There was only Josselyn. His wife.
He kissed her again and again, and then he shifted, meaning to lift her in his arms—
But she pushed away from him, enough to brace herself against his chest. He found his hands on her upper arms.
“I agreed to marry you,” she managed to pant out at him, her lips faintly swollen and her brown eyes wild. “Not to take part in whatever sick revenge fantasy this is. 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—even if she did not want to stay.
Which defeated the purpose of all of this, didn’t it?
And more, made him the monster her father was.
He let her go, lifting up his hands theatrically. “By all means, little wife. Run and hide if that makes you feel more powerful.”
And he really thought, in that moment, that Josselyn might take a swing at him. He had no doubt that if she did, the blow would land. It might even sting a little.
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 when his foot encountered only air. He saw her face as the world fell out from beneath him.
Nothing but her lovely face.
And then there was nothing.
CHAPTER SIX
JOSSELYN WATCHED HIM FALL, everything in her seeming to fall with him. Her stomach plummeted to her feet. She flung out her arms as if she could catch him, but missed, doing nothing but rapping her knuckles against the wall.
He twisted in the air, then hit the floor of the next landing with his arms thrust out in front of him, before finally coming to a stop with a sickening thud.
Then he was still.
And this was Cenzo Falcone, so she expected him to leap to his feet again. To rise as if it had been nothing but a trick, so he could laugh at her mockingly all the more. So he could kiss her the way he’d just done, all that wildfire and shocking heat, and make her forget her name all over again—
But though she gripped the stone wall beside her, her eyes fixed on him as he lay there, he did not move.
The only sound was her own heartbeat, a mad racket in her ears, her breath sawing in and out of her as one horrible moment bled into another.
Josselyn threw herself forward, scrabbling down the stairs and dropping to her knees beside him on the lower landing. What if he was dead? What if—?
She couldn’t think it.
A sharp pang bloomed in her chest, feeling too much like grief, but she ignored it. She reached out to touch Cenzo, happier than she wanted to admit that he was warm to the touch and that she could see no distressing, unnatural angles. Her fingers were shaking as she pressed them into his neck, but she was instantly relieved to feel his pulse there. Strong and steady.
“Okay,” she said out loud, shocked at her own breathlessness, and that sharpness within. “Okay, he’s not dead. Good.”
But still he didn’t move. She tried to think of any first aid dos and don’ts she might have picked up on over the years. He had fallen backward, but he’d twisted himself around and had somehow landed on his side. As she stared at him, wishing she’d done something useful with her life so she could handle this well, she could see a large, red bruise forming on his forehead.
She didn’t think he’d suffered a spinal injury, but a head injury probably wasn’t much better.
Josselyn reached for her phone, then stopped in the act of pulling it from her back pocket, swearing under her breath as she remembered. No cell phone service. No Wi-Fi. No possible means of contacting the outside world. She remembered that he’d said something about a radio. But she had no idea where one might be, or even how she would explain where they were or what had happened.
Could she take the time to look? Did she dare leave him? What if he lapsed off and died while she was scrabbling around the old castle for a radio that, for all she knew, he might have lied about having in the first place?
He murmured something then, his voice sounding thick and unused. She didn’t think that he was speaking in English. Or even Italian, for that matter. Josselyn was relieved that he was speaking at all.
And she made a command decision, there and then.
“Come on,” she said briskly, trying to put her arm around his back, thinking that might help him figure out how to get to his feet, since she certainly couldn’t lift him. “Cenzo. You have to get up.”
And to her surprise, he moved. First onto his knees, looking woozy, before pulling himself to his feet. She expected him to blink away the wooziness and then light into her, but he didn’t. He only stared at her as if he couldn’t place her, and then looked as if he might slump there against the wall and topple on the rest of the stairs.
“We have to move,” she told him.
She didn’t question that decision as she helped him down the stairs, sometimes shouldering his weight when he faltered, until they reached the main floor of the renovated bit of the castle.
But she didn’t stop there, either. Because Cenzo moved with her when she encouraged him, clearly in a daze, and that was how she managed to get him all the way down to that rocky little landing on what passed for the beach. One step at a time, while the Sicilian afternoon grew deep gold and a richer blue around them.
The dinghy looked safer for a man of his size, but she led him toward the small sailboat instead, because there was no way she was going to row across the sea. She thought they were just as likely to end up in Greece when her arms gave out and the current took over.
But one thing Josselyn knew how to do was sail.
She raised the sail and was pleasantly surprised to find it intact. Then she managed to get Cenzo into the boat as she pushed off, still not quite thinking through what it was she was doing. There was no medical attention for him on this island. That had to be the priority. For all she knew, if she hadn’t wrestled him down all those stairs, she would still be searching all over the castle for the radio that—best case scenario—he’d probably hidden away to keep her from finding it.
