Josselyn supposed she was a great fool, because she didn’t like to think of him hurting. It made her stomach go hollow again. Even when she knew that his entire aim where she was concerned was to make sure she hurt. And, through her, to hurt her father too.
Well, she told herself tartly, you might not get applause for being the bigger person, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it anyway.
And maybe, she thought then, he hadn’t been as off base with his comments about her martyr complex as she’d wanted to imagine.
He was continuing to stare at her in that same way, as if he couldn’t make sense of her, and it made her uneasy. Or anyway, that was how she chose to interpret the spike of heat and sensation low in her belly.
“It’s encouraging that you’re sitting up,” she said brightly. “I thought for a moment there that you’d suffered something truly terrible, like a spinal injury. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, thank goodness.”
Cenzo’s head tilted again, slightly more. Just slightly.
“I have no idea who you are.” And his tone was accusing, as if it was clear to him that she’d done something to him. He shook his head slightly, then winced. “But perhaps this is of no matter, because I do not seem to know who I am, either.”
Josselyn could not have heard that correctly. “What do you mean? Exactly?”
He made an expression of distaste, and the impatience she’d seen in his expression intensified. “What I said. You are looking at me and speaking to me as if you know me, but I am certain I have never seen you before. And when the doctor asked me my name, I opened my mouth to tell him but nothing came to mind. Can you explain this?”
And wasn’t that the Cenzo Falcone experience in a nutshell, Josselyn thought as she tried to take that in. The man had woken up to find himself in a medical facility with no memory, and his first reaction was not fear or concern. Perish the thought! He instead demanded that others provide him with explanations.
“All right,” she said as calmly as she could. “That’s a curveball, certainly. What do you remember?”
He considered, then slowly shook his head—wincing once again, as if he’d forgotten he was hurt. “It is as if it is on the tip of my tongue, yet nothing comes. As if I need to concentrate, but when I do, there is nothing. A blankness.”
“Nothing at all?” Her pulse picked up and ran. “Not even a shred of something?”
“I know I am speaking English to you, though I spoke Italian to the doctor,” he said, his tone withering. Apparently that much was innate. He gestured at his own torso. “I know that I am fit and in excellent health. The doctor told me we were sailing and I can picture sailboats, the sea, beaches and tides...” He lifted a shoulder. “But none of it is specific. None of it is mine.”
Josselyn’s heart was beating much too fast. Of all the things she’d worried might happen, this hadn’t rated so much as a stray thought. Because it was madness. So mad she almost thought he had to be faking it to see what she would do...
Except she couldn’t imagine any scenario in which Cenzo Falcone would pretend for even one moment to be anything less than what he was. To appear in any way impaired, or seemingly helpless—not that he was acting as if he was either of those things.
On the contrary, he was lounging there on a hospital bed as if he believed that if he simply made enough demands of her, he would remember himself.
“Clearly you know more than I do,” he said then, again with that note of accusation and a banked fury in his old coin gaze. “Perhaps you would do me the favor of telling me something. Like my name.”
Only this man would wake with amnesia and fail to find the experience even remotely humbling. Josselyn almost wanted to laugh.
“Your name is Cenzo,” she told him, and she expected to see a light bulb go off in him. She expected to see the centuries of Falcone arrogance slam back into place. She watched those eyes of his, waiting for them to change from simply cool and watchful to that full-on predator’s stare that made her shiver just thinking about it.
“Cenzo,” he repeated, as if trying out the name. “I assume that is short for Vincenzo? I do not feel as if I am a man with a nickname, if I am honest. It seems... Beneath me.”
Of course it does, Josselyn thought. And managed, somehow, to keep from rolling her eyes.
“I have no idea if it’s a nickname or not,” she told him. He had a great many names, after all. Who was to say that Cenzo wasn’t one of them? She hadn’t been paying close attention during that part of their wedding ceremony. She had been far too busy ordering herself to stand still and look graceful, rather than turning on her heel and bolting back down the aisle to get away from him.
“The doctor made it sound as if you were my wife,” Cenzo said, a heavy kind of disapproval all over him. Because along with the accusation and arrogance, he had apparently remained judgmental, too. “Can this be so if you know so little about your own husband?”
And Josselyn’s heart beat even faster. She felt herself grow warm, but this time, not because of anything he was doing. But because of her own audacity.
Because she couldn’t seem to stave off the truly insane idea that had come to her. And no matter how she tried to push it aside, it seemed to grow larger and wider inside her.
Until it was all she could think about.
Because if ever there was a man on this earth who deserved a little bit of humbling, it was this one.
She stared back at him, her mind racing. She would have to rent an actual motorboat, or buy one, whatever. That way, she could monitor him herself and if there was trouble, get him back to land more quickly. That was the main thing.
Are you really debating doing this? a voice inside her asked. You know it’s wrong.
