‘Is that who I think it is?’ Emily asked, watching a fight break out, but only briefly. Her eyes widened as the Correttis lived up, in every sense, to their depraved reputations. ‘Oh my God, look at those two making out.’
‘Are you glad you came up here?’
‘Very.’ It was dark now and she didn’t want the night that was suddenly here.
Her last in Sicily.
As the figures became impossible to make out, Emily worked for an hour on his computer to get her report in.
He lay on the bed and for once his heart was not black. For a brief moment he glimpsed the peace of normal, of a couple together and sharing an evening. An honest, normal evening. The television on in the background, the tap of the keyboard as Emily worked. Then she looked up. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’ She smiled at him, and as naturally as breathing he returned it.
Yet his soul had been dead for years.
Unnerved by the normalcy, Anton ordered supper and it was waiting for Emily when she came out.
It was nice to sit huddled in a hotel bathrobe sipping a cocktail as Anton flicked through the news channels. Most were filled with the unfolding drama. She even saw her tweet and photo on one of the U.K. channels. But then something caught her eye.
‘Stop,’ Emily said. ‘Go back.’ She took a sip of her icy cocktail and smiled. ‘That’s Dianne.’
Dianne was scowling into the camera, her hair dripping. With really nothing to report, they were heading over to the correct lake now.
‘This is the woman you hate?’ Anton asked.
‘Hate?’ Emily laughed. ‘I don’t hate her, I just don’t like her. Fattispecie.’ Emily smiled.
‘You’re a bad girl.’
‘I know.’ She slipped onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and said sorry with her eyes. ‘And I know what happens to bad girls.’ She shocked herself, but what happened then shocked Anton even more.
He heard the sound of laughter and it came from him. A sound he had not heard since the morning his life was blown apart. He was younger, lighter, and it was with Emily in his arms. He had not felt like this since... He stopped laughing then, buried his face in her hair and remembered that morning, lying there hearing the wonderful news his wife had shared, and he thought the pain might actually choke him.
‘Anton?’
‘Come.’ He tried for normal. He went to the window and looked out on the dark streets but the crowds were dispersing. Only the press were still there, waiting for a morning that would be here soon.
‘We should get some sleep.’
* * *
Both tried.
He lay, for once not consumed with the pain of the past, just knowing there was fresh grief to come, for in a few hours she would be gone.
Emily lay there watching the moon gliding across the night sky as if someone had their finger on the fast-forward button and was speeding them towards dawn.
‘If we close the shutters, can we stop the morning?’ Emily asked in the fading darkness.
He fought for a glib comment to shut out not the morning but the woman in bed beside him, to disengage before dawn, as Anton always did, except his hands were stroking her down her waist, his arms pulling her right into him, his lips deep-kissing her shoulder.
She could feel his erection stirring between her thighs, and his hand brushed her stomach and moved down and stroked her clitoris before her mind even had a chance to wish it there. It was as if he knew her body; it was as if he were made for her. He was nudging her entrance when he should have been stretching over for a condom. Another assumption, another principle dissolved in his presence. She could not fight her want, her need, for the man stealing inside her. She was trying not to cry as he filled her, except she couldn’t hold on to a single emotion with Anton around.
‘Emily...’ He knew he should withdraw, only this wasn’t just sex, even if he tried to deny it. He rocked deeper within her. He could feel her sobbing, feel her orgasm building to meet his, and he wanted to feel. For so long he hadn’t, and it actually hurt to feel good.
Intimately she gripped him, pressed herself back into him as his mouth found her cheek. Emily’s neck craned for his mouth, for his tongue, for the close of his eyes as she throbbed to her first intimate spill on the inside, and she knew, she just knew, they belonged together.
They lay in silence, still locked together, as unspoken, reckless possibilities were entertained. It was Emily who voiced them. ‘Anton.’ She did not turn to him. Instead she felt him tense at her tentative suggestion. ‘I’ve got some annual leave....’
‘You need to get back.’
‘I know that but maybe in a couple of weeks...’ He was pulling away. ‘You spoke about the Corretti Cup. Maybe I could come back—’
She was interrupted by his phone, but she felt the relief from Anton at the reprieve, and he spoke for a few moments in Italian, his back to her, not wanting to turn around because he knew that he had gotten too close.
‘Maybe you could visit again,’ was his response to her offer, ‘but don’t come back for me.’ Only then did he turn to her. ‘That was a colleague. Alessandro has been arrested. I know the station. You could go there and get the scoop.’
‘Poor guy.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Just leave him alone.’
‘You’re not tough enough.’ Anton’s words were terse.
She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. ‘So people tell me whenever they’re about to break up with me.’
‘Break up?’ he said. ‘It was a weekend.’
Absolutely she wasn’t tough enough, because Emily started to cry.
‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘It’s been two nights.’
It had been the most amazing two nights of her life. She should be more sophisticated, Emily knew that.
