Castelli's Virgin Widow

by Caitlin Crews

  He made his way toward his office, past her empty desk that he hadn’t been able to make himself fill yet because she’d ruined him, she truly had, and he closed himself inside.

  He went to his computer to find his inbox full. Gritting his teeth, he clicked on the links that so many people had helpfully sent him. And there it was.

  SAINT KATE IN SEX ROMP WITH GIANNI’S PLAYBOY SON!

  SAINT KATE UPGRADES FROM FATHER TO SON!

  SAINT KATE STEPMAMA DRAMA!

  And underneath the shrieking headlines were the pictures. Kathryn on his roof. More to the point, Luca on his roof with her, half-naked, kissing her as if his life depended on it. As if she hadn’t just revealed herself as the traitorous, mercenary bitch she was. As if that wasn’t a scene of desperation and betrayal, and nothing more.

  Next to him, his mobile buzzed again, this time with a text from Rafael.

  Fix it, it read.

  It was succinct and to the point, and did nothing at all to soothe the raging thing inside Luca that was too angry, too ferocious to be a simple beast. This thing wanted blood. This thing wanted payback.

  This time, he vowed, he wouldn’t rest until he’d destroyed her, too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KATHRYN NOTICED THE sleek black luxury car, entirely too flashy for the quiet English country lane it blocked, the moment she came around the bend on her walk back from the shops.

  It had been twelve days since she’d dragged herself out of Rome and back to England. Twelve days since she’d gotten on the next flight back home. She’d never been so pleased to return to her native Yorkshire in all her life. The wolds and the country lanes. The clouds and the green. The redbrick houses that lined this small village, just over five miles outside Hull’s city center.

  Even her prickly mother, she told herself, was a vast improvement over anyone named Castelli.

  She slowed her pace as she drew closer to the car, parked as it was at a sharp angle directly in front of the cottage. Her carrier bag thwacked against her thigh. High above, plump clouds scudded across the winter sky, some thick with rain, some as wispy as cotton.

  And then Luca threw open the low-slung driver’s door and climbed out, unfolding himself onto her remote little lane like a nightmare come to life.

  A nightmare, she told herself firmly, as her heart squeezed tight in her chest. Definitely a nightmare.

  She couldn’t pretend she was entirely surprised. She’d seen all the papers. So had everyone else in this tiny little village—and most of England, for that matter. To say nothing of all the world.

  Kathryn had told herself that if she could weather a tabloid storm in a village this small, she could do anything. Including having a second generation of illegitimate children, like her mother before her. She’d imagined that when her pregnancy eventually became impossible to conceal, it would seem unworthy of comment in comparison.

  “It’s like you to give up, isn’t it?” her mother had sniffed when Kathryn had made it home. “I think we both know that’s your father’s blood in you. Making you as weak as he was.”

  There’d been no point replying to that. Or to the far more unkind things Rose had said when the tabloids had splashed those pictures everywhere.

  She’d decided that was all fine, too. She could stomp around in the chilly Yorkshire lanes wrapped up in concealing coats and heavy boots and pretend she was invisible, until she wasn’t.

  Luca, by contrast, looked lethal. Not invisible at all. He wore a pair of casual trousers and a shirt that would have looked unremarkable on any of the men Kathryn had just seen down on the high street, but this was Luca. He somehow looked as powerful, as darkly ruthless, as he had when he’d been wearing a bespoke suit. His hair was in its usual tousled state that somehow softened the austere male beauty of his hard face, making him that much more stunning. And no matter that he was scowling at her.

  The difference was that today Kathryn didn’t give a toss. He couldn’t break what was already broken.

  What he’d stomped into pieces himself on that rooftop far away.

  “Oh, lovely,” she said coolly as she drew closer. She didn’t smile at him, not even a forced rendition of one, and she told herself it was a bit sad that felt like a rebellion. “Does this mean it’s my turn to fling horrid accusations at your head and shred your character at will? I’ve been saving up insults, just in case.”

  “You took your turn in the tabloids,” he bit out. “So here I am, and no matter that it took me over a week to track you down to this godforsaken place. What do you want?”

  Kathryn blinked. “I don’t want anything. I might have liked some compassion when I told you some startling news, but that ship sailed.”

  “What game is this?” His voice was soft, but Kathryn could hear the thunder in it. It rolled off him like electricity and deep into her, setting off a different set of explosions. “What can you possibly hope to win?”

  Kathryn shifted her weight back on her heels and studied him, shoving her hands deep into her coat pockets as she did. He looked...unhinged, she thought. She’d never seen that wild look in Luca’s dark eyes, nor that tension that seemed to grip him.

  Luca slammed the car door shut with more violence than was necessary, rocking the magnificent sports car where it sprawled there, as muscular and dangerous as he was. Kathryn thought he might reach for her then, and braced herself against it—but he only eyed her in that predatory way of his that made her blood feel spiked in her veins.

  Then he leaned back against the car, crossing one boot over the other and his arms over his chest as if he was not only wholly at his ease, but also impervious to the Yorkshire winter wind that whipped down the lane in irregular bursts to shake the trees and slap at them. As if he would stand there forever if she didn’t answer him.

