Castelli's Virgin Widow

by Caitlin Crews

  “Keep this up,” he’d replied lazily, “and I’ll give you the whole damned company.”

  She won the respect of most of her coworkers eventually. And the ones who couldn’t handle her presence in the office stopped mattering to her and usually stopped working there, too. The day Luca smiled at her across the conference room table after a presentation she’d slaved over and called her brilliant was all that mattered.

  Because she’d been right. This was what she’d been meant to do.

  Luca had been the one to book the church and take care of all the wedding details.

  “You could participate, cucciola mia,” he’d said once, on a trip to Australia to tour the Barossa Valley. “It’s your wedding, too, I hesitate to remind you.”

  “Wedding?” she’d asked mildly. “What wedding? No one has proposed to me. How could there be a wedding?”

  He’d only grinned.

  Rose, of course, had been her usual vicious self. But on one of her visits to the little cottage in Yorkshire, Kathryn had abruptly cut her off when she’d started to spew her usual venom.

  “You sacrificed for me, Mum,” she’d said, holding her mother’s gaze so there could be no mistake. “I can never thank you enough for that. That’s what mothers do. And I did my best to do my part, too.” She’d waved her hands at the cottage where they’d stood. “You’ll never want for anything again. I’ll always take care of you.”

  “Aren’t you high and mighty now that you’ve lain with not one but two—”

  “Careful,” Luca had warned from his position in the far doorway, where he liked to stand while she visited her mother—like her very own emotional bodyguard. “Very, very careful, please.”

  And Kathryn had understood that it was Luca who had given her the strength to do this at last. To understand that she didn’t have to suffer through her mother’s rages and nastiness. That she didn’t have to participate in this dysfunction. Luca loved her. He wanted to marry her. They were having a baby, and most of the time they were happy together.

  She had nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to this angry, bitter woman who should have loved her most.

  “If you can’t learn to keep a civil tongue in your head, you’ll never see your grandchild,” Kathryn had told her. “I might choose to subject myself to this out of obligation and devotion, but I’ll never let you tear into my baby the way you do me.” Rose had sputtered about threats. “That’s a promise, Mum. Not a threat. The choice is yours.”

  And then later, Luca had held her tight and hadn’t judged her at all for crying over the childhood she’d never had with Rose.

  Kathryn thought she could do no less for him.

  She’d gone out of her way to make sure that they spent as much time with Raphael and Lily as possible, because they were the future of the Castelli family, not the grim past that Luca had already survived. She’d come to understand that no matter how lovely Gianni had been to her, he’d been a neglectful father to Luca. But Luca and Rafael were brothers, and they owned the company together, and they loved each other. That was what mattered now.

  They’d gone up shortly after Lily had given birth to little baby Bruno, another dark-eyed, dark-haired Castelli male, and stayed at the old manor house for a few days to marinate in the new shape of their family.

  “I hate it here,” Luca had told her when she’d woken one night to find him standing by the window instead of in bed. “I’ve always hated it here.”

  He’d told her of his lonely childhood, of all the ways he’d tried to get his family’s attention. Of all those sad years where he’d been left to his own devices, or the tender mercies of the staff, or the frustrations of his stepmothers.

  “You’re not a child any longer,” she’d told him, rolling out of the bed to go to him. She’d sneaked her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his back. “This house is what you make it. It’s only a house.”

  “It always seemed like a curse.”

  “You can break the curse,” she’d promised him. “All you have to do is love me.”

  “That, cucciola mia, is no trouble at all.”

  And they’d broken more than a few curses that night, driving each other blissfully mad in that great big bed.

  In the morning they’d gathered in the library with Rafael and Lily and the small boys, all of them bursting with pride over the new addition. This was the new version of the Castellis, Kathryn had thought. Not the stiff, formal way things had been the first time she’d come here with Gianni. No furious, horrible Luca. None of that pounding confusion because she’d been with the wrong man.

  Nothing but love. So much love, in so many forms.

  “Are you truly marrying in June?” Lily had asked as they’d sat together on one of the sofas, watching Rafael hold his brand-new son, that Castelli smile of his lighting up the whole of Northern Italy. “That’s only a month away.”

  “Luca is planning a huge wedding to someone,” Kathryn had replied with a laugh. “But he has yet to ask anyone in particular, as far as I know. It’s very mysterious.”

  “About that,” Luca had said.

  She’d looked up to find him standing before her, the whole world in his dark eyes. Then he’d dropped to his knees, and she’d clapped her hands over her mouth. Kathryn had heard Lily’s gasp from the sofa beside her, and had sensed more than seen the way Raphael had turned that smile of his their way.

  “I love you,” Luca had said. “I want to give you the world. I want this baby and I want you, Kathryn, cucciola mia, to be my wife and the mother of my children and the best thing in my life, forever. Will you marry me?”

