The Sicilian's Forgotten Wife

by Caitlin Crews

  Josselyn found herself clinging to the kitchen door. “Why are you telling me anecdotes about yourself?” She swallowed, not surprised to find her throat was dry. “Are you trying to lure me in with a false sense of camaraderie?”

  Those predator’s eyes met hers. “Yes.”

  She huffed out a breath. “Well. Points for honesty, I guess.”

  “I am not, as you have said, a liar, Josselyn. I did not lie to your father. I merely did not correct him. These are not the same thing.”

  She drifted farther into the kitchen, feeling not unlike Persephone creeping into the underworld. Because there was a platter before him with what looked like cheese and bread, and her stomach rumbled. But she dared not take any. Wasn’t that the rule? Eat something and you were doomed to stay in hell forever.

  On the other hand, she was really hungry.

  It helped that Cenzo did not appear to care overmuch what she did. He carried on fixing the meal before him, as if he was alone in the renovated kitchen. Josselyn crept closer and decided it would do her no good to ignore the physical realities of a situation.

  You really do need your strength, she told herself piously.

  And though she could feel Cenzo’s gaze on her from time to time as she stood across from him, every time she glanced at him he appeared to be entirely engrossed in preparing a pasta dish.

  Long before she was anywhere near satiated, he whisked the cheese and bread away. He carried the platter out through doors she’d thought were windows, leading her out to a wide terrace off the side of the kitchen. It seemed to hang there over the sea, nothing but the horizon in the distance and exultant bougainvillea closer in, clinging to the rail.

  “Sit,” he ordered her.

  And he did not wait to see if she would obey; he simply strode off back into the kitchen.

  To say that she had whiplash would be vastly understating the situation. Josselyn moved to the bright and fragrant rail, because despite the careening sort of feeling inside her, she couldn’t keep herself from staring out at the sea. She didn’t want to keep herself from it. The Mediterranean was deep blue and beckoning, and the ruckus inside her shifted into a kind of thrill. It was as if she couldn’t tell what her body might do of its own accord, suddenly. It felt entirely possible that she might simply find herself leaping off the terrace. Hurling herself out into all that glorious blue.

  And not because she was filled with the need to end herself. But because she thought that for a while there, she might actually fly.

  She heard a sound behind her and turned to find Cenzo coming toward her again, this time bearing two plates of the pasta he’d made. And she couldn’t help but notice that looking at him felt very much the same as looking down from this great height to the sea far below.

  He set out the plates on the table, which was perfectly placed to take in the view, and took one of the seats. Then did nothing, save raise one brow.

  And wait.

  Josselyn didn’t move. “I’m trying to fit in a homemade dinner with the list of threats you unspooled for me earlier. I didn’t expect to be enslaved via food.”

  “It is the way to the heart, Josselyn. Surely you have heard this, even in the rustic wilds of your Pennsylvania.”

  It was a bit rich to call Pennsylvania rustic and wild when they were currently perched on the top of a big rock, with civilization far off beyond the horizon. And yet she drifted toward the table despite herself.

  She told herself it was the pasta. “I think you’re going to have to explain to me how and why you’re pursuing this remarkably intimate bid for my destruction. Surely you could also put me under house arrest in one of your many properties and leave me to rot.”

  “But that would not give me what I want.” Cenzo indicated the empty seat opposite him with a peremptory hand.

  Josselyn should have ignored it. She should have made a stand, started how she meant to go on, and made it clear he couldn’t treat her like this. But again, she was hungry and she doubted very much that he would stoop to poisoning her. And in any case, even if it was poisoned, and/or it kept her in his underworld forever, it smelled delicious.

  She took her seat, glad that she’d kept her sweater on though the day looked sunny and warm. Maybe it was, but here up high where the castle pierced the sky, the sea breeze was constant.

  “Mangia,” Cenzo murmured, and then they each set to the task of eating.

  And Josselyn was far too aware, of everything. Every possible sensation. She felt the wind play with her hair and toy with what little skin was exposed. She felt the sun, pleasingly warm but never hot, and far off she could hear the seabirds sharing songs with each other as they flew.

  “This is delicious,” she said. She couldn’t help herself.

  “It is Pasta alla Norma,” he replied. “It is Catanian.” His gaze swept to hers, then lowered. “That is, from farther down the coast.”

  The food he’d prepared was simple. Sicilian, apparently. And the flavors burst on her tongue, making her feel something like seduced.

  Then again, maybe Josselyn was kidding herself. Maybe it had nothing to do with the food or the sea air or her admittedly scenic location. Maybe what she was truly aware of here was the man.

  Cenzo had changed his clothing while she slept—and she didn’t want to think about him doing such a thing in the same room where she’d slumbered on, unaware. It made her breath catch. Now he wore more casual dark trousers and a T-shirt that looked as if it might, very possibly, have been created specifically to glorify his form. He should have looked less dangerous out of the bespoke suits that she’d thought he lived in. But instead, the change did the opposite.

