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By the time he reached the car rental counter, Rafe was smiling…
But not for long.
He’d reserved an SUV, or the Italian equivalent. Generally, he disliked SUVs—he preferred low, fast cars like the ’Vette he had back home, but he’d checked a map and San Giuseppe was high in the mountains. The road to it looked as if it might be more a goat track than anything else, so he’d opted for the traction of an SUV.
What waited at the curb was not an SUV. It was the one kind of car he actually despised, a big, black American thing, a model long favored by his father and his pals.
A Mobster Special.
The clerk shrugged and said there must have been a communications error but, scusi, this was all she had.
Perfect, Rafe thought as he got behind the wheel. A gangster’s son on a gangster’s errand, driving a gangster’s car. All he needed was a fat cigar between his teeth.
So much for being in a better mood.
Things didn’t improve after that. He’d been far too generous, calling the ribbon of potholed dirt with the steep slope of the mountain on one side and a dizzying plummet to the valley on the other a goat track.
It was more like a disaster waiting to happen.
Ten miles. Twenty. Thirty, and he’d yet to see another car. Not that he was complaining. There wasn’t really enough room for two cars. There wasn’t really enough room for—
Something black bolted from the trees and into the road.
Rafe cursed and stood on the brakes. The tires fought for purchase; the big car shimmied from side to side. It took all his skill to bring it to a stop. When he did, the hood was inches from the yawning space that overhung the valley.
He sat absolutely still. His hands, clutching the steering wheel, were trembling. He could hear the faint tick-tick of the cooling engine, the thud of his own heart.
Gradually the ticking of the engine faded. His heartbeat slowed. He dragged air into his lungs. Okay. The thing to do was back up, very carefully…
Something banged against his door. Rafe turned toward the half-open window. There was a guy outside the car and he was obviously dressed for an early Halloween. Black shirt. Black trousers. Black boots.
And an ancient, long-barreled black pistol, pointed straight at Rafe’s head.
He’d heard stories of road bandits in Sicily and laughed them off, but only a jackass would laugh at this.
The guy made some kind of jerking motion with the pistol. What did it mean? Get out of the car? Hell, no. Rafe wasn’t about to do that. The pistol waved again. Or was it shaking? Was the guy shaking? Yeah. He was, and that was not good. A nervous thief with a gun…
A nervous thief with white, wispy hair and rheumy eyes. And liver spots on the hand that held the pistol.
Wonderful. He was going to be robbed and killed by somebody’s grandfather.
Rafe cleared his throat. “Easy, Grandpa,” he said, even though the odds were good the old boy couldn’t understand a word of English. He held up his hands, showed that they were empty, then slowly opened the door. The bandit stepped to the side and Rafe got out, carefully skirting the edge of the road and the void beyond it. “Do you speak English?” Nothing. He searched his memory. “Voi, ah, voi parlate inglese?” Still nothing. “Okay, look, I’m going to take my wallet from my pocket and give it to you. Then I’m gonna get back in the car and—”
The pistol arced through the air. He tried not to wince as it wobbled past his face.
“Watch yourself, Gramps, or that thing’s liable to go off. Okay. Here comes my wallet—”
“No!”
The old man’s voice shook. Shaking voice. Shaking hand. This was getting better and better. It would make an even better story than the one he’d already figured on telling his brothers, assuming he lived to tell it.
“Hugoahway!”
Hugoahway? What did that mean? The old guy’s name, maybe, but it didn’t sound Italian or Sicilian.
The old man poked the end of the pistol into Rafe’s flat belly. Rafe narrowed his eyes.
Another poke. Another gruff “Hugoahway” and, damn it, enough was enough. Rafe grabbed the barrel of the pistol, yanked it from the bandit’s shaking fingers and tossed it over the cliff.
“Okay,” he said, reaching for the old man, “okay, that’s—Oof!”
Something hit him, hard, from the rear. It was a second thief, wrapping his arms around Rafe’s neck as he climbed on his back. Rafe grabbed his assailant’s arms and wrenched the guy off him. The thief grunted, struggled, but he was a lightweight, and Rafe swung him around, worked his hands down to the guy’s wrists…
Hell, this one was only a kid. Not just lightweight but flyweight. The kid, too, was dressed all in black, this time including a deep-brimmed, old-fashioned fedora that obscured his face.
