“I agreed to marry you,” Josselyn panted out at Cenzo, her lips faintly swollen and her brown eyes wild.
“Not to take part in whatever sick revenge fantasy this is,” she continued. “I refuse to be a pawn in your game.”
“You can be any piece on the board that you like,” he replied, trying to gather himself. “But it will still be my board, Josselyn.”
And he watched something wash over her, intense and deep, and realized that he was holding on to her as if he wished to keep her with him.
He let her go, lifting up his hands theatrically. “By all means. Run and hide if that makes you feel more powerful.”
He kept his hands in the air, his mock surrender, and laughed at her as he stepped back.
Because he’d forgotten, entirely, that they stood on those narrow stairs.
She had kissed him silly.
It was his own mocking laughter that stayed with him as he fell, a seeming slow-motion slide backward. He saw her face as the world fell out from beneath him.
Nothing but her lovely face.
And then—nothing.
USA TODAY bestselling, RITA® Award–nominated and critically acclaimed author Caitlin Crews has written more than one hundred books and counting. She has a master’s and PhD in English literature, thinks everyone should read more category romance and is always available to discuss her beloved alpha heroes. Just ask. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her comic book artist husband, is always planning her next trip and will never, ever, read all the books in her to-be-read pile. Thank goodness.
Books by Caitlin Crews
Harlequin Presents
Chosen for His Desert Throne
Once Upon a Temptation
Claimed in the Italian’s Castle
Passion in Paradise
The Italian’s Pregnant Cinderella
Royal Christmas Weddings
Christmas in the King’s Bed
His Scandalous Christmas Princess
Rich, Ruthless & Greek
The Secret That Can’t Be Hidden
Her Deal with the Greek Devil
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Caitlin Crews
The Sicilian’s Forgotten Wife
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EXCERPT FROM THE WEDDING NIGHT THEY NEVER HAD BY JACKIE ASHENDEN
CHAPTER ONE
JOSSELYN CHRISTIE DID not expect to enjoy her wedding day.
It wasn’t that kind of wedding. She wasn’t that kind of bride—the sort who had dreamed her whole life of a white dress, a battalion of attendants, and a ceremony filled with personal details and love—which was just as well, because there was an appropriate dress, but no battalion. And the ceremony had been about the solemnity of marriage itself, not the couple getting married. A necessity as the couple hardly knew each other.
Josselyn understood it wouldn’t be a modern marriage, either, bristling with romance and mushy public declarations. Enjoyment really wasn’t on the menu.
But she had hoped for some degree of civility from the groom.
Her reception was in full swing in the ballroom. Old money Philadelphia milled genteelly around the ballroom in all their usual glory, here in her father’s house on the historic Christie estate, considered one of the most elegant addresses in Pennsylvania. And therefore, by definition, in the whole of America.
Just ask anyone here, Josselyn thought, as close to amused as she’d been in months.
The money on display in this ballroom tonight was so ancient that those who had inherited it didn’t call themselves Old Philadelphians. They preferred proper Philadelphians, or perennial Philadelphians, depending on the audience. But one thing they could all agree upon was that they were the direct—and in some cases, indirect—descendants of the first families of Ye Olde Pennsylvania colony. They felt, almost universally, that their bloodlines made them personally responsible for settling the state of Pennsylvania—and by inference, therefore, these United States.
If she listened closely, Josselyn was sure she could hear some of the snootier guests murmuring the so-called Philadelphia Rosary just under the sound of the band, that old rhyme of worthy Pennsylvania family names.
Morris, Norris, Rush and Chew...
Drinker, Dallas, Coxe and Pugh...
The Christies had Whartons on one side and Pennypackers on the other. Their money was old, their blood blue, and Josselyn supposed she should always have known that she was destined for a future precisely like the one she was embarking upon tonight. She should not have imagined that, somehow, she would be saved from sacrificing herself to her family name like all the blue-blooded brides before her.
“You look pensive, my dear,” came a familiar voice from beside her, startling Josselyn out of her gloomy thoughts. Thoughts of bloodlines and sacrifice did not inspire the average bride to beam about her reception, apparently. But she smiled almost instantly anyway, the usual rush of affection taking her over.
Even today.
Especially today.
Because she loved her father to distraction. She would do anything for him, as this day proved. She smiled down at him now, remembering when he had seemed bigger and stronger than anything that might threaten her. Now the years had seemed to shrink the elderly Archibald Christie, but she could see the differences in him already. Now that he had settled his daughter’s affairs as well as he could, in the best way he knew.
Because he believed that this marriage would keep Josselyn safe. And having lost her mother and brother, even if the accident was so long ago now, Josselyn had always understood that her safety was her father’s primary concern.
Even at such a cost.