She tried. She got out of the bed and dressed, and he lay there, hand behind his head, not watching, but as she went to leave the room, he halted her.
‘What happened before...’ Anton said. ‘We need to discuss...’
‘Am I to stop off at the farmacia?’ Emily asked. ‘How very thoughtful of you. Don’t worry, Anton, I’m on the pill. The condoms were only necessary in case I had an urge to shag a stranger the whole weekend.’ She just looked at him and couldn’t hide the hurt from her eyes. ‘It would seem that I did.’ She stared at his guarded, closed-off face and she saw the stranger he chose to be.
‘You’re right, it is time for me to leave.’
‘Then go.’
She took off the ring, but she would have her say.
‘It’s not your love for your wife that’s holding you back, Anton. It’s your hate for them.’ He just lay there and she knew she was right. ‘I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be around a man who spends his time booking restaurants in advance and looking for vantage points, who’s no doubt got pole position booked for the Corretti Cup.’ Tears did not make her weak, Emily realised, though she fought them. ‘That kiss on the stairs...’ She could see it all now. ‘You were turned on by revenge, when you should have been turned on by me.’
‘I lost my family.’
‘So you think you have nothing more to lose.’ Emily could be tough when it was called for. ‘That’s a dangerous place to be, Anton.’
She closed the door on him.
He waited for relief.
She was gone.
He could get back to...
To what?
He did not want to think. He flicked on the television. He met Dianne’s cold eyes as she reported on the most recent findings, as she barely blinked as she read the latest news.
Tough, jaded, bitter.
No, Anton corrected, Dianne was focused, determined.
And then his own words haunted him.
A little naive, a little sweet.
What would you choose?
CHAPTER TEN
EMILY STEPPED into her hotel room. One that she had been in for all of an hour. She changed quickly and thr
ew her clothes into the suitcase and was out of the hotel in moments.
She jumped into a taxi ahead of a couple of tourists, and if she was rude, if she wrong, it was better than relenting, way better than charging back to his room.
As if to taunt her, her phone bleeped and it was Gina.
Thought you might like a little memento (and congratulations on the scoop).
How could her career seem not to matter?
How could what had been so vital on Friday seem almost obsolete now?
Why did this have to be love?
Attached were the pictures Gina had taken of her and Anton. Emily saw her smiling face beside his closed one and she knew she could not let his pain darken her soul, which it would if she stayed.
He did not want her to stay, Emily reminded herself, but that did not soothe. She wanted on the plane and in the air and away from him.
Away from a dangerous love.
‘Fai presto!’ Emily urged the driver to go faster. She could see the airport, yet she felt as if the devil itself were chasing her. And it was.
She could hear the sirens, knew without turning that he had changed his mind, knew before he had overtaken them that the car the flashing lights belonged to was his.
Emily thrust the money at the driver, dragged her case from the car and just refused to look where he stood waiting.
‘I’m going.’
‘Emily.’
He took her wrist and she shook him off.
‘Emily.’ He went for the top of her arm and she turned in fury to him. ‘Unless you’ve got your cuffs with you, I’m...’
It was not her poor choice of words that halted her speech; it was the smile that met her gaze. It was an Anton she had never seen. A smile was the first thing her mind had begged from him, and if she had thought she had seen it in the restaurant that night, then she had been mistaken. For what she had witnessed then did not even come close. All the stress had vanished. The eyes hers met were no longer navy; they were the colour of a waking Mediterranean. There were shimmers and specks she should choose not to see.
‘There is someone I do not want to lose,’ Anton said.
‘Anton...’ Emily looked at him, saw the tenderness unhidden. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Fattispecie,’ Anton said as he confessed to her his lie by omission. ‘Louanna was pregnant. She had told me just that morning.’
Ah, fattispecie, Emily thought. Such a sad word.
‘I swore revenge that day and I vowed it again at their graves, but I am letting it go.’
‘For now.’
‘For good,’ Anton said, and then he said it again but with different meaning. ‘For good. A good that I do not want to lose.’ He did not want to crowd her. He did not want her to leave. He did not want another decade of bitterness. ‘Come back, not for the Corretti Cup. Come back, or I come and visit you. We can take it slow if you need to.’
‘I need to take this.’ It was her phone ringing hot now and she had to answer because it wasn’t Adam. Instead it was the chief of the newspaper, calling on a Sunday morning, no less. ‘I need a moment,’ Emily said to Anton.
‘Of course.’
Her career was not quite so obsolete, Emily realised as she struggled to keep the nerves from her voice as she took the call.
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Have you got more?’
‘Alessandro Corretti was arrested last night.’
‘That’s already broken.’
‘Taylor Carmichael—’
‘I saw that she was back.’
‘And deliciously misbehaving,’ Emily said.
‘Anything else?’