A flyweight, but a fighter.
The kid was all over him, kicking, trying to claw him, damn it, trying to bite him! Rafe hoisted the boy to his toes.
“Stop it,” he shouted.
The kid snarled something unintelligible in return, lifted a knee and took aim. Rafe twisted away.
“Are you deaf, boy? I said, stop!”
Evidently, stop didn’t translate well because the kid didn’t. He came at Rafe and the old guy joined the fracas, pummeling him with what looked like a small tree branch.
“Hey,” Rafe said indignantly. This was not how things were supposed to go. He was the tough guy here; tough guys didn’t get beaten up by boys and old men. He knew damned well he could stop the attack, just a couple of good punches would do it, but the thought of hitting Methuselah and a teenage delinquent was unappealing.
“Look,” he said reasonably, “let’s sort this out. Gramps, put down that stick. And you, boy, I’m gonna let go of you and—”
Bad move. The kid aimed his knee again. This time, he caught Rafe where he lived with devastating accuracy. Rafe grunted with pain, drew back his fist and managed a right cross to the kid’s jaw.
It must have been a good one because the boy went down in a heap.
Still struggling for air, Rafe started to turn toward the old man. “Listen to me,” he gasped….
The tree limb whacked him in the back of his head.
And Rafe went down beside the kid.
He came around slowly.
Ah, God, his head hurt. Methuselah had crowned him, the kid had kneed him. He had been totally and completely humiliated.
Could the day get any worse?
The old guy was sitting in the road, holding the kid in his arms, rocking him, talking to him in rapid and seemingly anguished Sicilian. He didn’t even look up as Rafe rose painfully to his feet.
“Okay,” he said gruffly, “okay, old man. Stand up. You hear me? Let go of the kid and get up.” The old man ignored him. Rafe reached down and grabbed a spindly arm. “I said, stand up!”
“Hugoahway!” the old guy shouted, and suddenly the words made sense. What he was saying was, You go away. Well, hell, he’d definitely oblige, but first he had to make sure the boy was okay. Stopping this unlikely duo from robbing him was one thing; killing them was another.
Rafe shoved the bandit aside, reached for the unconscious boy, lifted him into the crook of his arm. The kid moaned, his hat fell off, and…
And the boy wasn’t a boy at all.
He was—she was a girl. No. Not a girl. A woman with a pale oval face and a silky mass of long, dark hair. He’d KO’d a woman. So much for wondering if the day could get any worse.
Carefully he scooped her up, ignored the old guy pulling at his sleeve and carried her to the side of the road that abutted the sloping mountain. Her head lolled back. He could see the pulse beating hard in the delicate hollow of her throat. The angle of her body made her breasts thrust against the rough wool of her jacket.
He set her down against the grassy rise. She was still unconscious.
She was also incredibly beautiful.
Only an SOB would notice such a thing at a moment like this, but only a fool would not. Her hair wasn’t just dark, it was the color of a cloudless night. Her brows were delicate wings above her closed eyes; her lashes were dark shadows against razor-sharp cheekbones. Her nose was straight and narrow above a rosy-pink mouth.
Rafe felt a stir of lust low in his belly. And wasn’t that terrific? Lust for a woman who’d tried to turn him into a eunuch, who’d played back-up to an old man with a pistol…
Who now lay helpless before him.
Damn it, he thought, and he caught the woman by the shoulders and shook her.
“Wake up,” he said sharply. “Come on. Open your eyes.”
Her lashes trembled, then slowly lifted, and he saw that her eyes were more than a match for the rest of her face, the irises not blue but the color of spring violets. Her lips parted; the tip of her tongue, delicate and pink, slicked across her mouth.
This time, the hunger that rolled through his belly made him sit back on his heels. Was this all it took? Was being on Sicilian soil enough to make him revert to the barbarian instincts of his ancestors?
Clarity was returning to her eyes. She put her hand to her jaw, winced, then shot him a look filled with hatred.