Her gaze moved of its own accord toward the towering, brooding figure across the ballroom, engaged in deep conversation with a collection of other billionaires—all hanging on his every word, naturally—but she forced her eyes back to her father. No good could possibly come of making herself more anxious. Worrying would not change what lay ahead of her.
“I think the beginning of any marriage requires some level of pensiveness,” Josselyn said, but lightly. She slid her arm around her father’s shoulders, trying not to notice that he felt more frail than he should have. Because noticing it only broke her heart anew. And her poor heart was in enough trouble today. “Some sober reflection, perhaps. Clearheadedness and calm in preparation for what is to come.”
She could feel her father sigh a bit, next to her. They stood side by side, looking out over all the very best people who danced, drank, and cavorted beneath the gleaming lights. And who, Josselyn knew, would give not one thought to her again. Not one single thought.
Because this was the kind of wedding people attended for any number of reasons, but none of them having to do with celebrating love. And really, Josselyn had no one to blame but herself for imagining love would ever factor into her situation.
More fool her.
“I understand that this is not, perhaps, what you wanted,” Archibald said in his usual tone, gruffness overlaid with seven decades of innate polish. “I may be an old fool, but I hope I’m not entirely delusional.”
“Of course not, Pap
a,” Josselyn murmured. Placating him, of course. She’d told herself a million times that she needed to stop doing it, because surely it was time she strode forth and claimed her own life. But no matter how many New Year’s resolutions she made, she couldn’t quite bring herself to stop.
That was what affection did. It made her act against her own interests, and she couldn’t even say she’d minded too much until now.
Her father was many things, but easily placated was not among them. “You might think that I am a doddering idiot. I accept that. But I think, in time, you’ll see that all of this is for the best.”
“I understand,” Josselyn said as calmly as she could. “If I didn’t understand, I would never have agreed.”
And that was the thing. She had agreed.
No matter how overwrought she might have felt when she’d walked down the aisle this afternoon, no one had forced her to do it. There had been no gun at her back, no threats, no direct pressure. Josselyn had taken her father’s arm of her own free will and walked down that long aisle to her own doom.
Her father was drawn into conversation with an old family friend, but Josselyn stayed where she was. She smoothed her hands down the front of her exquisite gown, a near replica of the one her gorgeous mother had worn at her wedding. It had been Josselyn’s great joy, if laced with the usual bitter sweetness, to hold on tight to that connection today. She ordered herself to breathe. To smile. Instead, against her will, her gaze was drawn back across the room to where he still stood, holding court in his typically unyielding fashion.
Cenzo Falcone, a man so widely feared and admired that his first name was usually enough to create commotion. Cenzo, they would whisper, then shudder, and no explanation was needed. Cenzo, descended through European royalty and considered Sicilian nobility, heir to crumbling castles across the globe and a fortune so vast it was said a man could not possibly spend it all in ten lifetimes.
Cenzo Falcone. Her husband.
God have mercy on her soul.
A passing waiter offered Josselyn a drink and she took it gratefully. She was tempted to neck it straight down, but she managed to control herself. Rendering herself insensate might be appealing—more than appealing, at the moment—but she doubted it would end well. Because the wedding and the reception were one thing, but the clock was ticking. And all too soon, Josselyn would have to leave this place.
With him.
As his wife.
She took a small sip of the sparkling wine and kept her gaze trained on the groom.
Her husband. Maybe if she kept calling him what he was, this whole thing would seem more real. Or less overwhelming. Because many people had husbands. They were thick on the ground. There was surely no need to find the term intimidating.
Maybe if she called him what he was, she would find her way to some kind of peace with her new role as his wife.
When she looked across the room at this man who had stood up before all these people—there at the head of the long aisle, unsmiling while tightly coiled power swirled all around him, his brutally sensual features a raw assault—her mouth went dry. When the wedding ceremony had been hours ago now.
It was something about those arresting eyes of his, copper and gold, as if he was making a mockery of all the robber barons who had made their fortunes here. Many of whose descendants were currently eating canapés and having a waltz across the ballroom floor.
Breathe, Josselyn ordered herself.
Their courtship, such as it was, had been conducted over the course of only two in-person meetings. The first meeting had occurred two years ago, in Northeast Harbor, Maine, where Josselyn’s family had been summering for more than a hundred years. Josselyn had been acting as her father’s social secretary since she’d graduated from Vassar four years before, and she had been spending the cool afternoon catching up on his correspondence in the blue and white sitting room where her mother had once sat and read to her.
And everything seemed divided into before and after that fateful meeting.
There was before, when she had been writing out notes by hand because her father prided himself on his old school, old world approach to things. The secret to my success, my dear, he would tell her jovially, when they both knew the real secret was having been born a Christie. And better still, the male heir.
