by Jane Porter
Jillian’s heart fell. “What?”
“He has a big apartment there, not far from his office. I’ve never seen it but I’ve heard that it’s at the top of a building and very nice. In English I think you call it a penthouse.” Maria bobbed her head and then excused herself, returning to the house.
For a moment Jillian just watched Maria walk and then driven by some dark, murky emotion, Jillian scooped up Joe and chased after Maria. “Is Signor still here?” she asked, catching up with Maria just inside the door.
The castle felt cool and shadowy after the afternoon sun.
“I think so,” Maria answered. “He might even still be upstairs.”
Jillian left Joe with Maria and dashed up the stairs, her high heels tapping against the polished stone floor. She reached their bedroom just as Vittorio was turning off the light.
“Where are you going?” she asked breathlessly.
“To Catania. I have some business to take care of.”
“You’re going to your office?”
“Does it matter?”
She searched his dark eyes yet his expression was so completely shuttered she couldn’t see what he was thinking. “Yes.”
“I will be going to my office, yes, among other places.”
“Do you conduct most of your meetings at the office?”
“Not necessarily.” He gazed down at her, lips curling in a sardonic smile. “Worried that I’ll be conducting illicit business in dark alleys, Jill?”
“No.”
There was a moment of tense silence before Vittorio shook his head. “And you call me a liar.” His smile grew, his dark eyes glittering with anger. “But I don’t have time for this, as interesting as it is. Have a good night. Don’t wait up for me. I’m not sure when I’ll return.”
“You’re not coming back tonight?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t decided.”
“Vitt,” she protested, reaching out to touch his coat sleeve.
He glanced down at her hand resting on his dark coat and then into her face. “Don’t even try to pretend that you’ll miss me, Jill.”
She flushed, her cheeks burning with heat. “It’s only our first night here. I don’t know anyone. I barely know my way around.”
“You have our son. You know Maria. That should be enough.” He paused, considered her. “It has to be enough. Because that’s all you really have.”
She felt as if he’d slapped her. Her eyes watered. Her blush deepened, her skin burning from her chest to her brow. “You don’t need to be cruel.”
“I see. You can say whatever you want, but I have to play nice?”
“I’m sorry about earlier—”
“No you’re not. You’re never sorry. You’re spoiled and selfish and incredibly self-centered. And since you’re so big on the truth, let me tell you the truth. You are the absolute last woman in the world I would have picked to be my wife.”
“You didn’t used to think that—”
“Because I didn’t know you. But I do now.”
She buried her hands behind her back as tears filled her eyes, and then pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.
“Truth hurts,” he said bitterly, “doesn’t it?”
“I never meant to hurt you,” she said, “but you’re enjoying being cruel.”
“I don’t enjoy being cruel. But I will give it to you straight. This isn’t the kind of marriage I envisioned, just as you aren’t the kind of wife I wanted. But it doesn’t matter now. I deal in reality, not in fantasy or fairy tales. We slept together. You became pregnant. I accept my responsibility.”
How could he be so cold when her heart felt as though it were on fire? “How good of you,” she murmured. “How very mature.”
He shrugged. “There’s no love here between us. There never will be, at least, not now. So we will focus on our son. We’ll sleep together on occasion. Have sex when the mood strikes. Put on a good face in front of my family. But that’s it. Understand? That’s all you’ll get from me, and that’s all I want from you.”
She blinked, looked away, battled to keep control because it felt like he was taking a knife to her, again and again. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Torturing me.”
“Torturing you is the last thing on my mind. I’m merely clarifying our relationship, defining the parameters before we have to function in front of my family and the rest of the world.”
“And those parameters?”
“You belong to me in the bedroom. The rest of your life is your own.”
“I am not an object.”
“Agreed. You are my wife. You will fulfill your conjugal duties. But you are free to shop, and travel, and make female friends of your choosing.”
“Female?” she flashed, glancing up at him, tears still matting her lashes.
“Only female. I will tear apart any man that comes within ten feet of you. You are my wife. You are a d’Severano. You’d best remember that.”
“You must enjoy having so much power when I have none.”
“You don’t need power. You have me.”
“To think for me, speak for me and force me to lie in your bed!”
“I shall never need force to get you into my bed. I proved that point yesterday. But if you’d care for a refresher—”
“Not necessary, but thank you.”
He smiled mockingly and reached for his tie, loosening it slightly. “Maybe I do have time for a quickie.”
“No.”
“No?”
The pale green bedroom walls felt as though they were about to close in. “I mean, not like this. Not a quickie. It won’t be right.”
“And what would be right? Romance? Candles? Soft music in the background?”
“You’re so angry.”
“I am.”
She trembled inwardly, not out of fear, but shock and pain. She didn’t want him angry with her, not like this, not when they’d once been so happy together. Maybe they only had two weeks, but those two weeks had been the happiest of her life and she wondered if they could maybe be happy again. If they could just sort out their past. If they could just figure out the future. How they’d do that, she didn’t know, but she had to have hope. Had to believe they could make a real marriage out of this, otherwise, how did one live in a loveless marriage? How did one live with so much? How would she survive the next seventeen years?