Those soft-looking pink lips drew back from small, perfect white teeth. “Stronzo,” she snarled.
It was a word any kid who’d grown up in a household where the adults often spoke in Italian would surely understand, and it made him laugh. Big mistake. She sat up, said it again and swung a fist at his jaw. He ducked it without effort and when she swung again, he caught her hand in his.
“That’s a bad idea, baby.”
She hissed through her teeth and shot a look over his shoulder at the old man.
Rafe shook his head.
“Another bad idea. You tell him to come at me, he’ll get hurt.” Disdain shone in her eyes. “Yeah, I know. You figure he got me the first time but, see, here’s the thing. I don’t get taken twice. You got that?”
A string of words flew from her lips. Rafe understood a couple of them but you didn’t need a degree in Italian to get their meaning. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.
“Yeah, well, I’m not a fan of yours, either. Is this how you and Gramps welcome visitors? You rob them? Hijack their cars? Maybe send them tumbling down into the valley?”
Her mouth curled, almost as if she’d understood him, but of course she hadn’t. Not that it mattered. The question was, what did he do with this pair? Leave them here was his first instinct—but shouldn’t he notify the authorities? Yes, but he’d heard stories about Sicily and the cops. For all he knew, this pair were the Italian equivalent of Robin Hood and Little John—except, Little John had turned out to be Maid Marian.
The woman had a faint mark on her jaw where he’d slugged her. He’d never hit a woman in his life and it bothered him. For all he knew, she needed medical care. He didn’t think so, not from the way she was acting, but he felt some responsibility toward her, even if he’d only done what he had to do to protect himself.
He could just see telling that to a local judge: “Well, you see, sir, she came at me. And I hit her in self-defense.”
It was the absolute truth but it would probably just give the locals a laugh. He was six foot three; he weighed a tight 240 pounds. She was, what, five-six? And probably weighed 120 pounds less than he did.
Okay. He’d drive the duo home. Maybe what had happened had taught them a lesson.
Rafe cleared his throat. “Where do you and Gramps live?”
She stared at him, chin raised in defiance.
“Ah, dove è—dove è your house? Your casa?”
The woman jerked her hand free. She glared at him. He glared back.
“I’m willing to drive you and Grandpa home. You got that? No cops. No charges. Just don’t push your luck.”
She laughed. It was the kind of laugh that made Rafe’s eyes narrow. Who in hell did she think she was? And what was there for her to laugh about? She’d come at him, yes, but she was the one who’d lost the fight. Now she was out here in the middle of nowhere, at the mercy of a man twice her size.
A man who was angry as hell.
It would take him less than a heartbeat to show her who was in charge, that she was at his mercy, that he had only to cup that perfect, beautiful face in his hands, put his mouth to hers and she’d stop looking at him with such disdain, such coldness, such rage.
A kiss, just one, and her mouth would soften. The rigidity of her muscles would give way to silken compliancy. Her lips would part, she’d loop her arms around his neck and whisper to him and he’d understand that whisper because a man and a woman didn’t need to speak the same language to know desire, to turn anger to something hotter and wilder…
Rafe shot to his feet. “Stand up,” he growled.
She didn’t move. He gestured with his hand.
“I said, stand up. And you, old man, get in the back of the car.”
The old man didn’t move. Nobody did. Rafe leaned toward the woman.
“He’s old,” he said softly, “and I really have no desire to rough him up, so why don’t you just tell him to do what I said.”
She understood him. He could see it in her face.
Rafe shrugged. “Okay, we’ll do it the hard way.”
Her violet eyes flashed. She got to her feet, rattled off a string of words, and the old man nodded, walked to the car and climbed into the back.
Rafe jerked his thumb toward the car. “Now you.”
One last glare. Then she turned away, marched to the car and started to climb in beside the old guy.
“The passenger seat,” Rafe snapped. “Up front.”
She said something. It was something women didn’t say, not even on the streets of his youth.
“Anatomically impossible,” he said coldly.
Color rose in her face. Good. She did understand English, at least a little. That would make things easier. She got into the car. He slammed the door after her, went around to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel.
“How far up the mountain do you live?”
She folded her arms.