  It had nothing to do with the clothes. There was no disguising that the brooding, elemental danger that exuded from him was as much a part of him as that old coin profile. His predator’s gaze. That cruel mouth that made her hunger for another taste—

  What she couldn’t understand, she thought as she very carefully placed her utensils back on her plate, was how he’d known.

  He could not possibly have anticipated that there would be any attraction on her part. Attraction was far too funny. It waxed or waned or failed to turn up at all, based entirely on the individuals involved. Their history, their needs, and simply how they were wired.

  Yet he had sounded so sure that no matter who she might have been, he would have been able to elicit the same response in her.

  “You’re scowling at me,” he pointed out.

  “I want to circle back to my heroin addiction, such as it is.”

  “You might find that you wish for such sweet oblivion, when I’m done with you,” he replied. Conversationally, which made it worse. It took a few moments to fully land, and then it seemed to sit on her.

  She made herself sit up straighter. “I don’t know what makes you think I find you remotely attractive. For all you know, I could be actively working to conceal my repulsion. Like bile in my throat.”

  Those copper and gold eyes gleamed. “You do not find me repulsive, Josselyn.”

  “You don’t actually know that. I’ve had a great deal of practice concealing what I actually feel about anything. I’m very good at it.”

  Cenzo pushed his plate away and sat back in his chair. He looked like a man at ease, but she could feel the weight of his stare. “Let us say that I was in some doubt about your reaction to me, though I am not. It would not matter in any way. We are isolated here. And I will tell you this, mia moglie. I have found that where there is attention, attraction follows.”

  “You’re either attracted to a person or you’re not.” She shrugged as if it was all out of her hands. “It’s not mutable.”

  “Shall we test it?” He laughed when she shrank back. “I rather thought not.”

  Josselyn tried to look as if she indeed had bile in her throat instead of too much molten heat char
ging through her and settling low in her belly. “In case you wondered, I have found your kisses rather lacking. If a man of your much-vaunted prowess and certain narcissism takes notes on his performance.”

  She had the sense of his laughter, though all he did was smile. “We were speaking in generalities, yes? The mythic possibility that I might encounter a woman who does not want me. I like a fairy story as much as the next person, but let us turn our attention instead to you, Josselyn.”

  Nothing about the way he was sitting or looking at her changed, yet she still felt as if that noose was around her neck again. And pulling tight.

  Only she had never heard of a noose making a person burn like this, all the way through, until she had to fight off the urge to squirm in her seat.

  Cenzo considered her for a moment. Maybe three. “You do know that one of the chief inducements your father offered me was your innocence, do you not?”

  Josselyn felt her chin rise when what she wanted to do was scream at the violation of her privacy. “You’ve mentioned my innocence before. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago.”

  “Did it?” Cenzo’s eyes gleamed. “I think not.”

  “I couldn’t give my virginity away quickly enough,” Josselyn declared, lying through her teeth. “You went to boarding school. You must know what it was like. I don’t believe any virgins were permitted to graduate from the hallowed halls of my high school.”

  “Your father seemed certain,” Cenzo said. Also sounding certain.

  Josselyn nearly laughed, because the absurdity of this conversation was too much. She was sitting in a half-ruined, half-renovated castle somewhere off the coast of Sicily, debating her virginity. Literally discussing it as if it was an estate sale item, like some former doyenne’s silver. It was so absurd, in fact, that she couldn’t muster up any of the numerous emotional reactions she suspected she was likely to have regarding it—but later. She counted herself lucky for that.

  “I don’t know how to break this to you,” she told him, some of that near-laughter in her voice, “but my father is quite literally the last person on earth with whom I would ever discuss my sex life.”

  But Cenzo only smiled in that edgy, knowing way of his. “What I was going to say, cara, is that your father was very certain, yes. But I too live in the world. And am well aware that fathers are often the last to know what it is their daughters get up to. Yet any doubts I might have had were completely erased that afternoon in Maine.”

  Josselyn could still remember it all with such painful clarity. The shock of it, of him. Lounging there against an ancient fireplace, electric and impossible.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said now. “As I believe you’ve already pointed out, we didn’t even speak.”

  “Words were unnecessary.” He gave the impression of shrugging without quite doing so, though his gaze was even more intent. “Your eyes grew big. You stopped breathing. Then you turned red. Not, I think, the typical behavior of an experienced woman.”

  Josselyn had never felt her virginity like any kind of burden. She’d retained it through chance, not deliberation. It was difficult to have any kind of a social life when she spent most of her time in her father’s company. And during her college years—and indeed throughout boarding school—when she’d been left to her own devices, she’d never really managed to understand how a person got from one place to the other. The flinging off of clothes had never seemed organic to her. Did one person start and the other follow? Did both parties agree to undress and then proceed from there in a kind of lockstep? It had always seemed fraught with tension and potential mishaps, so she couldn’t even say that she’d avoided it. It was more the opportunity had never arisen.

  She now wished that she’d spent more time applying herself to the issue.

  But she only sniffed at Cenzo. “It’s too bad that your Ivy League education failed to make it clear to you that a person’s virginity is not, in fact, visible when they walk into a room.”

