until he finds her and announces that they’re still married! He’s determined to claim Ariana for his royal bed. But dark-hearted Andreas quickly realizes desire is even more binding than duty…
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE
CHAPTER ONE
“IS THIS A coup to overthrow me?” Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon joked as he walked into his study to find his family staring at him with a spectrum of emotions—concern in his sister Eleni’s eyes, stubborn resolve in Mia’s, something he couldn’t define in his brother Nikandros’s and pure frost in Gabriel’s.
“None of us want your job, your popularity rating or your life, Andreas,” replied Nikandros, the financial genius who had set Drakon on its path of recovery after the mess their father had made in the last decade.
Nik was right. The state of his life currently—utter chaos with the Crown Council breathing down his neck for the announcement of his choice for the next Queen of Drakon, the questions the media was raising about his mental health, his frequent disappearances from Drakon in the last year, sometimes even his sexuality—would have usually had the effect of fire ants crawling all over his skin.
But he didn’t have any mental energy left beyond the hunt he’d been on for two years now. He was getting close, he knew it in his blood.
He settled down next to Mia. The smell of baby powder drifting from her was strangely calming. “How are you, Mia?”
Mia took his hands in hers. He tried not to flinch. Physical contact made him twitchy and now Mia knew it. But somewhere in the last few months, his sister-in-law and he had become strangely close.
“You didn’t come to see the twins, Andreas. After all the hullabaloo you raised about heirs for Drakon, I’m feeling neglected.”
He smiled. “I have just this hour returned to Drakon.”
“Which nicely segues to why we are all here. Andreas, what is going on?”
“You let her leave Tia and Alexio’s side to ask me this question?” Nik glared at him in response. Dark shadows bruised Mia’s eyes. “You look awful.”
“Stop posturing, Nik. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” She smiled and her eyes lit up with that same incandescent joy he’d seen in Nik’s of late. “I have two very good reasons for my ghoulish look, Your Highness,” she said, her gaze tracing the angles of his face. “You however do not.
“You look like hell,” she said with that forthrightness he’d come to expect from her, “and whether Nik and Gabriel will agree to put it like that or not, we’re all…very worried about you.”
He frowned, looked up and, with a strange knot in his gut, realized it was true. “It’s not necessary.”
“There’s talk from the Crown Council about asking you to step down. Your popularity level is at its lowest,” Nik said in a deceptively calm voice. “Some political pundits have dared say Father’s madness has already begun to manifest in you. You leave Drakon for days, not one of your aides knows your schedule, you refuse to see even Ellie and me…”
“That’s why you’re all worried?” Andreas asked with a laugh. “That Theos gave me his madness in addition to everything else?”
Eleni spoke up. “Of course not. But we do think you’ve been acting strange. Andreas, the House of Tharius is waiting for your word to release news of your engagement. The coronation is in two months and you—”
His phone pinged and every nerve in him went on high alert. He knew even before he switched on his phone’s screen what the news was going to be. His fingers shook when he swiped the screen.
Found the target. Sending location specs now.
His breath balled up in his chest, and he had to force himself to exhale.
Anticipation bubbled in his blood, coupled with savage satisfaction. “Let the House of Tharius know it’s off.”
The shock that spread through the huge room made the hairs on his neck rise. Nik and Eleni looked at him with such concern in their eyes that for the first time in months Andreas felt a little guilt. “I apologize for leaving you both in the lurch these past few months. I needed—”
“Thee mou, Andreas!” Nik burst out. “We don’t care that for the first time in thirty-six years, you took a few months for yourself.”
“Not the first time,” he said automatically. “I took a free year just when your health improved. Almost ten years ago.”
Nikandros frowned. “When Theos tried to make me his leashed dog?”
“A few months before that happened, yes.” When Andreas had, in a fit of madness, threatened Theo that he would walk out on Drakon if he didn’t give him some time off.
“Andreas.” Eleni reached him, her voice wavering. “You can’t be crowned King without a wife. That’s one of the oldest Drakonite laws. No member of the Crown Council will let you defy it. Are you…are you giving up the crown?”
Nikandros cursed so filthily that he had to laugh.
Andreas patted his sister’s hand awkwardly. “I’m not doing any such thing, Eleni. I will be crowned as scheduled.”
“You need a wife for that.” Nik again. Only Gabriel stood silent, staring at him from those steel-grey eyes. Gabriel, his brother-in-law, who had figured out the truth.
“Whatever you’re considering—” Eleni was close to tears now “—please tell us. Nik and I would never judge you for what—”
“I can’t marry Maria Tharius because I already have a wife. For two years, I’ve been trying to locate her.”
You are like me, Andreas, in every way. The same taste for power and control runs in your blood. Why do you think your little wife ran?
Those words had haunted him for two years now. But he didn’t give a damn.
He would willi
ngly be a monster if that meant she was back in his life.
“You’re married? To whom? When? Why didn’t you ever…” Eleni faintly shook with the force of her questions, until Gabriel put his hands on her shoulders and absorbed her petite form into his.
“She was Father’s ward. I married her during that sabbatical year in a secret civil ceremony.”
“Father had a ward?” Another curse from Nikandros, for he knew that meant another life his father would have played games with.
“Your pity is wasted on her, Nik,” Andreas said stonily. “Turns out Father and she understood each other perfectly well.”
“Ariana Sakis.” Eleni pronounced the name that had become so much a part of his own makeup that Andreas couldn’t remember a day before her life tangled with his. “She was shy of eighteen by a few months.”
Utter shock was etched on their faces now.
He’d been twenty-six and he’d married a barely legal eighteen-year-old in a secret ceremony… He could have grown two horns and a tail and it would have been less shocking.
“Her parents…died in a car accident. There were rumors that they’d been arguing, that her mother had driven it into the tree on purpose,” Eleni explained to Nik. “Her father…was a military general, a close friend of Father.
“There was a lot of talk about what an abusive husband he was and Father immediately severed the connection between the House of Drakos and him.
“Only a handful of people knew he had her custody and he sent her off to…no one knew where. I don’t think she even set foot in the palace.”
“To a fishing village off the coast,” Andreas finished. “Having met Father a couple of times, she’d been more than willing to go.”
“That’s where you met her?” asked Nikandros.
Andreas nodded. “I…I demanded Father give me a year to do as I wanted, to research a book I wanted to write. He agreed, after a lot of ranting.