  “I don’t know,” she’d said, looping her arms around his neck and smiling at him with everything she was. “I’ve grown so fond of you calling me Stepmother. How can I give that up?”

  “You won’t regret it,” he’d promised her, his hard mouth curving and so much light in his dark eyes. “I have far better names for you.”

  “I love you,” she’d whispered. “I think I always have.”

  “You are the love of my life,” he’d said as he’d tugged her hand down from his neck and slipped a ring onto her finger, where it sparkled so brightly it made her feel dazzled. Or perhaps that was him. “You are the reason I know that such things exist. You are my heart, Kathryn.”

  “Yes,” she’d whispered, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. “Always yes, Luca. Always.”

  And she married him with his brother at his side and her new sister-in-law at hers, because family was what mattered. Their family. The one they’d made, taking what they needed from what they’d been given and leaving the rest behind, where it belonged.

  “This life is too beautiful,” she told Luca that night, their first night together as husband and wife. “How can it ever get better than this?”

  Four months later, they found out together, when Kathryn gave birth to a marvelous little creature the Castelli family hadn’t seen in generations.

  A little girl.

  “Hold on tight, cucciola mia,” Luca told her as they sat together on their first night as their own little nuclear family at last.

  He held their perfect daughter in his arms, his dark eyes filled with love and light and the whole of their future, right there within reach.

  Theirs for the taking, Kathryn thought happily. Theirs, always.

  Luca’s smile then was big enough to light up the night. “It’s only going to get better from here.”

  And it did.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE SURPRISE DE ANGELIS BABY by Cathy Williams.

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  The Surprise De Angelis Baby

  by Cathy Williams

  CHAPTER ONE

  COULD THE DAY get any better?

  Daniel De Angelis stepped out from the air-conditioned comfort of his black chauffeur-driven Mercedes and removed his dark sunglasses to scan the scenery around him.

  Frankly—perfect. Brilliant sunshine glinted on the calm turquoise water of the Aegean Sea. He’d never made it to Santorini before, and he took a few minutes to appreciate the scenic view of the bowl-shaped harbour from where he stood, looking down on it from a distance. He could even make out the vessel he had come to snap up at a bargain price.

  It looked as picture-perfect as everything around it, but that, of course, was an illusion. It was semi-bankrupt, on its last legs—a medium-sized cruise ship which he would add to his already vast portfolio of conquests.

  He knew down to the last detail how much money it had lost in the past five years, how much it owed the bank, how much its employees were paid, how discounted their fares were now they were desperate to get customers... He practically knew what the owners had for their breakfast and where they did their food shopping.

  As with all deals, big or small, it always paid to do his homework. His brother, Theo, might have laughingly referred to this extravagant purchase as nothing more than a toy—something different to occupy him for a few months—but it was going to be a relatively expensive toy, and he intended to use every trick in the book to make sure he got the best possible deal.

  Thinking about his brother brought a grin to his face. Who’d have thought it? Who would have thought that Theo De Angelis would one day be singing the praises of the institution of marriage and waxing lyrical about the joys of love? If he hadn’t heard it with his own ears when he had spoken to his brother earlier in the week then he wouldn’t have believed it.

  He looked around him with the shrewd eyes of a man who knew how to make money and wondered what he could do here. Exquisite scenery. Exquisite island, if you could somehow get rid of the hordes of annoying tourists milling around everywhere. Maybe in the future he would think about exploiting this little slice of paradise, but for the moment there was an interesting acquisition at hand, and one which would have the benefit of his very personal input—which was something of a rarity. He was relishing this break from the norm.

  Then there was his successful ditching of the last woman he had been dating, who had become a little too clingy for comfort.

  And, last but not least on the feel-good spectrum, a sexy little blonde thing would be waiting for him when his time was up on that floating liner so far from paradise...

  All in all this was going to be something of a holiday and, bearing in mind the fact that he hadn’t had one of those in the longest while, Daniel was in high spirits.

  ‘Sir? Maybe we should head down so that you can board the ship? It’s due to leave soon...’

  ‘Shame... I’ve only been here for a few hours.’ Daniel turned to his driver, whom he had brought with him from the other side of the world on an all-expenses-paid, fun in the sun holiday, with only a spot of driving to do here and there. ‘I feel Santorini could be just the place for me... Nice exclusive hotel somewhere... Kick back and relax...’

  ‘I didn’t think you knew how to do that, sir.’

  Daniel laughed. Along with his brother and his father, Antonio Delgado was one of only a few people in whom he had absolute trust, and in fairness his driver probably knew more about his private life than both his brother and his father, considering he drove him to his numerous assignations with numerous women and had been doing so for the past decade.

