Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER FOUR
BUTSHEDIDnot have to make it easy for him.
Josselyn jerked her hand away from Cenzo’s once she was off the boat. She charged ahead of him along the jetty toward the narrow, endless stairs that climbed up from the rocky beach. And instead of standing about, politely offering to lend a hand as they began unloading the luggage so she could settle into her imprisonment in style, she did what she’d been wanting to do for what seemed like a lifetime now.
She ran. Up the stairs and away from the boat. Away from him.
His words seemed to chase her, blaring within her and snarling like demons at her heels.
The stairs wound around and around the outside of the castle, and she ordered herself to slow down when her breath deserted her. Before her heart clawed its way out. The climb was steep and his words only seemed to echo more loudly inside her, but as she slowed she noticed something else. This might be a rocky ruin of an island, but the view was stunning.
The Mediterranean Sea stretched out in all directions, an impossible blue. Josselyn assumed the land she saw in the distance, not quite over the horizon, was Sicily. The morning was bright and though the breeze was cool, it felt as if it might warm as the day went on. If she’d found this place on a vacation of some kind, she thought she might have found it charming.
And what struck her then, as she accepted the beauty of even so desolate a place, was the quiet.
She couldn’t think when she’d last been so utterly by herself. If she ignored the evil bridegroom issue—as she felt she needed to do or she would simply scream and leap from the stairs to dash herself on the rocks below, something that felt unduly dramatic—she could hear the sound of high-above birds. Waves below as they surged against the rocks. The breeze rushing through the very few trees and down from the heights.
It was stark and it was lonely, but that didn’t make it any less beautiful.
Josselyn told herself she would hold on to that. Somehow.
And on she climbed.
The ruined part of the castle intrigued her, but she somehow doubted that the richest man alive planned to camp there, exposed to the elements, no matter what lesson he thought that might teach her. She passed the half-fallen walls and the stairs began to widen, eventually leading her up from the rubble to a kind of landing and an old stone gate.
She pushed her way through it and stopped short.
Because she’d expected nothing but stark ruins and crumbling stone, but the moment Josselyn stepped through the gate, she could see that this castle was not nearly as abandoned as it looked from below. Not the highest part of it. She now stood in the forecourt of a small keep, but on this side of the gate everything was...polished. It gleamed. She crossed over the stones, her boot heels beating out a cadence as she moved. And when she reached the other side, the great wooden doors that greeted her opened soundlessly and easily.
Inside, she found the same old stone walls but with new windows to let in the light. In the place of the dreary antiques or possibly prison cells she’d anticipated, she found open spaces, hints of modern steel, every furnishing clearly carefully chosen to make everything seem bright and new.
She was still trying to take that in when she heard the door open behind her, and whirled around to face Cenzo once again.
Her heart, having settled down, leaped into high gear again.
“I told you that you would not be harmed,” Cenzo said. “I see that you did not entirely believe me. Perhaps you even wished that you might end up in the dungeons, all the better to martyr yourself.”
“As a matter fact, I’m not a martyr at all.”
“Are you not?”
He prowled inside, and suddenly the great hall that had felt airy and light to her moments before seemed to close in on top of her. It had something to do with the way he trained those hawk’s eyes upon her, as if he was only waiting for the right moment to swoop in and eat her whole.
Her heart kicked at her and her belly twisted at that notion, but between her legs she was shamefully hot.
“I’m really not,” she told him. “I didn’t do as my father asked because it brought me some pleasure to sacrifice myself to his desires. Or to yours. I did it because I love him. And I understand him. I like that I can take care of him in this way after the lifetime he spent caring for me.”
His smile was a mirthless blade. “You might as well not bother trying to convince me that your father is a good man, Josselyn. I know better.”
“And will you tell me what sins my father committed against yours?” she demanded, taking a kind of refuge in the temper that kicked in her then. It was far better than the other, more worrying things she felt. Like attraction. Or the competing sense that she should not go about bringing up his lost father—and no matter that he seemed to have no qualm using that loss as a weapon. She knew that she would not react well if he threw her mother at her in this way. She hated that she felt shaky, deep inside, as she pushed on. “Surely if the crime requires this kind of punishment, I should at least know the details.”
“In time, cara,” Cenzo murmured, those eyes of his gleaming. “In time.”
His men entered the hall then and did not pause in the great hall, seemingly knowing already precisely where they needed to go. Josselyn had the sudden notion that if she went now and ran full out, she could race down the stairs, take the boat, and leave them all here to rot.
But Cenzo only laughed, dark and low.
“You can try,” he told her, as if he’d read her mind that easily. “But I will catch you before you make it to the gate. And I do not think you will appreciate my response.”
Her lips tingled at that, reliving the crush of his hard mouth to hers. She told herself she’d hated it, but it still took everything she had to keep from lifting her fingers to touch her lips, to see if they still felt like hers after he’d imprinted himself upon her.
The trouble was, she believed him. She believed that he would chase her and catch her, and more than that, she understood what he hadn’t said. That it was not so much what he might do—but the simple fact that running like that would encourage him to put his hands on her body.
Josselyn might have been innocent, an accident that had somehow gone on for more years than she would have thought possible when it had never been a plan of hers or any kind of statement, but that didn’t make her an idiot. Whatever she might want to call what happened when they touched, it was clearly combustible.