She did. But maybe there were degrees of wrong. Because she had not signed up to be the object of his unhinged revenge conspiracies. And yet he had carried her off to that ruin of a rock, mocked and threatened her, and had been very explicit about what he planned to do to her while she was there.
And she believed that if he hadn’t fallen, he would have set about doing exactly what he’d promised. He had already been doing it, she thought, remembering that kiss.
So really, what was the harm in turning the tables?
Unlike him, she had no intention of actually hurting anyone. Unlike him, she had no ulterior motive. This was an opportunity for the great Cenzo Falcone to see the world a little bit differently, for a change. That was all.
Maybe, she told herself piously, it might even make him a better person. In the end.
She couldn’t deny that beyond all of that, she would certainly enjoy watching her powerful, overwhelming husband cut down to palatable size.
“Well?” he demanded. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
And that sealed it, really. Because even now, when he had no idea who she was, what the relationship was, or even who he was, that was how he spoke to her. As if she owed him her instant obedience.
Oh, yes, she was definitely going to enjoy this.
And she would worry, later, about how it made her a terrible person.
She would worry later—when their month on that rock was up, no real harm was done, and maybe, just maybe, the vainglorious Cenzo Falcone had learned a lesson.
“I’m afraid the doctor put ideas in your head,” she said, and smiled. “And because you’ve been banged up today, I will forgive it. But you do not normally speak to me in this manner, Cenzo.”
She already enjoyed it. That was the truth of it. She already wanted to laugh out loud, she enjoyed it so much.
Instead, Josselyn held his gaze. “You’re my servant.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TRY AS HE WOULD, Cenzo could not seem to access the great and abiding joy his employer told him he had once possessed in his job. In his life, which apparently demanded total
immersion in that job.
“I have never met a happier servant,” the signora had told him merrily while his head had still been pounding in that doctor’s office. “You have often told me that you could not think of a single thing you would prefer to do. And, sure enough, your joy infused every moment of your day, every task you completed, everything you said and did.”
A week later, Cenzo could not imagine how that could ever have been so. He felt a great many things as he sank back into his role, but none of them were joy.
Or even adjacent to joy, by his reckoning.
They had not gone to the hospital in Taormina. His employer had waved a breezy hand and told him that she would be happy to monitor him herself, unless, of course, he had a driving need to seek hospital attention, in which case she would have him transported down the coast at once. And Cenzo did not have to dig particularly deeply to feel that he did not have any such need.
His head had hurt that first day. There’d been a ringing in his ears, that pounding, and a headache every time he so much as drew breath, it seemed. When they’d left the doctor’s office, she’d encouraged him to get into the back seat of the SUV that waited for her and had left him there a moment while she conferred with the driver. No doubt he should have listened to the conversation. He should have tried to glean any information he could about the bewildering state he found himself in.
But instead, he’d simply...sat there. And had the distinct sensation that allowing another to cater to him while he remained in the dark was new to him, in some way.
Which would make sense as a servant, he supposed.
They’d driven down to the water, where the signora had a boat waiting. A boat she piloted, only waving him off when he suggested that perhaps he ought to do the honors. For surely that was his role.
“Who knows if you remember how to operate a boat?” she’d asked in her merry way. “I’d rather not discover that you don’t remember a thing while we’re in the open water, if you don’t mind.”
He had felt as if he ought to argue about that, but hadn’t.
And then she’d taken him across the water to a desolate slab of rock topped with ruins, where, she claimed, they would remain for a month.
He had helped as best he could—happy that the painkillers the doctor had given him had kicked in—while she brought the boat into the rocky, unwelcoming shore, then moved it back out again while towing the waiting rowboat. She’d thrown down an anchor and then had made as if to row them to shore.
Cenzo had drawn the line at that. He might have been wounded. And a joyful servant. But he was still a man.
He had done the rowing.
But it was when she started to lead him up the stairs that seemed to march on into forever, and rather steeply, that he was so dubious he’d had no choice but to share it. As perhaps servants did not usually do.
“This is a place you choose to come?” he had asked. “Deliberately?”
The signora had gazed at him serenely from two narrow steps above, putting her just below his eye level. “Oh, indeed. It has been in my husband’s family for many generations. It’s an excellent place to...” She had smiled widely. “Rediscover oneself.”
Perhaps that made this the perfect place, Cenzo had thought, for a man as adrift as he was then. Though he could not pretend that anything about it felt perfect. Particularly not when the place was nothing but the remains of something better.
But his was not to reason why, he had tried to remind himself as they had climbed. His was to...serve, apparently.
He had tried to allow the notion of service to sink into him like the sun. To warm inside him and become...well, palatable, anyway.