Rafe ground his teeth together, started the car, carefully backed away from the sheer drop and continued up the road in silence. Minutes passed, as did miles. And just when he’d pretty much given up hope he’d ever see civilization again, a town appeared. A wooden signpost that looked as if it had been here forever announced its name.
San Giuseppe.
He stopped the car and took in his first sight of the Sicily of his father.
Houses overhung a narrow, cobblestoned street that wound its steep way up the mountain. Washing hung on clotheslines strung across rickety-looking balconies. The steeple of a church pierced a cloudless sky that overlooked a line of donkeys plodding after a small boy.
Cesare had insisted on showing him a couple of grainy snapshots of the town, taken more than fifty years ago. Nothing had changed, including the castle that loomed over it all.
Castello Cordiano.
Rafe put the car in gear. The woman beside him shook her head and reached for the door.
“You want to get out here?”
An arrogant lift of her chin brought into prominence the bruise he’d inflicted. Guilt racked him and he took a deep breath.
“Listen,” he said. “About your jaw…”
Another flash of those violet eyes as she swung toward him.
“Yeah, I know. Believe me, the feeling’s mutual. All I’m trying to say is that you should put some ice on that bruise. It’ll keep the swelling down. And take some aspirin. You know what aspirin is? As-pi-rin,” he said, knowing how idiotic he must sound but not knowing any other way to get his message through.
She snapped out an order. The old man replied; his tone suggested he was protesting but she repeated the order and he sighed, opened the door and stepped from the car.
Rafe caught her elbow as she moved to follow the old guy.
“Did you understand what I said? Ice. And aspirin. And—”
“I understood every word,” she said coldly. “Now see if you understand, signor. Go away. Do you hear me? Go away, just as Enzo told you to do.”
Rafe stared at her. “You speak English?”
“I speak English. And Italian, and the Sicilian form of it. You, quite obviously, do not.” Those stunning eyes narrowed until only a slash of color showed. “You are not welcome here. And if you do not leave of your own accord, Enzo will see to it that you do.”
“Enzo? You mean Grandpa?” Rafe laughed. “That’s one hell of a threat, baby.”
“He is more a man than you will ever be.”
“Is he,” Rafe said, his voice gone low and dangerous and instead of thinking, he caught her by the shoulders and lifted her across the console, into his lap. She struggled, beat at him with her fists but he was ready. He caught both her hands in one of his, slid the other into her hair, tilted her head back and kissed her.
Kissed her as he’d fantasized kissing her, back on that road. She fought, but it was pointless. He was hot with fury and humiliation…
Hot with the feel of her against him. Her mouth, soft under his. Her breasts, tantalizing against the hardness of his chest. Her rounded backside, digging into in his lap.
His body reacted in a heartbeat, his sex swelling until he was sure it had never been this huge or throbbed with such urgency. She felt it happen; how could she not? He heard her little cry of shock, felt it whisper against his mouth. Her lips parted and she tried to bite him but he turned the attempt against her, used it as a chance to deepen the kiss, to slip his tongue into the silky warmth of her mouth. She gasped again, made a little sound of distress…
And then something happened.
Her mouth softened under his. Sweetened. Turned warm and willing, and the knowledge that he could take her, right here, right now, made his already-hard body turn to stone. He let go of her wrists, slid his hand under her jacket, cupped the delicate weight of her breast…
Her teeth sank into his lip.
Rafe jerked back and put his hand to the tiny wound. His finger came away bearing a drop of crimson.
“Pig,” she said, her voice shaking. “No good, filthy pig!”
He stared at her, saw her shocked eyes, her trembling mouth, and heard his father’s voice reminding him that any man could step into the darkness of overwhelming passion.
“Listen,” he said, “listen, I didn’t mean—”
She opened the door and bolted from the car, but not before she’d flung a string of Sicilian curses at him.
Hell, he thought, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing it against his lip, for all he knew, he deserved them.
CHAPTER THREE
WAS the American going to come after her?
Chiara ran blindly into the narrow alley that led to a long-forgotten entrance to Castello Cordiano, following its twists and turns as it climbed steeply uphill.