And given what he told her he intended to do with her, it was obviously in her best interest that she see to it they touched as little as possible.
She turned away from him then—away from her escape route—and followed his men. Or rather, the men carrying her luggage, hoping that at some point they would veer off from the others and settle her somewhere far away from their master.
But no such luck. She had a brief tour of lovely rooms clearly modernized with an eye toward bringing the sea and the sky inside, then she was led up into a high tower. Where all the men with all the luggage climbed all the winding stairs to the top until they reached the sprawling master suite.
And, naturally, Cenzo was standing there in the doorway when all the men retreated.
Blocking her exit, if she wasn’t mistaken. Again.
“You can’t really think that we’re going to share a room, can you?” Josselyn crossed her arms, but mostly because she wanted to make sure that if she started shaking, he couldn’t see it. “Do you actually imagine that there’s any possibility we’re just going to leap into bed together?”
“I would not be averse to it.” He looked amused when she scowled. “But there are no other bedrooms here, I am afraid. I told you. The castello is a place for solitary reflection. There is only the one bed.”
“Then I am very sorry that you will have to sleep on the hard stone floor somewhere,” she said, with an admirable stab at a sweet tone. “I know you seem to think that I’ll be writhing about on the floor in the throes of a sex addiction soon enough, but I’m happy to say that no such addiction currently exists. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to freshen up after an overnight flight and a round of unwanted kisses and unhinged threats from my brand-new husband.”
Josselyn expected him to argue, but instead, all he did was laugh again. That damnable laugh of his that made her shudder, then overheat. He sketched a deeply mocking bow, there in the doorway. And she couldn’t believe it when he...turned and left. She actually ran to the door herself to make sure that he really was walking down the stone stairs, leaving only the sound of his footsteps behind as he went round the bend at each landing.
Was she happy he’d left her? Or did she feel something...more complicated?
She opted not to analyze that too closely. The first thing she did was go back into the sprawling bedchamber and close the door behind her, not particularly surprised to find it had no lock. Then she pulled out her phone and checked to see if what he’d said was true. Sure enough, there was no cell phone service. No Wi-Fi. Though all around her the Mediterranean lolled about seductively on the other side of the windows, she found the quiet seemed a little more ominous, suddenly.
And the curses she muttered under her breath, then not so under her breath, didn’t help any.
Still, Josselyn did what she could. She checked to see that the bathroom did, in fact, have a lock—and that was the only reason she drew herself a bath, then settled into it, trying to soak her equilibrium back.
And it worked well enough, because she was certainly calmer when she got out. She supposed that if she was to be locked away here for a month, it was a nice touch that the bath was fully outfitted, like a spa, so she could while away her terrible honeymoon with luxurious bath salts and a view.
Josselyn meant to march back downstairs the moment she was dressed, to confront Cenzo yet again, but instead she found herself drawn to a cozy chair that sat in one of the tower’s sunny alcoves, offering her nothing but the sea and the sky. She curled up there, intending to gaze out for only a moment or so, but instead, nodded off to sleep.
And when she woke again, with a start, she could tell from the light outside that hours had passed.
Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe she could spend this month catching up on her sleep—because Lord knew, she had been plagued with sleepless nights ever since Cenzo Falcone had turned up in the family cottage in Maine that day.
She splashed cold water on her face, avoided her reflection in the glass, and then set off to see what, exactly, she was dealing with.
Josselyn told herself she was exploring, that was all. And that was what she did. First to see if what he’d told her was true. And she found that though there were other doors in the tower, they led to rooms...but not to other bedchambers. There was a small library. A sitting room. Something that she would have considered a yoga room if it had belonged to anyone else.
But no other bedrooms. And not even a sofa big enough to act like a bed in a pinch.
Down in the main part of the new castle, she accepted that she was looking for her husband only when she made no effort at all to run toward the door now that no one was guarding it.
Was he right, after all? Was this how it started? Was she to be drawn to him against her very will?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told herself sternly. “You’re trying to salvage something from this situation, that’s all. It’s perfectly rational.”
But she didn’t feel particularly rational when she found him in the large kitchen. His intensity seemed to her like a living thing. Like a hand that reached out and caught her up, then held her in a fist.
Cenzo stood at a center island surrounded by steel and inviting tile, a rack of copper pans hanging above him, while he wielded what looked like a very, very sharp knife. She could see the old hearth on one side and could imagine that it had once been the center of the castle, but today it stood cold. And Cenzo appeared to be preparing food, which struck her as... Well, as nothing short of astonishing.
“I trust you slept well,” he said, without looking up. In a mild tone that very nearly sounded friendly.
Something skittered around inside her at the idea that he’d looked in on her while she slept. She wanted it to be dismay, and she told herself it was, but it was too warm for that. Much too warm.
“I find it difficult to believe that you actually know how to cook,” Josselyn said, maybe too severely. She tried to breathe through her dismay. “Surely in all your other many residences, you are besieged by servants ready and eager to meet your every need before it forms.”
“I am.” He was chopping up tomatoes and tossing them in a small pot before him. “But there are a few places I go where it is only me. And if I would like it to remain only me, that means I must take care of my own needs. The first time I attempted it, I cannot say the cooking was a success. So I hired a chef to teach me. Because it turns out that even on my own, I insist upon a certain standard.”
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 charging 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,” Cenzo 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.”