When they made it up flight after flight of winding old stairs that wound around and around the isolated rock, he had found he liked the newer part of the castle much better. The ruins made him uneasy. It was as if they whispered secrets of other forgotten lives, drawing comparisons he did not wish to entertain. Cenzo vastly preferred the sleek lines of the renovated part. He would not have said that it felt like a homecoming, exactly, but for the first time since he’d woken up in that exam room, he had breathed easier.
That had made him feel as if he was moving in the right direction, no matter what else might have been happening. It had felt like progress.
“You must have a splitting headache,” the signora had said as they stood in the grand foyer, all clean lines interrupted with a bold wall here, a commanding piece of art there. “Why don’t you head to the kitchen and get something to drink? I’m sure I have some headache tablets that I can give you.”
She had pointed in the correct direction, and Cenzo had obediently taken himself off to a kitchen he was pleased to find was as sleek and welcoming as the rest. He had still found it difficult to imagine himself serving in any capacity, but he took it as a good sign that the kitchen felt like his. The whole renovated part of the castle did, come to that. But then, he was sure he had read once—back behind that wall in his head that he couldn’t penetrate—that good servants felt that kind of ownership over the places where they served. He had the dim impression of a film featuring stately British homes and some kind of saturnine-faced butler.
He had found all the glasses in precisely the place he imagined they ought to be, for his convenience, and that, too, seemed to indicate that he had indeed spent time in this place.
It seemed to take the signora a great long while to locate her medicine. When she’d come back, she had seemed faintly flushed. As if she’d exerted herself in the search for paracetamol. He had opened his mouth to inquire, but had closed it again.
Surely servants did not last long in their positions if they asked such personal questions of their employers. Maybe he’d picked that up in the film, too.
She had slid the bottle over to him, smiling again. And he had admitted, then, that despite the racket in his head, he liked the way she smiled. Too much, perhaps.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the night off?” she had asked. “And tomorrow as well. If you like, we can set you up in the master bedroom, because I really don’t like to think of you sleeping as you usually do when you’re trying to recover from something as traumatic as this has been.”
He had tossed back a couple of tablets and swallowed them down without water. “How is it that I usually sleep?”
Again, she had smiled. Angelically, he had thought.
“You prefer a pallet on the floor. That seems austere to me, but you’ve always claimed that you feel better that way. You don’t like to coddle yourself. Strength of body and strength of mind breeds strength of character, you always say.”
Cenzo had thought he sounded like a bit of an ass, but kept that to himself.
“I will remain in my usual place, I think,” he had said, more forbiddingly than he should have, given that she was his employer. He had tried to look...servile. “And hope it encourages my memory to return more quickly.”
And he had thought she looked almost guilty then, but he’d supposed that was his headache, obscuring everything.
When she had led him upstairs, the room that was designated as his looked like it might once have been a sitting room of some kind, though it featured only chairs and a table. No sofa. Not even a settee. There were suitcases stacked neatly in one corner and on the floor beneath the windows, a single pillow and a pile of nicely folded blankets.
Austere, indeed.
“Don’t hesitate to call for me if you need something,” she had said.
“I will, signora,” he had replied.
Though he had privately thought that he would rather die than do any such thing.
He had lain down and pulled the blankets over him, then had waited for his body to relax into what it surely knew, no matter what he remembered. And instead had seemed able to think only of how hard the stones were beneath him.
But as
the days passed, he became used to them. And to his little pallet beneath the window.
What he did not get used to in any hurry was his job. Or, as the signora told it, his calling. More than a career. More than simply something he did for money—assuming he had money out there somewhere.
But no matter how he searched within himself, Cenzo couldn’t seem to find anything that resonated with that.
Still, he performed the duties expected of him. He found that he enjoyed cooking in that kitchen where he felt most like himself, whoever that was. He appreciated the excellent ingredients available to him and the greatest pleasure, he found as he compiled ingredients, was serving what he made to the signora.
Cleaning, on the other hand, he found distasteful in the extreme. And worse than that, simply tedious. Cenzo could not reconcile the joy he’d been told he’d once felt in performing these tasks with the boredom he felt while doing them now.
Sometimes it felt more like rage than boredom, but he did it all the same.
“Why don’t you join me?” the signora asked one evening after he’d brought her the small feast he’d prepared. She nodded when he looked at her in surprise. “It seems silly for you to sit in the kitchen, eating by yourself when it is only the two of us here. You might as well enjoy this view too, especially since we are both eating at the same time.”
Something in him had turned over at that, though he could not have said what it was.
But when he retrieved a place setting and his own meal, then sat down with her, it felt as if something in him...settled.
Had they eaten in this manner before? Was it a habit? Or was it more of an employer’s whim, that she could carry out or not as she saw fit?
He thought he probably had his answer with that last one.
“Your ring is very beautiful,” he said, because she was holding her wineglass before her and the ring caught the setting sun, sending it dancing all around them in shards of light. She looked startled, looking down at the enormous ring as if she didn’t know how it had gotten on her finger. “Your husband is very generous.”
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