And maybe that was all rationalization so she wouldn’t have to think about things like kissing him until she felt inside out, despite everything he’d said to her this day, much less that grief at the sight of him fallen—but by the time she accepted that she was tacking out of the tiny, rocky cove and heading toward the mainland.
Across from her, Cenzo had slumped down against the gunwale. And no matter how she tried to rouse him with her foot against his leg as well as her voice, he didn’t move.
If she wasn’t mistaken, he was unconscious.
That couldn’t be good.
Josselyn did the only thing she could. She gripped the tiller and kept sailing, letting the wind do the work and hoping that she’d made the right decision.
It had taken her a long time to get Cenzo down those stairs, so she was chasing daylight across the water. As she neared land, she was grateful to see some lights go on ahead of her to show her the way. Because otherwise, who knew where she would have ended up?
She found her way to a tiny harbor and was happy that she could tie the boat up at an actual dock rather than trying to haul it ashore with Cenzo still seemingly unconscious. And then, having done it, she had a moment’s worry as she considered her situation. Should she leave him here? Or try to rouse him again and see if she could make him stumble his way toward whatever kind of village this was? He lay there, slumped against the side of the bo
at, and even so, there was no mistaking who he was. His power was evident even in repose. But with his eyes closed, it was easier to get lost in the perfectly sculpted lines of his face. To wonder about those stern yet sensual lips of his that she now knew far more intimately—
But there was no time for that, she told herself as the same heat that had overtaken her in that tower stairwell walloped her again. And so inappropriately. The man was hurt, and no matter her feelings about him, she was certainly not going to leave him to die while she dithered about his lips.
That thought spurred her into action. She vaulted out of the sailboat onto the dock, then charged her way up into the village. She slipped the Sicilian Sky off her finger as she walked, tucking it into her pocket, and told herself it was only smart not to brandish such a valuable piece of jewelry about in a strange place where she was more or less on her own.
Once in the tiny medieval village, she used her rusty Italian and got directions, not to a hospital, but to the local doctor.
“A retired doctor, capisci,” said the kindly older man as he and the woman Josselyn had taken for his nurse, but who was likely his wife, rushed with her back down to the docks. “This is a small village. For a hospital it is necessary to go all the way to Taormina, but here I take care of what I can.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Josselyn managed to pant out as they hurried along.
And it took the three of them, working together, to get Cenzo out of the boat. Then to move him along into the town, and to the doctor’s small, makeshift office. Once again, he seemed half-roused but something like drunk as he shambled along, then seemed to pass out when he was lying on the exam table.
“He tripped and fell,” Josselyn told the doctor as he checked Cenzo’s vitals. The older man frowned as he examined that growing bruise on Cenzo’s forehead. “I’m afraid he fell hard, and onto stone.”
“You can wait outside while I check him out, per favore,” the doctor said, in his careful English. “It is better.”
Josselyn agreed that it was. She let herself out of the small medical office that must once have been the house’s front room. Outside, the dark had fallen. She sat down on the step and looked around without seeing much of anything, possibly breathing fully for the first time since Cenzo had kissed her.
Since Cenzo had walked into the cottage in Maine.
She shifted, realizing her phone was still in her back pocket, and pulled it out so she could be more comfortable. But then it was in her hand, so she switched it back on and the screen lit up, reality returning in a rush with each incoming text, email, and message.
He had taken her to the castle to isolate her. But now he was out of commission, or at least slowed down.
Josselyn looked back at the door to the doctor’s office, where Cenzo was now receiving appropriate medical attention. Then back at her phone, which represented freedom. Or at least, the means to put some distance between her and this man who wanted to maroon her on an island until she became an oversexed Stepford wife.
She swiped through to find a map, so she could see where she was. And there was something about that little dot, blinking at her. Telling her that she was right here, in a coastal village only a bit of a drive up the coast from an airport. Here, not imprisoned on a rock in the sea, firmly entrenched in Cenzo’s clutches.
You are here, the dot seemed to say. And you are you, still, despite his best efforts.
Josselyn hooked her free hand over the nape of her neck, squeezing as if that might do something for the tension there. Then she took a few breaths, trying to reset herself. She could still see him falling backward. And that look on his face—not fear or panic, because he was still Cenzo. If anything, he had looked thunderstruck that gravity dared to assert itself upon him.
She almost found that funny now.
Josselyn wanted to call her father to assure him that she was all right, but it occurred to her as she swiped through to her contacts that she had more pressing things to worry about now. First, her father would assume that she was all right, so calling to tell him she was would necessitate telling him what had transpired. And she couldn’t bring herself to break his heart over the phone. Second, and more pressing, Cenzo was likely to wake up fully at any moment, shake himself off, and come after her.