“I don’t want you angry, Vittorio. And I do want to fix this…make amends. I don’t know how yet, but will you at least let me try?”
For an endless stretch of time he said nothing. Then he reached out to her, his palm sliding down her neck, his fingers curving to fit her nape with his thumb at her earlobe. “And how would you do that?” he murmured huskily, stroking the hollow beneath her earlobe.
Her pulse leaped at his touch. She licked her lips as her mouth dried. “I would try to remind you that we can be good together. That we could be happy.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
His dark eyes held hers, the brown irises hot, glowing with tiny shards of amber and gold. “Does that include the bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“You’re offering me your body.”
“Yes,” she answered, her voice low.
His dark eyes flared with heat and immediate carnal desire. “And what will you do for me when I am in your bed?”
He was binding her heart with a chain. “Whatever it is you want your wife to do.”
Vitt’s hand slid down her neck to her collarbone and then over the middle of her chest, into the V between her breasts. “Anything I want?”
His hand was warm, so warm on her chest. Her breasts swelled, heavy, her nipples hardening. “You said I was to be obedient.”
“What a good wife you intend to be,” he taunted, clasping her jaw in both his hands, lifting her face to his. He held her face up, examining every inch as if she were a beautiful thing he’d bought at m
arket and he was now eager to inspect his purchase. After an endless, scorching scrutiny, he dipped his head, covered her lips with his, and kissed her deeply. His tongue probed her mouth, tasting, savoring the softness and heat within.
Jillian shuddered, heat exploding in her middle, coursing through her veins.
His tongue stroked the inside of her lower lip, flaming nerve endings everywhere. His teeth, straight, white, nipped at her lip and heat flared from her womb to her limbs.
She was melting, dissolving in his hands.
And then he drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked the tip, the sucking sensation tight and rhythmic, reminding her of his body thrusting into hers, making her back arch, her hips tilt, her body shaping to his.
His hands slid up into her hair, his fingers dragging across her scalp. He was waking her, warming her, fanning the empty aching need.
And still he kissed her, his knee parting her thighs, pressing up against her sensitive flesh and she grew hot, wet, needy in response.
Jillian slid her hands up his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her hands as she kissed him back, her skin hot and sensitive, her body taut with desire.
Long moments passed and then he lifted his head. He gazed down into her eyes a long moment and stroked her flushed, warm cheek. “I think I will claim what is mine.”
He unzipped her dress and peeled it off over her head before unhooking her bra and casting it on top of the discarded dress. Her panties followed along with her slim chocolate heels.
Once he had her naked, he dropped her not all that gently onto the enormous bed. With his dark gaze fixed on her, he shed his own clothes and then joined her on the bed, pushing her back to straddle her hips.
This time there was no foreplay. This was a lesson in ownership, a display of possession. He possessed her, too, stretching her out beneath him, his hands holding her wrists down above her head, his chest crushing her full breasts, his strong thighs holding her slim thighs apart as he entered her, and then filled her, driving deep into her body, again and again.
She was warm and slick, his shaft thick and hard, and he stroked her relentlessly, creating a maddening friction that was so pleasurable it almost caused pain.
With each of his thrusts she tightened her inner muscles around him, wanting to hold him, wanting to keep him with her in an attempt to meet that wonderful and yet terrible need he created.
As he filled her, her head spun, and her senses swam with the dizzying pleasure of it all. Making love to him had always made her emotions feel wildly out of control. Today was no different. She craved him. She hated him. She needed him. She wanted him. She wanted him like she’d never wanted anyone or anything. And when together like this, skin against skin, warmth to warmth, heartbeat to heartbeat, she didn’t think she could possibly ever want anything more.
This was intimacy, and closeness, connection as she’d never known it. Together like this, she felt whole. Comforted. Cherished. The lovemaking was such perfection it made her eyes sting and her heart ache. She never wanted it to end. Not even tonight.
Long before she was ready, her body betrayed her, nerves and muscles coiling into an explosive physical climax that triggered his. She sighed as he released into her, her body still sensitive and shuddering with pleasure. How could sex be so right with him when everything else was so wrong?
For a moment she allowed herself to relax into him, savoring the feel of his hard, lean body. And then he withdrew.
As always, she felt bereft.
As always her heart ached, wanting, needing more.
He turned onto his side, pulled her up against him, his arm over her chest holding her close to him. She let him, too, because when they were together like this, she did need him. She needed him more than she’d ever needed anyone. Her life had been lonely. Her father’s problems had eclipsed everyone else’s needs. When Vittorio loved—even if only with his body—she felt good. And safe. Safer than she felt with anyone else.
But sex, even slow and leisurely, didn’t last forever. It always ended. And the afterglow always ended. And then she was swamped with all the overwhelming emotions again.
Emptiness. Pain. Hopelessness. Sadness.
And so when he wrapped his arm around her, his forearm warm and snug against her breast, she unsteadily exhaled and inhaled and exhaled again to keep the tears from falling.
How could she mistrust him and yet need him so much?