‘Plenty,’ Emily said, ‘and it’s not going away anytime soon.’ She told him about the docklands and about Carlo’s illegitimate son, Angelo, who looked set to make a move against the family that had disowned him. They spoke for a few moments, then she turned off her phone and looked over to Anton. Then, taking a deep breath, she wheeled her case over to him.
‘That was my boss,’ Emily said. ‘Not Adam—the big one. He said my two favourite words.’
‘Which are?’
‘Clothing allowance.’ Emily smiled. ‘They want me to stay on and find out more. I’m going to be busy....’
‘You won’t need to lift a finger. I can tell you anything you need to know.’
‘Which means I’m going to be busy.’ Emily grinned. ‘Hello, research.’ He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair, not in grief, just to inhale her scent.
It was a kiss at the airport but neither a hello nor a goodbye; it was a kiss of life and taking chances and staying around long enough to feel your heart again. And as he loaded her case into his car, as she climbed in to set off on another adventure, there was no need for sirens or flashing lights.
They had time.
Time before they heard their three favourite words.
But both already knew what they were.
* * * * *
The more powerful the family…the darker the secrets!
Harlequin Presents® introduces the Correttis; Sicily’s most scandalous family!
Look for all 8 books in the Sicily’s Corretti Dynasty series:
A Legacy of Secrets—Carol Marinelli
An Invitation to Sin—Sarah Morgan
A Shadow of Guilt—Abby Green
An Inheritance of Shame—Kate Hewitt
A Whisper of Disgrace—Sharon Kendrick
A Façade to Shatter—Lynn Raye Harris
A Scandal in the Headlines—Caitlin Crews
A Hunger for the Forbidden—Maisey Yates
Keep reading for an excerpt from A Legacy of Secrets by Carol Marinelli!
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Presents title.
You want alpha males, decadent glamour and jet-set lifestyles. Step into the sensational, sophisticated world of Harlequin Presents, where sinfully tempting heroes ignite a fierce and wickedly irresistible passion!
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CHAPTER ONE
SANTO JERKED awake, his heart racing, and reached out for familiar comfort, but rather than a bed with a lover beside him, he was asleep alone on a couch.
What happened last night?
His mind was a cruel trickster.
It did not tell him what had happened—it showed him little clues.
There was an empty whisky bottle on the floor, which Santo stepped over to get to the bathroom, and when he looked down he saw that he was still wearing the wedding suit, but his tie was off and the shirt torn and undone.
He checked the inside pocket of his jacket, remembered Ella double—and triple-checking that he had them before she left and he went off to be best man at his brother’s wedding.
The rings were still there.
He splashed his face with water; his face and chest were a mass of bruises.
Santo looked at his neck and grimaced, but a few love bites were the least of his concerns as yesterday’s events started to come back to him.
Alessandro!
Santo picked up the phone to arrange a driver, but he got the night receptionist who, perhaps unaware that she should not ask such questions, enquired where he wanted to go and Santo promptly hung up.
Looking out of the window, from his luxurious vantage point, Santo could see the press waiting. Rarely for Santo, he couldn’t stomach facing them, or his brother, alone.
‘Can you pick me up?
Despite the hour, Ella answered the phone with her eyes closed. Afte
r four months working for Santo Corretti she was more than used to being called out of hours, though he sounded particularly terrible this morning. His deep, low voice, thick with Italian accent, was still beautiful, if a touch hoarse.
Yes, beautiful and terrible just about summed Santo up.
Peeling her eyes open, she looked at the figures on her bedside clock. ‘It’s 6:00 a.m.,’ Ella said. ‘On a Sunday.’ Which should have been enough reason to end the call and go back to sleep. Yet, all night, Ella had been half expecting him to ring, so much so she had sat with her giant heated rollers in last night and had already laid her clothes out. Like the rest of Sicily, Ella had watched the drama unfold on television yesterday afternoon and had seen updates on the news all night. Even her mother in Australia, watching the Italian news, would know that the much-anticipated wedding of Santo’s brother Alessandro Corretti to Alessia Battaglia had been called off at the last minute.
Literally, at the last minute.
The bride had fled midway down the aisle and the world was waiting to see how two of Sicily’s most notorious families would deal with the fallout.
Yes, Ella had had a feeling that her services might be required before Monday.
‘Look, this is my day off.’ She did her best to hold firm. ‘I worked yesterday...’ Of course, as just his PA, Ella hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Instead her job had been to ensure that Santo arrived sober, on time and looking divine as he always did.
The divine part had been easy—Santo made a beautiful best man. It was the other two requisites that had taken up rather a lot more of her people skills.
‘I need to pick up Alessandro from the police station,’ Santo said. ‘He was arrested last night.’
Ella lay there silently, refusing to ask for details, while privately wondering just what else had happened yesterday.
She had raised a glass to the screen as she had seen Santo arrive at the church, talking and joking with Alessandro, privately thinking that the gene pool had surely been fizzing with expensive champagne when these two were conceived.
Uncovering the Correttis (Sicily's Corretti Dynasty) Page 5