  “Generally speaking, no,” he agreed. “But yours is.”

  That was horrifying to contemplate. “I’m not going to argue with you, Cenzo. It’s pointless. Of the two people sitting here, I’m the only one who actually knows my sexual history.”

  A normal person might have looked abashed at that. But this was Cenzo Falcone. All he ever seemed to look was amused.

  Josselyn forged on. “What I’d like to know is how, if you truly believe that I remained virginal all this time, you think that you can simply swan in and not only get me into bed but make me a slavering addict where you’re concerned. You don’t suffer from insecurity, do you?”

  “I am a man who was taught since birth to know his consequence.” Cenzo waved a hand. “My worth is not a mere concept to me, to be trotted out in sad self-help seminars. I know it to the decimal.”

  “I see. You intend to treat me like a bank balance. And that, you seem so confident, will render me so enslaved to you that it will break my father’s heart from afar.” Josselyn sat back in her chair and tried to look as unconcerned as he did. “This seems a bit far-fetched, I have to say.”

  “That is because you do not understand,” he said, almost sounding warm. Inviting. If they had been discussing any other topic, she was sure she would have been confused. She would have imagined that somehow, this was nothing more than a domestic moment between a husband and wife.

  Was that what he wanted her to think? Was it just another example of his mind games?

  “I have studied your family,” Cenzo told her, with perhaps too much portent in his words for her liking. “You were very young when your mother and brother died.”

  “I was ten.” And it was funny how grief changed over time. She didn’t feel the sharp edge of it any longer. She wouldn’t like it if someone wielded it as a weapon, in temper, but she didn’t mind when people brought up her family tragedy of their own volition. Because it was a simple fact that happened to be her personal history. Her mother and older brother had sailed out into Blue Hill Bay that summer’s day and had never returned.

  Nothing ever made that better. But then again, it wasn’t as if anything could make it worse.

  “There were those who expected your father to remarry, especially with a young daughter yet to raise. But he did not. He raised you himself, and as far as anyone is aware, never had the slightest interest in another woman.”

  “Their marriage was arranged, much as ours was,” Josselyn said, nodding. “But the difference is, they quickly fell in love. I think my father has always felt that there is no possibility that he could ever hope that lightning might strike twice for him.”

  “How romantic.” Cenzo did not sneer, but he certainly made it clear that he did not find that story romantic at all. “It has been nearly twenty years. It is clear to even the most casual observer that if your father is capable of loving anything at all, he loves you.”

  She laughed, more in shock than because she thought that was funny. “If he’s capable? Let me assure you, he is. Of course he loves me. As I love him in return.”

  “So tender,” Cenzo murmured, and this time, the sardonic inflection seemed to leave marks in her flesh. “But you see, that is exactly what I will use.”

  It shouldn’t have felt like whiplash. She’d known he was playing games here. Still, she found herself winded once more.

  And worse, molten hot straight through. Because apparently being more or less kidnapped and marooned on an island was the key to making her think about taking off her clothes. Who could have guessed?

  “You speak so much of how you will use me,” she managed to say. “Enslave me. Addict me. A lot of implied action and danger, I’d say. But when given the opportunity to show me how intimidated I should be by all your bluster, all you did was cook pasta and slice up some cheese.”

  “It’s only the first day,” Ce
nzo said, and smiled as if he was approachable. Or as if he wanted her to think he was approachable...if only for a moment. “But I want to be clear about the aim here. Your father is used to your attention. To being the center of your world. You think he is capable of love. I do not.”

  “Oh,” she said mildly, “look at that. Another topic that I know more about than you.”

  He ignored her, lounging there as if daring the Sicilian sun to render itself prostrate before him too. “Either way, Josselyn, when I take all that you have to give he will be left with nothing. And you will be too far gone to care.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CENZO WAS ENJOYING HIMSELF.

  Truly, this had all gone better than he could have imagined, and he had spent the past two years imagining it in every possible permutation. What she might say, what she might do. Having studied her extensively, he thought he’d been prepared.

  But Josselyn defied study. And he hadn’t been prepared for his response to her. He certainly couldn’t have known that a simple conversation with this wife he had not wanted eclipsed any other form of entertainment in his memory.

  He told himself that boded well for his plans and nothing more. For she was the quarry, not he.

  And yet you seem to need reminders, a voice in him, sounding far too much like Françoise, commented acidly.

  “I don’t understand,” Josselyn said, though he thought she lied. Her color was high again, though he would not share that with her. Not when it seemed such an excellent barometer of her reactions. Her dark eyes were glossy, her mouth militant. She stayed where she was, sitting perhaps too still after having eaten a meal he’d prepared with his own hands. He had intended to throw her off-balance. What he had not prepared for was how deeply such a thing would affect him in turn.

  Because it turned out that he liked it. He liked that his wife should eat what he had made. He liked watching her eat. He liked talking to her, because he never knew what she might say when so many of the people he interacted with bored him silly. He liked too much of this—of her—particularly when it felt like the kind of intimacy he did not intend to allow.