How could he make her feel so vulnerable? No one else made her feel this way. Why did he?
Lying in the bedroom’s semidarkness, with the last lingering rays of sunlight fading from the sky, Vittorio felt Jill’s chest rise and fall, a silent hiccup of emotion that she never acknowledged, and always refused to discuss. Suppressing a sigh, he drew her small frame closer to him, her soft round breasts pressed to his arm.
She was so full of secrets and her secrets wore on her. He’d known many men who lived in the shadows, clandestine lives filled with cloak-and-dagger games, but those men reveled in their furtive behavior, thriving on danger, thriving on power. Jill didn’t.
He’d once wished she’d tell him what troubled her. He no longer cared. Or that’s what he told himself.
But when her narrow rib cage rose and fell with a deep shuddering breath, his own chest grew tight.
In Bellagio everything had been easy between them. Not just the sex, but the connection, the conversation, the friendship they’d been building. He’d trusted her. He’d believed she was honest, true and real.
Turned out nothing about her was honest or real. Not her name. Not her past. Not even her hair color.
His meeting tonight was with one of his detectives. The detective had learned what he’d called “significant details” of Jill’s past.
Tonight in Catania he’d discover who she really was.
Tonight could change everything.
And so he held her closer, held her as if he could possibly keep bad news from changing the fragile tie between them.
Maybe in his own way, he still loved her a little.
“When I first saw you on the cliff, I thought perhaps you were wearing a wig,” he said quietly, his voice rough with passion and emotion he’d never share. “But it’s not a wig. You dyed it.”
She lay still in his arms. “Yes.”
“How have you perfected so many different disguises?”
“Theater. I performed in all the high school plays and musicals. I loved it so much that I went to Gonzaga as a theater arts major.”
“I thought you studied hotel management.”
“I did. I graduated with a degree in hotel management, but initially I wanted to be an actress.”
“Why?”
She took a deep slow breath. Her voice wasn’t entirely steady. “I wanted to be someone else.”
Vittorio stayed with her another half hour and then wordlessly he pulled away and left the bed. She lay on her side facing the wall listening to Vittorio dress.
He was leaving.
Leaving her.
She told herself she didn’t care. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to ignore the slide of fabric and the scrape of zipper. Then came a moment of quiet. She felt Vitt’s hesitation. Felt him standing over the bed, gazing down at her. She didn’t turn to him, or speak. She kept her eyes closed pretending to sleep.
Then he walked away and the bedroom door opened. She opened her eyes then, looked toward the door and the hallway. A ray of light fell across the bedroom floor and she glimpsed Vittorio’s hard, handsome profile and his shoulder before the door closed, shrouding the bedroom in darkness once again.
For long minutes she lay on her back, thinking but not thinking. Feeling but not feeling. Doing her best to close her own door on her inner turmoil.
She couldn’t let herself feel. Couldn’t analyze a single emotion. Couldn’t go inward because if she did, she’d fall apart.
Every time she was with Vitt it felt so right, so why did it have to be so wrong?
/> In Catania Vittorio met with the American private investigator at his office. It was nine o’clock and the office was closed, all lights off except for the executive suite that housed Vittorio’s office.
The detective, a former FBI agent, sat across the desk from Vitt, a notepad open on his lap, telling Vitt everything he’d discovered.
He’d discovered a great deal.
It required all of Vitt’s self-control to remain seated with his expression neutral while the detective revealed everything he’d discovered about Vittorio’s new wife.
April Holliday wasn’t Jillian’s only alias. Jillian Smith was an alias, as well. There were three other aliases before she had become Jillian Smith at age sixteen.
She’d been in the U.S. government’s witness protection program for fourteen years, had moved numerous times and changed her looks and name repeatedly because her family’s safety had been repeatedly compromised.
“She had four different identities on file with the government,” the detective said, glancing briefly at his notes. “She was creating that fifth one—April Holliday—when we located her in Carmel. But April Holliday wasn’t a government-issued identity. It was one she’d created on her own to hide from you.”
Vitt’s brow lowered. “Is she still part of the witness protection program?”
“She is supposed to be. The rest of her family still is.”
“Where is her family?”
“Parents are in Florida. The exact location isn’t known.”
“Who are they?”
The detective shook his head. “That is the one piece of information missing from her file.” He leaned forward, slid a sheet of paper across the desk toward Vittorio. On the paper he’d listed all of Jill’s aliases, including her schools and studies and the different addresses from the time she was twelve until now. “There is nothing I could find that gives her birth name, or her parents’ original names. Like Jillian, her family goes by Smith, and has used Smith for a number of years. We do know that the entire family, a family of four—mother, father and two daughters—was placed in the program fourteen years ago but we don’t know why.”
Vittorio calmly studied the paper in his hand, his relaxed features revealing none of his inner tension. There was a reason Jill had run from him in Bellagio. She’d heard the word Mafioso whispered and disappeared like a thief in the night. And she’d kept running until he’d found her. But she remained terrified of him. She’d made it clear she didn’t trust him, or believe that he wasn’t connected to the mafia. She’d said so several times.