The truth and what would follow it. His condemnation. Possibly his loathing.
But every morning she would wake up and find herself in the alternate reality she’d created. Where beautiful, impossible Cenzo smiled when he saw her. Where he saw to her comfort, inquired about her needs, and more than that, talked to her as if she was a person instead of a tool to wield.
And in that alternate reality, it was far too easy to get caught up in how astonishingly attractive he was, especially when he wasn’t seething with buried rage and revenge. How egregiously gorgeous. Especially because this Cenzo seemed to have no notion of how to dress like the richest man in the world. She supposed it was her fault, because she’d never corrected him when he’d appeared in little more than casual trousers and a T-shirt on the first day. She hadn’t insisted that he dress like a butler because she’d been far too busy excoriating herself for her lies.
As the days wore on, she almost wished she’d insisted on the formality. Because maybe if she had, she would be able to think of him differently. Instead of catching her breath every time she looked up and saw him studying her. All that intensity and focus of his, and all of it sharply focused on...tending to her happiness.
Ruthlessly.
So implacably that it made her burn and burn.
Josselyn could not say that she was actually happy in this situation. She was far too aware of the game she was playing. And how temporary it all was, whether she was burned alive or not.
Their time here was running out. Their days were numbered.
And because it was temporary—or so she told herself—she permitted herself to enjoy it.
Because this version of her husband was a delight.
He talked to her. He listened to her. He seemed genuinely interested in what she thought, what she said, what she felt about anything and everything.
She knew better, but he made her heart beat funnily when he smiled at her. He plied her with food. He insisted on running her baths. His eyes followed her everywhere. The heat in him found the fire in her, and they both grew hotter by the day.
And even though she knew that he was just a version of Cenzo that she’d created, Josselyn found that she was susceptible all the same.
Because it turned out that the Cenzo who existed without a thirst for revenge was, more or less, pretty much the perfect man.
A man who asked after her family and when she told him of the tragedy that had taken her mother and brother so long ago, had reached over and placed his hand on her arm. A simple expression of solidarity in grief. In loss.
Even though she knew he could not recall his own loss, his own grieving.
It had moved her far more than any words might have.
This version of Cenzo was the man she’d dreamed he might be when she’d allowed herself to hope that she might have what her parents had.
Knowing he would hate that he had fallen so far was like an ache in her, because she knew that if she could, she would keep him this way forever. No matter what that made her. She couldn’t unknow such a thing about herself.
“I have been considering the matter closely,” he said one day, as they explored the ruins down near the waterline. It had been Josselyn’s idea. Because she thought she needed to actually do something with all the strange nervous energy inside of her. Before it burst out of her in inappropriate ways. “But I cannot decide if I am a good man or not.”
She looked out through a hole in what had once been an outer wall. She saw the sea before her, that impossible blue. And yet more knowable than the man behind her.
“Surely if you question such things, that already makes you better than some.”
“Can a man be good if his thoughts are...unworthy?” he asked.
Josselyn wanted to ask him why he paused over that last word. She glanced back at him, but as usual, his intense focus made her uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable is not the right word and you know it, she scolded herself internally. Because what she felt was too hot. Too interested. Too aware that there was no one on this hunk of rock but the two of them, that he was her husband, and that if she wasn’t mistaken, the way he looked at her during these lost days of too many lies was lit up with all the same heat and need she felt herself.
Hotter than the Sicilian sun.
“Thoughts are just thoughts,” she managed to say, trying to sound philosophical. “It’s what you do that matters.”
Indeed it is, she thought, and didn’t quite manage to keep from wincing.
“It’s what you do that is judged,” Cenzo countered. “But it must begin within, is that not so?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me if you already have an answer.”
Her trouble was that all of this felt far too cozy. Too revealing. The searching conversations they kept having, too deeply personal even if he couldn’t remember why he would never have had them with her before, felt like intimacy.
It felt like she was getting to know him. The real him.
She was all too aware how dangerous that line of thinking was.
Because the real Cenzo would loathe this. He would hate her for allowing him to expose himself. Josselyn knew that.
Yet she also knew that the real Cenzo would have taken great pleasure in doing the same thing to her.
So who was she to lecture him on how to be good?
“Maybe you can’t remember the details of who you are,” she said after a moment, turning her back to the watchful sea. “But maybe you don’t need them. Do you have a sense of right and wrong? Do you know how you feel about things? I think the clues to who we are must be wrapped up in that.”
“I believe I am a good man,” Cenzo said with his typical conviction. But then he paused, studying her, the sun pouring over him like it wanted to hurt her. “Or I would like to be one. But I do not know if every man thinks these things. Perhaps it is no more than a convenient and flattering way to think of oneself.”
“I believe that if you want to be a good man, then you can make sure that you are one.” Josselyn’s chest ached. “No matter what the provocation. No matter your past. No matter what lies have been told.”