  “I don’t want anything from you.” Kathryn met his dark gaze and felt that same old heavy, edgy thing flip over deep inside her. Maybe she would always have this odd yearning, this bizarre hope that he might prove himself a different man. But he wasn’t. And she didn’t have to tolerate the way he spoke to her. “I told you that you’re going to be a father. What you choose to do with that information is entirely up to you.”

  “And this independent stance has nothing to do with the fact that if I fail to claim this child you can try to pass it off as my father’s, I’m sure.” Luca’s eyes blazed, though he still stood there as if he was relaxed. “And in so doing, potentially win yourself a conservatorship of one-third of the Castelli fortune my brother and I now share between us. That is quite the luxurious life you’ve plotted out for yourself, Stepmother. Let me guess. You spent your entire marriage trying to get pregnant, but failed. Then when my father died, you realized you had one shot left. Rafael has never had eyes for any woman but Lily, not even when he thought she was dead, which left me.”

  She wished she could run him over with his own ridiculous car.

  “Right,” she said in a flat voice. “You’ve figured me out. Except for the fact that I was a virgin, as you know very well.”

  “There are words for what you are,” he retorted, in that hard-edged way that slapped at her the same way it had in Rome. “But I don’t think virgin is one of them.”

  “Yes,” she said, scathingly. “You saw to that.”

  “You can’t lose, can you?” He was seething, she realized. So furious that the only thing containing him was the way he held himself there, so rigid and still. “If I do nothing, the way I would with any other woman who tried to claim I’d impregnated her, the world will assume the child is my father’s. You’ve guaranteed yourself a payday for the rest of your mercenary little life.”

  Kathryn opened her mouth to throw something back at him, to defend herself somehow, but instead found herself swamped by a tide of heavy emotion, as deep and as dark as the North Sea
. She tried to fight it off. She’d sworn to herself that this man would never see her cry again, that he didn’t deserve it—

  But it was no use.

  It rushed over her. It betrayed her as surely as he had.

  Entirely against her will, Kathryn sobbed.

  All the things he’d called her over these past two years, and the past twelve days in particular. All those vicious lies in the paper. All the nasty things her mother had said to her about history repeating itself, but much dumber this time. And the way Luca had turned on her so completely. So certain she was every terrible thing she’d been called.

  So certain that he’d called her some of them himself, this same man who had tended to her so gently that night in Sonoma. Held her against him and bathed her himself.

  She sobbed and she sobbed.

  “How could you?” she demanded, when she could talk—or try—through the flood of tears. “You were there, Luca. You know perfectly well this baby is nobody’s but yours!”

  “Why?” he threw right back at her, and he wasn’t standing there so languidly any longer. He didn’t sound like himself, either. Not lazy or amused in the least. He moved toward her, wrapping his hands around her upper arms and pulling her face to his. “You held on to your virginity against all odds for twenty-five years, even made it through an entire marriage with it intact, then threw it away in the back of a car with a man who used to be your stepson? Why would anyone do that without an ulterior motive? How could it be anything but a plot?”

  Kathryn shook with all the huge and unwieldy things inside her. She didn’t know when she’d dropped the carrier bag. Or when she started pounding her fists against his impervious chest.

  “Because I love you, you jackass!” she cried.

  He closed his hands over her fists and held them away from him, and something in the expression on his beautiful face made her still. She stopped trying to hit him. She stopped fighting. All she could hear was her own ragged breathing, and everything else was that raw thing in his eyes.

  And the foolishness in her, that still hurt when he did.

  “Then, you are the only one who ever has,” Luca said, matter-of-fact and quiet.

  And it turned out a broken heart could break again, after all.

  * * *

  Luca felt outside himself. He let go of Kathryn’s hands, and she wiped at her face. And he didn’t understand how he could feel turned inside out, a stranger to himself, and still enjoy it when she straightened and fixed him with that fierce scowl of hers.

  Had he really come here to hurt her? He’d been lying to himself. He understood that he’d have taken any excuse at all to hunt her down. Any reason in the world to see her again. Anything to shift this darkness off him—and only she could do that, though Luca couldn’t think of a single reason in the world she’d want to do anything of the kind.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said crossly now. “Of course you’re loved. The whole world loves you. You are beloved wherever you go.”

  “I am known. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Your family—”

  “Listen to me,” Luca said, his voice darker than he meant it to be and far more urgent. “My father loved his money and his search for new wives. My mother loved her own illness. Rafael loves Lily. I decided early on that I wanted no part of any of that, because there was no room for me anyway. I wanted control, not love. I wanted to make sure nothing and no one could hurt me the way all of them either hurt others or were hurt themselves. Maybe the truth is I don’t know how. It isn’t in me.”

  Her scowl deepened. “Luca—”

  “And then came you,” he gritted out. “You got under my skin from the first. You spent two years married to my father and still, you drove me crazy. I’ve never met anyone who bothered me more.”

  “You’ve mentioned that. At length.”