She had absolutely no doubt about that.
And so she had to question why she was sitting there on an old step in this tiny village, wasting precious moments, when what she could be doing was putting space between her and him.
No matter how he tasted. Or how that magical fire seemed to dance in her still.
Focus, she ordered herself.
Over the next half hour or so, out there in an ancient street, she made arrangements as swiftly as possible. At any moment she expected the door behind her to fly open, and the doctor and his nurse to come out, exclaiming the name Falcone to the night sky. It was inevitable, and that meant, ring in her pocket or not, Josselyn needed an escape route.
But when the door opened, it was only the doctor’s wife, and she was smiling. A very soothing, professional sort of smile that was not remotely tainted with the sort of awe and reverence the name Cenzo Falcone generally inspired.
Josselyn smiled back, and hoped she looked... Well, whatever would be appropriate if she hadn’t just put into motion an escape plan while her husband of less than a day lay in an exam room nearby with a head injury.
“He’s looking much better,” the woman said, more in Italian than English, but she spoke slowly enough that Josselyn could pick it up well enough. “But he is, how you say, he does not...” She pointed at herself, moving her finger over her face. “He cannot say who he is.”
Josselyn nodded, trying to look serious. When secretly, she was perhaps slightly relieved that it sounded like he’d hurt his jaw in the fall. Which would save her his scathing remarks.
“You could take him to hospital,” the woman continued. “In Taormina.”
“He really can’t speak?”
“Confused,” the woman said, then shrugged, indicating with some pantomime that Josselyn should follow her inside.
Josselyn responded with even more pantomime that she would follow in a moment, pointing at her phone. She considered her options when the door closed, leaving her outside again, and as she did an SUV pulled up before her. And behind it, another vehicle, but this one with rental hire information on its side.
“You made it here so quickly,” she said to the driver of the SUV. “I’m very impressed.”
“Grazie,” the man said, smiling broadly. “It was nothing.”
Because it turned out that when offered an incredible gratuity on top of an already expensive request for speed, people were only too happy to oblige.
“Hold on one moment,” she told him, calculating possibilities as quickly as she could. “I might have another job for you. Is that okay?”
The driver assured her that it was more than okay, so Josselyn turned and went back inside the doctor’s office.
She braced herself for a round of questions and accusations about what it was she was doing with a man as easily recognizable as Cenzo Falcone, but when she pushed her way into the exam room, the doctor only smiled and asked her to step back out so they could discuss his condition.
Josselyn took a moment, looking past the doctor to where Cenzo stared back at her, his eyes open and an expression she could not possibly begin to categorize in those ancient eyes of his.
She shivered as she followed the doctor into the next room.
“He is awake now, this is good,” the older man told her. “It is my opinion that if you watch him tonight and make sure there is no concussion and no more unconsciousness, maybe no hospital is necessary. Where did this happen? On your little sailboat?”
“Oh,” she said airily, not sure why something in her cautioned her against telling the truth. “We made
a day out of it. A pretty sail, stopping along the way to climb on rocks and things.”
She expected the doctor to question her further on that, but he only nodded. “The concern is that he slipped in and out of consciousness a few times. Maybe this could happen again. At the hospital, they will be able to monitor him, make sure that all he suffers is this bruise, you understand.”
“I thought he was confused, too?”
“He didn’t want to tell us his name.” But the doctor shrugged. “There are many people who react like this when they wake up to find themselves somewhere strange. Maybe this is nothing.”
What it sounded like to Josselyn was that the mighty Cenzo Falcone did not wish it to be known that he had been laid low in this fashion. No doubt his ego wouldn’t allow it. She nodded sagely. “My car is outside, so it will be easy enough to transport him. I really can’t thank you enough for your help. What do I owe you?”
The older doctor looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or amused. “This is not necessary. We are in Italia, sì? He is okay, this is the important thing.”
Josselyn thanked him, and then there was nothing to do—especially as the doctor and his wife gazed at her so expectantly—but step back into the exam room.
And face Cenzo at last.
He was sitting up on the side of the bed, that livid, darkening bruise doing nothing to dim the ferocity of his gaze. He looked rumpled and impatient and alarmingly sexy, and it was that last part that she was going to have to come to terms with, Josselyn knew. But not here. Not now. Not until she handled the details of this as any decent person would, and then made good her escape.
“There’s a car for you outside,” she told him in as steady a voice as she could manage. “It will take you to the hospital. Or wherever you want to go, if the standard of care at the Taormina hospital is not to your liking.”
Cenzo continued to stare at her, looking more and more thunderous by the moment. He swallowed, as if his throat was dry. Then his head tilted slightly to one side, and she could tell by how gingerly he did it that even that little movement hurt him.
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