  ‘You’re right.’ He briskly pulled open the car door and slid inside, appreciating the immediate drop in temperature. ‘Nice thought, though...’

  In truth, kicking back by the side of a pool with a margarita in one hand and a book in the other wasn’t his thing.

  He kicked back in the gym occasionally, on the slopes occasionally and far more frequently in bed—and his women all ran to type. Small, blonde, sexy and very, very obliging.

  Granted, none of them stayed the course for very long, but he saw that as just an occupational hazard for a man whose primary focus—like his brother’s—had always been on work. He thrived on the pressure of a high-octane, fast-paced work-life filled with risk.

  He had benefited from the privileges of a wealthy background, but at the age of eighteen, just as he had done with Theo, his father, Stefano De Angelis, had told him that his fortune was his to build or not to build as the case might be. Family money would kick-start his career up to a certain point, but that would be it. He would fly or fall.

  And, like Theo, he had flown.

  Literally. To the other side of the world, where he had taken the leisure industry by storm, starting small and getting bigger and bigger so that now, at not yet thirty, he owned hotels, casinos and restaurants across Australia and the Far East.

  He had acquired so much money that he could spend the remainder of his life taking time out—next to that pool with a book in one hand and a margarita in the other—and still live in the sort of style that most people could only ever dream of. But work was his passion and he liked it that way.

  And this particular acquisition was going to be novel and interesting.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he reminded Antonio, ‘you’re to drop me off fifteen minutes away from the port.’

  ‘It’s boiling out there, sir. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather enjoy the air-conditioning in the car for as long as possible?’

  ‘A little discomfort won’t kill me, Antonio, but I’m deeply touched by your concern.’ He caught his driver’s eye in the rearview mirror and grinned. ‘No, it’s essential that I hit the cruise ship like any other passenger. Arriving in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven Merc isn’t part of the plan.’

  The plan was to check out the small cruise liner incognito. The thing hadn’t made a buck in years, and he wanted to see for himself exactly where the myriad problems lay. Mismanagement, he was thinking. Lazy staff, incompetence on every level...

  He would spend a few days checking out the situation and making a note of who he would sack and who he would consider taking on as part of his team when the liner was up and running in its new format.

  Judging from the list of airy-fairy scheduled activities, he was thinking that the entire lot would be destined for unemployment.

  Five days. That was the time scale he had in mind, at the end of which he would stage his takeover. He didn’t anticipate any problems, and he had big plans for the liner. Forget about woolly lectures and cultural visits while on board substandard food was served to passengers who frankly wouldn’t expect much more, considering the pittance they were paying for their trips.

  He intended to turn the liner into one of unparalleled luxury, for a wealthy elite whose every whim would be indulged as they were ferried from golf course to golf course in some of the most desirable locations in the world. He would decide on the destinations once the purchase was signed, sealed and delivered.

  As with every other deal he had successfully completed, Daniel had utter confidence that he would succeed with this one and that the ship would prove to be a valuable asset. He had never failed and he had no reason to assume that this would prove the exception.

  At the port, with the shiny black Merc behind him and a battered
backpack bought especially for the purpose slung over his shoulder, he cast a jaundiced eye over the motley crew heading onto the liner.

  Already he could see that the thing was in a deplorable state. How could Gerry Ockley, who had inherited this potential goldmine from his extremely wealthy father, have managed so thoroughly to turn it into something that no self-respecting pirate would have even considered jumping aboard to plunder? How the hell could he ever have imagined that some wacky cultural cruise would actually turn a profit?

  True, it had taken over eight years to run it into the ground, but he would have thought that someone—bank manager...good friend...concerned acquaintance...wife—would have pointed him in the right direction at some point.

  The liner was equipped to hold two hundred and fifty passengers comfortably, in addition to all the crew needed. Daniel figured that at present it was half full—if that.

  He would be joining it halfway through its trip and, ticket at the ready, he joined the chattering groups of people, mostly in their mid-fifties and early sixties, who were gathering in preparation for boarding.

  Did he blend in? No. When it came to anyone under the age of thirty-five, as far as he could tell he was in the minority. And at six foot two he was taller than nearly everyone else there.

  But he was in no doubt that he would be able to fend off any curious questions, and he was tickled pink that he would be travelling incognito for the next few days. Was that really necessary? Possibly not. He could always have stayed where he was, in his plush offices in Australia, and formulated a hostile takeover. But this, he thought, would afford him the opportunity of removing at least some of the hostility from his takeover.

  He would be able to tell Ockley and his wife exactly why he was taking over and exactly why they couldn’t refuse him. He would be able to point out all the significant shortcomings of their business and he would be able to do that from the advantageous perspective of someone who had been on board their liner. He was being kind, and in the process would enjoy the experience. The fact that the experience would be reflected in his offer would be a nice bonus.