  “But I couldn’t stay away from you, Kathryn. I couldn’t stop.” He shook his head. “And then, when I touched you, I didn’t want to stop. I thought that maybe I’d finally found the thing that brought down every other member of my family. I thought maybe I could be different.” He blew out a breath. “Then you betrayed me, and I knew.”

  Her gray eyes were dark and solemn. “You knew what?”

  “That it’s no more than what I deserve,” he said harshly. “I don’t blame you for wanting to do this on your own. You shouldn’t want me, Kathryn, and you certainly shouldn’t want me near any child. What would I teach it? To be like me?”

  “Stop,” she commanded him.

  “I’ll support you in any way you want me to,” he said gruffly. “But I won’t be surprised if you think that’s a terrible idea.”

  Kathryn stared at him for a long moment, then made a low, hard sort of noise. She surged forward, wrapping her arms around him. And he couldn’t seem to keep himself from folding his own over her, to keep her there.

  “My mother lives her whole life in the past, Luca,” she whispered fiercely. “Nothing is ever good enough for her, certainly not me.” She reached over and took his hand then dragged it to her still-flat belly. “But this baby won’t live like that. This baby will be loved. It already is.”

  He shook his head. “You’re both better off without me.”

  “Luca,” she whispered, her voice just as ferocious, “I love you. That isn’t going to go away, no matter what you do.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” he threw at her. “You should pay attention. I’m a terrible man, Kathryn. Terrible enough to let you take me back, because I want you too much. Terrible enough to keep you when I know I should let you go. What would you call that if not crazy?”

  “Love, you idiot,” she told him, tears falling down her cheeks again. “I’d call it love.”

  Luca reached over then and cupped her face between his hands, drawing her closer. Drawing her in, where he’d never thought he’d have her again. Where he would do his best to earn her.

  “I think,” he said, right there against that mouth of hers, “that you’re going to have to show me what you mean. And it might take a while.”

  And he could feel her smile, right there against his own, and it was like coming home.

  “I have a lifetime,” she told him.

  Which, Luca decided as she pressed her mouth to his at last, was a very good start.

  * * *

  The second time she married a Castelli, it was a bright June day with an achingly beautiful English summer sky arched blue and impossible above them that no one had to tell Kathryn was its own miracle.

  She was beginning to depend on miracles.

  Kathryn hid her pregnancy, early in its second trimester, behind the grand white dress she hadn’t worn to her first wedding. The bells rang out, and the hordes that Luca had insisted upon inviting packed the village church and spilled out into the lane. It was a far cry from the quick trip to the registry office that had comprised her first set of wedding vows.

  The paparazzi had hounded them after those pictures, after Luca had come to Yorkshire and they’d worked things out between them. That hounding had taken on the edge of hysteria when Luca had only shrugged one day at the usual set of shouted questions and announced that he and Kathryn Castelli, yes, the widow of his father formerly known as Saint Kate, were engaged.

  They’d been back in Rome by then, tucked away in the penthouse he’d insisted she live in with him, and she’d taken it upon herself to warm up a little bit. She’d started with flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. Acrobatic and colorful, splashing warmth and cheer throughout the stark, steel and crisp-lined space.

  “How many flowers are too many?” he’d asked the other day, turning in a circle in the center of the massive space.

  “They’re a metaphor,” she’d replied tartly, typing on her tablet. “The more color in this flat, t
he more love in your cold, cold heart.”

  “Then, you’d better call the florist and have more delivered,” he’d told her, that simmering look in his dark eyes that still made her own heart flip in her chest. “I feel almost empty.”

  Then he’d showed her how much of a lie that was, right there on the sleek sofa.

  “You haven’t asked me to marry you, I note,” she’d pointed out after the engagement announcement had spilled all over the papers.

  “I’m getting around to it,” Luca had said, watching her arrange another dramatic bouquet. He’d been cooking dinner, something Kathryn would have said was entirely beneath him.

  “Just as you were getting around to telling me you were a gourmet cook?” she’d asked.

  “I am a man of intense mystery and many facets, cucciola mia,” he’d told her. “And I cannot eat in restaurants every night of my life.”

  “This has nothing to do with you and your control issues, I’m sure,” she’d replied, and then laughed so hard it had made her ache when he’d thrown a handful of chopped nuts at her.

  The paparazzi had carried on chasing them around Rome, until the day Luca had actually paused while out on one of his runs and had answered one of their salacious, impertinent questions.

  “How can you live with yourself now that you’ve seduced your father’s wife?” the man had shouted at him.

  Luca had smiled. That glorious smile.

  “Have you seen her?” he’d asked. “I live with myself just fine.”

  Kathryn had only rolled her eyes at that one. She’d been far more concerned that she be able to continue working, and to do the things she wanted to do in the company. And she hadn’t been above winning that argument by using the heavy artillery.

  When she’d finished with Luca, he’d laughed and told her he’d give her anything if she knelt before him just like that and did all of it over again, her mouth and her hands, every day.

  “All I want is my own marketing campaign,” she’d told him. “This is merely a side benefit.”