His copper and gold gaze seemed brighter, then. “Tell me what that entails.”
And somehow, without her noticing, he had drawn close. She found her back against that half wall and then there was Cenzo above her, blocking out the sky.
She felt her breath change. She felt everything inside her pull tight, then seem to shimmer.
“It’s not a recipe that you can follow,” she whispered. “It’s life. It’s each and every choice you make over time.”
Like the choices she was making now. Or not making.
“Maybe it is not that I truly desire to be a good man.” His voice was low. His gaze moved over her face, seeming to catch on her lips. On that mark just beside them. “Maybe it is that I wish only to be good for you.”
“Cenzo...” she began.
“Let me in, signora,” he urged her, his voice a dark thread that seemed to wrap all around her, then tug.
Again and again, pulling her to him. Making her want things she shouldn’t.
Why shouldn’t you? something in her asked. This version of Cenzo would not hurt you. This version would hurt himself first.
“Let me in,” he said again, and his hands were on the wall beside her head. His face was lowered, hovering there just above hers. It would take so very little to surge onto her toes, lift herself up, place her lips on his.
Again. At last.
Some part of her thought she’d earned it. That she deserved a little pleasure here, before reality ruined them all over again.
“Josselyn,” he said, and it made a new sort of heat prickle at the back of her eyes, because oh, how she loved to hear her name in his mouth. His perfect mouth. “You must know that all I wish to do is
serve you.”
And that almost broke her, but it was a gift.
Because it reminded her who they were.
The real Cenzo Falcone had no wish to serve anyone, least of all her.
Even so much as kissing him now would make her no better than he was. The way he’d claimed a kiss on the boat that first morning, the way he’d branded her with it, had told her in no uncertain terms who he was. But that didn’t mean she needed to be like him.
She ducked away, out from beneath his arm, her heart pounding so loudly that it echoed back off the ruins. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they could hear it all the way across the water in Taormina.
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked, turning so his eyes could follow her, though he stayed where he was. “I would have thought rather the opposite. Who does not wish to be served? In any and all capacities?”
Josselyn wished she could breathe regularly. She wished she couldn’t feel that wildfire slickness between her legs. She wished it didn’t seem like he was in control of her body even though he was no longer this close to touching her. And hadn’t touched her.
And, because he believed himself her servant, might not touch her at all unless she granted him permission.
She couldn’t tell anymore which part of that made her shudder, sending all those goose bumps prickling up and down her spine.
“The trouble is that you don’t know what you really want,” she managed to say. She even sounded vaguely in control of herself. “How could you? You don’t know who you really are.”
“You have told me who I am.” He shrugged, and he looked dangerous and beautiful. Ancient and untouchable, standing here in these ruins where his ancestors had fought and died, lived and loved. She was sure she could feel their ghosts all around them, judging her as harshly as he would. “And I might not know any number of things, signora, but I do know that the things I want are not a mystery to me.”
“I told you I was married,” she said, expecting that to be a dose of cold water on this situation.
But Cenzo only shrugged, the corner of his mouth crooking up. “So you say. You have run away from this husband of yours and isolated yourself here, where no one can reach you. And you took me with you. I cannot say I see this husband of yours as a barrier.”
She laughed at that, helplessly, because what else was there to do?
“You may not consider him a barrier,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “But believe me, he is a force. When you feel that force, you will think quite differently about all of this.”
His smile widened. “I like my chances.”
The absurdity was almost too much for her. “Cenzo. This is not something that’s going to happen. It wouldn’t be right.” She rubbed her hands over her face, not the least bit surprised to discover she was shaking. “Weren’t you the one who was worried about how to be a good man?”
“I am not so concerned, it turns out.” And though the day was blue and clear, Josselyn was sure she could hear thunderstorms brewing in the distance. “Whether you want to admit it or not, la mia bella signora, there is a fire between us.”
“There may be,” she said, because she thought denying it would make him more resolute. And because it might also actually, physically wound her to deny it. “But that doesn’t mean we have to let it burn us alive.”
“Maybe, Josselyn, I wish to burn.”
“I don’t.”
It was not the first or even the worst of the lies she had told him, but this one stung. Horribly. Wounding her, just as she’d feared.
And because she was holding on to the faintest shred of virtue here in the middle of this mess she’d made, she made herself turn and walk away.
Before she found she couldn’t.
CHAPTER NINE
AS THEIR MONTH on the island wound down, Cenzo discovered, if not quite a joy in his menial tasks, a sense of satisfaction in completing them.
And could not help but feel it as a kind of victory.
He found he liked the simplicity of their days on this rock. He woke on his pallet, which he had come to appreciate. It was always still dark when he rose, and he liked the faint hints of dawn on the other side of the windows as well as the cold stone beneath his bare feet as he moved through the castle. Up and down the many stairs. He liked to run all the steps, twice, before making his way to the kitchen to begin preparing the signora’s breakfast.