Josselyn had been humming her favorite summer anthem beneath her breath, silly and bright. She had been thinking that the breeze coming in through the windows was lovely, but it was making her a bit cold, so she might run up in a moment to grab a light scarf. Her plans had involved a walk later. Possibly a sail, though her father didn’t like it when she sailed out alone, so she rarely did it. It had been a Thursday, so her father’s housekeeper was off and it would fall to Josselyn to prepare their supper later. She was planning on a cold soup with fresh vegetables from the garden.
Such a mundane, quiet summer’s day in the middle of what she’d considered a happy little life. At least, Josselyn thought she’d been happy. It seemed to her she must have been, in those last, sweet moments before everything changed.
“Josselyn,” her father had called from the parlor in the front part of the house. “Come meet our guest.”
She could remember the suppressed excitement in her father’s voice and had stood quickly, frowning, because she hadn’t expected any visitors that day. Her father’s interests ran mainly to his golf game and his club when he was in Maine, and when he threw the odd dinner party—rarely more than a handful all summer—he had Josselyn plan them well in advance.
Still, there were longtime family friends and what seemed like half of Philadelphia’s upper crust all around on the rocky, craggy island, some twenty miles from Bar Harbor. Any one of them might have stopped by.
Josselyn had tried in vain to smooth down her usually long and straight dark hair, gone thick, wispy, and frizzy with the sea air. She’d been thinking a little bit crossly that she shouldn’t need to worry about her appearance with no advance warning, but knew she would have worn something more appropriate if she’d known she’d have to appear in the parlor today. Appropriate by her father’s definition, that was, whose take on modesty seemed to have gotten stuck midway through the previous century.
Then she’d walked into the room and promptly forgotten her Bermuda shorts and soft chambray shirt, clothes better suited for, say, a spell in the garden where there would be dirt. Her father was seated in his usual chair, and she noted distractedly that he was beaming. But that wasn’t the alarming part.
The alarming part was Cenzo Falcone, leaning up against the gentle old fireplace across the bright and happy room.
Dark and brooding and the end of everything.
She couldn’t remember what he’d chosen to wear, though she had the vague impression of a suitable shirt and dark trousers. But all she’d really registered was him. All that power. All that unrelenting intensity of those curious eyes of his, as if they were ancient coins his ancestors might have traded in, off in lost kingdoms long ago. The impression of his chiseled male beauty, almost alien in its severity. The close-cropped dark hair, the nose of a Roman emperor, the sense that whole nations rose and fell on his wide shoulders.
The man would have been an affront to the senses in a city of glass and concrete. Somehow, there on the coast of Maine, he was more like a terrible outrage. A dark and knowing storm that had rendered her powerless at a glance.
Her ears had been ringing, her heart had taken up a terrible pounding in her chest, and Josselyn had felt simultaneously winded and wild. She’d wanted to run out of the house that had always been her refuge, as fast as she could until she hit the water. The moody Atlantic, where she could take her chances with the currents that might sweep her off, all the way to Iceland and beyond, if she was lucky.
Though at that moment, Cenzo’s eyes heavy upon her for the first time, drowning had seemed like a pleasant alternative
. And also redundant.
Josselyn had stayed where she was, rooted to the spot, while her father mouthed some pleasantries, conducted whatever he considered appropriate introductions that she hardly heard, and then made everything worse by quitting the room.
Leaving Josselyn all alone with this man who had looked at her like she had chosen this fate. And made it clear he did not think highly of her for the choice.
“I... I don’t know what my father told you,” Josselyn had said, haltingly.
“He has told me the bare minimum,” Cenzo had replied.
It was the first time she’d heard his voice. Low, dangerous, and spiked with that accent that whispered to her of European capitals and Italy’s rolling hills. He made her shiver. Made her break out in goose bumps.
Made her wish she had already started running.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Then I will tell you.” Cenzo stayed where he was at the other end of the room, dominating the old fireplace. It was impossible not to notice how tall he was. How he commanded this space that had been her family’s for generations. As if it was his. As if she was his. As if this was no more to him than going through the motions. “Your father, who was in another life my own father’s roommate at Yale, has made me an intriguing proposition. And I have accepted it.”
“Proposition?” she had repeated, her heart hammering in her chest. When she’d already known. When this had been inevitable all along. It was a wonder only that her father had not married her off before now, and how had she convinced herself that he had let go of that notion? She’d known full well her father was not in the habit of letting go. Of anything.
“We will marry, you and I,” Cenzo told her. There had been something cruel in his gaze. In the elegant brutality that she could see all over his features, no matter that it was tempered with that sensuality beneath it. She had the thought that a knife could be dulled, but it was no less a knife. “It is your father’s wish and I have chosen to grant it.”
“Before even meeting me?” Josselyn had asked, feeling as if she was being daring when surely it was a reasonable enough question.
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