No one knew this passageway existed. She’d discovered it when she was a little girl, hiding in the nursery closet with her favorite doll to get away from her father’s callousness and her mother’s piety.
It had been her route to freedom ever since, and there was the added pleasure of fooling her father’s men when she seemed to vanish from right under their noses.
The alley ended in a field of craggy stone outcroppings and brambles. A thick growth of ivy and scrub hid the cen-turies-old wooden door that led into the castle. Panting, hand to her heart, Chiara fell back against it and fought to catch her breath. She waited, then peered through a break in the tangled greenery. Grazie Dio! The American had not followedher.
Behaving like the brute he was must have satisfied him.
No surprise there. She’d always known how the world went. Men were gods. Women were their handmaids. The American had gone out of his way to remind her of those truths in the most basic way possible.
Chiara took a last steadying breath, opened the heavy door and slipped past it. A narrow corridor led to a circular staircase that wound into a gloomy darkness broken by what little light came through the balistraria set into the old stone walls. Long moments later, she emerged in the nursery closet. Carefully she stepped into the room itself, eased open the door, checked the corridor, then hurried halfway down its length to her bedroom.
Her heartbeat didn’t return to normal until she was safely inside with the door shut behind her.
What a disaster this day had been!
Yes, she’d gotten farther from the castle than ever before, but so what? The plan to frighten the American and send him running had been a miserable failure. Worse than a failure because instead of frightening him, she’d infuriated him.
Angering a man like that was never a good idea.
Chiara touched the tip of her finger to her lip. Was his blood on her? It was not but she could still feel the imprint of his mouth, could still taste him. The warm, firm flesh. The quick slide of his tongue. The terrifying sense of invasion…
And then, without warning, that sensation low in her belly. As if something were slowly pulsing deep inside.
She blinked, dragged air into her lungs. Never mind going over what had happened. What mattered was what would happen next.
She had badly underestimated the American.
Where was the short, stocky, cigar-chomping pig she’d envisioned? Not that he wasn’t a pig. He was, absolutely. The difference was that she could not have walked into a room and picked him out as one of the goons who did the work of men like her father.
He was too tall. Too leanly built. But it was more than looks that separated him from the men she knew. It was…What? His clothes? The gray, pinstriped suit that had surely been custom-made? The gold Rolex she’d glimpsed on his tanned, hair-dusted wrist?
Maybe it was his air of sophistication.
Or his self-assurance.
Smug self-assurance, even when Enzo had pointed a pistol at him. Even when she’d flung herself on his back. Even when she’d sunk her teeth into his lip to end that vile stamp of I’m-in-charge-here male domination.
That hot, possessive kiss.
Chiara jerked away from the door. She had to work quickly. Dio, if her father saw her now…
She almost laughed as she stripped off the ancient black suit and white, collarless shirt Enzo had found for her. Thinking about Enzo was enough to stop her laughter. What humiliation he had suffered today. And if her father ever learned what he had done…
He would pay a terrible price, and all because of her. She should not have run to him for help, but who else was there to turn to?
Enzo had listened to her story. Then he’d taken her hand in his.
“I can scare him off,” he’d said. “Remember, he is not truly Sicilian. He is American, not one of us, and they are not the same. They are weak. You will see, child. We will catch him by surprise. And while he is still immobilized, I will show him my pistol and tell him to go away. And he will be gone.”
When she protested that it was too dangerous, Enzo had suddenly looked fierce and said he had done things of this sort in the past.
It was hard to imagine.
The old man was her dearest friend. Her only friend. He’d been her father’s driver when she was little and he’d been kind to her, kinder than anyone, even her mother, but her mother had not been made for this world. Chiara had only vague memories of her, a thin figure in black, always kneeling in the old chapel or sitting in a straight-backed parlor chair bent over her Bible, never speaking, not even to Chiara, except to whisper warnings about what life held in store.
About men, and what they all wanted.
“Men are animals, mia figlia,” she’d hissed. “They want only two things. Power over others. And to perform acts of depravity upon a woman’s body.”
Chiara kicked the telltale clothing into the back of her closet, then hurried into the old-fashioned bathroom and turned on the taps over the bathtub.