He brewed strong coffee every morning, then threw together some batter to make the morning buns he knew Josselyn preferred. Particularly as a counterpoint to his rich, bitter coffee.
Of all the tasks he completed in the course of a day, he thought he liked none so much as when Josselyn wandered into the kitchen, her lovely, soft eyes still shaded with sleep. She always looked so grateful for the coffee he pressed into her hands and the sweet roll he’d made for her that was usually still warm. So grateful that it made him wonder about her. About the life she’d led on the other side of this strange month. About the things he couldn’t recall. That such a small thing could bring her such obvious joy seemed to him like some kind of miracle.
He took it as daily evidence of her husband’s unsuitability.
A topic he liked to think about a great deal, especially when Josselyn set off for her morning ramble about the ruins. Cenzo spent the mornings cleaning. He started at the top of the tower and worked his way down, and while that was one more area of this life of his that he would not describe as joyful, per se, he had come to find a certain fulfillment in the completion of his daily chores. And he liked that as he did them he could see Josselyn down below, frowning out at the sea as she took her morning constitutional, moving in and around the ancient stones.
He liked to think that what she worried over, as she stared out toward the horizon, was him.
Just as he liked to think that her nights were sleepless as his were, because the fire could be denied but that didn’t make the flames any less bright.
“This is our last day here,” she told him that morning, a tautness in the way she held herself that he disliked. “Men will come tomorrow to take us back. When they do, things will change.”
“What will change?”
Today she had taken her coffee and her bun out to the terrace. It was another warm morning, the sun and the sea in seeming concert, as if the whole world was that same gleaming blue. Just like the blue stone she wore on her hand.
Something in him shifted uneasily as he stared at that stone today. The ring was always commanding, but it seemed to him almost to echo inside him this morning. But he couldn’t quite catch hold of it. Like a melody he knew he recognized, though he’d forgotten all the words.
Cenzo concentrated on Josselyn instead.
He had grown to consider himself something of an expert on her expressions. On every stray feeling he could read in those lovely brown eyes of hers or the color in her cheeks. They seemed grave to him today.
“Everything will change,” she warned him. “You must prepare for that. Things have been very simple here, but this is not the real world.”
“You must tell me what my position is like in the real world, then,” he said, not liking the dire way she was speaking—but also not particularly concerned. Let things change. He would remain the same. He was certain of it. “I’m not sure I know what the position of personal manservant typically entails.”
Her smile seemed dry, and in any case, went nowhere in her eyes. “I don’t think that’s a title you’re going to embrace.”
“Come now, signora.” And he threw caution to the wind, then. “If you wish to release me from my position, say so. If that is the change you mean. Or I will be forced to think you are running away. That will not make your marriage any better. You must know this.”
She swallowed, visibly, but she did not drop her gaze.
“I had hoped that your memory woul
d come back while we were here,” she said, evenly enough. And he might have thought that his words had not affected her at all were it not for the pulse he could see beating out a mad rhythm in her neck. He liked that. He took some pride in it. “I hoped that you would not have to face reality without knowing who you really are.”
“You are more concerned with who I really am than I have ever been.” He could have sat with her at the little table, but he felt too...restless. That near-melody in his head was driving him a little bit mad. He leaned against the rail instead. “To be perfectly honest with you, I do not care at all what or if I remember. I know what I need to know.”
“I think that’s easy for you to say that now,” she replied, sounding...cautious. “Because you don’t know.”
“This is what I know about myself, signora.” He had started calling her that because it had seemed appropriate. It was a reasonable way to address the lady of the house. Or the castle, in her case. But he had come to like the way it tasted on his tongue. And better still the way that each time he said it, she always reacted. A widening of her eyes, a darkening of all that brown. A sucked-in breath, or her lower lip suddenly pulled between her teeth. Oh, yes, he liked it. “I am strong. I sleep upon stones and rise refreshed. At first it seemed to me that a life of servitude must be demeaning, but I have not found it so. There can be no shame in it. Everything I do here, I do well. What have I to fear from a reality that can only offer me more opportunities to excel?”
Josselyn laughed the way she did sometimes, as if she couldn’t quite believe the things he said. As if she couldn’t quite believe him, though that didn’t make any sense.
“What’s remarkable is that I know you believe this. You might even be right. Still, I know things that you don’t know. And, Cenzo, there’s no telling what kind of reaction you’ll have when you learn them.”
She looked so serious that he almost wanted to ask her more questions. To find out what she meant.
But he dismissed the urge almost at once. Because what did he care? He couldn’t remember it anyway. He had vague impressions of what the world out there contained. When Josselyn had told him they were off the coast of Sicily, he had known not only what Sicily itself was, but other things about it too. That it sat off the coast of Italy. That it was a part of the Mediterranean region. Over the course of this month, with the help of some of the books in that small library, he’d assured himself that while he might not know himself, he knew the world.
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